10 Loudest Wrestling Pops You Didn't Know About
8. Magnum TA Walks
Had he not been forced into early retirement, it is no exaggeration to state that the very complexion of today's industry might look unrecognisable. The flutter of a butterfly's wings made the halcyon days something less than that. That much is certain.
Mangum TA was the great lost talent: a barrel-chested, earthy hero so incredible at the babyface art that he convinced tens of thousands of North Carolinians that he was seconds away from getting his eyeball gouged out at Starrcade '85.
Just under a year later, having starred throughout what many consider to be the single greatest year in the history of the industry, Magnum totalled his car around a telephone poll and shattered his C-4 and C-4 vertebrae. The damage to his nervous system was so profound that it rendered the right side of his body paralysed. It was thought he would never walk again.
He walked out at the 1987 Crockett Cup in the Norfolk scope.
In the sort of scene that comes with a headphone warning, this is less a pop and more of a scream: the fans are so stunned in awed delight that they scream with an ear-splitting pitch between bouts of teary hysteria.