Ask 411 Wrestling: Why Isn’t the Undertaker an Actor?

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Andron wants one particular wrestler to rest in peace:

To be a wrestler, especially in the WWE, one must be able to act, right? So I assume if you’re a top name on the WWE then your acting skills must be off the charts. This brings me to the Undertaker. Has he ever starred or acted in any movies? If not, why not?

Outside of his wrestling appearances, the Undertaker has only had a handful of acting roles. The only feature film credit he has came from the 1991 Hulk Hogan vehicle Suburban Commando, in which he plays one of the lead bad guys. However, Taker’s role in that movie is really just to have a couple of fight scenes with Hogan, so we’re not talking about a big departure from what he was doing in the WWF at the time.

Beyond that, Taker has had some guest television shots on Poltergeist: The Legacy and Downtown, both in 1999, but that’s really it aside from playing himself on shows that are directly tied into wrestling.

Why hasn’t the Undertaker done more acting? He is pretty well known for not doing a lot of out-of-character interviews, so you’re probably not going to get an answer directly from the horse’s mouth. However, he’s had opportunities, and he was around in two rather hot periods in wrestling that gave others the chance to spin off into legitimate acting if they liked. Thus, the only reasonable conclusion is that Taker hasn’t done more acting simply because it’s not something that interests him.

Yes, he is getting closer and closer to retirement with each passing month, but, if he’s been smart with his money from wrestling, he doesn’t exactly need a job once his grappling days are over with. He’s likely earned more than enough money during his career to comfortably retire on, and, given the iconic character that he’s created, he’s probably got some pretty healthy retirement income coming his way off of residuals and merchandising deals.

Fortunately, this Kristian question didn’t have to be cut for time:

Regarding the infamous incident between Sid, Arn Anderson, and the scissors: How was nobody criminally charged or blacklisted from wrestling forever after near fatal injuries with a deadly weapon? Those just seemed like natural consequences for actions of such brutal nature.

The criminal side of things is pretty easy to explain. For those who are not aware, the “scissors incident” occurred at the start of a WCW European tour while the crew was staying at a hotel in Blackburn, Lancashire, England. Both men were hospitalized and filed criminal complaints against each other with the local authorities but ultimately withdrew them. Reports at the time indicated that Sid and Anderson did this because they would have to have remained in the United Kingdom for up to ninety days for the complaints to be processed, and neither wanted to do that. Though not reported, I would have to imagine that each man also had to consider the possibility that he himself would have been prosecuted if he pursued charges against the other, as neither man was totally blameless in the incident, particularly when you start to consider the multiple conflicting accounts that gave rise to the fight. It is true that local authorities could have pursued charges without either “victim” having filed a complaint, but reports were that the authorities were content with the fact that both wrestlers would have been out of the country soon enough.

Once Anderson and Sid were back in the United States without charges having been filed in the United Kingdom, there wasn’t much that could be done from a criminal perspective. U.S. authorities typically won’t have the ability to prosecute for acts that take place outside of the country.

In terms of consequences within the world of pro wrestling, both men were suspended for some time while WCW investigated the incident. Ultimately, Anderson was reinstated, so presumably WCW brass came to the conclusion that he was less at fault for the incident – which seems to match most reports of what happened. Though he was not blackballed from wrestling, Sid was fired by WCW. His release was technically based on overall behavior problems and not just the fight with Anderson, but obviously the fight had to weigh heavily in that decision.

Sid getting cut (no pun intended) from the roster was a particularly big punishment, as WCW’s original booking plans for 1993 saw him scheduled to win the World Heavyweight Title from Vader at Starrcade, eventually becoming the biggest babyface in the promotion. Of course, once Sid was gone, that spot ultimately went to Ric Flair.

Mainstream wrestling promotions did stay away from Sid for a while, as he didn’t resurface in WWE until 1995. In between his WCW and WWF runs, he worked some independents but was mostly main eventing for Jerry Lawler’s USWA, where he purportedly had a great attitude. He also worked with multiple WWF stars who did guest shots for the USWA, including Adam Bomb, Mabel, and two matches with the Undertaker.

I suspect that the WWF gave Sid another chance in part because of the positive reports from the USWA, which also included a bump for the company’s business when Sid was on top. Also, you have to keep in mind that this was at a time when the WWF was on death’s door in terms of its revenue and its roster depth, so they were going to take just about ANYBODY who they thought could make them money against the now-Hogan-fronted WCW, whether that person nearly killed Arn Anderson or not.

Richard U. is here to enhance the column.

Who is in your “Jobber Hall of Fame”?

Mine is:

A – Assassin #2
B – Brutus Beefcake
C – Curt Hawkins
D – Spike Dudley
E – El Gigante
F – Mr. Fuji
G – Gilberg
H – Hillbilly Jim
I – Disco Inferno
J – Jim Duggan
K – Koko B Ware
L – Little Beaver
M – Mulkey Brothers
N – Jim Neidhart
O – Outback Jack
P – P.N. News
Q – Queen Kong
R – Repo Man
S – Sharkboy
T – Ta-Gar Lord of Volcanos
U – Uncle Elmer
V – Virgil
W – Mikey Whipwreck
X – X-Pac
Y – The Yeti
Z – Zack Ryder

I prefer the phrase “enhancement talent” to “jobber,” but I get what you’re going for. If I’m following Richard’s lead and picking one enhancement wrestler for every letter of the Latin alphabet, my list would look a little something like this:

A – Riki Ataki – Ataki was a Japanese-American wrestler who was prominent in the late 1980s and early 1990s, mainly working on WWF Superstars and Challenge. However, he also had at least one match in the AWA and worked TV tapings for the short-lived Herb Abrams UWF. Ataki had a one-off comeback match in a SoCal indy group in 2012, which he surprisingly won.

B – Salvatore Bellomo- Though he is of Italian heritage and was promoted as such, Bellomo was actually born in Belgium. He was a decently successful territorial wrestler but got his most national fame as a JTTS in the WWF in 1983 and 1984. His highlights there include being one of the very few wrestlers that the Iron Sheik defended the WWF Title against in the month that he held the belt before dropping it to Hulk Hogan. I also remember Sal appearing on an early episode of Tuesday Night Titans where he highlighted his hobby of making paper boats. (No kidding.) Bellomo has remained active on European indies through the 2010s.

C – Tiger Chung Lee- I’m probably cheating with alphabetization on this one. Though born in Japan and living there for most of his life, Tiger was ethnically Korean. He started his wrestling career in Japan in the late 1960s under the name Masanori Toguchi, likely in an attempt to hide his Korean ancestry as fellow Korean-Japanese pro wrestler Rikidozan did. When he first came to the United States in 1973, he started wrestling under his birth name, Kim Duk. He worked in many territories, including the AWA and Crockett Promotions, before jumping to All Japan, where he teamed with Kintaro Oki in a feud against the Giant Baba and Jumbo Tsuruta. Duk switched to New Japan in 1983 and started splitting his time between that company and the WWF in 1987. Though he was big time in Japan, he was essentially a job guy in the WWF, including a low card tag team with Mr. Fuji and a televised loss to Hulk Hogan (who he had previously wrestled in Japan) in an era where seeing Hogan on TV was not common.

D – “Duke of Dorchester” Pete Doherty- For almost eighteen years, Pete Doherty of Dorchester, Massachusetts was one of the most recognizable undercard wrestlers in the entire World Wrestling Federation. With a trademark toothless grin, an off-kilter brawling style, and vocal selling so loud that it would ring throughout the arena, Doherty became a cult favorite during one of the company’s hottest periods. He also occasionally wrestled under a mask as the Golden Terror, and, in an unusual turn for a job guy, he was given a regular slot doing color commentary on the WWF’s shows from the Boston Garden as well as a couple of other random cards.

E – Jose Estrada, Sr.- Much like the Duke of Dorchester, Puerto Rican star Jose Estrada, Sr. was an opening match regular in the WWWF/WWF from the mid-1970s through the early-1990s. (In fact, in his first WWWF match that I was able to find a record of, he teamed with Doherty.) Despite losing the vast majority of his matches with the company, Estrada did technically hold a championship there . . . though he didn’t beat anybody to win it. The WWWF used to promote a Junior Heavyweight Title, and Estrada allegedly beat Tony Garea in a match to revive the vacant championship on January 20, 1978. However, many sources report the match as being fictitious, with Estrada being given the belt just so he could lose it to Tatsumi Fujinami on January 23. Estrada’s other career highlight in the WWF was being one-half of Los Conquistadors in the late 1980s with fellow Puerto Rican star Jose Luis Rivera. He’s also the father of Jose Estrada, Jr., who was a star in Puerto Rico and Japanese hardcore promotions in addition to being one of Los Boricuas in the late 90s.

F – Jerry Flynn- Speaking of the late 1990s, Jerry Flynn was the job guy supreme of WCW during the Monday Night War, doing a martial arts gimmick and becoming a regular opponent of Bill Golberg during Goldberg’s legendary winning streak. The two men wrestled each other no fewer than ten times, with Goldberg obviously getting the duke in each one of them. Towards the end of his run with the company, it seemed like WCW was trying to give Flynn a gimmick and a push, first giving him a signature match known as “The Block” (in which he would fight men backstage) and then putting him in Jimmy Hart’s “First Family” stable (alongside the Barbarian, Brian Knobs, and Hugh Morrus). Though many fans associate Flynn most closely with WCW, he also had an earlier run as an enhancement wrestler with the WWF, where he did the honors for top-flight stars like Waylon Mercy, Rad Radford, and Henry O. Godwinn.

G – The Gambler- The Gambler is one of my personal favorites, primarily because I remember spending so much time in the 1990s trying to figure out what the hell his gimmick was supposed to be. Was he a professional wrestler who enjoyed playing cards on the side? Was he a professional poker player who enjoyed wrestling on the side? If he was a professional poker player, did he ever meet and/or play against Gabe “Mr. Kotter” Kaplan? Why did he wear an 80s-style satin windbreaker to the ring despite it being at least five years out of date? Why did he eventually change to dressing like he was from the old west? Whatever he was supposed to be, he wrestled almost 100 matches for WCW and the USWA between 1990 and 1999, losing almost every single one of them. Perhaps the most noteworthy match in the Gambler’s career was one that he had against Chris Jericho on an episode of WCW {Pro} in 1996. Though the match was nothing memorable to fans watching at the time, Jericho remembered it well and wrote about it in his first autobiography, noting it as a basic yet solid match that helped restore some of his self-confidence when it was at a low point. So, without the Gambler, Chris Jericho may never have made it out of WCW.

H – Barry Horowitz- I don’t know how you have a jobber hall of fame without this guy. Though Horowitz was actually a pushed wrestler in some territories (mostly under his alternate ring name of Jack Hart), most everybody knows him from his time making others look good in the WWF and later WCW. Horowitz had an initial run with the Fed from 1981 through 1983 and then took some time away to compete in Florida before returning to the WWF in 1987 and remaining there through 1990, when he had a brief run on NWA World Championship Wrestling and worked a couple of tapings for the Global Wrestling Federation. In 1991 and 1992, Horowitz was a free agent who alternated regularly between the GWF, the WWF, and Smoky Mountain Wrestling, and he even snuck in a couple of near-forgotten tours with All Japan. In 1995, Horowitz went full-time with the WWF and got a brief push after upsetting Chris Candido. In October of ’97, he did what many WWF names did around that time and jumped ship to WCW, where he remained until 2000. Horowitz did some independent shots and worked the tapings for the Hulk Hogan/Jimmy Hart startup XWF, but he was largely out of wrestling by the end of 2002 aside from the odd one-off match. Horowitz had a hell of a career, wrestling most of the biggest names from two of the most important eras in wrestling history, including Dusty Rhodes, Bret Hart, Randy Savage, Steve Austin, Shawn Michaels, Kenta Kobashi, Mitsuharu Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada, and Akira Taue.

I – Stalker Ichikawa- There aren’t a lot of pure jobbers in Japanese wrestling, at least not in the same way that they exist in the U.S. However, one wrestler who breaks that mold is Dragon Gate’s Stalker Ichikawa, who has now been wrestling and losing to not just DG’s roster but also some of the biggest outside stars the company can find for the past twenty years. Ichikawa, who comes to the ring dressed as a demon . . . insect . . . thing while the strains of the “William Tell Overture” play, is meant to add some comedy to Dragon Gate’s shows, providing a bit of a palette cleanser in the middle of the company’s typically fast-paced, high flying matches. Stalker’s career has outlasted those of many other Dragon System wrestlers, showing that, sometimes, being a job guy is good for your longevity in the sport.

J – Special Delivery Jones- For some reason, I always think that S.D. Jones is in the WWE Hall of Fame. It turns out that he’s not, though he did appear at the 2006 HOF ceremony to induct his friend and former tag team partner Tony Atlas. That would be Jones’ last appearance with the company that gave him worldwide exposure, as he passed away in 2008. During his time as an active wrestler in the WWF, Jones was almost always an enhancement wrestler, though he always seemed to be treated just a bit better than the average enhancement wrestler. He did pick up wins over his fellow job guys from time-to-time, he tagged with major stars like Bobo Brazil and Andre the Giant, and he even got at least one WWWF Heavyweight Title match, a loss to “Superstar” Billy Graham in 1977. Though most closely associated with the WWF, S.D. did periodically walk away from the Fed to have runs in other companies, including Mid-Atlantic and New Japan, though his win-loss record was always less than stellar. When the WWF began their national expansion under Hulk Hogan, Jones signed on with them exclusively and remained there through 1990, wrestling for indies and startups for the rest of his career.

K – Rocky King- Rocky King was a well-respected enhancement guy in Jim Crockett Promotions during the mid-1980s. How do I know that he was well-respected? Just take a look at who his opponents were. King had a disproportionately large number of matches against members of the Four Horsemen, the Midnight Express, the Russians, and other high-level members of the company’s roster. He was regularly paired with the promotion’s most skilled wrestlers, which was almost certainly an indication that those wrestlers wanted to be in the ring with him. Unlike many jobbers, King parlayed his in-ring career into other positions in wrestling, as he was the manager of the Fabulous Freebirds for a while as “Little Richard Marley,” a WCW referee for many years, and ultimately a promoter of his own independent group. It’s probably also worth noting that King, who began his in-ring career in 1984, has had several matches this year.

L – Steve Lombardi- Much like Barry Horowitz representing “H,” there was very little doubt in my mind when compiling this list that Steve Lombardi would represent “L.” Lombardi, who has had a variety of ring names that we’ll get into a bit more later, turned his proficiency at doing jobs in the ring (and other types of jobs elsewhere . . . allegedly) into a twenty-five year long career with the WWF/WWE. Lombardi began with the Fed in late 1983 and worked under his given name for several years until 1989, when Bobby Heenan began managing him and rechristened him as the Brooklyn Brawler as part of a feud with “Red Rooster” Terry Taylor. Lombardi’s long-time status as a jobber actually played into the feud, as Heenan recruited him specifically to show that he could manage anybody he wanted to a victory over the Rooster. In the early 1990s, Lombardi also started pulling double duty under a mask as Kim Chee, the “handler” of Kamala, though he didn’t wrestle under that name until 1993, when the Ugandan Giant turned babyface. (On some shows, Lombardi pulled double duty as both the Brooklyn Brawler and Kim Chee.) Perhaps because of that experience, the WWF gave Lombardi two more alternate gimmicks in 1994, as he made some appearances as Doink the Clown and some as baseball-themed wrestler Abe “Knuckleball” Schwartz (sometimes called MVP). The Brawler remained a fairly regular part of the roster through 1998, with his in-ring appearances becoming more sporadic after that and eventually petering out in 2002. At this time, Lombardi was already working backstage with the WWF, and he continued to do so until being released in 2016. It should be noted that he is still active up to this day, as there are several records of the Brooklyn Brawler working on the Midwest independent scene in 2018.

M – The Mulkey Brothers- Our first tag team on the list (and the first time I agree with Richard), Randy and Bill Mulkey were the quintessential job guys of the mid-1980s in Jim Crocket Promotions. They were regular opponents of the Roadwarriors, the Rock n’ Roll Express, and the Horsemen, and their popularity grew to the point that James E. Cornette once referred to “Mulkeymania running wild” while on commentary. The phrase stuck, and fans continued to support the lowly grapplers to the point that they were actually given a big, out of nowhere win in 1987, defeating the new tag team of the Gladiators to qualify for a berth in the Jim Crockett Sr. Memorial Cup tag team tournament. (In reality, the Gladiators were regulars George South and Gary Royal put under masks specifically to put the Mulkeys over.) Of course, Bill and Randy were knocked out of the tournament in the first round. The Mulkeys also had runs in Championship Wrestling from Florida and did a couple of shots in the WWF when they taped television down south. You can still find Bill and Randy popping up on the occasional legends show these days.

N – Nasty Ned- “Nasty” Ned Brady was an entertaining undercard wrestler in WCW in the early 1990s, appearing regularly on Worldwide and {Pro} and losing to men like Dustin Rhodes and Jim Duggan. Perhaps his most memorable moment on WCW television was when he teamed with Cactus Jack (at the time still called Cactus Jack Manson) as part of an angle in which Jack would team with a job guy and beat the holy hell out of him after their inevitable loss. After being bested by the standout duo of Tommy Rich and Ranger Ross, Ned became one of the first men on national television to eat Cactus’s diving elbow from the ring apron. That was in 1989. A couple of years later, Nasty Ned suffered an even greater indignity, when he was wrestling for an independent group out of Florida called the IWF. There, Ned worked under the name “The Repo Man.” According to the July 29, 1991 edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, IWF promoter Eddie Mansfield received a legal letter telling him that Ned needed to stop using that moniker immediately. Apparently, a member of the IWF locker room contacted J.J. Dillon, at the time a WWF executive, about the gimmick, causing the WWF to register a trademark for it and send the cease and desist. Of course, not that long after, Barry Darsow became the Repo Man on WWF television. Had things played out slightly differently, perhaps Ned Brady could have been a WWF Superstar.

O – Barry O- Over the last couple of weeks in this column, I’ve taken some heat from the comments section for, in their estimation, underrating the legacy of Randy Orton. In an effort to make amends with the Orton family, I am now inducting his uncle into the jobber hall of fame. Yes, that’s right, the “O” in “Barry O,” stands for “Orton,” making him the less popular son of Bob Orton, Sr., the brother of Bob Orton, Jr., and the uncle of Randy Orton. Barry started wrestling out of the family’s hometown of St. Louis in 1976, about four years after his older brother did. After stints in California, the Pacific Northwest, and Mid-Atlantic, Barry landed in the WWF, where he started putting over everybody and their brother (but not his own brother). Barry did break away from the WWF for a time in 1987, when he transferred to Stampede Wrestling as the masked Zodiac, the mouthpiece for Jason the Terrible.

P – AJ Petruzzi- Petruzzi is another classic job guy from the Hulkamania era of the WWF, where he was so low on the pecking order that there are records of him losing singles matches to guys like Iron Mike Sharpe and Rene Goulet. (Hmmm, Rene Goulet. Is it too late for me to revise my “G” entry?) Despite not really making waves in the Fed, Petruzzi did go on to become a multiple-time tag team champion in the early days of ECW as one of the masked Super Destroyers, after which he went on to train a cousin of his to wrestle. Who was that cousin? None other than Gene Snitsky. So, I suppose you could say that Snitsky’s wrestling career was definitely Petruzzi’s fault.

Q – Massive Q- Just kidding. I wanted to make sure you were paying attention.

Q – Buck Quartermain- Buck was a Florida-based independent wrestler who regularly got himself booked to do enhancement duty when major wrestling promotions came through his area. This started with him working a bit on WCW’s tapings at Disney’s MGM Studios in 1993. From 1994 to 1996, he alternated between appearances for WCW and the WWF, including several bouts on Monday Night Raw and even a dark match before the 1995 Royal Rumble. Quartermain is one of the few wrestlers on this list to have appeared for ECW, doing a couple of shots for them when they attempted to expand into Florida. He even became a regular job guy for TNA when that company first started running its television tapings out of Universal Studios in 2005. One interesting fact that I didn’t know about Buck before researching for this column is that he actually left Florida in 2006 and 2007 for a series of shows promoted by Tatsumi Fujinami’s Muga World Pro Wrestling (now known as Dradition).

R – Road Block- I have to admit, if I were being 100% objective, I should probably put WWF jobber Johnny Rodz into this position, since he managed to work his way into the actual WWE Hall of Fame. However, this is my list, so I feel like I’m entitled to include at least one personal favorite, and that personal favorite is none other than the Rochester Road Block, who looked like a bootleg member of the Natural Disasters. Road Block allegedly got into wrestling after attending a 1987 WWF house show, jumping the rail, and attacking the One Man Gang. (This story has been frequently repeated, but its validity has always seemed suspect to me.) From there, Mr. Block actually had a pretty decent international career, as he was brought into be a foreign giant in the SWS and W*ING promotions in Japan as well as Mexico’s UWA, in addition to working independents in the northeastern United States. His greatest national exposure in America came when he was snapped up to be an enhancement talent during WCW’s Nitro era, where his sole purpose seemed to be allowing guys like Lex Luger or the Giant to demonstrate how strong they were by Torture Racking or chokeslamming the 400 pound jobber. And, of course, he also fell to Goldberg’s Jackhammer.

S – Iron Mike Sharpe- “S” was probably the hardest spot for me to fill, and it was because of the choice between a legendary job guy most closely associated with the WWF and a legendary job guy most closely associated with the NWA. Though talented and respected Carolinian wrestler George South easily could have taken this spot, I ultimately decided to award it to Canada’s greatest athlete, “Iron” Mike Sharpe because, even though he is most closely associated with the WWF, he actually did do quite a bit of work in NWA territories as well, whereas South was primarily working in NWA territories and WCW with only the occasional crossover into the WWF. Sharpe, known for his leather forearm brace and his constant bellowing throughout matches, Iron Mike was also a second generation wrestler, as his father, Mike Sharpe, Sr., was one of the legendary Sharpe Brothers who were the first major foreign heels in Japanese pro wrestling when the “sport” was brought there during the Allied occupation of Japan following World War II. Sharpe Jr. didn’t match his father’s worldwide renown, but he is well-remembered by a certain generation of pro wrestling fan.

T – Texas Hangmen- What’s better than a jobber tag team? How about a jobber tag team that can work twice in one night under different gimmicks! That’s what WCW got when they brought in the masked Texas Hangmen in the 1990s. In addition to putting over teams under that name, the Hangmen would also remove their hoods and face the same opponents under the names “Mean Mike” and “Tough Tom,” a.k.a. Disorderly Conduct. (Sadly, my dream WCW jobber feud of Disorderly Conduct vs. The State Patrol never came to fruition.) Outside of WCW, the Hangmen were actually a pushed act, as they picked up some wins in the latter days of the AWA and were a top heel tag team in Puerto Rico’s World Wrestling Council. Both men also went overseas for Big Japan Pro Wrestling from time-to-time, though not always together as a unit. In an odd trivia note about the team, Tough Tom (but for some reason not Mean Mike) was featured in a set of trading cards that WCW and Topps released in 1999, being one of a handful of wrestlers to provide personal autographs to chaser cards in the series.

U – The Undertakers- This is probably a little bit of a cheat, but “U” is a very difficult letter to come up with wrestlers for. The Undertakers were a jobber tag team in the WWF, albeit not under that name. 400+ pound twin brothers Val and Tony Puccio were the Undertakers in the northeastern independents in the early 90s, and they were given a run with the WWF beginning in 1992, which was speculated to be as a result of their sending a legal notice to the Fed after the debut of the now much-more-famous Undertaker. While in the WWF, they were known as Double Trouble, and they never appeared on television but worked house show programs with the Bushwackers, the Natural Disasters, and High Energy before the company sent them to the Japanese promotion WAR in as part of a talent exchange. After parting ways with the WWF for the first time, they were brought back briefly in 1994 as substitutes for the Heavenly Bodies in a house show program with the Headshrinkers when Jimmy Del Rey was injured. Val Puccio might also be recognizable to early ECW fans, as he worked there as a singles wrestler for a brief spell, putting over Hack Myers and Mikey Whipwreck.

V – “Wrestling Superstar” Virgil- Originally known as Soul Train Jones in Tennessee, Virgil was brought into the WWF as Ted DiBiase’s, ahem, servant and had only sporadic matches on television but was rather active on the house show circuit. Then, when he eventually turned on DiBiase, he got to beat the Million Dollar Man via count out at Wrestlemania VII and pin him for the Million Dollar Title at Summerslam. From there . . . things went south pretty quickly. DiBiase won the fake title back on a Survivor Series preview show, and Virgil proceeded to feud with Skinner before putting over the debuting Repo Man. It seemed like most debuting mdicard wrestlers got to pin Virgil on their way up the card from that point until 1995, at which time he and the company parted ways. In 1996, he got one of the sweetest gigs in wrestling, as WCW signed him to be the “head of security” for the nWo, which involved him hanging around ringside a lot but almost never wrestling. When he did wrestle, it was usually to give a win to a midcard wrestler who was going to be crushed by some of the nWo’s bigger names later on. (Ray Traylor, I’m looking at you.) He was so loyal to the nWo that he was one of the last members of the group before it dissolved in 1999. He remained with WCW until near the end, competing and often losing under the names Shane (as part of Vince Russo’s Creative Control stable), Curly Bill (as part of the West Texas Rednecks), and Mike Jones (his real name). He’s been active on the independent scene since then, actually winning more than he’s been losing for once in his career.

W – Frank Williams- Frank Williams did nine solid years in the World (Wide) Wrestling Federation from 1976 to 1985 and had virtually no wins for that entire period, unless he was wrestling a true no-name. There are two interesting things about Frank Williams’ career. First, he wrestled as “Frank Williams,” despite the fact that his real name was Armando Pumarejo, and you’d think the WWF, which often used stars from different ethnic groups to bring in a wide array of fans, would also try to use the ethnic angle to give “Williams” some sort of defining characteristic. Second, the most memorable moment of Williams’ career came when he was given a guest spot on Piper’s Pit in 1984, where he was mocked, belittled, and beaten to a bloody pulp before Roddy Piper bellowed one of his most memorable lines into the camera, “Just when you think you know all the answers, I change the questions!” Poor Frank didn’t even get a match with Piper after that one to try to even the score. Sadly, Williams passed away not that long after the end of his in-ring career in 1991, succumbing to lung cancer.

X – Mr. X- Much like Steve Lombardi working as Kim Chee to save some money, Mr. X was another cost cutting maneuver, as he was the masked alter ego of then-WWF referee “Dangerous” Danny Davis. Starting in 1981 and continuing all the way through Davis turning heel and becoming a professional wrestler in his own right in 1987, X was gonna give it to ya . . . if by “give it to ya” you mean “lose and lose rather quickly.” Sadly, Mr. X was not seen again after that. He presumably went back to his home in Parts Unknown, where his mother gave him quite a bit of grief for not getting his doctorate like his brother did.

Y – Young Stallions- Jim Powers was a talented, good looking muscular kid from New Jersey who just couldn’t seem to catch a break after several years of appearing in the WWF. Paul Roma was a talented, good looking muscular kid from New York who just couldn’t seem to catch a break after several years of appearing in the WWF. In 1987, they decided that the key to breaking their respective losing streaks was to form a team with each other, and . . . it turns out that they were both totally wrong. They dropped falls to just about every “name” tag team in the promotion over the course of two years, after which they unceremoniously split up and couldn’t even be given a proper feud with one another, though some of that may have had to do with an injury that Powers suffered at right around the same time as the breakup.

Z – Tony Zane- Tony Zane was a Georgia-based wrestler trained by “Nightmare” Ted Allen in the early 1980s, which put him in the right place at the right time to do job work for Georgia Championship Wrestling, Mid-Atlantic Wrestling, and later WCW. Tony also had one of the most unintentionally hilarious masked gimmicks of all time, as, in various southern indies, he appeared as the masked Mr. Atlanta. Mr. Atlanta wasn’t a hilarious gimmick in and of itself, but it certainly turned into that when you heard that Mr. Atlanta was announced as being from “parts unknown.” Also, I can only assume that he was a big inspiration for Sami Zayn in his early career.

And, believe it or not, we’re going to close it out on the jobbers.

We’ll be back in seven days with more of your questions – which can, as always, be sent to [email protected]!