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RIP "Mean" Gene Okerlund (1942-2019)


Guest Edwin

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I would dare say this deserves its own thread but if not that's okay.  The guy was as much part of my childhood as Hogan and Savage were.  Long before announcers were just robots reading canned lines Gene brought shittons of personality and wit to his interviews.  In a land where there was a lot of cocaine-fueled promos he was there to make sense of it all and keep talent on track so they got their points across.  RIP, Mean Gene.

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  • Dolfan in NYC changed the title to RIP "Mean" Gene Okerlund (1942-2019)
18 minutes ago, joseph2112 said:

RIP to the best. You could always see how much he enjoyed these promos. "EXACTLY! PRECISELY!"

 

That was great. From the beginning when Sheik called him "Gene Mean" he just started smirking and they had to move the camera away from him and zoom in on the Sheik.

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"Ric Flair you have made World Wrestling Federation PUT THAT CIGARETTE OUT!"

?
 

23 minutes ago, NikoBaltimore said:

I would dare say this deserves its own thread but if not that's okay.  The guy was as much part of my childhood as Hogan and Savage were.  Long before announcers were just robots reading canned lines Gene brought shittons of personality and wit to his interviews.  In a land where there was a lot of cocaine-fueled promos he was there to make sense of it all and keep talent on track so they got their points across.  RIP, Mean Gene.

Absolutely.  The anchor and backbone of so many broadcasts.  Isn't Okerlund the first guy Hogan wanted them to bring in to help get him over when he returned to WWF in 83?  That tells you a lot.

In some ways, once I got so accustomed to seeing him, it almost didn't really feel like wrestling without him there.

RIP and thank you for so many positive, formative memories.

 

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Mean Gene going to WCW made them seem like more of a WWF rip off than Hulk Hogan and Macho Man going over IMO. God knows how AWA fans felt when he went to WWF!

RIP to the best in the biz, this is still the best example of him corpsing (the wrong word to use but...)

 

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People have said Gene and Heenan jumping to WWF was way more important in the long run than Hogan jumping. I can believe it because while Hogan was an absolute superstar, he was never the true "face" of the AWA. Heenan and Gene were the homesteaders, and you can make a case that the AWA never truly recovered from the one-two punch of losing Gene and Bobby.

I wish it was still on Youtube somewhere, but there's a hysterical promo with Gene, Blassie, Slick and Hercules that ends with Blassie completely going OOC after a perturbed Gene calls Herc a "jabroni."

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