Running Thoughts #5 – Chasing Barry Windham (or, “What the Hell is Up with All That Wrestling Crap on Your Facebook Page?”) - Part 2

Part 2 of 3

So who would’ve guessed?  While the pieces of my world were being turned upside-down with my move from Florida, by the time the pieces had largely rearranged themselves, I found that my childhood hero had been waiting for me in Pennsylvania all along.  And I found him doing well when I got there - he had largely transformed himself physically, and was way “over” (i.e. – popular) with the fans as one-half of the tag team champions in this glitzy new (to me) wrestling promotion called the World Wrestling Federation (WWF).  It was more than I could have ever hoped for.

 

Except for one thing.

Was that really Barry Windham?

CWF Barry Windham (Circa 1982)

WWF Barry Windham (right) with Mike Rotundo circa 1984

I mean, he looked so damned different. 

For one thing, when did he get so freaking blonde?  I later learned that even during his waning days in Florida, Barry had started to go blonde with his hair.  But, my Lord, he was really, really blonde now.  Like, Goldilocks blonde.  And he was wearing it longer to boot. 

Had he looked like that in Florida?  I didn’t think so. 

While that seems like a strange question to ask now, you have to remember that it had been a good 6 – 8 months since I had last lain eyes upon Barry Windham, and we didn’t have an internet back then where I could look up his photo and remind myself what he looked like.  I also hadn’t yet wrapped my head around the fact that it wasn’t uncommon for wrestlers to change their looks from time-to-time, especially when they were making the switch to a different promotion (and changing hair color was one of the less-extravagant things that a wrestler could do with his image).  But, man, he really looked different to me, more than a simple change in hair styles could account for.

I realize now that one of the reasons that Barry’s blonde hair looked so strange to me was that, for the vast majority of the time period I was watching him in Florida, Barry’s hair was unnaturally dark (for him).  As I learned many years later, the period during which I was watching Barry wrestle in Florida was actually his second stint with the local promotion down there (Championship Wrestling from Florida – or CWF).  In the months before he came to my attention, he was finishing up an aborted stint working with his father, Blackjack Mulligan (a wildly popular wrestler himself who later ended up in the Hall of Fame), in another territory where he had dyed his hair black (like his father’s) so he could wrestle as “Blackjack Mulligan, Jr.”.  

Barry (left) as Blackjack Mulligan, Jr. with Father the Original Blackjack Mulligan

For a variety of reasons, that gimmick hadn’t worked for Barry, and before long he ended up back in CWF as good old Barry Windham, where he was discovered and idolized by a wide-eyed young boy in need of a hero (myself).  Problem was, all that black hair dye hadn’t washed out too well and his normally light, sandy-brown colored hair ended up replete with dark streaks through it.  I didn’t know any better – I assumed that that was his natural hair color.  This dark-streaked look became the look I was familiar with and it rendered his new blonde image, all these years later, that much more jarring for me.

"Dark Streaked" Barry in Florida circa 1982

Hair aside, by the time he showed up in the WWF, Barry had also started putting some weight on that 6’ 7” frame of his.  Good weight.  While he was never what one would call “muscle bound” (even at his physical peak), by the time he left Florida for parts North in the mid-80s, he was well on his way to having that lean musculature he became well known for throughout the rest of that decade.  This was no longer a skinny, somewhat gawky kid daring to tread in a land of muscle-bound thugs.  This was a man to be reckoned with in his own right, and was yet another difference for my young mind to try and wrap itself around.

 

Also, where the hell was the Flying Lariat?  

 

Among the handful of things that became apparent to me while watching my very first WWF show that long-ago Sunday was the fact that Barry had a new finishing move – the Bulldog.  Now the Bulldog was a fine enough move in its own right.  It consisted largely of putting your opponent in a side-headlock, maintaining him in that hold while you ran across the ring with him, then jumping and landing on your rear-end while pushing your opponent’s head/face into the ring mat.  The idea was to use your own weight, combined with that of your opponent’s, to deliver a “knock-out blow” to your opponent’s head.  Problem was, it was a fairly standard move that had been used by a lot of wrestlers before (and not necessarily as a finishing move).  The Flying Lariat, meanwhile, was unique to Barry (as far as I know, he invented it).  And while the Bulldog did have the advantage, much like his former finishing move, of showcasing Barry’s grace and fluidity in the ring, it lacked that devastating, “holy shit did you see that?!” quality inherent in the Flying Lariat’s ability to dazzle the crowd and bring them to their feet.

 

To this day I’m not sure whose bright idea it was to take such a unique and amazing-looking finishing move and put it on the shelf during Barry’s U.S. Express days.  My theory is that the Flying Lariat looked too much like the “Mexican Hammer”, which was a less impressive looking but mechanically similar finishing move being used by the then very popular WWF Intercontinental Champion – Tito Santana.  Whatever the reason, it had effectively robbed my favorite wrestler of my favorite move.  While I was tremendously grateful that, despite the odds, I still had Barry Windham to watch on TV in my new hometown, it was a Flying Lariat-less Barry Windham, and contributed to my confusion as to whether I really was watching the same wrestler I thought I had left behind in Florida.

 

Despite these stark (in my mind) differences between the CWF Barry Windham and the WWF Barry Windham, there were just too many similarities for it to be anybody other than the same guy.  I saw that, for the most part, he wore the same ring attire.  He still came to the ring wearing what was then his trademark red bandana around his neck, which he would un-cinch and remove once he got into the ring.  He wore pretty much the same colored trunks and those cool black and white western-style wrestling boots that I’ve only ever seen worn by himself, his brother Kendall Windham, and the Magnum T.A.-incarnation of Terry Allen (another CWF wrestler who went on to larger fame and fortune in another promotion).  

 

But what really cinched it was the fact that, c’mon, how many 6’ 7” wrestlers are there out there who can move with the grace and agility of a young Barry Windham?  Of course it turned out to be the same guy.  It’s just that, much like me, he had done a little growing up during the year or so he was off my radar, and with that physical maturation, he was really turning into something special as a wrestler.  Something special that couldn’t continue to be overlooked by wrestling promoters and the broader wrestling audience for much longer.  

 

The problem was, he was wrestling for the WWF at that point.  

 

Now, many people would look at that and think that it was the absolute perfect place for a young superstar-in-the-making to be.  For starters, the geographical area that was historically covered by the WWF was only the largest media market in the country.  It was based in New York City (the WWF’s Madison Square Garden shows were legendary even back in those days), and its reach covered the majority of Pennsylvania (with the lucrative Philadelphia market) and New England (with Boston, Providence and other NE cities).  If a young, up-and-coming wrestler wanted to situate himself to receive maximum exposure, the WWF was the place to be.  Additionally, the WWF’s production values and marketing ability were simply unmatched by any other wrestling promotion in the country.  The man who ran WWF, Vince McMahon, Jr., was and is known for many things both positive and negative.  But one thing even his detractors would have to admit is that he knew how to put out a slick-looking product and market it effectively.  

 

And the final consideration, apparent now only in hindsight, is that the WWF was on the brink of its first “Golden Age”, when it went from being a regional (though wildly successful) Northeastern U.S. promotion to being a hugely popular nationwide phenomenon.  Within the next year, the WWF would make its presence felt in the music industry (through alliances formed with Cindy Lauper and MTV), Saturday morning cartoons (which were actually a big deal back in those times), movies, an expanded TV presence and even a hot-selling album of songs either performed by, or about, some of their more famous wrestlers (including the U.S. Express).  The WWF, and its mega-star Champion Hulk Hogan, were about to become household names, and Vince McMahon, Jr., not content to be simply #1 among regional promotions, used that popularity to compete with the NWA and all of the other promotions on a national level.  The wrestling industry had never seen anything like it.

 

And Barry was there at the start of it, well-positioned as one-half of the WWF tag-team champions, and still seen as having the majority of his best wrestling years ahead of him.  I truly believe that if Barry had stuck with the WWF and bought into McMahon’s way of doing things, he would have eventually either been “turned heel” (when “good guys” are repackaged as “bad guys”) and been pushed as being a major contender for Hulk Hogan’s title, or kept as a “face” and been groomed as Hogan’s “heir apparent”.  For starters, he had the size (the WWF liked their star wrestlers to be big), though McMahon probably would have insisted that he work at becoming more muscular-looking.  Secondly, he had the pedigree, as his father (the aforementioned Blackjack Mulligan) had formerly worked for McMahon’s father to great success back when the promotion was known as the WWWF (World Wide Wrestling Federation).  Thirdly, he had the striking good looks that would have worked hand-in-hand with McMahon’s world class marketing machine to package and sell him as a star.  And, finally, unlike Hulk Hogan, he was an excellent “worker” (i.e. – a wrestler adept at performing the “fake” maneuvers that make a match look real and compelling) and had loads of physical talent.  Unlike Hogan, there wasn’t a move in the “book” that Barry couldn’t perform, whereas Hogan, despite his incredible look, charisma and magnetism, was more or less an immobile brawler with a great gimmick.  An argument could be made that during the mid-to-late 80s and into the early 90s (throughout much of Hogan’s reign), Barry was the single biggest talent in any wrestling promotion, and that talent could have been tapped to make Hogan look like a star (had Barry been turned “heel” to challenge Hogan), or turn Barry into a superstar “face” champion himself.

 

Looking at Barry’s circumstances at this point in time, it was almost like the stars were aligning to turn him into a nationwide wrestling superstar.

 

Barry (Right) Being Marketed as a "Stud" by the WWF Marketing Machine (His Shirt Was Purportedly Ripped by Over-Eager Fans)

But it didn’t happen.  And as I learned many years later, in the wrestling business, having loads of talent does not necessarily increase your likelihood of becoming a star.

 

As it turned out, Barry didn’t stay with the WWF for very much longer, and when he disappeared from their roster, so did my ability to follow his career.

 

You see, as I mentioned earlier, our new home in that rural part of central Pennsylvania where we settled didn’t yet have cable, and wouldn’t have it for many years to come.  As such, if I was going to watch Barry wrestle at this juncture, by necessity he was going to have to be wrestling for the WWF (less than ideal circumstances given what was about to happen).  And to be honest with you, the period of time I was able to watch him wrestle for the WWF (which turned out to be only about 6 – 8 months) didn’t constitute great television, so it was inevitable that my attention to Barry’s career (and wrestling as a whole) would begin to flag anyway.

 

You see, the wrestling product being turned out by WWF at the time was much different than the product I had become a fan of down south.  For one, you didn’t get much on their weekly television show other than “squash matches” (another piece of wrestling jargon – referring this time to those one-sided matches where a star wrestler spends the vast majority of the match beating up on a “jobber”).  While the weekly CWF program always had 1 – 3 “squash matches” on its card, it was also rounded out with a healthy amount of competitive matches where you actually got to watch more formidable wrestlers go up against each other.  Watching a solid hour of nothing but “squash matches” was hardly compelling in my opinion, especially when so much time was spent between matches hyping up the more competitive matches which, sadly, were not televised.  My guess is that McMahon didn’t like the idea of giving away the more competitive matches on “free” television.  If you wanted to watch a wrestling match between bona fide wrestlers that was actually competitive in the WWF, well, you were going to have to drive to an arena and pay money to see it.  This was exacerbated by the fact that even on the rare occasion when the WWF put a competitive match on its TV program (usually older matches that they had already made their money on), I discovered that those matches usually only went about fifteen minutes or so - twenty tops.  

 

I later learned that McMahon was of the philosophy that your average wrestling fan didn’t have the attention span to stay interested in a match for more than twenty minutes or so, which is why his matches rarely went beyond the fifteen-minute mark.  Of course, given the nature of the product he produced in the WWF, I can’t say I disagree with him, at least in regards to those mid-80s WWF-style matches.  However, I had seen CWF once dedicate the entirety its weekly TV program to a single match between Barry and Cowboy Ron Bass which not only kept my eyes glued to the screen for the entire 60 minutes, but left me wanting more at the end.  (Of course, Barry later went on to become famous for a series of legendary matches with the then World Heavyweight Champion, Ric Flair, which were consistently 45 minutes to an hour in length).  As such, McMahon’s philosophy that a good wrestling match should never be more than 20 minutes in length was an outright fallacy in my book.  

 

So it goes.

 

Barry’s remaining months in the WWF, however, were not uneventful.  If anything, they were wildly successful from a business standpoint (and, as I later learned, wrestling is, first and foremost, a money-making enterprise).  The U.S. Express were riding high as tag team champions when they rolled into the very first WrestleMania – an historic event that changed the industry and pretty much set the template for those pay-per-view “super shows” that the industry is known for today.  

 

At WrestleMania 1, the U.S. Express went up against the former champions, the aforementioned diabolic team of the Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff.  Our young, patriotic heroes had the match well in hand when, right on cue (about 16 minutes into the match), the Iron Sheik borrowed a cane from his manager (Classy Freddie Blassy) and “caned” Barry in the back of the head.  Inexplicably, the ref missed dastardly act, and instead of disqualifying the challengers, counted out a comatose Barry for a heartbreaking and tragic loss.  The heroes had been vanquished by the villains, and their championship belts were taken away to adorn to torsos of a Middle-Eastern madman and a godless, freedom-hating commie.

 

The match had its intended affect.  The fans were outraged (in the wrestling business, they refer to this as generating “heat”), and McMahon made a boat-load of money from a series of subsequent rematches where the U.S. Express sought justice by chasing the Sheik/Volkoff in an attempt to regain both their honor and their lost belts.  Inexplicably, McMahon allowed that very thing to happen a couple of months later on, of all things, free TV.  In a very strange match that last all of about five minutes (Barry was in the ring for maybe all of two minutes), Rotundo (with some slightly illegal help from Barry) reversed a move called a “tight cradle” and pinned the Iron Sheik for the win.  The crowd went nuts.  Justice had been restored.  America’s favorite sons were champions once again.

 

However, this turned out to simply be a means of allowing the U.S. Express to quickly move on to a new feud against another “heel” tag team, this time the pairing of Greg “The Hammer” Valentine (who, like Barry, was a second-generation wrestler, his father being the legendary Johnny Valentine) and Brutus Beefcake (another ex-Florida wrestler named Ed Leslie who was being repackaged as a new character in the WWF).  This pairing was known as, “The Dream Team”, and the pattern began to repeat itself.  The good guys feuded with the bad guys over the course of several shows before the “heels” emerged victorious at a match in Philadelphia, again due to illegal tactics (this time, Beefcake rubbed what was purported to be a lit cigar into Barry’s eyes before Valentine pinned him).  I distinctly remember watching the WWF marketing machine hype a series of upcoming rematches where the U.S. Express would again seek justice by chasing the bad guys.  And, again, the WWF was poised to make a whole lot of money.

 

Then, with no explanation, the hype stopped.

 

That series of rematches never occurred.

 

The Dream Team kept the titles and embarked on a whole new feud with a new “face” team from England known as the British Bulldogs.

 

And Barry was nowhere to be seen.

 

Rotundo stayed with the WWF for a while, and a reconstituted version of the U.S. Express was rolled out to a less than a warm reception by the fans (with a tall, blonde but less athletically-gifted wrestler named Dan Spivey taking Barry’s place).  However, as this new tag team failed to catch on, Rotundo too disappeared from view.

 

What the hell was going on?  The WWF hype machine began to hype other wrestlers, the British Bulldogs won the tag team titles to much fanfare, and I was going nuts.

 

Where the hell was Barry Windham?  Why hadn’t the rematches taken place?  Why were the British Bulldogs the ones who were allowed to compete for those belts and not the U.S. Express?

 

It was as if Barry had fallen off the face of the earth.  And in my limited circumstances, with no cable TV, no place within a fifty-mile radius that sold any type of wrestling publication and the internet at least another decade down the road, I was left in complete ignorance.

 

Languishing in this vacuum where I could find no information on what had happened there were simply no other options I could pursue.  I tried to stick with the WWF in the hopes that Barry would show up at some point.  But as the months passed and Barry failed to reappear, my interest in their strange brand of wrestling quickly waned.  After about a year or so, I gave up on wrestling entirely, figuring I was growing out of it the same way I was growing out of comic books and Saturday morning cartoons.

 

As a result, I didn’t see Barry wrestle again for twenty years.

 

End Part 2 of 3

Part 3:  http://epp101.blogspot.com/2015/06/running-thoughts-chasing-barry-windham_7.html
 

Special Shout Out to FatKidCool for The Pictures Used in This Article.

 

Be sure to check out the Facebook page she administers for Barry Windham at:   https://www.facebook.com/#!/BarryCWindham?fref=pb&hc_location=profile_browser