Author: Pete Moon (Assistant Editor)

As Paul Heyman said in a 2022 interview with Fox Sports, Professional Wrestling in the 1990s needed disruption, and Heyman was willing to be the disruptor. When last we left the tale of Heyman’s career in professional wrestling, he had done just that. After becoming sole creative director of Eastern Championship Wrestling in 1993, he began shifting the promotion’s image to line up with the grittier, edgier styles that had come into the mainstream with the rise of Alternative Rock and Gangsta Rap just a few years earlier. As we will continue to chart Paul Heyman’s legacy of hustle, as…

In a 2022 interview with Ryan Satin, Paul Heyman said of his life that he’s never held a real job. Whether it was selling sports memorabilia from his family home, taking pictures of local wrestlers in the New York area, producing events at Studio 54, or booking for the 3rd biggest pro wrestling promotion in North America, Heyman never thought of his work as a “real” job. “I worked around people who had real jobs,” Heyman told Ryan Satin. According to Heyman, the people who did lighting for Studio 54 or the camera operators at WWE events were the people…

On April 3rd, 1908, Gotch Vs Hackenshmidt was the most important match of the turn of the century. Professional wrestling was very different at the turn of the century. The sport caught on in America after the Civil War, where the soldiers took to grappling as a form of entertainment. The soldiers who were best at wrestling would go on to perform for audiences at circuses and carnivals. From there, it grew into a spectator sport. However, it wasn’t a very profitable spectator sport. It lacked the excitement of boxing or the freshness of baseball or football. Wrestling matches were…

Most pro wrestling historians will tell you that Ron Simmons defeated Vader on August 2nd, 1992, to become the first black World Heavyweight Champion. Dissenters, what few there are, will point to Bobo Brazil’s victory over Buddy Rogers on August 18th, 1962. But it’s Reginald ‘Regis’ Siki who deserves his accolades. Brazil reigned unrecognized as NWA World Heavyweight Champion for 73 days. But there is one champion the history books leave out, whether by design or by accident. Nat Fleischer mentions him in passing in his exhaustive 1936 history “From Milo to Londos” and Marcus Griffin fails to mention him…

In the history of professional wrestling, there are thousands of competitors who came to the squared circle from other athletic backgrounds. For example, Kevin Nash and The Undertaker both played basketball before stepping between the ropes. Macho Man Randy Savage and Sycho Sid had promising careers in baseball. Jim Neidhart, Goldberg, and Roman Reigns were professional football players. When you look at all the stories of pro wrestlers from different sports backgrounds, they tend to carry a common trait. They all failed to impress at the highest level of their sport. Ernie Ladd, however, is a different story. __________________ Ernie…

The January 31st episode of RAW is WAR began with a pyrotechnics display followed by the entrance of The New Age Outlaws as The Radicalz debuted on WWF Raw. Road Dogg gave a typical spiel about how great it is to be tag team champions and how he and Billy Gunn were bound to beat anyone who came to the ring. After a commercial break, Al Snow and Steve Blackman came out for a WWF World Tag Team Championship match. The result seemed a foregone conclusion, with The New Age Outlaws as part of the recently reunited D-Generation X and…

Following Jesse “The Body” Ventura’s floundered comeback bid in 1986, he had some tough decisions to make. The blood clots in his lungs severely impacted his wrestling ability, but Jesse Ventura was still one of the best promos in the business. Putting his mic skills to use, The Body would move behind the desk, co-hosting WWF programming alongside the likes of Vince McMahon and Gorilla Monsoon and becoming one of the most iconic heel commentators. During this time, he also hosted The Body Shop, an interview segment akin to Piper’s Pit. “Many people have asked me, how did I become…

Yeah, you read that right. In the world of professional wrestling, Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope of the Insane Clown Posse are unsung heroes, and we challenge many to deny it. “But Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope can’t wrestle!” fans might be ready to retort. Well, ECW, WWF, and WCW certainly didn’t see things that way. ‘But JCW is nothing but some backyard trashbag league,’ I hear you typing in the comments section. The Insane Clown Posse – We Need To Talk About The Greatest Show If Juggalo Championship Wrestling truly was a backyard league, why have wrestlers…

In the world of Lucha Libre, there is one name that stands above all others, and that name is El Santo. The average pro wrestling fan probably hasn’t heard that name before. However, when he was alive, El Santo was a bigger star in Mexico than Hulk Hogan, The Rock, and John Cena ever were in the United States. El Santo was not the first wrestler to compete under a mask. That honor goes to “The Masked Wrestler,” an anonymous competitor at the 1865 World’s Fair. Santo wasn’t even the first masked wrestler in Mexico. That trend took off after…

While the team that dons the maple leaf in The Olympics is commonly referred to in press and commentary as “Team Canada,” that wasn’t always the way. The first use of ‘Team Canada’ to refer to a team representing Canada was in the 1972 Summit Series. The 8-Game ice hockey series pitted the inaugural Team Canada against a team from the Soviet Union. Team Canada scored an upset victory in game 8, bringing hope to a world on edge due to the Cold War and easing relations with Soviet Russia. The nickname stuck, and ever since, any team representing Canada…