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RIP Bobby Eaton (1958-2021)


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2 hours ago, The Natural said:

tumblr_n61r4eodnn1snhdpvo4_400.gif&ehk=K

Pygmalion for Rubes may be one of the best vignettes ever made.  RIP Sir Robert; Earl of Eaton.

Edited by J.T.
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When I was a kid:

1) Everyone was a wrestling fan

2) Big wrestling fans wanted to be a wrestler

3) Real wrestling fans wanted to be a heel (duh)

4) REAL wrestling fans wanted to be in a heel tag team. 

After all, was there anything that was as cool or seemed as fun as breaking the rules with your best friend and/or manager at the expense of some dorks after insulting some fat poors who paid money to see you lose and didn't get to? Everyone should have a relationship like a heel tag team does at some point in their lives. 

In terms of lasting influence on my personality -- The Midnights are up there. I was always partial to the dark, technical menace of Arn/Tully an JJ. But The Midnights definitely had more fun. They were the cutting edge of awesome moves. Cornette was the master of talking a huge game without any ability to back it up whatsoever. The aforementioned huddles when things weren't going their way, the distractions leading to someone getting cracked with a tennis racket, Cornette's love of whipping people with a belt while Stan and Bobby smirked with glee -- they were just so great. The feud with the R'n'R was epic. The showdowns with The Fantastics were better.

The Midnights were also a damn good face tag team. We never got to see the full showdown with The Horsemen (with Tully mocking Bobby's looks being the genesis of it). The big feud with The Original Midnight Express was so friggin' great. But true heels can only stay on the side of good for so long, as made clear when Cornette hoodwinked The Dynamic Dudes a little later on. 

Either way, people who claim they like wrestling but don't know a thing about "Beautiful" Bobby Eaton are casuals. But real ones know that untsville, Alabama's favorite son was an even bigger real one.

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I heard today like all of you and on page 3 it just has to be said again, with all of the intensity I can convey through a post on a phone. He was the nicest guy on the planet. He was as good of a wrestler as he was nice to. He was 1 of the best. I noticed way before wrestler’s real attitudes were exposed how dang nice he was. When he was a face I saw him doing fives on the way to the ring once and he hesitated in 1 spot where this little girl was and did that double handed face grab/rub thing that older people sometimes do to children. You could just see the real Bobby in that 1 second. 

In the Tracey Smothers thread we talked about a small group of wrestlers who could wrestle anywhere on the card from the dark match to the main event. Most of those guys were a little short on main events. Well, Bobby was 1 of those guys and he had that reputation while being in a crapload of main events. Is there anybody else who you can say that about? He was just so dang great and I loved him. 

Who remembers that time WCW was doing 1 of those fan vote main events on an early Nitro? The skit within a skit where the showed The Blue Bloods sipping tea was 1 of the funniest things I’ve ever seen. It might have only happened once but it still happened - Bobby Eaton was funny lol! 

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6 hours ago, hammerva said:

Yeah I never understood people that said Eaton couldn't cut a promo.   Maybe it was too "southern" for people on a national level but he more than held his own.   Now it isn't good enough the Cornette wasn't needed though.  Frankly that was with all of the Midnights. 

Bobby standing back in interviews probably happened by accident. He was good but Jim Cornette was possibly the best ever. That brings me to the real point. Bobby Eaton was...dang...almost Hank Hill like or Jerry Rice like. He was perfect at what he did. Effing perfect, so perfect that that when he wasn’t doing the main job, he still did whatever he was doing perfectly. And he did it so effortlessly. All he did was stand there yet there was something about. Stick anybody else there and it doesn’t look as good. Jim Cornette doesn’t sound as good, Stan Lane doesn’t look as good, etc. Bobby Eaton doing anything just made it better.

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This one kinda hurts, like how I cried when Dusty died, hearing about Bobby was just not an easy thing to take. 

 

He was part of so many great matches and feuds. Despite not being a talker during the MX era, he still had a presence of a guy that you didn't want to fuck with. That's  kindvof the beauty of being quiet.

I hated that his singles run fizxled because it produced good matches but then he got backbin that yag team rythm and you knewthat was what he loved doing. 

 

There was onlyvone Bobby Eaton and we, as wrestling fans, were blessed to have him to ourselves.

James

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I don’t post here often but when I heard the news I  wanted to post about all of the emotions I was feeling but just couldn’t find the words. You all did it so wonderfully for me. 
 

The only thing I know to add is one thought that kept popping into my mind all day. As a kid in the mid eighties I knew Bobby Eaton was a great worker before I knew what a “great worker” was. 

 

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https://www.facebook.com/RealMickFoley/photos/a.150133228350157/4939745399388892

 

REMEMBERING BOBBY EATON

Our wrestling business was dealt a huge blow with the death of “Beautiful” Bobby Eaton today. It’s been said many times today already, but it bears repeating again: as great as Bobby Eaton was inside the ring as a wrestler, he was even greater outside of it as a human being. And make no mistake about it - Bobby Eaton was one of the greatest in-ring performers of his generation; a man who helped elevate tag-team wrestling with classic 80’s rivalries with The Rock n Roll Express, The Fantastics, The Road Warriors and many more.

Bobby was a wrestler’s wrestler; the type of guy the other wrestlers flocked around the monitor to see. Everything he did was so super smooth and fluid. My first singles match with Bobby - in Greensboro, NC in 1991 was a delight, because everything he did meant something, and he got the most out of everything he did. I was privileged to ride with Bobby, Stan Lane and Jim Cornette on many loops in 1990, when the Midnight Express more or less took me under their wing during my first run with WCW.

It was on those loops that I got to see Bobby’s kindness up close. At gas stops he would often return to the car with a soft drink or a snack for me that I hadn’t even asked for, and on a few occasions, I saw him emerge from those stores with something to eat or drink for down on their luck strangers he’d seen on his way into the store. Bobby didn’t see those strangers as bums or losers, but as fellow human beings in need of a helping hand. Those were great lessons for me as a young man, and the living embodiment of the biblical phrase from Matthew 25:40 “Truly I tell you that whatever you did for the least of these my brothers, you did it to me“

My heart goes out to Bobby’s family and friends during this difficult time. Rest in peace my friend. #RIPBobbyEaton 

 
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13 hours ago, hammerva said:

If he isn't the greatest tag team wrestler ever he is in the top 3. 

Nah, he was the best, and honestly, I don't think it's all that close. Beautiful Bobby was in so many great tag teams that we don't even talk about half of them--if there was more footage online from his team with Koko, we'd all be raving constantly about how awesome they were together, because what we have shows how ahead of their time they were. And he was in a tag team with the second best tag wrestler ever, Arn Anderson, and it's still only like the fourth best tag team on his resume. He was in a tag team with Randy Orton! But what made Bobby so great was that he always made sure to adjust his style to complement his partner--he didn't wrestle the same way with Koko that he did with Sweet Stan, or Double A, or Sir Steven, or Dennis Condrey. 

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Somebody should really use that Pop-Up Backbreaker as a finisher.

Can't remember the poster who rightly talked up Eaton's Running Swinging Neckbreaker. This is for you. Check the sell job by Arn Anderson.

Edited by The Natural
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