wrestling / Columns

The 8-Ball 08.17.12: Top 8 Badasses Turned into Clowns

August 17, 2012 | Posted by Ryan Byers

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the 8-Ball. I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and we are here for yet another installment of the best damn countdown related column on this website. (And think of the ground that covers.)

Before we get to the meat of this week’s column, though, I want to do something that I don’t often do and address some of the feedback from last week’s column, in which I counted down the Top 8 Olympians in Pro Wrestling.

There were two items regularly brought up in the comments that I would like to touch on. The first – and easier dealt with – is the group of folks who stated that I should have included the Iron Sheik on the countdown, claiming that he was part of the Iranian team in the 1968 Olympics. The Sheik was not an Olympic competitor in those games or any other games, despite his assertions to the contrary. The whole thing was a work designed by promoters early in his pro wrestling career to make him seem like a more formidable wrestler. Take a look at Wikipedia’s article about the 1968 Iranian summer Olympic Team, which lists every competitor the country sent. Khosrow Vaziri is nowhere to be found.

Sheikie baby did help in coaching U.S. Olympic teams after he moved to the United States, but the article was about Olympic competitors, not coaches . . . and I don’t mean for any of this to detract from his legitimate amateur credentials, which are impressive even if he is not an Olympian.

The second talking point in the comments was that I should have included Mark Henry. The lack of inclusion was not a result of me forgetting about Henry (I namedropped him at the end of the column, in fact) but rather a result of me feeling that he did not fit within the top eight wrestlers who qualified for the list. Some claimed that he should have eked past Bad News Allen, while others claimed that I could/should have replaced any of the Japanese wrestlers on the list with the World’s Strongest Man.

I still have to disagree. Keep in mind that, in the criteria for the column, I indicated that I was basing the list on the entrants’ combined success in both wrestling and the Olympics. As far as comparing Allen and Henry is concerned, Allen absolutely smokes Henry in terms of Olympic success. As was noted in the column, Allen was a bronze medalist in judo. Henry, in weightlifting, was in both the 1992 and 1996 Olympics. He placed 10th in 1992 and, though he was considered to be a huge prospect in ’96, he was injured and finished with a surprisingly low ranking. He had a lot of success elsewhere in the sport of weightlifting, and I don’t mean to detract from those accomplishments, but Henry’s actual Olympic competitions were disappointments.

As far as comparing Allen and Henry’s wrestling careers are concerned, people pointed to Henry’s WWE World Heavyweight Title as compared to Allen’s zero WWE titles and Henry’s longevity in WWE as opposed to Allen’s relatively short run. However, commenter Zeus came in towards the end of the discussion and basically summed up my thoughts on those topics for me:

Bad News was a heel in an era when heels weren’t world champion. Unlike today where everyone ends up world champion eventually. He was certainly better than Henry, you have to consider that he was a great heel in Japan and a great heel in Calgary more important than a guy who was a joke for 95% of his career and would have been fired long ago if not for his dumb contract.

If you compare the two guys’ careers based on what the standards for success were in their respective eras, I think Allen wins out for the precise reasons that Zeus mentions.

As far as comparing Henry to the Japanese wrestlers in the column is concerned, it’s not even close. Granted, none of those Japanese wrestlers medaled . . . but neither did Henry, so you at the very least have to consider them even in terms of their Olympic accomplishments. (And, really, Hase and Tsuruta ranked higher in their sports than Henry did in his.) Also, all three of them were more successful in professional wrestling than Henry has been to date. As Zeus correctly noted, Henry has really only spent a couple of years out of a sixteen year career as a legitimate main eventer, and that’s at a point when the business is cold, WWE’s roster is thin, and, even as a main eventer, he hasn’t had to carry the company due to the presence of bigger stars like John Cena and Randy Orton. Hase, Tsuruta, and Choshu all had careers that, to date, are longer than Henry’s, and, for numerous years of those careers, they were tip-top of the card wrestlers during periods where Japanese wrestling was just as popular in Japan as U.S. wrestling was in the U.S., if not more so. They were multiple time world champions in their respective weight classes at a time and in a place when world championships meant far more than what they did during Henry’s reigns.

Again, I’m not trying to knock Mark Henry as a wrestler or a performer because, particularly for the past two or three years, I have been a huge fan of his and a supporter of his work in WWE. However, for the purpose of the list that I did last week, I honestly think that, based on the criteria given, he ranks beneath all of the men who were listed. Would he have been ninth or tenth if the list extended out that far? Possibly. But this is the 8-Ball, emphasis on the 8, and I can’t mention every single human being who might qualify for a list just because some might feel they should be included where I don’t.

I feel that the outcry in favor of Henry is really just an example of a recency bias, in which people assign more importance to things that occurred in the recent past as opposed to the more distant past. When I write these lists, I try to control for that bias to the extent that I can (keeping in mind my age), and I think that has been the source of a fair amount of the disagreement between my opinions and those who voice differing opinions.

I have now ranted entirely too much about last week’s column, so let’s head on to the new material.

Top 8 Badasses Turned to Clowns

When I was filling in for Mat Sforcina on Ask 411 Wrestling last week, I talked about the Bushwackers in response to two different questions, one regarding longstanding tag teams and one regarding the year in which Luke and Butch finally departed the WWF.

Any time that I think about the Bushwackers, I think about just how amazing it is that they were transformed into kiddie friendly do-gooders, with face-licking and wacky dancing when, just a few years earlier, they had earned their money by being one of the most sadistic, bloodthirsty acts in all of professional wrestling, sort of the Abdullah the Butcher or the Sheik of the tag team scene.

I then started to think about similar transformations that had occurred in professional wrestling over the years, and, thanks to this column, I can no longer think of a series of similar items in the wrestling world without pairing them down to eight and ranking them.

As such, I now present to you the top eight pro wrestling badasses who were turned into clowns.

8. Boris Alexiev to Santino Marella

This is a little bit on the obscure side, but it’s perhaps one of the more shocking transformations given just how different the end product was from where wrestler started off. Young Anthony Carelli wanted to be a professional wrestler, so he headed off to Ohio Valley Wrestling and paid to take their beginner classes. Eventually, that turned into a spot on the OVW roster when the company was being booked by Paul Heyman, and Heyman took Carelli’s judo and marital arts background and turned it into the gimmick of Russian shoot fighter Boris Alexiev, essentially indy wrestling’s version of Fedor Emeilanenko. Then Carelli went to WWE and became Santino Marella, the guy who wears a green sock on his hand and was recently featured in a music video in which his story arc focused on his inability to work a webcam.

This seems like a good time to point out that I don’t consider all of these transformations to be bad things. In fact, I consider the majority of them to be positives for the wrestlers’ careers Though I liked the Alexiev gimmick for what it was, the fact of the matter is that wrestling promotions’ rosters need variety, and Marella is a better fit for the current WWE scene as a comedian than he is as a faux MMA guy. There are too many other members of roster who need the serious gimmick and can’t do anything else, so Santino the clown helps balance them out.

7. Giant Baba

This was a transformation made out of necessity. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Giant Baba was one of the two major stars that carried all of Japanese wrestling on his back, alongside Antonio Inoki. He feuded with men like Jack Brisco in strong, serious professional wrestling matches that captivated the Japanese public, and he was so successful at it that, when he and Inoki split, they still had enough star power separately that they were each able to found and maintain their own coequal wrestling promotions, New Japan Pro Wrestling and All Japan Pro Wrestling. In addition to being its promoter, Baba also stayed on as AJPW’s top star for the first several years. However, as the 1970s turned into the 1980s, Baba’s body started to break down a bit, and he also realized that it was probably time for a new young star to emerge and to be rallied around by the people, similar to how he and Inoki were allowed to surpass Rikidozan several years earlier. So, Baba slowly started to step out of the spotlight, allowing men like Jumbo Tsuruta to take his place.

However, Baba was smart enough to realize that, even if he was not going to be a serious main eventer, there were still some benefits to having his name on the promotion’s cards. He was still a beloved figure, and AJPW just didn’t seem like AJPW without his presence. What he needed, though, was a new role that would not overshadow the younger generation and would not overtax his body. So, what did Baba become? He became a comedy wrestler. He, alongside other veteran members of the promotion who had come up in wrestling with him, started competing primarily in comedic six man tag matches in the middle of the card. Like Santino above, this transformation was actually a positive, as it allowed Japanese wrestling to move into a new era while keeping a hint of the past on hand.

6. Kamala

I’m young enough that my first exposure to professional wrestling was the early 1990s WWF. By that time and in that place, Kamala was already sort of a clown. Yes, he had a feud with the Undertaker in 1992 during which he was at least marginally booked as threat to the Dead Man, but he was losing far more often than he won, and 90% of the angle seemed to be based around Kamala getting scared and running like a buffoon, particularly when there was a casket around. From there, Kamala became an even bigger goofball. Circa 1993, he was turned babyface and paired with the Reverend Slick in a demeaning angle in which Slick attempted to turn the Ugandan Giant into a “civilized man” by giving him bowling lessons. Also as part of that angle, Kamala, who had been a successful wrestler for almost twenty years, suddenly forgot how to pin people and would need encouragement from the crowd to put them on their backs after first trying to pin them on their stomachs. In the 2000’s, Kamala became even more of an over-the-top cartoon, as he did an angle in Memphis (video above) in which he was trained as a singer and would croon songs while in full war paint.

Some time before the singing gimmick rolled around, I was old enough that I had gone back and watched several tapes of wrestling from the decades before I was watching and read up a fair amount on my history. It was at that point that I realized the bowling, pin-’em-on’-their-stomach, kinda racist caricature that I had grown up with actually used to be one of the most legitimately terrifying men in all of professional wrestling. Kamala, the Ugandan Headhunter, damn near murdered men in Mid-South Wrestling and left fans in pants-wetting fear when he would perform stunts outside of live arenas like ripping live chickens apart with his bare hands. He was able to parlay that success into similar runs elsewhere, including World Class, the original Memphis territory, and even the WWF, where he had a program with Hulk Hogan in the early days of Hulkamania. This is the first repackaging on the list that I truly felt was a disappointment, because it’s not as though Kamala in 1993 when he became a goof looked or moved all that differently than Kamala in 1985. He still could have contributed to wrestling as a feared heel during a time when the industry absolutely needed it.

5. Doink the Clown


Yes, I’m getting ready to complain because they took the clown and turned him into a clown. Bear with me for a little bit, though.

When Matt Borne first trotted the Doink character out on to WWF television, it was dark. Really dark. The guy was tormenting seemingly random children in the audience and having maniacal, unprovoked mood swings every few minutes. When he would wrestle, his style was heavily submission-based, and it looked like he was taking joy in twisting his opponents with half crabs, stump pullers, and the like. Then there was what he did to Crush. Poor, poor Crush. The Doinkster blasted him from behind with a loaded prosthetic arm and refused to let up, clobbering him time and time again in a surprisingly violent attack for what was essentially the Saturday morning cartoon era of the World Wrestling Federation. (Oh, how history repeats itself.) The gimmick was unique and it definitely had an adult twist to it, so there is little surprise that fans who were in their teens and twenties during Doink’s debut still speak fondly of that initial heel run to this day.

Unfortunately, though, the character succumbed to the era in which it was introduced and, just like Kamala before him, went from a feared killer into somebody who had to be marketed to sell the most merchandise to the kiddies. Fans today talk about how John Cena lost his edge in order to make the WWE product more family friendly, but the even bigger tragedy was Doink, who went from being John Wayne Gacy to Bozo at the drop of a hat.

4. Goldust

Goldust is one of the few characters on the list who started off as a serious but then became a comedic character for such a long period of time that almost everybody I have talked to about him has completely forgotten that he was at one point a pretty rough character.

In his first couple of years in the World Wrestling Federation, Goldust was essentially the modern day equivalent of Adrian Street. Yes, he dressed in an effeminate manner and engaged in some homoerotic activity, but, when it came time to take care of business in the wrestling ring, he was one of the more dangerous competitors in the Federation. He went on an impressive winning streak for several months after his debut, became a multi-time Intercontinental Champion, and even had feuds with Ahmed Johnson, the Undertaker, and Vader where he wasn’t completely portrayed as their physical equal but came a hell of a lot closer than other heels on the roster at the time.

Then, in 1998, things started to fall apart. Goldust transformed into the Artist Formerly Known as Goldust, which was fine at first, as it was essentially just a more extreme version of the existing Goldust character. Before long, though it turned into pure comedic fodder, with Goldust dressing up as his father, as a gigantic baby, and even Sable. Eventually Goldust did turn away from that character and became a born again Christian under his given name of Dustin Runnels, feuding with Val Venis due to Val stealing away his wife. It seemed to be a solid, serious angle at first, but the lack of a clearly defined face and a clearly defined heel hurt it badly, and, by the conclusion, there was nothing left to do but make Dustin into Goldust once more, with no clear rhyme or reason. From this point forward, Goldust was never again the effeminate badass that he used to be. His sexuality and erratic behavior was used to portray him as a joke, not as a dangerous competitor with a penchant for playing mind games to throw off his opponents. Somewhat unfortunately, that portrayal of Goldust has endured, sticking with the character in just about every relaunch he has had with WWE (and there have been several) through the end of his most recent stint as a wrestler in 2010.

3. The Public Enemy

In the early 1990s, “Flyboy” Rocco Rock and Johnny Grunge were journeyman wrestlers who, after running into each other several times on the independent circuit, decided that they would form a tag team. They became the Public Enemy, a couple of no-nonsense thugs from Philadelphia, and they became one of the first “extreme” acts in what was then known as Eastern Championship Wrestling. Rock and Grunge helped to define the promotion’s blood-and-guts style of brawling. Perhaps most importantly, they were the first guys to make tables a regular part of their arsenal. Yes, wrestlers had gone through tables in the past, but it was the Public Enemy who first made a point of bringing folding tables with them to the ring as part of their entrance and attempting to incorporate a table spot into each match as its focal point.

However, as was the case with most of ECW’s top acts, they did not stay in ECW for too horribly long. In this case, World Championship Wrestling came calling, hoping to round out their roster with acts that had been successful on a regional level. The Public Enemy kept their names and their basic looks in WCW, and they even kept tables incorporated in their matches. There was something much different about WCW’s Public Enemy, though. Their most important matches were still usually contested under no disqualification rules, but now the “no DQ” stips weren’t there to kick the violence up a notch. Instead, they were there primarily for comedic effect, with the crowd getting laughs when frequent TPE opponent the Disco Inferno would do a rubber-legged sell of a trash can lid to the head or when Johnny Grunge would bust out, of all things, a toilet seat to use as plunder. Rock and Grunge even wound up laying down vocals to their own, Jimmy Hart-esque entrance music, reminding all of the kids as they headed down to the ring that, “La-dee-da-dee-da-dee, we likes to party.”

This is why the Blue Meanie and Stevie Richards were able to make fun of them so easily after their departure . . . and this is why teams like the Dudley Boys and the Gangstas are remembered far better as the hardcore units that made ECW’s tag division what it was.

2. The Sheepherders to The Bushwackers

When I mention in the introduction to the column that one specific thing inspired it, you can probably guess that thing will be an entry on the list . . . and, more often than not, it will rank pretty highly.

So, here you go. Much like the original, more savage version Kamala, I was not familiar with the Sheepherders when I first got into wrestling. I only knew Butch Miller and Luke Williams as the Bushwackers, the guys in the WWF who flailed their arms around like they were having a stroke when they walked to the ring and questionably licked small children’s faces. Little did I know that, just a few years earlier, they had been one of the most rough-and-tumble tag teams in all of professional wrestling, wrestling far more believable and dangerous matches than guys like Ludvig Borg and Yokozuna, who I considered to be the true badasses of the era. For quite some time after I first learned of the Sheepherders and saw some of their more brutal matches, I was actually angry at the WWF for taking a pairing that was so deliciously devious and turning them into unassuming goofballs.

However, as I got older and more mature, I realized that this was essentially Luke and Butch’s equivalent of the career evolution that the Giant Baba went through. Not many WWF fans realized this, but, by the time that Miller and Williams made their debuts with the Fed in 1989, Williams was already 42 years old and Miller was 45, getting just a little bit too old to continue with their bloodletting, hard hitting ways. Plus, they didn’t leave the promotion until 1996, when Williams was closing in on 50 and Miller had just passed that milestone, so the incentive for them to tone down their style only increased as their WWF stint pushed on. Now that I have also aged and have a little bit of perspective on things, there is no way that I am going to begrudge a forty-plus year old wrestler for doing something that allows him to cash his checks without breaking his neck.

1. Cactus Jack to Mick Foley

And, speaking of men who get older and decide that they want to cash their checks without breaking their necks, here is our number one entry . . . Mick Foley.

Unlike the Bushwackers and Kamala, I got into pro wrestling when Mick Foley, at the time competing as Cactus Jack, was at the absolute height of his reputation as a wrestler who competed in some brilliantly violent matches. His 1992 Beach Blast match with Sting was one of the more exciting encounters that WCW produced in the early part of the decade, and the poor guy let himself get absolutely BRUTALIZED in matches and angles with Big Van Vader. That doesn’t even take into account what he would do a few years later in both ECW and the various hardcore promotions in Japan (FMW, IWA, W*ING), where the Sandman was hitting him over the head with glass bottles (both not breaking them), Terry Funk was slamming him on exploding barbed wire boards, and Kintaro Kanemura was dropping him on beds of nails. Cactus Jack was simply doing things that no professional wrestler had done before and that few professional wrestlers have done since . . . and, in at least a couple of cases, they were so over the line that I would strongly caution today’s wrestlers to never attempt them. Things continued down that road for a while and culminated in perhaps the two most memorable matches in Mick Foley’s career: The 1998 Hell in a Cell match against the Undertaker and the 1999 Royal Rumble match against the Rock, documented in Beyond the Mat.

Not long thereafter, as Foley details in his autobiographies, he saw that the bumps were catching up with his body and decided that, for the sake of his children, he would rather be the guy who wore the sock on his hand than the guy who fell off of a fifteen foot high cell for the fun of it all. And, for the stage that he was at in his life, that was perfectly fine . . . and, unlike several entries on this list, he provided just as many awesome, memorable moments in his “comedian” role as he did in his “badass” role. They were just awesome and memorable in an entirely different way. Really, that speaks highly to Mick Foley as a performer. Many actors can do comedy and many actors can do drama, but it takes a true master to pull them both off with similar levels of excellence. It’s not exactly the same as acting, but Mick Foley has mastered professional wrestling to that degree.

That’s it for this week’s 8-Ball. If you can’t get enough of Ryan, follow him on Twitter here.

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