Has ribbing become a lost art? It seems that there aren’t many stories today as there are from the past. Maybe folks just aren’t talking? With the assorted different, colourful personalities still in the business one would think that there would still be some hi-jinx going on.
So lets take a look then to the past, and some rib stories that have been shared with SLAM! Wrestling in the past year.
Let’s start with “No Class” Bobby Bass, who shared one on the late Adrian Adonis, who roomed with him on a tour:
“He asked, ‘Do you want a pizza, Bass?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said, ‘I’ll get it for you.’ Maybe it was spaghetti, it was one of those things. He came back in the room, and said, ‘Here’s your spaghetti,’ and he let it fly across the room. Christ, it hit the wall, all over the wall, all over the bed. He just laughed his butt off.”
Luis Martinez was often the target of ribbing, said Hartford Love.
Luis Martinez. Photo by Steven Johnson.
“We played a lot of jokes on him. You know, when you’re not wrestling and you’re out away from the wrestling, and you’ve got nothing to do, you think up things to do to each other, to play jokes. We’d get a hotel room, and we’d all be on the same floor. He used to put his beer, because you needed it for after wrestling, you needed to put fluids back in your body; we’d always get beer and chicken, or something, to eat. He used to put his beer in the bathroom in the sink and put ice on top of it. We’d come back from wrestling, and he’d be in his room watching television, sitting on the end of the bed with the flicker watching TV. We’d be sneaking by, because the bathroom door was always by the door to his room, and we’d be taking his beer, drinking it, and putting the empty bottles back. Then all of a sudden you’d hear him cursing and swearing. ‘Who took my friggin’ beer?!’ All kinds of crazy sh–.”
Sometimes ribs seem pretty mean, such as one that Jerry Brown says Buddy Roberts pulled on a paperboy.
“One time we were coming back from Montreal, and he was in a bad mood. The paperboy was out there selling papers. Buddy got him to stick his head in the car. Well, he had these electric windows, and he rolled the window up on him, and away we go down the road driving pretty fast, the guy could hardly keep up. Finally, he let him go. We’d do things like that, not to hurt anybody, just to have fun.”
Moose Morowski didn’t do any stupid ribs, but liked good clean ones.
Two great ribbers, Dick Murdoch and Adrian Adonis, teamed up as WWF World tag team champions in 1984.
“Dick Murdoch pulled one on me. We’re in Abilene, Texas. They don’t sell alcohol in town, you have to buy it on the outside. Going in there, we stock up and have a cooler full of beer for the way home. That’s a long trip. I’m coming back from the matches and I have Murdoch and me. I stop at a red light. All of a sudden I hear, ‘Bang!’ He says, ‘Okay, you can go now. I shot the light out.’ Shot the light out in the middle of town, for chrissakes! I crapped myself. I went down and hit that goddamn pedal, and down the side streets I went. But that was Murdoch.” he said, before sharing another story about Murdoch in Kansas City. “One of the wrestlers had some spare ribs delivered to the hotel room. “So it was dropped off at the desk. The guy is bringing them in and he mentioned the guy’s name, and Dick says, ‘Oh, that’s me!’ Dick takes the spareribs. So the guy comes into the hotel room with this girl, and when he opened the door, they had eaten all the spareribs, him and Dusty, put all the ribs on the carpet all the way down. It was only 15, 20 feet of spareribs to the guy’s hotel room!”
Here’s hoping any ribs you play, or are played on you today don’t involve your head stuck in a car window!
— with files from Greg Oliver
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