DAMN!

Hello all

As I watched wrestling this week, I was pleasantly surprised at what I saw on Raw. I have to say it was a very good episode. It reminded me of the glory days of wrestling (you know, back in the days of the Monday Night Wars, when you would watch one show the entire way through. You would not turn away). I watched the entire time, and could not turn away, it was that riveting.

Anyway, as I watched wresting, I saw that the next person to be elected into the WWE Hall of Fame was Ron Simmons. Simmons is one of the most influential men in wrestling history. Why, you ask? Simmons was the 1st black man to ever win the World Heavyweight Championship, for a major company. When I saw this, I thought to myself that I should write a blog about him. But I thought that I already wrote one about him. But I luckily for all of us, I had not.

Ron Simmons was born in Perry Ga. Simmons was a football player growing up. He attended Warner Robbins high school, where he played tight end and linebacker. After high school, Simmons went to Florida State University. At FSU, Simmons was an all-American. He was one of the greatest college football players of his era; he led the team to straight trips to the Orange Bowl. Simmons later went on to be the 1st FSU player to have his jersey number retired. After college, Simmons went on to play pro football for a few years. Then when he was done with football, he took up the sport of professional wrestling.

Simmons joined WCW, and became a part of a tag team with Butch Reed, called “Doom”. When Doom 1st started out they wore dark black masks. So you could not see their faces, you just saw these 2 big dudes, who at the time, were managed by a very tiny lady named, Woman. Having achieved minimal success with Woman, and after losing a match to the Steiner Brothers, where they had to lose their masks, they decided to go a different route as far as management. They hired Theodore R. Long as their manager.

Under new management and with a new look, Doom set their sights on becoming the best tag team in the world. They challenged the Steiner Brothers for the Tag Team titles and won them in May of 1990. They would go on to have a great nine month title reign, defeating some of the biggest teams of that time in WCW. They defeated the likes of the Steiner Brothers, Rock and Roll Express, and the Four Horsemen. Early in 1991 Doom lost their World Tag Titles, and Reed turned on Simmons which made Simmons a singles competitor. Simmons would defeat Reed, and begin his singles career.

After the feud with Reed, Simmons would have good matches with some of the other up and coming guys in WCW at that time. He would wrestle and defeat Hall and Nash, as their former personas, the Diamond Stud, and Oz. Then at Halloween Havoc 1991, he challenged the WCW World Heavyweight Champion Lex Luger, though he was not successful. After that Simmons went back down the ladder in WCW as far as the world title race.

Then in 1992 Simmons fortune would change. The WCW world champion at this time was Big Van Vader. Vader had been involved with a long battle with Sting over that title. They would battle most of 1992, and 1993 for the title. One night in August, Vader had a title defense against Sting, but Sting could not wrestle that night, so there was a raffle held to see who would face Vader for the title, Simmons won the raffle. Then later that night Ron Simmons powerslamed Vader, and pinned him to win the WCW World Heavyweight Championship.

Simmons held the title for five months. He defeated some of the guys who may not have been big names at that time, but would go on to become the bigger names in the business, like Rick Rude, and Mick Foley(Cactus Jack). In December of 92, Simmons would lose that would title back to Vader. Though he was a very good and fighting champion, Simmons was never a major player in the World title picture again.

In 1994 Simmons left WCW. He went to ECW, where he spent a year. But again he was not a major player. So in 1996 he went to WWE. In his beginning in the WWE, he was known as Faarooq. In WWE, Faarooq formed a faction called the “Nation of Domination”. The Nation was a group that started the careers of most of the members of the group. The main group members have all gone on and done great things after they left the group, including the 2 guys who went on to become world champions, The Rock, and Mark Henry. After being kicked out of the group, Faarooq went on to team with another future champion, JBL (simply known as Bradshaw at the time), to become a team known then as the Acolytes, later known as the APA. With Bradshaw, Faarooq would go on to win the World tag team titles, on 3 different occasions. That group would stay together for years, until they were broken up during the Brand Extension when the Raw and SmackDown rosters became exclusive.

Ron Simmons is one of the most influential men in this business. Think about it. Even now in 2012, there have only been 5 black world champions. He is not the most electrifying man in sports entertainment, he is not a 5 (I guess now, 6 time world champ), he is not the world’s strongest man, and he is not a rapper, but someone had to be the 1st. Someone had to be the one to show the world that someone other than Sting, Vader, Flair, Hogan, Race, Funk, and anyone else who was on top at the time could be champion. That they could look outside of the box at that time, and show that the world was ready for a little bit of color, in the world title.