This one will be more telling of what people have seen I think. We're talking about a rare man here. A big man that could bump really well and still does actually. It's kind of embarrassing that he pops up today and still bumps better than men that are 30 years his junior in some cases.

Yay for me. Slaughter is one of the most underrated workers of all time.

Yeah, people see his last WWF run where he was getting up there in age and his AWA run where he had no one to fight and label him as sucking. They need to see his Iron Sheik matches, his tags in Mid-Atlantic and some of his stuff in Japan. He was a really great brawler.

His work with Pat Patterson is also fucking excellent.

I also point people at his Mania match with Hogan. That match was much better than it ever had a right to be.

Yay. His match against Zartan was the quickest squash in the history of Marvel/Hasbro/Sunbow.


Aside from his brawling and bumping, he was pretty decent on the stick, too. He had a great delivery, got his point across and could make a crowd love or hate him. People remember his lonnnnnng ass promo during the 1990 Survivor Series, but overall he could cut a good promo. Let's face it, he's one of the more memorable characters from the kayfabe era.

Yay. One of the biggest stars of the 80's (and 70's?) and a resurgent run that did nothing but help the people around him in the early 90s. Way underrated.

In some ways I wish he wasn't around in the last 10 years or so doing that random job, but in other ways, it is nice to show the youngsters who he is, and what he is still capable of, even today.

It still shows you though that when he does the nostalgia matches and whatnot that he still gets a pretty decent pop.

I'll say yes because of his work I've seen from the early 80s as heel against Patterson and Backlund and for his work as face with Iron Sheik and his run the AWA.

Yay. He was one of the better workers during his era, and his promos for the most part were short and to the point. His 1990-91 run in the WWF hurts him a bit, but not enough to damn an entire successful career before that.

How does his 90-91 stuff hurt?

He was pretty good around the time regardless of the fact that he was basically thrown away after he was done with Hogan. He was one of the best heels ever just for his heel run with the title.

It hurt because, without the whole Desert Storm issue, Sarge would never have received the title. He was well past his prime at that point, but was booked to the top for the sake of a stupid angle.

Yes, all wrestling angles are stupid, but I don't think even the dimmest bulb from New Jersey bought into Sarge as an "evil Iraqi". You'd see him acting all evil on "Superstars of Wrestling"....but then the commercials would run and you'd see him in front of an American flag telling you to run out and buy GI Joe toys.

His promos were usually good...but for that angle he was given WAY too much mic time. It's like they wanted to constantly remind us that he was evil, in case we forgot that he was evil from all the evil things he had done, which were evil. Watch the 1990 Survivor Series where he gives a long, time-killing interview on the way to the ring. If you covered your ears and ignored the promos, his 1990-1991 matches weren't bad on their own. But with that angle constantly being forced in, it hurt things.

Only reason his "I wannnnnt.....my country baaaaack" angle worked was because fans knew it was the end of the ridiculous "evil Iraqi" Sarge. They were glad to see an end to the silliness and to have the real Sarge back.

EDIT: lest we forget and because I never miss a chance to plug this. The Cobra Clutch HURTS!

In retrospect, the distaste of the early 90's Sarge doesn't seem so bad as compared to an episode of Smackdown airing on the day of a major terrorist attack in London featuring fake terrorists taking out Undertaker and carrying Daivari out of the building as if he was a martyr.

Times change, WWE standards sink to new lows.

I totally bought Slaughter as an Iraqi Dick in 90-91. Granted, I was 10, and I was a huge mark, but it totally worked for me. When he burned the Hulkamania flag, slapped the Camel Clutch on while Adnan held the belt (upside down) in Hogan's face, and then nailed Hogan with a fireball, I was fucking into it. I hated Slaughter, Adnan, and Mustafa (and had no clue he was the Iron Sheik....or what an Iron Sheik was).

They totally worked for me, and it actually helps his career. He was the top heel for a solid period of time, and did very well in it, regardless of the stupidity of the angle.

Slaughter/ Don Kernodle vs. Steamboat/ Jay Youngblood may be the best booked feud ever.

Slaughter/Kernodle were an awesome team. Really a shame that they seem to be forgotten in a lot of talks. Though they were mentioned in the Tag Team Hall of Fame book I have.

Who cares? It got Sarge to a point where he never would have gotten otherwise. To me that's actually a pretty cool chance to do what no wrestlers ever do and that's try and be effective one more time before they call it quits.

I think that the fact that Sarge was getting death threats and whatnot at the time certainly proved that someone was buying it. I know I was eating it up as a little mark at the time.

I would agree that he was given too much mic time, but I think that actually attributed to the fact that people hated him.

See, I'm saying that it was as outlandish as trying to believe Max Moon/Comet Kid really was from outer space. And yeah, I'm a little surprised that little kids bought into Sarge as an Iraqi Dick.

If you're making a "Best of Sarge" compilation, you'd have to throw in his '91 Rumble, Wrestlemania 7 and even a "Desert Storm Match" with Hogan. But skip the interviews and angle hype unless you're really being a completionist.

One thing I liked about his 1990-1991 run: on PTW, Gorilla would talk about Sarge's previous WWF run and would say stuff like "he was a very gracious and stand-up individual", implying that something happened to him. Nobody else even mentioned that "Drill Sergeant Slaughter" had been there before and used to be a good guy.

Regardless, when he arrived in the WWF in the summer of 1990, I was glad to him onboard. I just didn't like that angle.

Thats a good point by EVE, as I actually started watching wrestling about 2 weeks before Wrestlemania VII. I saw an episode of Superstars (or maybe some kind of primetime special) and saw Slaughter for the first time. I had no clue he was anything but an Iraqi Sgt, or whatever he was exactly.

I had no clue Sgt. Slaughter was anything but an even Iraqi dick until I grew into wrestling a bit and started doing some back research.

Did they really never bother explaining it in a storyline? He just walked out one day with an Iraqi flag, and that was it?

I'm trying to remember, but I think when he first returned in June 1990, he was portrayed as a "war hawk"-- an ultra-right wing guy who loved war and corporal punishment.

In his intro vigenttes, he would say: "my name is Slaughter... DRILL Sergeant Slaughter". They played up the drill sergeant aspect and in many ways he was like a military version of the Big Boss Man's character (he supposedly beat the crap out of new recruits, like Boss Man did to prisoners).

I want to say that he may have had an early promo where he sorta' backed the US involvement in Kuwait, saying something like "let's just steamroll into Iraq and take no prisoners". Then, around SummerSlam, he began talking about the "brave Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein" and parlayed that into becoming an "Iraqi".

So you really hadn't seen or heard of Sarge before 1990? I just assumed that he was well-known among kids due to the GI Joe thing (and previous wrestling exposure). Growing up, Sarge was definitely more popular and well-known than Ric Flair in my 'hood. The GI Joe cartoon ran in daily syndication until 1992 or so, with a live-action Sarge hosting every episode. I had seen all the cartoons by then, but I'd still tune in occasionally to see Sarge and his voice-over recaps. "Last time, on GI Joe, those snakes had us up to our ears in tube worms!!"

I didn't really know anything about Wrestling prior to Wrestlemania 7, and have never been a G.I. Joe kid at all, period. Like, I seriously know nothing about it, and have never owned a toy, nothing.

I know. Blasphemy.

I wonder who voted against him. I don't see any posts from the lone voice out there.

I'm the nay. I've never seen him do much that wows me, and I REALLY bought the Iraqi sympathizer character. I haven't dug that far back into his pre-WWF runs, but what I have seen doesn't do ti for me.