Some wrestlers built their careers on charisma. Manny Fernandez built his on a reputation for being genuinely difficult to deal with — a trait that made him a believable monster in the ring and, by his own account, cost him a shot at the biggest stage in the business.
Over roughly a decade at the top of the territorial system, Fernandez feuded with some of the biggest names in the sport, held tag team gold with two very different partners, and never once compromised the hard-nosed, no-nonsense identity that gave him his nickname.
Manny Fernandez: The Career of “The Raging Bull”
From the Texas Panhandle to Florida Wrestling
Emanuel Fernandez was born July 27, 1954, and played offensive guard for West Texas State University’s football team before turning to wrestling.
He trained under Dick Murdoch, one of the most respected hands of that era, and debuted in 1979 in the West Texas-based Western States Sports promotion.
Fernandez later credited Murdoch directly for how seriously he learned the business, recalling that Murdoch would knuckle him upside the head hard enough to leave ten knots when he messed up in training
“When I messed up (in training), Murdoch would knuckle me upside the head. Sometimes I’d come out of that ring with about 10 knots on my head.
That’s how serious they were about it… Back then you had to earn the respect of the old schoolers.
You had to respect them. You come into the dressing room and there was guys like Dusty (Rhodes) and even Ernie Ladd and all the guys that were in there; Bugsy McGraw, Don Muraco, Sir Oliver Humperdink – you went over there and shook their hands and you respected people.
If you got out of line and acted stupid, you paid the price. That was part of the business. If you weren’t going to respect the business, they didn’t respect you.”
–Manny Fernandez on learning from Dick Murdoch.
He moved into Championship Wrestling from Florida later that year, and it didn’t take long to make an impact.
In October 1979, Fernandez beat Terry Funk for the NWA Florida Heavyweight Championship in Orlando, kicking off a long, brutal rivalry between the two West Texas natives that defined his early run in the territory.
He successfully defended the title against Funk and others before losing it to Don Muraco in March 1980, then spent the early ’80s bouncing between Texas promotions such as Houston Wrestling, Southwest Championship Wrestling and Bob Geigel’s Central States territory.
It was in the Central States territory where he won the NWA Central States Heavyweight Championship in 1982 and unsuccessfully challenged Ric Flair for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship that same year.
A tour of All Japan Pro Wrestling in 1983 rounded out his early résumé, working alongside Chavo Guerrero and Stan Hansen.
Arriving in Jim Crockett Promotions
Fernandez’s career shifted into a higher gear in September 1984, when he joined Jim Crockett Promotions, the Carolinas-based NWA territory that would become his most significant professional home.
He quickly formed a tag team with Dusty Rhodes, one of the promotion’s biggest stars, and the pairing won the NWA World Tag Team Championship (Mid-Atlantic version) from Don Kernodle and Ivan Koloff in a cage match at the Greensboro Coliseum that October.
That November, at Starrcade ’84, Fernandez beat Black Bart for the NWA Brass Knuckles Championship, adding a singles title to go with his tag reign.
The Rhodes pairing didn’t last into 1985; Bart reclaimed the Brass Knuckles title that January, and the Koloffs took the tag titles back from Fernandez and Rhodes that March.
Fernandez then found himself the target of a genuine grudge angle when Arn Anderson attacked and laid him out, sparking a feud that saw Fernandez team with fellow Anderson victim Thunderbolt Patterson in a series of unsuccessful challenges for the NWA National Tag Team Championship.
Fighting Paul Jones’ Army — Then Joining It
By mid-1985, Fernandez had aligned with the flamboyant “Boogie Woogie Man” Jimmy Valiant in an ongoing war against manager Paul Jones and his villainous stable, known simply as The Army.
The pairing, nicknamed the “B and B Connection,” scored a win over Army members Abdullah the Butcher, The Barbarian, and Superstar Billy Graham in a six-man tag at the inaugural Great American Bash in July 1985, and that November, Fernandez beat Abdullah the Butcher outright in a Mexican deathmatch at Starrcade ’85.
The Post and Courier’s retrospective on Fernandez’s career).
It was a clean, effective heel turn — the babyface who’d spent over a year fighting Jones’ group suddenly became its newest and most prominent member.
At Starrcade ’86, Fernandez came to ringside for Jones’ hair-versus-hair match against Valiant, and after Valiant won and shaved Jones bald, Fernandez and his new partner, Rick Rude, ran in and hit Valiant with a double DDT a brutal coda to the entire year-long story.
The Awesome Twosome
Manny Fernandez and ‘Ravishing’ Rick Rude, now paired together as Jones’ top act, quickly became one of the promotion’s featured teams.
Shortly after Starrcade ’86, they beat the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson for the NWA World Tag Team Championship (Mid-Atlantic version) in a televised match out of Atlanta, kicking off a lengthy program between the two teams that ran through the rest of the promotion’s tag division.
Reflecting years later on the run, Fernandez didn’t pretend the gold meant much to him personally by that point, admitting he’d stopped caring about the titles after holding them for so long, and that he was always getting fined or in trouble as part of his career.
“We made great money with Ted Turner. I was making half a million a year…When I was in the later stages of my career with Rude, I didn’t care for the belts.
We had them for so long, after a while, I just didn’t care to wear them. I always got fined or got in trouble, which was a part of my career. I always gave Dusty a headache. I always kept Dusty on his toes.”
Manny Fernandez still a raging bull
The reign ended in May 1987 when Rude left the promotion for the WWF while still holding half of the belts the situation resolved through what’s since become known as one of wrestling’s classic ‘phantom title changes’.
A pre-taped, off-the-record match in which the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express were said to have defeated Fernandez and a substitute Ivan Koloff in Spokane, Washington, quietly transferring the titles back without ever properly closing the loop on-screen.
Left to work as a singles heel afterward, Fernandez spent the rest of the summer feuding with Jimmy Garvin and both Windham brothers before departing Jim Crockett Promotions entirely that September.
New Japan, Memphis, and the AWA
Fernandez’s career took him further afield after Crockett. He debuted for New Japan Pro-Wrestling that October, working stars like Riki Choshu and a young Keiji Muto, and that November joined Memphis’s Continental Wrestling Association.
There he won the AWA International Heavyweight Championship from Bill Dundee in his debut before dropping it to Jerry Lawler the following month in a unification bout.
By June 1988, Fernandez had landed in the American Wrestling Association, where he immediately picked a real fight, attacking Wahoo McDaniel and destroying his ceremonial war bonnet on television, launching one of the most personal and violently remembered feuds of his career.
The program built to an Indian strap match at SuperClash III that December, plus a string of brutal cage matches. One of those bouts, at Chicago’s UIC Pavilion, produced so much blood that ESPN reportedly refused to air it.
Fernandez later called it one of the defining physical experiences of his career.
“The ring was covered in blood from corner to corner. The people went crazy,”
–‘Raging Bull’ Manny Fernandez lived his gimmick.
Puerto Rico and the Invader #3 Controversy
Fernandez left the AWA in 1989 for Puerto Rico’s World Wrestling Council, where his run produced one of the more disputed moments of his entire career.
In a match against Invader #3 (Johnny Rivera), Fernandez landed a top-rope knee drop to his opponent’s midsection that appeared to cause genuine internal injury; Rivera began vomiting blood in the ring, and Fernandez followed up with two more knee drops regardless.
Debate has lingered for decades over whether the spot was a legitimate work-related injury or a real act tied to backstage tension involving WWC booker Jose Gonzalez, who’d recently been acquitted of murdering Bruiser Brody.
Fernandez later said that he’d deliberately hurt Rivera as payback for Brody’s death, though the timeline doesn’t fully support that explanation, since the match happened roughly two months before Brody was actually killed.
–Manny Fernandez – Inside the Mind of “The Raging Bull” @The Apter Chat
Why He Never Went to the WWF
Unlike most of his contemporaries, Fernandez never had a run in Vince McMahon’s WWF, and that wasn’t an accident.
He turned down the company outright, framing the decision as a matter of personal identity rather than a missed opportunity.
“I told him to F off. I spent thirty some years in the ring. I didn’t want to work for Vince because I’m not a politican.
I got in a lot of trouble coming up in the business because I didn’t brown nose (or) kiss (up to) nobody.
If you didn’t like what I was then do what you’ve got to do. I didn’t want their belt, belts didn’t mean nothing to me.
I watched Terry Funk draw more houses when I was coming up in the business without a belt… My mom raised a man, not a dumb (person).
I didn’t have a father so my mom raised me. She taught me to be a man. So I’m not going to go there and let (them) humiliate me and put bull horns on my head, come out there like a raging bull like they did Terry Taylor and all that…
Struggling in the early parts of your life makes it easier in later parts of your life. I didn’t need that. I had just signed with New Japan anyway.”
Manny Fernandez Never Wanted To Work For Vince McMahon Because ‘I’m Not A Politician‘.
He was equally blunt about the WWF’s cartoonish gimmick culture, saying he had no interest in being paraded out with a bullhorn character the way the company had done with other wrestlers, and pointed to Terry Funk’s ability to draw money without ever holding a title as proof that the belts themselves never meant much to him.
That same defiance carried into his time in NWA/WCW, where, according to his own account, he refused pressure to give up an independent, lucrative Japan deal in exchange for staying exclusively with the Atlanta-based company, telling the promoter in charge exactly where he could put the contract.
The Long Independent Run
Fernandez continued wrestling through the 1990s and beyond. He worked stints with the Global Wrestling Federation, Japan’s Network of Wrestling promotion, and International World Class Championship Wrestling, along with a run in All Pro Wrestling, where he won the APW Universal Heavyweight Championship in 1997.
He wrestled sporadically on the independent scene into the 2000s and 2010s, officially retiring after WrestleCade 2013 only to come out of retirement again in 2017, wrestling regularly for IWA Mid-South and other independents into the following decade.
The Legacy
Fernandez’s résumé reads like a tour through nearly every major American wrestling territory of the 1980s: Florida, Texas, Missouri, the Carolinas, Memphis, Minnesota, Puerto Rico, and multiple tours of Japan.
He held titles across nearly every promotion he passed through, headlined Starrcade cards, and built genuine, physical rivalries with Terry Funk, Wahoo McDaniel, and the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express, while turning heel on Jimmy Valiant in one of the more effective slow-burn stable defections of the era.
More than the accolades, though, Fernandez’s career is remembered for exactly what his nickname promised, a wrestler who never softened his edges to fit anyone else’s idea of how the business should be played.
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