Ask 411 Wrestling: Did Jim Ross Out Pat Patterson On WWE TV?

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Through Hel Stryer and brimstone . . . it’s Ask 411 Wrestling!

I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling. If you have one of those queries searing a hole in your brain, feel free to send it along to me at [email protected]. Don’t be shy about shooting those over – the more, the merrier.

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Jonfw2 took a break from his cross-country bus tour to ask this question:

As I continue my heroic quest through the early days of Raw, I was shocked to see a long form interview that Vince did with Lex Luger after he became the all American character. This was around August of 1993 and it aired over the course of 4 or 5 shows in pre-taped form.

He talks about a lot of real life personal details- that in and of itself is amazing considering this was the days of Adam Bomb, Doink, and Bastion Booger- but the real shocker is when Vince straight up asks him if he uses anabolic steroids.

In response, Luger claims that he DID use steroids but only when they were legal and once he learned of the health effects and they became illegal, he stopped.

So how true was that answer? Was he at the time legitimately off the juice? With the proximity to the infamous steroid trial is it possible he really was clean for a while? Or was this just a straight up lie? Obviously in the years ahead, “clean” is the last word anyone would use to describe Lex but how close to true was he being at that time?

Normally I would err on the side of disbelieving any denial of steroid use by a wrestler, but in this instance I think there is more truth to what Luger is saying than I would otherwise guess.

At this point, I legitimately do believe that Luger was clean in the WWF. I say this for three reasons. First, all reports are that the company truly was serious about its drug testing program at this time, and you had plenty of other members of the roster with herculean physiques who either got new bodies or left the company at this time. Is it theoretically possible that they were strict on everybody else but let Luger skate because he was the tippy top guy? Yes, it is technically possible, but this is countered by the fact that even Lex himself got smaller during this era. Just go back and compare him to what he looked like when he was with WCW prior to jumping to the WWF. He’s smaller in the Fed, though he appears to have gotten more cut to help compensate for that.

Second, we’re now thirty years after Luger’s WWF run, and his story has remained pretty consistent. In an interview with Chris Van Vliet as recently as last year, Luger openly admitted to being on steroids and growth hormone while he was in WCW but still maintained that he was clean in the WWF. In 2025, I do not know what incentive Luger would have to be open about his steroid use in WCW but continue to lie about steroid use in the WWF. That just wouldn’t make any sense. Therefore, I believe his claims about not being on the gas while working for Vince McMahon are more credible than they would otherwise be.

Third, if we look to issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter from July and August 1993 in the runup to Luger versus Yokozuna at that year’s Summerslam, Dave Meltzer seems to believe that Luger is clean. He doesn’t come right out and say that, nor does he come right out and say Luger is using. However, Meltzer at this time was all about calling out hypocrisy from wrestlers, and if he believed Luger was doing anything while simultaneously claiming to be clean, he would have at the very least made some snarky comments about it if not just called Luger on the carpet outright. He never did that, and if anything he was talking about the evidence that Lex truly was clean, such as the physique change that I referenced above. In fact, in his review of Summerslam ’93, Meltzer said the challenger in the WWF Championship match was “a guy they called Lex Luger” who looked more like Stan Lane.

If I had to put money on it I would bet on Luger cleaning up his act in the WWF.

I haven’t answered many Tyler from Winnipeg questions lately, so let’s try one out:

What’s Bull Buchanan or B2squared’s best match?

None of the above?

With all due respect to the guy, he was a pretty mediocre (though not awful) wrestler and wasn’t often booked into a position where he was going to be having the greatest matches on a given show. His best matches, which are all pretty average, are tag team bouts, and usually multi-team tag bouts at that. I can’t think of a noteworthy match he had as a singles performer.

Josh can’t see me . . . or anybody else for that matter:

As a lifelong wrestling fan, I feel a certain demographic like mine has been severely underrepresented…. fellow glasses wearers. I know many wrestlers wear glasses outside the ring but the only one I can think of who seemed to wear them on screen was Arn Anderson when he would cut promos. So why don’t other fellow four eyes wear theirs as well when not wrestling? Also give me the top 10 wrestlers who have to wear glasses in their regular lives.

I don’t know that anybody associated with the wrestling business has ever explained why wrestlers don’t tend to wear glasses on camera, but it does make sense to me because in kayfabe terms, when you are a wrestler, you have to be prepared for physicality at any time. Even though you may only be booked to cut a promo, you never know when one of your rivals is going to attack you or vice versa. Outside of kayfabe, wrestling is a cosmetic business where most folks are trying to look tough and, appropriate or not, glasses typically aren’t associated with tough guys.

Arn Anderson isn’t the only person who wore glasses on camera in wrestling, though. Let’s not forget about the Dudley Boys, whose gimmick was based on the bespectacled Hanson brothers in the movie Slap Shot. Every member of the Dudleys wore glasses in ECW, and they briefly came to the WWF with Bubba and D-Von, though eventually that part of the schtick fell by the wayside. Barry Horowitz also briefly wore glasses on camera for a short period of time following his upset in over Bodydonna Skip, as the WWF was trying to package him as an underdog, “nerd” sort of character.

Ricochet has often been spotted in glasses in AEW, as was NXT wrestler Dion Lennox for a time.

Similarly, I.R.S. and Dean Douglas wore glasses as part of their characters, getting over the “fact” that they had white collar jobs when not grappling. Similarly, Isaac Yankem wore glasses with dental loupes, commonly used for magnification while performing work on people’s teeth.

We also shouldn’t forget about Percy Watson, whose entire gimmick when wrestling in NXT was that he wore glasses while actually wrestling. Granted, they were just frames with no lenses, but he did it nonetheless.

Top wrestlers who wear glasses day to day? LET’S GO:

Stan Hansen: Famously nearsighted, Hansen is a guy who proves you can need specs and still be a total badass.

Arn Anderson: Yes, he was mentioned in the question, but something would feel wrong about not having Double A on this list.

Cody Rhodes: Formerly managed by Arn Anderson, the two have something in common when it comes to their eyesight.

Liv Morgan: Definitely the award winner for “best looking wrestler who wears glasses.”

AJ Lee: . . . might give Liv a run for her money, though.

Roman Reigns: The Tribal Chief is a myopic marvel.

Seth Franklin Rollins: Known for his outrageous outfits on camera, Rollins typically wears fairly restrained spectacles in his private life.

Necro Butcher: There’s something pretty amusing about a deathmatch wrestler wearing glasses that look like they came off of a college professor . . . but that’s exactly what Necro does.

Brody King: Similar to the Necro Butcher, King contrasts his bruising, heavy metal style with some professorial frames.

The Blue Meanie: Yeah, they’re painted on, but it’s my list and I’m still counting them.

A Different Ryan is comin’ out, so you better get this party started:

I remember back in the late 90s/early 2000s, whenever the “Stooges” were baby faces coming out to Hogan’s Real American theme, there was one incident when Pat Patterson and Jerry Brisco were in the ring (they may have actually won a match) and the camera cut to Patterson and Jim Ross, then the voice of Monday Night Raw, said, “He’s single fellas.” My question is: was Patterson “out” at that time? It just seemed like such a random comment. Was there any known heat on JR for saying that (either from the office or from Patterson)?

Pat Patterson’s sexuality was well known in the professional wrestling industry going as far aback as the 1970s. I’m not sure if he ever proudly and loudly proclaimed it, but I twas one of those things that everybody who worked with him knew. Despite this, he didn’t technically come out in public until 2014, when WWE tried to use his sexuality to promote its Legends House “reality” show and a biography called Accepted: How the First Gay Superstar Changed WWE.

Was there any heat for Jim Ross making that comment?

Nope. And do you know why not? Because Patterson didn’t care. First off, he was enough of a made main in the WWF that this kind of stuff wasn’t going to fly unless he was on board with it. Second, J.R.’s comment didn’t just come out of nowhere. It was part of a long tradition of announcers in the company making allusions to Patterson’s sexuality. Most notably, Gorilla Monsoon would call Pat “the master of the go behind” and, during matches featuring Steve Lombardi (who Patterson reportedly had a relationship with), Gorilla would say that Pat had spent “many hours” with the young wrestler.

This wasn’t harassment of a gay wrestler by an announcer. It was an inside joke being made by close coworkers and everybody laughing at it.

Nick keeps putting things off:

WrestleMania always used to be in late March or early April until a few years ago. Now it’s in late April. It’s not a huge deal, but why do you think this changed?

Nick Khan has spoken to this in a couple of different interviews. First, having Wrestlemania later in April means you have better weather. Though the show has mostly been in warmer climates lately, going later in the month does open up the possibility of doing open air arenas in places that have colder weather during the winter. Plus, a large percentage of Wrestlemania’s live audience travels in from outside the host city, so even if you have the show in a warm climate you make travel easier for those who come from colder places.

Second, there are concerns about competition from other sporting events. The NCAA basketball tournament runs from mid-March to early April, and Khan wants to put some space in between those events, which have overlapping audiences.

Nick leaves some things hanging out there:

Was it ever said why the Baby Doll/Dusty Rhodes blackmail storyline was dropped after only a few weeks?

Yeah, Larry Zbyszko covered this in his shoot interview with RF Video several years ago.

There was supposed to be a segment as part of the angle during which Baby Doll kissed Dusty Rhodes, representing the “kiss of death.” However, Baby Doll was married to Sam Houston at the time, and apparently Houston raised a big stink about his wife not kissing another man on television. This lead to Baby Doll refusing to go forward with the segment, and she was cut as a result.

Without Baby Doll there to participate in the angle, it was just quietly dropped.

Big Dingo gets by with a little help from his friends:

Recently Ricochet and Speedball both contributed to the same pin in a quadruple threat qualifier and were both counted the winner as a result.

I’ve searched around and found examples of pinning combinations in multi-man matches and found examples of simultaneous pins against two different opponents or two opponents pinning each other at the same time and even two or more opponents teaming up to eliminate one wrestler with the same pin… but can’t seem to find any examples of a multi-man match with one intended winner where two wrestlers pinned the same opponent and were both given the win as a result.

Are you able to find any other examples of two wrestlers pinning the same opponent at the same time in a multi-person match with one intended winner? If so, what was/were the result(s)?

Probably the biggest example of this comes from the September 27, 1998 WWF pay per view Breakdown: In Your House. The main event was a triple threat match for the WWF Championship between champion Steve Austin and challengers the Undertaker and Kane, which also had the unusual stipulation in which Kane and Taker could not pin each other, which really made it more like a handicap match even though it was billed as a triple threat.

Ultimately, the two “brothers” simultaneously pinned Austin, though they pinned him from opposite sides of his body rather than dog piling him as often happens in these simultaneous pin situations. Most resources list the duo as co-winners of the match, though the title was vacated rather than being given to one or both of them.

Bryan wants to spend one night in China:

Considering the WWE is a world wide company, do you think they will ever hold a PPV in the most populated country, China ? I realize the US doesn’t have the best relationship with China, but 30 years ago Ric Flair wrestled in North Korea and that’s an even worse relationship. Would there be a market demand there in Beijing?

Fightful did report in September 2025 that WWE brass was considering a major event in China, though those reports were not particularly detailed, nor have I seen them followed up on in the intervening six months, so who knows how realistic it is at this point.

APinOZ scores a big upset with this question:

Going WAY back now, in 1977 or ’78, when Australia had a show called World Championship Wrestling which was televised every Saturday and Sunday at 12 noon, Harley Race, who was NWA World Champion at the time, lost a non-title TV match to local champ (and promotion owner) Ron Miller, by pinfall, clean as a sheet. A very young me was gobsmacked by this, thinking that we would NEVER see the NWA champion pinned on television. But in the territory days, was that a common enough occurrence, for the reigning champ to get pinned clean on a local territory’s TV show?

For what it’s worth, the referenced Miller/Race match appears to have occurred in 1977, though I could not find an exact date. Ron Miller received five NWA World Heavyweight Title matches that year, at least some of which would have occurred before the television upset, because if you watch the match, afterwards the announcer can be heard to say something about Race going one hour with Miller “again,” referencing an early draw in a title match between the two. Handsome Harley would be back in Australia in 1978, where Miller would receive three more championship opportunities, all of them ending in draws.

On to the broad question of NWA Champions losing to set up contenders, it wasn’t unheard of but it wasn’t happening all the time, either. The more common scenario would see some sort of disputed finish on television to set up the championship match at the arena, since the champion did need to be protected to a degree.

Sam Malone’s Hair from Disqus closes us out with a series of questions:

What’s your favorite sandwich?

The single best sandwich that I ever had was a chicken parmesan sandwich from a local restaurant that no longer exists. I still daydream about that thing from time-to-time.

In terms of a type of sandwich that I can get in multiple places as opposed to a specific sandwich, I often default to a reuben. Put some waffle fries and a big dill pickle spear with that bad boy, and you’re in business.

Better dog, Matilda or Lassie?

I have to go with Lassie for longevity if nothing else. However, I do feel very bad for Matilda every time I hear a story about how the 1980s WWF locker room treated her.

Worse Star Wars movie, Clones or Solo?

People often don’t believe me when I say this, but I have never seen a Star Wars movie in full, though I have vague memories of seeing some of the Ewoks cartoons when I was a really young kid.

Will we ever get a proper remastered of …And Justice For All?

I’m not a huge Metallica guy, so maybe there is some deep fan debate about this I’m not aware of, but my research tells me that there was a remaster back in 2018.

Why do people suddenly become clumsy when running away from killers?

I don’t think they actually do. I think this is an invention of the movies.

Is Tyler From Winnipeg one person or part of the Borg?

8

One person, as far as I can tell.

We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.