3/31/17: “Ravishing” Rick Rude - The Guy You Loved to Hate Enters the WWE Hall of Fame
Imagine trying to explain to somebody unacquainted with pro wrestling that one of the all-time great villains of the industry was the guy who played the male stripper.
In its cartoon world full of offbeat characters, the very act of being a wrestling fan relies on a suspension of disbelief. Even so, it’s difficult to imagine such a gimmick getting over, much less having the staying power that “Ravishing” Rick Rude did. Rude was such a natural heel and tremendous in-ring technician, the practitioner of the “Rude Awakening” has been awarded perhaps the ultimate wrestling honor, induction to the WWE Hall of Fame the weekend of Wrestlemania 33.
“The Ravishing One” surfaced on the molten hot landscape of the then-WWF in mid-1987 as the newest member of the vaunted “Heenan Family,” up to that time a feeder system of baddies for Hulk Hogan to dismantle, most notably Andre the Giant. While Hogan’s antagonists generally tipped the scales at over 300 pounds, Rude was no behemoth. And unlike the other Family members, Rude didn’t need Bobby “The Brain” Heenan as a mouthpiece. Rude’s personality was so obnoxious, his physique chiseled, his moves so devastating, he just seemed larger than life. The presence of the smarmy “Weasel” certainly served to intensify the fans’ hate, but Rude could draw heat from a crowd with just a run-on sentence and a swivel of the hips.
“Cut the music. What I’d like to have right now,” Rude would bark into a microphone after striding to the ring to a rendition of “The Stripper.” “Is for all you fat, out-of-shape (insert city here) (insert insult here) — keep the noise down while I show the ladies what a real, sexy man looks like.”
“Hit the music.”
It was like mad libs. Rude would improvise a demeaning taunt (usually alliterative) aimed at the inhabitants of whatever city he was wrestling in, and instantly, the jeers would rain down. Here’s a rundown of some of the best:
“Arizona airheads”
“Boston bozos”
“Daytona dirtballs”
“Hartford heifers”
“Indianapolis idiots”
“Kansas corn-fed cows”
“La Crosse losers”
“Minnesota meatheads”
“Nebraska nerds”
“New York nitwits” or “Nothin’ happenin’ New Yorkers”
“Providence peons”
“Rochester rugrats”
“Southern swamp sows”
“Springfield sweathogs”
Rude would also tweak the last part of his taunt based on current events in wrestling. He could be showing the ladies “the sexiest man alive,” or, to the disgust of the doughy, insecure gentlemen in attendance, “an eyeful of what your old lady dreams about every night,” but when he altered it to include a jab at his opponent, such as the wife of Jake “The Snake” Roberts, or the mother of the Big Boss Man, it furthered the feud, worked the fans into a lather, and had the opposition irate.
Then he’d hand the robe to Bobby and swivel his hips, before blowing a kiss to the thousands in attendance from his mustachioed mouth. Over the top? You bet. Certainly more than a 7-year old watching Saturday morning TV could comprehend, but it resonated: the guy was a one charismatic douche. Rude was one of a select few star wrestlers to never have a run with a major company as a babyface. And that’s the reason why.
The previous paragraphs described all the ways Rude was great before the bell even rang for a match. When the competition started, he was a bipolar genius: alternating between aggressive jerk and chickenshit heel, preening when he was in command and doing the hip swivel just to stick it to the fans.
He finished his opponents with a devastating hangman’s neckbreaker known as the “Rude Awakening,” which, conveniently, had the same name as a post-match segment when Heenan would select a woman from the crowd and have her come into the ring, where his champion would give her a long smooch. Rude’s guest would almost always “pass out” from the overwhelming magnitude of the kiss, and Rude would gently lower them to the mat. What a jerk!
I mentioned before that Rude broke the Heenan Family mold. It is rumored that Rude was such a stiff worker in the ring that Hogan purposely avoided working with him. Instead, Rude snared the Intercontinental Championship at Wrestlemania 5, beating the Ultimate Warrior (with Heenan’s assistance) and adding his name to the list of great tacticians to hold the Federation’s secondary strap.
Rude would lose the rematch to the Warrior at Summerslam ’89 and again in the main event of Summerslam ’90 before exiting for WCW, where he spent the next four years with more gold around his waist. After retiring due to injury, Rude passed away (as too many of our childhood wrestling heroes ultimately did) from an overdose in 1999.
But the hip swivels live in infamy. You can still hear the echoes of the insults, bouncing off the walls of arenas across the country. Was “Ravishing” Rick Rude corny? Yes! But Richard Erwin Rood was incredibly good at his job of being the absolute worst of the bad guys. And in wrestling, the bad guys make the good guys look good. This weekend, the WWE Hall of Fame welcomes a heel without peer and a truly legendary character.
This post was originally published to macandgu.com on March 31, 2017.
