Miss Vicious

Miss Vicious started out in Arizona in 1988, both as a manager and as a female wrestler, with her first big feuds being with Thunder Mamma and The Apache Princess.

Later down the road, she gained a great deal of respect for more intense feuds with Irish Miss and the crafty veteran, Josie Navarro.

She likewise became an important part of Mamba Incorporated, working as a manager for The Black Mamba, Bonecrusher and Illustrated Vic Capone.

One of her greatest matches came in Phoenix in front of 2,000 people in 1991, an amazing feat for an independent group and NOT exaggerated card at Graham Central Station. Copies of the bout still float around among tape traders, proving the size of the audience and the intensity of the match up was not a stretch of the imagination.

She eventually retired from the ring, though there has been talk of her making a comeback as a manager again. Time will tell, one supposes.

Lellani Kai

Kai made various appearance sin Phoenix at the height of her WWF run, as well as a few other stops in smaller towns in Arizona. Outside of that, she was never a regular in the western areas, as she was booked more regularly in the south where she lived and started out.

For the most part, Kai was matched against Wendi Richter, with whom she had a long standing feud in the WWF and had wrestled several times beforehand for other promotional offices. Both before, during and after Kai's title run for the WWF as their Women's World champ, she and Richter would be paired off.

After all is said and done, Kai will undoubtedly be considered one of the best women wrestlers in history.

Arizona served as a witness to this during her brief run there.

Masters Of The Weird

My new book, Masters Of The Weird, is out on Lulu now and designed mainly to sell at my lectures or horror fests.

Info at http://www.lulu.com/content/12694461

The book has a decent amount of wrestling material, including a profile or Vince McMahon.

There are also lengthy bios of Mike Mazurki and Tor Johnson, who were seen in Arizona in the 1940s.

On a lesser scale, CC Starr is dealt with and his work in some low budget Indy dvds.

There is also a section on Eddie Sullivan and the making of Gunfight In Tombstone.

The Ed Wood movie is dealt with at length and naturally offers a piece on George Steele.

The Missing Link

Dewey Robertson was a popular  wrestler in Canada and the Midwest under this name, while also donning a mask for various gigs as The Crusader. Under the hood he engaged in a lengthy feud with Hank James, that included one particularly grueling Lumberjack Match at The Akron Armory in Akron, Ohio.

Other people he faced with the mask or as himself without it included The Sheik, The Mongols, Frenchy Martin, Bulldog Bower, Don Kent and George Steele, just to name a few.

It was when   he signed on with the WWF that  he really developed a new routine, wearing green greasepaint, a new hairdo and becoming an eye-roiling maniac in the tradition of the people he used to battle, such as Sheik and Brower.

Many do not realize, however, he had developed this routine before coming to the "Fed" and it was his brainstorm, not theirs.

Though intended to be a villain, he proved so popular the office turned him"good", which left people to shout "Bang your head" at him and roar approvingly when he pounded his skull against a ringpost.

It was during his WWF run that he made some shows in Phoenix and Tucson.

The Missing Link routine proved to be a hit with desert fans..

Robertson went into semi-retirement at a nudist colony in Canada and occasionally promoted matches there, where the wrestlers fought naked.

He later developed prostate cancer, seemed to be beating it, then died from the disease.

The Gorgeous George Book

Gorgeous George by John Capouya is a wonderful book that  captures both the light-hearted and the darker side oft hsi revolutionary showman.

The book also mentions some of the appearances of this late star in Phoenix, where he was a mainstay.

One section tells of how George was talked into having an injured knee numbed up by Rod Fenton and going out to do a match, only to have the thing turn twice as bad the next morning, when the medication wore off. He evidently called Fenton on the phone and tore him apart with every profanity known to man.

There is another tale of how George and traveling companion, Howard Cantonwine, got into a  roadside fist fight when both left the arena thinking the other had collected their pay off for the night.

A great book and a close up look at a controversial man who was certainly far from flawless, but nonetheless a magnificent showman.

"I wrestled Gorgeous George three times and he was drunk all three times," Tito Montez explained to me in a phone conversation once a few years back. By what is presented in this book, such is no surprise.

Don Arnold also told me about  wrestling George when the latter was blitzed and literally holding him up in the corner as he pummeled him, while trying to keep him from passing out.

Again, the George described to me by those who knew him seems clearly to be the one presented in this book.

Worth reading.

Daniel "Sergio" Camacho

Camacho is the son of a martial arts master and a friend to The Hawaiian Lion, so he grew up understanding self-defense from an early age and was able to walk into pro wrestling with relative ease.

In 2010, Camacho rocketed onto the scene in Phoenix, where he was declared the RDPW "Rookie Of the Year" following several harrowing matches for this promotion.

Just as he was really picking up steam, however, a torn Achilles tendon sidelined him for months.

He is now back in  action and appearing for a number of different promotional offices n Arizona.

With some luck, bookings will pick up in surrounding states and he will really get the recognition he deserves.

The Death Of Woody Farmer

Woody farmer passed away last week without a lot of publicity. Though known predominately in Texas, Oklahoma, California and the south, he also made varied trips into Arizona in the 1960s and 1970s.

For the most part, Farmer wrestled as a villain, using an unorthodox stomping headlock to force people into submission or a crushing bearhug to do the same. Some of the people he faced included Cowboy Bob Ellis, Cowboy bob Yuma, Nano Ortega, Greg Campbell, Kiko Torres and Eddie Lopez, though he really reached his height in a  feud with Tito Montez.

In 1977, Montez and Farmer met several weeks straight at the Phoenix Madison Square  Garden, facing each other  in all types of matches before Tito was able to finally gain the conclusive win.

During his last days in Arizona, Farmer became a fan favorite, after a split between his partner Jody Arnold and himself in a tag match. The two then ended up facing each other as well, in a series of hectic matches, until Woody finally gained the upper hand.

Always a tremendous physical specimen, Farmer would often perform feats of strength or in a straight shoot, allow fans from the audience to try to hurt him by punching him in his stomach. When he tightened his stomach muscles many fans found it was like hitting a brick wall.

Bob Kelly

Cowboy Bob Kelly was a top draw in Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Louisiana in the 1960s and 1970s. The odd part is as a wrestler he never appeared in Arizona as far as I know.

This seems a bit odd, for in the south he feuded with many Arizona mainstays such as Bearcat Wright, Eddie Sullivan, Ken Lucas and Dick Dunn.

The strangest part is Kelly DID show up ion Arizona to meet with Eddie Sullivan and others, but not in the ring.

Kelly came in to shoot a movie in Apache Junction titled Gunfight In Tombstone, about the gunfight at the OK  Corral. Kelly became Wyatt Earp and Eddie Sullivan made an unconvincing Doc Holiday as someone way too big for a man supposed to be dying from TB.

It is strange Kelly never bothered with this neck of the woods when active as a wrestler as he could have gone over big.