Date: August 15th If you weren't watching the WWF back in the early-to-mid-90's, you missed out on an interesting phenomenon of wrestlers with "side jobs". It seemed like half the roster had kayfabe "jobs" that their characters had. You had a clown, a race car driver, a hockey player, a repo man, a matador, a baseball player during Major League Baseball's strike, a sumo wrestler, and also... a garbage man. In his quest to show the world that he knows and understands the average man, even though he's been a billionaire, Vince McMahon decided it would be a great idea for one of his wrestlers to have the gimmick of a person who disposes of trash for a living. He even came to the ring with a garbage can, and would wrestle in his garbage man uniform. Presumably, that would make him smell pretty bad. Droese never amounted to much in the WWF. His biggest victory was a disqualification win over Hunter Hearst Helmsley (nearly a year before Hunter would win his first Intercontinental Title) before the 1996 Royal Rumble. It was the first loss for Helmsley, and as a result of a match stipulation, Droese entered the Rumble in the #30 spot, while HHH had to enter in the #1 spot. Did it do him any good? Droese was eliminated in one minute, while Helmsley lasted nearly 50 minutes before being eliminated, so you do the math. Duke "The Dumpster" Droese represented the exact type of cartoony, stuck-in-the-past wrestling that WCW tried to eliminate when they came up with the idea for Nitro, and those types of characters didn't last long once Vince was forced to change the style of his product to keep up with the times. Let's all be thankful for that.
Columnist/Podcaster/Director at LordsOfPain.net for nearly seven years, with nearly 2000 total columns written. Interviewed and/or involved in interviewing the likes of Tyler Black/Seth Rollins (twice), Diamond Dallas Page, Jimmy Jacobs, Christopher Daniels, Uhaa Nation and more.
