In August 1992, Bill Watts was back up to his old booking tricks again and in the midst of turning African American grappler Ron Simmons - at one-time a member of the successful heel "Doom" tag team with Butch Reed - into a top babyface performer. Simmons wresting the WCW Championship from Vader in Baltimore? Definitely a surprise, but Simmons was certainly athletic enough of a heavyweight wrestler to pull it off. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEFiVntlPNA The crowd's response to Vader's defeat is incredible here. Between eight-time NWA champion Harley Race being in Vader's corner and Baltimore being a great wrestling town, everything is here to make this a truly special moment and overall a great match.
Besides having been an independent professional wrestling manager for a decade, Marcus Dowling is a Washington, DC-based writer who has contributed to a plethora of online and print magazines and newspapers writing about music and popular culture over the past 15 years.
