TWT: The Original Nature Boy

The Wrestling Truth

The Original Nature Boy

Hello Ed Roland back again and this week I got a good one, I am going to talk about “The Nature Boy” WOOOO….wait no not that nature.

“THE NATURE BOY!” BUDDY ROGERS!

Yes this week it’s Buddy Rogers, so let’s not waste any more time and let’s go.

Buddy Rogers born Herman Rohde in 1920 in New Jersey.

The son of German immigrants and started out on the New Jersey Police before he was discovered by a local promoter.

But the man that got him notice was Ed “The Strangler” Lewis in the 1940’s and his career took off from there, and in 1951 he was McMahon Sr.’s promotion, Captiol Wrestling Corporation.

Oh, almost forgot, before that he also had Slave Girl Moolah as his valet, but she was most known as The Fabulous Moolah later in her career.

Back on track now…. After he spent the 50’s and 60’s wrestling mostly in Columbus Territory he went on to wrestle in the NWA in 1961.

They voted him to be the man to take on Pat O’Connor and winning in front of a then North American pro wrestling record attendance of 38,622 and what a way to win your first world title.

They billed this legendary match as “the match of the century” and made it a 2 of 3 falls match.

Some promoters though took exception to Rogers and thought that he had favoured certain territories, and then known shooters Karl Gotch and Bill Miller decided to break his hand and then Rogers shortly after suffered an injury in Montreal against Killer Kowalski and put him on the self for some time.

When he returned the NWA voted him to switch the title back to arch rival Lou Thesz (see previous article to learn about him) who publically announced his disliking towards Rogers, making all their matches seem more real and wonderful to watch and so in 1963 the match took place in Toronto, after the match Rogers was very hesitant on giving up his title but Sam Muchnick (Toronto promoter) put in safe guards that basically forced him to hand over the belt.

The main reason for his hesitance was that the match was only one fall and back then ALL title matches where done in 2 of 3 falls to show that the wrestler who won was truly worthy but Rogers felt ripped out of the deal.

The second thing that and this pushed him out of NWA was the other safe guard, a champion back then was to give a 25,000$ deposit for the title and it was to given back to the champion upon losing the title BUT in this case the “safe guard” was use as a threat against Rogers.

The threat was that if Rogers didn’t cooperate and give up the title then his money was to be given to charity and not returned to him (and you though VKM was bad) so Rogers eventually did give it up.

Also at same time he was co holder of the US Tag Team Championship with his frequent partner “Handsome” Johnny Barend, the won the belts in 62’ in D.C on television against Johnny Valentine and Arnold Skaaland.

Rogers and Barend held the belts until 63’ when they lost to Buddy Austin and The Great Scott after that they split, faced each other for a while and got back into the tag scene by beating Bruno Sammartino and Bobo Brazil.

Rogers also had a tag stint with Bob Orton but it wasn’t a long one.

As the new champion Lou Thesz was not all that popular and didn’t draw in the north east (mostly New England) Toots Mondt and Vince McMahon Sr. withdrew from NWA and formed World Wide Wrestling Federation and Rogers was announced as their tournament winner which they had taken place in Brazil and making Buddy Rogers the very first WWWF World Champion but it was short lived when he suffered a mild heart attack and effected his endurance so they had him lose to Bruno Sammartino who was the companies top draw but the match lasted only 48 seconds and it made Rogers disheartened and he quickly left the ring right after the match.

There was a legend that said the Toots Mondt actually dragged Rogers out of bed for the match but at the same time there was no way he could hold the burden of world champion and carry the company in poor condition hence the quick finish.

Sammartino years later claimed that Rogers was never ill and just didn’t want to lose his title and that he was going to win the belt that night regardless and also claimed that Rogers WANTED the quick finish.

Although his claims didn’t make sense as Rogers was still the man on top thanks to the anticipation of a re-match (he was just as popular as Sammartino) and in his return to the ring he made quick work Hans Mortier using the patent figure four leglock which he invented years prior.

The had the match hyped up when they reunited him with his old team mate and facing them off against Sammartino and his partner Bobo Brazil with Rogers pinning Sammartino for the finish.

The rematch was to held in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1963 in Rogers’s home town and even the tickets had their face on them…..But the match NEVER happened.

Wait what.

Yeah it never happened, the reason for it was, it was announced that Rogers was retiring and they replaced him with Gorilla Monsoon.

Rogers made brief stints from the mid 60’s until 1978 when he joined Jim Crockett Promotions even though by this time he was in his 50’s as a heel manager to greats such as; Big John Studd, Ken Patera, “Superfly” Jimmy Snuka and Gene Anderson.

His most notable point around this time was when he was in the Carolinas and faced off against “The New Nature Boy” Ric Flair and in 1978 he put the younger Nature Boy over as a way of passing the torch.

After that he returned to WWF and had one final match, teaming up with his protégé Jimmy Snuka to face Lou Albano and Ray Stevens, he broke his hip and retired for good.

1992 was the end of the Buddy Rogers era, he was originally going to wrestle one more match against Buddy Landel but the company the wanted to produce it (Tri-State Wrestling Alliance) went under and the match never happened.

Later that year he was weakened by a severly broken arm that subsequently lead to 3 strokes, 2 IN ONE DAY!

He was on life support for only a sort time as they found out he would never recover and there was almost no chance of him waking up, he was brain dead, so they took him off life support.

The Legacy he left behind was almost mirrored exactly by Ric Flair, as he adored Buddy Rogers.

The Strut, the charisma and even the figure four and being the top draw for 15 years was all Buddy, and he was really was the Original Nature Boy, and Ric Flair was the one who perfected it, in his honour as well as Flairs own.

Well, folk that’s it, the history of one of the greatest of all time as well as one of the earliest wrestling controversies and one of the first charismatic characters in memory, next week I talk about the first Canadian legend…Killer Kowalski….Until next time this is Ed Roland signing off. 

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