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RIP George "The Animal" Steele


Pete

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I have very vivid boyhood memories of George Steele. The first one being face or heel, he scared the shit out of me. The second being I was relived he was a good guy. 

The biggest highlight of the year for me was the times my mother would rent a VCR for a weekend and I could rent wrestling tapes. I probably watched Wrestlemania 3 a hundred times. The tape does not really do justice to what a big part Steele was in Randy Savage's storyline. Foes for Savage would come and go but George persisted in pursuit of Savage. When Steamboat was injured, George kept the feud hot on TV by standing in Steamboat's place. The final image of Steamboat holding the belt up hugging Steele is such an iconic bookend to that feud. Along with Savage with his head down while Elizabeth consoles him. 

In a way that was the end of Steamboat and Steele in the WWF. It was too perfect a happy ending to ruin. While Savage could rebuild as the best foil for the Honky Tonk Man. 

I think Steele was a very underrated worker. He got a lot done with an economy of moves. I enjoyed much of the 70's work I saw of his and think he was an excellent heel.  

RIP Animal

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26 minutes ago, Victator said:

I have very vivid boyhood memories of George Steele. The first one being face or heel, he scared the shit out of me.

I've seen a lot of that in RIP Steele threads on other boards and I attribute a lot of that sentiment to his use of the Flying Hammerlock finisher.  

Even when George worked face, people had a really hard time accepting George taking it home in baby fashion by hoisting dudes in the air and popping their shoulders out of the socket.

I know that we don't like to delineate between heel offense and face offense anymore, but some moves are just so vicious in execution that you can't help but associate them as heel offense.

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Growing up in the Northeast, he was the first hill I was legit scared of. I thought there was no way Backlund was gonna beat him...which leads to my most vivid memory of him wrestling which was when he did face Backlund at the Spectrum, where Backlund swung out of the flying hammerlock and rolled him up for the pin in under 30 seconds. 

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My earliest memories of wrestling all invovle King Kong Brody and Dick the Bruiser and Terry Funk.

But my earliest memories of WWF involve two very powerful emotions:

1) Hating Hogan

2) Loving George "The Animal" Steele

Everything about his act made him a real attraction to me. It was alternately hilarious and disturbing, convincing and absurd. But I always pepped up when he showed up.

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My favorite little flourish of his run against Savage was after he lost on SNME, and Steamboat consoled him by sifting through the pile of turnbuckle stuffing and pretending to make it snow.

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I am trying hard not to be sad because I found Steele to be a scary scary man as a child.  This bullshit is not helping me stay strong. 

Why is there so much dust in the office today?  Fucking HVAC..

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