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Pete

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I wish the Slater and Murdoch team had run on longer in 91 WCW.

Outside of that it wasn't until the wonder of Youtube started that I had seen much of the guy and, yep, Terry Funk clone sums it up. Which is no knock on the guy

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Bob Roop was an Olympian known to shoot on and cripple people trying to get into the business. When he tried to do that to Slater, Dick left him in a pool of his own blood. That sounds akin to someone coming up against Stu Hart and having the measure of him; tough ain't the word. RIP

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I think my first exposure to Slater was him teaming with Buzz vs the Andersons in 85 JCP.

one of my favorite angles is when, through hubris, Slater lost both the NA and TV title in mid-South without defending either of them.

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Was WWF running shows in the South (other than Florida) during the period Dick was there? It always seemed to be a massive misjudgement to have a babyface doing a Southern rebel gimmick and waving the Confederate flag in the Northeast buildings where WWF always ran TV.

I don't know how the timeline matches up, but would they have been better off having him as a fake Funk brother after Terry left, since he was always thought of as being a clone of Terry Funk anyway. Or was he too well known to pull it off?

Slater as a babyface never seemed to fit, I remember being surprised to see him and Buzz Sawyer as fiery babyfaces against the Andersons at GAB '85, when I'd seen the match listing on the VHS case I think I assumed it'd be a heel vs heel match.

Dick Slater will go down in history as one half of the final WCW U.S. Tag Team Champions along with the Barbarian.

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1 hour ago, Happ Hazzard said:

Was WWF running shows in the South (other than Florida) during the period Dick was there? It always seemed to be a massive misjudgement to have a babyface doing a Southern rebel gimmick and waving the Confederate flag in the Northeast buildings where WWF always ran TV.

Checking Wrestlingdata, they ran a handful of shots down South while Dick was there, mostly Birmingham, Memphis and Nashville. Also a fantastically random show in Jackson, MS of all places.

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When the network came out, I watched Starrcade 83 for the first time and came away thinking, I need to see more Dick Slater and Bob Orton matches from the early 80s.  Dick Slater is one of those dudes who just blended in with everyone else to me as a kid, but as an adult, I appreciated him much more.  He was really smooth in the ring, and could wrestle multiple styles.  If you needed him to brawl, he could, but if you wanted someone to get on the mat and work some holds, he could do that too, want to see a picture perfect double underhook suplex he could do that as well.  R.I.P. to a really underrated worker.

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3 hours ago, Curt McGirt said:

Bob Roop was an Olympian known to shoot on and cripple people trying to get into the business. When he tried to do that to Slater, Dick left him in a pool of his own blood. That sounds akin to someone coming up against Stu Hart and having the measure of him; tough ain't the word. RIP

 

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Perhaps Eddie Graham actually got the legal name change at some point, and people naturally assumed his work name was still a work. Like how everyone continued saying Warrior's real name was Jim Hellwig, long after he'd legally changed it to Warrior Warrior.

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https://www.si.com/vault/1988/03/07/117252/down-from-sumos-summit-now-its-sleeper-holds-and-airplane-spins-for-a-grand-master

Sports Illustrated article from 1988 on Hiroshi Wajima's pro wrestling debut. IIRC, the piece included a photo of Wajima with the Road Warriors.

13-year-old me got a good laugh at Tiger Jeet Singh being described at the outset as "the fat man in the green turban". Had no clue who he was at the time, sp I was imagining Aladdin really let himself go.

As for the description of Baba (who I had also never heard of at the time),.I was imagining a very tall, gangly version of Mickey from the "Rocky" films.

 

 

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Dale Pierce, a wrestler, manager and author who wrestled in the 70s and early 80s, mostly out of Arizona, passed away on 11/9. He was believed to have been 60 years old and had been battling cancer for a few years. He wrestled and managed under the name Time Traveler Marcial Bovee, and wrote articles for wrestling magazines and newsletters about the Arizona independent scene in that era as Dale Pierce, his real name. He also wrote a book on the history of wrestling in Akron, OH and had a web site about the history of wrestling in Arizona. He did three WWE television matches under his real name, as enhancement talent on two days of taping in 1982, losing to Buddy Rose, Bob Orton Jr. and Tony Garea. Vince McMahon made fun of his physique as he didn’t look like a pro wrestler of that era would look and only did those two days and was never brought back. He broke in as a disciple of Dr. Jerry Graham

 

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