The most emotional event of the calendar year is the WWE Hall of Fame ceremony, held the night before WrestleMania, where fans and current performers pay respect to both major stars of the past and present.
In recent years, the event had been heavily criticized due to time limits and attempts at scripting speeches. But from all accounts, this year’s, particularly speeches by Edge, Christian, The Four Horseman and JBL, was the best in years.
It was notable for a few things, with Edge as the youngest inductee in history, someone who clearly belonged in based on whatever standards they would choose to use as one of the company’s biggest stars of the past decade. But usually people being honored are at a different stage of their lives. Edge is the first guy from the generation who was still a little kid and had few if any memories of the territorial days, being a fan of the Hulk Hogan/Ultimate Warrior era as his childhood wrestling memories. He was presented as the star of the show, with Mike Tyson as the celebrity, a conglomeration of four Horsemen, Yokozuna, Mil Mascaras and Ron Simmons rounding out the list.
Time limits were thrown out, and while JBL in his speech talked about scripting early, and how nobody was going to write a script to tell him what to say about his best friend, it didn’t have that feeling.
The behind the scenes story leading up to it was the first time someone from a rival organization that was still active was put in, with Ric Flair as part of the Horsemen induction. TNA and WWE reached a business agreement to allow him to attend. TNA asked for little, just a WWE performer who was with TNA to appear for one day in TNA, not on television, but recording talking head footage to comment on an upcoming DVD release. They also asked for it to be announced that Flair was appearing through an agreement with TNA, or make some sort of reference to Flair being a TNA wrestler. We don’t know the details of what was settled, only that the latter didn’t happen, but even though from a legal standpoint, TNA held the aces here since WWE had advertised Flair and sold tickets without getting clearance, TNA was the one that folded its hand. In the end, they knew this was a big deal to Flair, and they didn’t want to come across petty.
Besides most of the wrestlers (some were not able to attend because they had to sign autographs at Fan Axxess) on the roster with the exception of Undertaker (who doesn’t like to be seen out of character) and Dwayne Johnson, among those in attendance included Kevin Greene, Kevin Nash, Mick Foley, Tommy Dreamer, Sean Waltman, Lita (with C.M. Punk), Harley Race, Iron Sheik, Jimmy Hart, Steve Keirn, Ricky Steamboat, Carlos Colon, Fit Finlay, Sharmell Huffman (with Booker T), Tammy Sytch, Linda McMahon, Nikita Koloff, Jim Duggan, DDP, Dory Funk Jr. and Maryse Ouellette (with The Miz).
The show opened with Jerry Lawler introducing a tape of Ron Simmons. Simmons, 53, was a legitimate college football superstar who was a first team All-American, had his number retired, was a Heisman Trophy candidate and is in the college football Hall of Fame. Simmons actually went head-to-head in two Orange Bowl games as a defensive lineman battling Steve Williams, an offensive lineman as Oklahoma faced Florida State.
Simmons was considered too short to play the defensive line in the NFL, and after playing in the old USFL, his football career ended and he broke in during the dying days of Championship Wrestling from Florida, after the suicide death of Eddie Graham. He got a big push based on his athletic ability and football name, and had a successful career. His main claim to fame was being the first African-American to win the WCW title. While it was lauded as some sort of a major breakthrough of someone overcoming their race and prejudice to make it to the top, the reality was very different.
Bill Watts, who was hired to run WCW, was looking to replicate the Junkyard Dog as an African-American superstar. With Simmons, who had the credentials and was certainly decent enough in the ring, he was the best guy for the job at the time, because there weren’t any other alternates. It didn’t work. Even as champion, it was clear the audience never took to Simmons as the top star. Plus, and this wasn’t his fault, he was champion during a period when WCW had few charismatic heels for him to face. After only a few months, he lost it back to Vader and fell from main events and was eventually cut. After going to ECW, where he didn’t really click, his career appeared to be over when he was signed by the WWF. He had a strong early run as a single, led the Nation of Domination, a group which ended up being the impetus for The Rock becoming a star, and finished his career with a long run as JBL’s tag team partner.
JBL: Layfield opened by saying that they sent a writer to help him with his speech and he said he can’t repeat what he told the writer, saying the day he can’t talk about his best friend without help is the day he gets put in the ground.
He talked about Simmons as a football player, and joked about his ridiculous outfit with a helmet when he started as Faarooq Asad in WWF, saying Steve Austin had the line about how Simmons was the only guy who can walk around wearing that and nobody would say anything. He tried to say if it wasn’t for the barriers Simmons broke down as the first African-American world champion, there wouldn’t be The Rock. While Simmons’ role as an adversary when Rock was turning the corner was legit, the whole first black champion thing and opening doors is way overblown. It was 1992, and the reign was because Bill Watts was looking for a first black world champion and he was on the roster. He wasn’t Bobo Brazil or Bearcat Wright, who established themselves as major superstar and drawing cards, and after making their names as headliners, were the first two black world champion in the 60s. The WWA title was one of the big three at the time with NWA and WWWF, and Los Angeles was the second largest city in the country, and that title was recognized and defended in Japan when neither the NWA nor WWWF title were at that time. He then told a Vince Russo story, saying how when he and Simmons were put together as the APA, that the former head of creative who went to WCW wanted to play on the racial elements with one guy playing white stereotypes and the other being black, and Simmons refused to go along with it, saying that they were going to play who they were, which was best friends. JBL made a remark about the “Jim Crow” WCW. which really wasn’t fair He then claimed that the APA once did an 8.6 quarter hour rating, and told the wrestlers in the crowd when they do an 8.6 quarter to tweet him. There was a Raw show at the peak of the Monday Night Wars when Nitro was pre-empted and wrestling was on fire that did better than an 8.0 overall, so it’s possible that was true. It couldn’t have happened in a head-to-head segment. JBL talked about how one of the best things in his life is that Simmons is his friend, and talked about how Simmons was the best man at his wedding.
RON SIMMONS: He came out in character and teased the “Damn” thing saying there’s a word he wanted to say, and the crowd shouted it out. He crossed them up and said the word was honored. He mentioned being in other Halls of Fame (College Football) but said this meant more, and thanked Hiro Matsuda (his trainer), Ric Flair (who he had early world title bouts with), Junkyard Dog (a very interesting name because I guess he realized that JYD with his success as a draw did open doors for Simmons) and Dusty Rhodes. He said how his run led to Booker T’s run, but Booker T’s run actually came because WCW was being sued on racial discrimination charges at the time, and to counter, the company felt it would be best to have a black world champion and Booker was easily the best guy who fit the bill. He joked about his wife, how he played football and wrestled for years and was fearless, and didn’t know the meaning of fear until he came home at 5:30 a.m. and saw his wife’s eyes, and then talked about how the WWF as an organization was always one where if he had a problem, he could go to them. He also noted he had a tough childhood, but that made him who he was.
ALBERTO DEL RIO: Del Rio inducted his uncle, Mil Mascaras. Mascaras, 72, still wrestles today. His real name is Aaron Rodriguez (Del Rio is Alberto Rodriguez, the son of Mil’s brother Dos Caras Sr.), was one of the great drawing cards of his generation, all over the world, but he came before the time of most of the fans in attendance and a lot of the modern wrestlers. Even when he was in his early 40s and it was past his heyday, I can recall when San Jose weekly wrestling in the LeBell dying days was doing 400 a week, and when Mascaras came in, it would be triple that every time. He was a worldwide drawing card based on his unique style, and more his colorful ring outfits. He’s one of the five biggest stars in the history of Mexican wrestling, but unlike El Santo, he broke through past just the Hispanic audience to be among the biggest foreign stars in history in Japan, and was a huge draw in places like Central America and Africa, packing stadiums there. Never talked about, and Del Rio only talked three minutes about his uncle and again, most in the audience didn’t really know him, was that in 1975, when Eddie Einhorn, the owner of the Chicago White Sox, made an attempt to run a national promotion, battling both the NWA and WWWF head-on, it was Mascaras who he chose as his big star. And Mascaras drew big in Roosevelt Stadium in New Jersey early for matches with Ivan Koloff, but the promotion didn’t have the staying power. Del Rio said his uncle was the first Mexican in the WWE and the first to wrestle in Madison Square Garden. There were Mexican wrestlers in the promotion long before Mascaras, but as far as people who were superstars in Mexico, he was the first that I can recall, as Santo, Blue Demon, Tarzan Lopez, etc. never worked in the Northeast. His real claim to fame was being the first masked man to work in Madison Square Garden. They had this decades old law because of bad publicity from The Masked Marvel days where masked man couldn’t work in New York. Mascaras was such a big draw that Vince McMahon Sr., who had forced all his other masked man to work without masks in MSG like The Spoiler, The Masked Russians, etc., got Mascaras before the commission and Mascaras explained his situation, what his mask meant and under no circumstances, MSG pay and exposure or not, he would not work if he couldn’t wear his mask as he never took it off in public. They granted him the right and that ended that rule.
MIL MASCARAS: Mascaras, in a flashy bullfighter like suit and his mask spoke in broken English. Most of the crowd and wrestlers had no real emotional connection with him and really couldn’t understand the level of star he was. He kept talking about different wives and people really didn’t understand what he was saying. He did put over wrestling in Japan, where he was the most popular wrestler to a generation of children who grew up in the 70s.
DUSTY RHODES: Rhodes, the big rival of the Horsemen, compared them to The Beatles. He noted Ric Flair is the first guy to be inducted twice, called him a national treasure and said nobody in the business accomplished what Flair did. He praised J.J. Dillon as the strategist, Barry Windham as the best natural athlete who ever came into the business, how Tully Blanchard was the glue and Arn Anderson was the guy who always did what needed to be done.
J.J. DILLON: James Morrison, 69, was kind of notable because while everyone else got older in the Four Horsemen, he started out as a guy who was 40 and with the white hair looked 50. Now he’s almost 70 and still looks in his 50s. He told the story of the Horsemen, because it was kind of a fluke about the name and the group. They were the lead heels in 1985, as Flair, the world champion, would on occasion have the Andersons, Ole & Arn, interfere in his matches. Dillon at the time was managing Blanchard. Once, at a taping, when the show ran short, they just sent them all out as the lead heels together to cut a promo, and Arn Anderson said how they were like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and held up four fingers. Soon, college kids would come to matches in suits and ties, since Blanchard & Flair always dressed up as part of their act, and would hold up four fingers. There was a lot of talk about the decision regarding the five guys, with the argument being, this was the best Horseman group. For pure wrestling ability, they were, since when they were together as this unit, Blanchard & Anderson were one of the two best heel tag teams in wrestling (along with the Midnight Express), and Windham and Flair were at that point in time probably the two best in-ring singles wrestlers. However, this unit was only together for four or five months, even though they made it sound like they were together for nine years. Windham replaced Lex Luger as a Horseman in April 1988, and Blanchard & Anderson left Crockett promotions in September after a falling out with Rhodes. While in the ring they were great, that was also not a strong period for the company, which was deep in the red and ended up being sold in November. The original Horseman, Flair, Blanchard, Ole & Arn, were only together about nine months as a group called the Horseman before Ole was kicked out, turned face and replaced by Luger. But that was a super hot period for business and from a drawing money perspective, that was the most successful quartet. The Luger group was close behind, and Luger had the right look at the time and made them look more like stars and things were still good. There were a ton of other incarnations that came later, but none matched up to the first few years, in either talent, impact or for business. A 1995 version of Flair, Anderson, Brian Pillman and Chris Benoit, together briefly, could rival the talent of the previous incarnations. Pillman left the promotion, and then Anderson retired in 1997 due to neck injuries. The final version was in 1999, consisting of Flair, Benoit and Malenko, with Anderson as the manager, and had an entourage that also included a bodybuilder woman nurse with giant boobs called Asya the Nurse, heel referee Charles “Lil Natich” Robinson, and David Flair. As far as the reasons what was picked, most would agree that if you picked the group when it was really on fire, it was the Ole Anderson version, but Ole Anderson and Vince McMahon hate each other, and Ole wouldn’t come, and physically couldn’t come. The fact his name was never mentioned or acknowledged, not unexpected, still was weird, particularly since Arn Anderson in telling the story of how JYD led to his first break, it was all because he looked so much like Ole. Those close to the situation said Luger wasn’t inducted, or ever mentioned, because of the death of Elizabeth more than because he walked out of WWF without telling anyone and showed up on the first episode of Nitro in 1995 as the first shot of the Monday Night Wars. Benoit’s name is not allowed to be mentioned and ignoring the Benoit run meant Malenko, Pillman and Steve McMichael shouldn’t be mentioned. And the reality is, when Flair talked about his favorite years in the business, the 90s WCW with all of its internal problems were hardly that period.
RIC FLAIR: Flair, who was described as a retired wrestler on the WWE site, and I guess he may be given TNA pulled him from Lockdown, but he sure hasn’t said those words. He came out and joked about how the last time he was inducted was four years ago, and he has a new wife. The first thing he did was tell a story about Tiffany, his wife at the last ceremony, talking about how that week he was up until 3 a.m. at the bar with John Cena and his wife called and asked him when he was going to grow up, and then asked what he even has in common with people who are 30 years younger than he is. He said that he turned off his cell phone and stayed out. He said how he’s had a wonderful career, being able to spend 40 years as a wrestler, and how the best time of his career was the years with these guys. Flair did used to tell me that the best times of his career were the Horseman days and his rookie year learning the business in the AWA with guys like Ray Stevens, Nick Bockwinkel and Superstar Graham. He started crying a few times. He talked about how he ran with these guys for nine years. Well, he was together with Arn forever. The other three it was actually not that long at all.
BARRY WINDHAM: I will say it was great to see Windham, 51, he was walking around fine after suffering both a heart attack and a stroke and being near death. Windham noted he was the first second generation wrestler, whose father was inducted into the Hall of Fame (father is Blackjack Mulligan). That’s actually not correct because all the Von Erich kids are in, as is Fritz. And Greg Valentine should be second generation, given that his father was actually a bigger star than most of the guys who are in. He noted that his father, who wasn’t there, is doing well. He talked about meeting Flair and Blanchard while still a kid, and meeting Dillon when he was a referee in the old Amarillo territory going to college.
TULLY BLANCHARD: Blanchard, 58, who now works in prison ministries, talked about the Horsemen being guys who every night went out to try and be the best at their job. He said they would compete to have the best match and had the attitude that there was nobody in wrestling they couldn’t follow. He said he spent his time trying to give people their $10 worth of entertainment. He talked about his four children, and noted that he had long since gone on a different path in life and how his children didn’t know anything about this period of his life. He thanked Pat Patterson for bringing him into WWF and Bobby Heenan (who wasn’t there) for being his manager. He noted that this was the worst week and one of the best weeks of his life, because his father’s funeral was the previous Monday and how his father was one of his best friends. He talked about how his father beat Ted DiBiase’s father in 1950 to win the Big 8 championship (actually it was Big 7 at the time). He talked about how he and all the guys of his era wake up with twinges and bad backs but it was all worth it and said that wrestling fans paid their money and deserve as much as you can give them each night.
ARN ANDERSON: Marty Lunde, 53, known by everyone as Arn Anderson, got a standing ovation coming out. Of the Horsemen, he’s actually the one the current group of wrestlers know because he’s been with the WWE as a producer since WCW went under in 2001. He noted that he didn’t work on a speech and was going to wing it. He said he started watching wrestling at seven and got hooked on it, and that as a kid, his idols were the tag team of Dick Slater & Bob Orton Jr. He noted working for Bill Watts, driving himself to death trying to get a break, and it was Junkyard Dog who noted that he looked a lot like Ole Anderson, which led to him getting his first break as a reincarnation of the Andersons tag team. He noted he’s the only guy who can say he was managed by Paul Heyman, J.J. Dillon and Paul Ellering. How could he have left out Hiro Matsuda? He hardly talked about the Horseman days, talking about his early career, skipping to his retirement and then talking about the guys in WWE today. He talked about his children and how proud he is of them. He actually talked nothing about the Horsemen days, but did bring up how his career ended due to neck problems. He said he was told he would either lose his left hand, or would need surgery that would possibly end his career, and never wrestled again. He mentioned all the WWE agents and how hard they worked, joked about how three years ago, who would have ever thought C.M. Punk would be a team leader, praised Randy Orton for being as good as his father and praised a ton of different current wrestlers and said the current guys are the caretakers of the industry.
SHAWN MICHAELS & HHH: They came out to induct Mike Tyson, but did an Abbott & Costello comedy routine. They joked about when Tyson was in his prime they’d rush from shows to the hotel to see his fights, rush to park, and rush in, but since they always ended so quickly, they’d get there and the fight was already over. HHH kept making fun of when Tyson gave the knockout punch to Michaels in 1998 at WrestleMania and they ended up with Michaels making a remark that he was better than HHH, leading to a “Shawn is better” chant. HHH credited with Tyson for turning the tide in the wrestling war with WCW. The one thing about Tyson, as compared with Pete Rose or Drew Carey or Bob Uecker, is that if you wrote a history of pro wrestling, Tyson, Cyndi Lauper and Mr. T should be part of that history. Mr. T and Lauper for their part in the first WrestleMania which really was the make-or-break night of the WWE’s expansion (Mr. T has turned down Hall of Fame invites on more than one occasion) and Tyson for his role in getting Steve Austin over as the biggest short-term drawing card in history and building momentum for WWF to overtake WCW. He was also personally responsible for the revival of WrestleMania, which was big from 1985-1990, but declined significantly in interest from 1991-1997, where it fell to 237,000 buys. Because of Tyson, they were up to 730,000 buys, tripling in one year, and Mania has been on that new level ever since, even in bad times.
MIKE TYSON: Tyson did a strange speech, talking about how Bruno Sammartino was his hero growing up, and that as a kid he wanted to be a pro wrestler, but he got arrested and met Cus D’Amato who taught him boxing. He mentioned seeing Sammartino against Nikolai Volkoff, Lou Albano, Freddie Blassie, Moondog Mayne (who never wrestled Sammartino for the title), The Sheik, The Valiant Brothers, Spyros Arion and others. He noted that WWF helped him financially when he was about to lose his house (he got paid $3 million plus for Mania in 1998 at a time when he was having money troubles after being suspended from boxing for biting Evander Holyfield’s ear off), although he was clearly kidding about losing his house. He talked about how his kids didn’t care about him being inducted into the boxing Hall of Fame but were all excited about this. Then he started talking about how he didn’t know that John Cena was really black, and how Dusty Rhodes was 1970s blaxplotation black and started laughing and left. At another point he went out of his way to point out Pat Patterson in the front row, who was sitting next to Stephanie McMahon Levesque.
JIMMY & JEY USO & RIKISHI: They were there to induct Rodney Anoai, Yokozuna. The Usos came out and talked about their extended family and how of all the members, Yokozuna was the only one to be WWE champion. They noted they were kids when he started and they couldn’t understand why they said he was Japanese. They said he was the opposite of his TV character. They also introduced their father, Rikishi, who was Yokozuna’s first cousin. Rikishi noted that a Yokozuna is the highest honor and in wrestling, the WWE Hall of Fame is the highest honor. Yokozuna is actually the term for Grand champion in the sport of sumo, an honor equivalent to being a Hall of Famer in major league baseball, except maybe higher because of its long history and more select numbers. Anoai, a huge man at more than 400 pounds but with good timing, started wrestling at the age of 18 as Kokina and later Kokina Maximus, because of his gigantic ass (gluteus maximus) in Japan, Mexico and the AWA. In 1992, one of the biggest stars in sumo as Konishiki, a 600 pound Samoan who was a huge drawing card but was actually never promoted to Yokozuna, who garnered a lot of publicity in the U.S. at the time because of his size. Anoai’s actual gimmick was not being Japanese, but being completely modeled after Konishiki, a Polynesian who went to Japan and became a sumo superstar. He was asked to gain weight, which ended up being his undoing, managed by Mr. Fuji and pushed as an unstoppable monster from his arrival in 1992. He was kept untouched, squashing everyone with his banzai drop, where he’d come off the middle rope and land with ass to chest on his helpless opponents. It looked like the absolute worst finisher to take, as did any move he did when he’d jump up and land on guys like leg drops and splashes. In reality, he had a reputation of being a great worker for his size, and shockingly, a light worker who never hurt anyone. He won the 1993 Royal Rumble, and followed by beating Bret Hart for the WWF title at WrestleMania, but as soon as the match was over, Hulk Hogan came and beat in seconds t win the title. At the time, he was 26 years old, making him the youngest WWF champion in history up to that point (Bruno Sammartino was 27 when he won the title for the first time). When Hogan refused to lose the title to Bret Hart at SummerSlam in 1993, he and Vince McMahon had a falling out and Hogan agreed he’d lose it to the monster Yokozuna on the way out, which he did at the King of the Ring show in June, as opposed to Hart, who he considered a mid-card guy and too small. Yokozuna had a famous angle where Lex Luger bodyslammed him in the attempt to make Luger the next Hogan, but that failed, and Yokozuna ended up losing the title instead to Hart at WrestleMania in 1994. Anoai started in WWF at about 500 pounds, and developed a terrible weight problem. He was moved into a tag team with Owen Hart. He probably hit as much as 760 pounds, a weight he could barely move at, and even though Happy Humphrey was billed at 802 pounds as the heaviest pro wrestler in history, having seen Yokozuna “work” with Goldust live when his weight was the most out of control, there is no question he was the heaviest man legitimately to have ever been a pro wrestler, along with the McCrary Brothers, twins who worked in the 70s who were also more than 700 pounds. The company sent him to weight loss clinics, but they only proved to be a temporary fix. Finally, the New York State Athletic Commission suspended him for health reasons from competing, which meant he was not allowed to wrestle in any of the two dozen or so states that still regulated pro wrestling. The company rarely used him, because there was no point in shooting a TV angle with him that they couldn’t follow up on in half the country. Eventually, when he didn’t lose weight, he was cut in 1998. He lost a little weight, working independents, and was touring the U.K. when he died of pulmonary edema in a hotel room in Liverpool, England on October 23, 2000, at the age of 34. He was 680 pounds at the time of his death.
CHRISTIAN: He came out and noted Edge’s new haircut saying that once again Edge is always trying to copy him. He talked about how they’ve been best friends since the age of 12 talking about being pro wrestlers and how they both made it. They played tape of them as kids playing pro wrestler. He talked about how Edge grew up with his mother working two jobs at a time to support him and Edge knew he had no choice but to make it big to repay his mother and take care of her. Christian noted that he and Edge talked about Edge’s retirement, with Edge wanting to wrestle Christian at WrestleMania in his last match this year, but said Edge ended his career in his last match being world champion at WrestleMania.
EDGE: Edge was pushed as the star of the show. He hugged Christian for a long time and they posed together. He showed photos of he and Christian as kids and talked about entering a contest where you would write an essay and the winner would get free wrestling training at Ron Hutchison and Sweet Daddy Siki’s school in Toronto. He praised the training and said anyone who left that school was ready to be a pro wrestler and really put over Siki, a forgotten star of the 60s and 70s. He noted Tony Condello death tours driving over frozen lakes to cities and seeing holes in the ice. He pointed out Lance Storm, Rhino and Scott D’Amore as his friends he invited to be there and how he named him Rhino. He joked about how once driving over the frozen ice that the van started to sink and they had to get out and Christian fell through the ice with freezing water waist deep while Rhino was scared to death, but ran at Christian and gave him a gore. He thanked Bret Hart, noting he asked Bret Hart how to get into WWF and Hart started training with him and got him his tryout match. He said his first WWE contract was for $210 a week. He talked about his TLC match with Ric Flair, and wrestling Eddy Guerrero, and brought up Michaels, Mick Foley, the Hardys, Kurt Angle, The Dudleys, Batista, Chris Jericho, Owen Hart and John Cena. He said how he didn’t know if he was ready for the Hall of Fame this soon but that Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels both texted him immediately to tell him he deserved it. He also talked about how Vickie Guerrero and Lita were able to help take him to the next level as a star with the Rated R gimmick, and that he got to team with his childhood idol Hulk Hogan as a dream come true. He said he hoped that he could be to Zack Ryder and Curt Hawkins what Bret Hart and Michaels were to him. He thanked all kinds of wrestlers, his girlfriend, Tommy Dreamer, and mentioned the names Glen and Mark (Kane and Undertaker). The show ended with him doing a five second pose.
Joe Scarpa, who became a legendary pro wrestling figure in the Northeast in the 70s as babyface fixture Chief Jay Strongbow, passed away on 4/3 at the age of 83.
Scarpa was actually an Italian from Philadelphia, who was brought into the Northeast by Vince McMahon Sr. in 1970 to play a Native American character. Although he never showed it as Chief Jay Strongbow, Scarpa had by that time already had a long career where he was a very good technical wrestler, using his real name. He was best known in the Southeast where he had been a consistent headliner for years.
He came in, with his Native American regalia, his chops, his war dance which would start with him standing in a funny position and talking with Vince McMahon saying how “Strongbow is putting the bad mouth on him,” about his opponent, and the sleeper hold, and quickly moved up to the No. 2 babyface position and remained in that position for years. He was a fixture in the company for most of the next 15 years, with a few breaks, in front of the camera, and for another 15 more years behind the scenes as a road agent.
In the early and mid-70s, Strongbow, billed as both Chief Jay Strongbow and at other times as Indian Jay Strongbow, had a clearly defined role, working main events in smaller cities and usually going over the heels who had already had their championship run. In Madison Square Garden, he would frequently be in tag matches with the top heels who had already had their runs with the champion, and when he was in the territory, would be a regular partner with Andre the Giant. He was rarely on the losing side of matches during his peak years, and went a period of probably five years or more where he never lost a match via pinfall with the exception of one spot show match to Ray Stevens in Hagerstown, MD, for whatever reason.
McMahon protected Strongbow, and the rare times he did lose, it would be via count out (or perhaps a blood stoppage), usually to a heel who would be getting a shot at the championship at the next show.
He held the tag team titles four times, once with Sonny King, once with Billy White Wolf (who went back-and-forth between being a Native American and an Iraqi Sheik Adnan Al-Kaissie) and twice with supposed brother Jules Strongbow (who was a legitimate native American, whose real name was Frank Hill).
Scarpa was already 41 when McMahon Sr. brought him in for what ended up being his big career break. It was notable because even though Wahoo McDaniel had a run as a Jeremy Lin-style New York cult celebrity for a short period of time while playing linebacker for the New York Jets (featuring the public address announcer saying, “Tackle by who?” and the entire audience would chant “Wahoo, Wahoo” as McDaniel was the only player in the AFL with his nickname and not his last name on his jersey), McMahon never pushed him to main events. McDaniel ended up being an all-time great, but was doing big business in Texas at the same McMahon brought Scarpa in.
Jay Strongbow actually got his name from the original Jules Strongbow, a wrestler who later became a promoter and matchmaker in Southern California. His billed home town of Pawhuska, OK, was a town filled with Native Americans where the oldest members of the Fuller family originally came from, which is where he got the home town from. While wrestling in Oklahoma, it was Scarpa who saw a young Jack Brisco, and when he then went to Florida, recommended Brisco to Eddie Graham, who built Brisco into being one of the biggest stars of the era. Strongbow as Scarpa, in his last run before going to the WWWF, was a veteran babyface who frequently teamed with a young Jack Brisco when Brisco was getting his first push in Florida.
Strongbow worked with most name heels in the business during his big years in WWWF, with his most well known feud likely being with Greg Valentine in 1979, where they did an angle where Valentine broke the beloved Strongbow’s leg, the first time they had ever done a significant injury angle with him and at the time it was still rare that he would lose so it had great shock value and elevated Valentine to a level where he was a top of the line heel for years.
The angle went so well that it was copied a few years later in the Mid Atlantic area with Valentine and McDaniel. During the Pedro Morales era as champion from 1971-1973, Strongbow was easily the second most popular full-time wrestler in the promotion, and probably maintained that level among full-timers (behind the big touring attractions who would come into the Northeast like Dusty Rhodes, Mil Mascaras and Andre) well into Bruno Sammartino’s second title run. Because of the policy of main event faces never wrestling each other, Strongbow almost never got singles title shots (I believe he may have gotten one or two with Ivan Koloff and Stan Stasiak at smaller arenas during their brief transitional runs in 1971 and 1973) at major arenas. In 1977 and 1978, when Superstar Billy Graham was champion, Strongbow was one of many faces who had been denied title shots for years that became a regular contender. By that point, his role as the never getting pinned No. 2 babyface had been taken by Ivan Putski, and he was working more in the middle of the cards.
The injury in the Valentine match on television allowed Strongbow to leave the WWWF for several months before returning for a series of grudge matches, including his specialty, the Indian Strap match. He was also well known in the Northeast as the guy several babyfaces would turn. The most notable was when Spyros Arion turned on him, leading to the Bruno Sammartino vs. Arion feud, one of the biggest of its time. Another turn perhaps the most remembered, because angles were so far in the early 70s and the first tag team partner to turn on Strongbow was a young Jimmy Valiant.
Strongbow was always pushed as a star in other territories but never protected like in WWWF. He headlined against The Sheik in Detroit and Toronto when those cities revolved around babyfaces being brought in to lose to the heel champion.
Eventually, due to age, he moved down to the middle and lower part of the cards, putting over the heels on the way up, including during the first year of the company’s national expansion. Although he wrestled a few times after that point, Strongbow retired at the age of 56 after being a full-time wrestler for 38 years to become a road agent with WWF in 1985, and remained in the position until the late 90s when he retired.
Even long after he retired, Joe Scarpa largely disappeared and he was always known as “Chief” and very few called him by his real name. You would get various opinions on him. The people who tended to misbehave didn’t like him because he was the guy who reported their stuff to the office. He had the reputation among wrestlers of being tough and cranky, but was strong at helping lay out matches from his decades of experience. For example, when one young wrestler came up to him and asked if doing too many jobs on television would hurt his career, Scarpa replied, “What career?”
Others understood his position, particularly the ones who grew up in wrestling or started out as fans in the Northeast, and had more respect for him.
The promotion honored him in its first actual Hall of Fame class in 1994 (Andre the Giant was inducted on his own in 1993 and Strongbow was part of the initial class the next year).
His last appearance as a television character was in 1994 in a storyline where he helped introduce Chris Chavis as Tatanka, who was brought in to be the modern version of Chief Jay Strongbow. While given a huge push at first, Tatanka was never nearly as a popular as Strongbow and even with a huge undefeated streak, didn’t catch on and was turned heel, and later faded from the scene.
Strongbow had been at some shows from time-to-time when the promotion would come to Georgia, where he retired to, with his last television appearance being on November 17, 2008, when he was introduced in the crowd at a show in Atlanta.
We’ll have a more detailed bio of Strongbow in the weeks to come.
