10 More Wrestling Facts You Probably Didn't Know
Ludicrously geeky pro wrestling trivia to mess with your sense of self.
Proper fandom requires an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of the specialist subject in question. If you can’t write an horribly esoteric round of pub quiz questions on the lyrics to B-sides by The Fall or production minutiae on the original two seasons of Star Trek, are you really a fan at all?
That goes double for ‘smart’ fans of pro wrestling, who tend to treat each other with an oddly passive-aggressive contempt at the best of times. If we can get into ferocious twelve-hour slanging matches on Twitter over the merits of a single performer, imagine how much worse it is when the conversation turns to little known facts from wrestling history.
As mentioned before, if you tell a pro wrestling fan that you know pro wrestling trivia he or she doesn't know, eight out of ten of them will take that as a personal challenge and one will take it as a personal insult. This being indisputably the case, articles like this - or this, or this - can provoke wrestling fans to frothing madness… which, again, is part of the fun of writing them.
So here, witness the flogging of a dying horse, with the revelation of another ten wrestling facts you probably didn’t know (but will insist in the comments that you did).
10. Mean Gene Remains Undefeated
Legendary wrestling announcer and backstage interviewer Mean Gene Okerlund is undefeated in the squared circle.
For those of you too young to remember him, here’s a brief refresher: Now seventy-four years old and retired, for the most part, the mustachioed broadcaster was once the pinnacle of on-air authority for the WWF and, later, WCW. If you’re imagining the exact opposite of Michael Cole right now, you’re headed in the right direction.
The great Streak began in August 1984, when Okerlund teamed with Hulk Hogan to face George ‘The Animal’ Steele and Mr. Fuji, pinning Fuji himself with some assistance. He’d have to wait until his time in WCW for another opportunity, teaming with Buff Bagwell to defeat Kanyon and misshapen announcer Mark Madden sixteen years later, and pinning Madden solo in a rematch the following week.
Mean Gene would go 4-0 with his final match (so far…) in 2012, when he teamed with a babyface Sheamus to face Alberto Del Rio and Daniel Bryan on SmackSown’s Blast From The Past special. Sheamus picked up that pinfall over Bryan after no less than seven wrestling legends came marching down the aisle to save Okerlund from a beating. Well, the man’s an icon.