Wednesdaymania 8 (strong language edition)

It's been another tough week in wrestling. Brickhouse Brown died, came back to life, and then died again. Nikolai Volkoff passed at 70 (not exactly a surprise, but sad all the same), and Jerry "the King" Lawler lost a son - Brian Christopher - suddenly and terribly.

Remember how I said suicide rates among wrestlers seemed weirdly high? Yeah. It happened again. Maybe. There's an investigation underway.

So today I'd like to post a few videos of these men, just so you get to experience their awesomeness. I was never really a fan of Brian Christopher, but that's because I only ever saw him after Vince McMahon got a hold on him and made him the lesser half of Too Cool opposite my main man Scotty 2 Hotty! Had I seen his primo heel work in Memphis, I'd have probably liked him a lot more than the hooting, screeching man-child he played in WWE.

First up, we have the venerable Cold-War Heel Nikolai Volkoff:

Nikolai Volkoff''s real name was Josip Peruzović, and he was a Yugoslavian/Croatian (Croatia was part of Yugoslavia when he was born, it seems) weight lifter in his youth. He eventually emigrated to North America via Canada and worked for Stampede Wrestling before Vince McMahon decided he needed a Cold War villain. Despite the fact that most people who emigrated from Bloc countries weren't exactly thrilled with the USSR, Volkoff took the Russian gimmick and ran with it. The man was still singing the USSR anthem a few years ago.

I can't say he was the most electrifying wrestler on earth, but that's not what made him so popular, anyway. Wrestling skill rarely seems to have made people popular in the 1980s (cough *HOGAN* cough). It was all personality, and the man had personality in spades. I mean, I love that he eventually got into it with his former tag team partner, the Iron Sheik (oh man, you gotta check him out) and Sgt. Slaughter at Survivor Series 1990 because he was suddenly pro-west and a defector! I'm not 100%, but if the Soviet Union had officially dissolved in 1991, then I'm pretty sure we all knew it was coming in 1990...

Regardless, he eventually became a sympathetic heel, basically trapped under Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase's thumb and poorly treated. That sad-sack gimmick was the last one he had in wrestling besides his brief returns in Gimmick Battle Royals, his Hall of Fame ceremony in 2005, and other shows playing his old gimmick.

He seems to have been a gentle man, though perhaps a bit behind on the times on occasion.

He will absolutely be missed.



Brian Christopher Lawler may have been best known as the annoying member of Too Cool, but he was also a fantastic heel in his father's Memphis territory of wrestling:

Brian Christopher, like many wrestlers, fought his personal demons constantly. He wasn't always successful, and unfortunately, they may have defeated him in a jail cell at 46 years old.

It's frustrating, looking at his Wikipedia page, because it says so little about his work before the WWE. Yes, it's hard to get hold of most of the old Territories' tapes, but his gimmick in the WWE just shredded what you can see here from being a great whiny chickenshit heel to being a human baboon with goggles and possibly one of the best themes in WWE history...

We'll see if there are further developments in the sad tale of his passing, but I, for one, have seen too many suspicious jail-cell hangings to rule out anything hinky from having happened. I'm not saying he was murdered. I'd never go that far unless there was evidence. I'm just also saying it's possible that suicides are allowed or encouraged in some cases. However this case turns out, the world has still been robbed of a fantastic wrestler and wrestling personality.



I have, I'll confess, never seen a Brickhouse Brown match, to my knowledge. This is a crime and a sin against wrestling, and I'm going to rectify it as soon as I can, because my god, the man was a genius. He's also another tragedy of wrestling, because if wrestlers were guaranteed health insurance, he'd probably still be alive. His prostate cancer was survivable when diagnosed, but because he did not have the money to pay for lifesaving treatment, he was given painkillers and died a slow, horrific death. But tell me again how America is the greatest and most advanced nation on Earth...

Anyway.

Brickhouse Brown was one of those rare wrestlers who got started in the business with no training, but eventually, he was trained by some of the best and became an NWA Tag Team Champion. The biggest tragedy of the story, I think, is that Vince didn't hire him, because if he had, then I think that he'd have been as big as any African American wrestler could have been in the WWE.

Then again... if you watch even the preview of his shoot (real-talk) interview, you may see why Vince passed him up... Maybe don't do what he did to Harvey Wippleman (even if he probably deserved it...)

In conclusion, we had a hell of a week, losing three seriously awesome guys in one week. Actually, it was in a span of about 24 hours. They all died on July 29th. I should point out that pretty much every other time that's happened, it's been because of a terrible vehicular accident. This was a sad week.

But their memories shall forever live on.

My god. I have to do something less depressing last week :P

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