Retro Active will mainly focus on baseball, however, since the season is still a month away, the focus will shift to my other passion…early 90s pro wrestling, mainly ideas that just left you thinking, “Someone actually signed off on this?” This is truly saying something considering that the industry as a whole is greatly dubious in general. Topics over the next few weeks will include but are not limited to: The Shockmaster, Phantasio, and Arachnaman.
This week we start out with an old favorite from my mental archives, “Rapid Delivery” Rory Fox. Unfortunately, there are no photos or videos of this gimmick to my dismay (to Rory Fox’s delight), but to give you an idea of what we are working with here: Rapid Delivery was a paperboy wrestler. Yes, he actually came to the ring wearing a backwards hat, with a mailbag slung across his chest, and tossed papers out to the crowd.
Are you finished rolling on the floor yet? Well how about a visual…
Rapid Delivery came to my attention nearly a decade ago thanks to the brilliant (potentially Cable ACE Award winning) documentary show-gram: MTV True Life: I’m a Pro Wrestler. This particular episode also shed light on Fox’s trainer, the honorable sleaze ball Les Thatcher. Thatcher, a veteran in the world of wrestling, ran a skeavy wrestling academy in which Fox and some other absolute clowns worked out and trained to be pro wrestlers. Thatcher was the one who brilliantly derived the Paper Boy gimmick for Fox.
During the segment in which Thatcher brought Fox into his office to discuss the idea of a wrestling paper boy, it was difficult, even as an adolescent, to determine if I should be laughing or crying, or crying from laughing. I was never a paper boy so I am not sure as to what kind of aggression one possesses. I would assume Thatcher must have told Fox, an avid thespian, to conjure up feelings of teen angst as to not having a date for the prom, handing in homework late, being chased by a dog on the morning paper run, flat bike tire, or a neighbor complaining that his Sunday USA Today insert was mysteriously missing as his muse to unleash hostility in the squared circle against someone the likes of, oh let’s say…oh, I don’t know…Tony Atlas!
Speaking of Atlas, holder of several WWF records for terrible gimmicks, he was also apart of Thatcher’s crew. As MTV chronicled the meteoric rise to stardom of Rapid Delivery, it also followed the downward spiral of former WWF Tag Team Champion, Mr. USA Tony Atlas, who according to wiki, also went by the “nom de guerre The Black Superman.” If you're not familiar with Atlas, he's in the non-roided up photo headlining this post.
In the show, Atlas chronicled his unceasing injuries and knee pains and his troubles finding work in the industry. As an aging, over the hill, African American professional wrestler who went by the name Black Superman, the fact that no one wanted to hire him was the part that just really shocked me.
Even worse, was the fact that it appeared as though he was going MC Hammer bankrupt. Again, bizarre, considering that his last “successful” gimmick in the WWF, nearly a decade earlier, was a fighting African tribesman named Saba Simba. Again, there was no picture available which sucks to the nth degree because I know I have a picture of him in an old WWF Magazine in my mom’s basement (I didn’t get out much as a child), but to give you a mental illustration, he came to the ring with an African headdress and a spear! No kidding! You just can’t make it up.
I digress. Back to Fox, as one would imagine, the Rapid Delivery paper boy was popular with the younger fans who could relate to delivering papers by day and wrestling behemoth meatheads by night. They came out in the tens to see him fight all along the Ohio coast. You would think that with all of this fanfare and such a marketable character that Rapid Delivery would have been immediately gobbled up by the WWF and should have his plaque in the WWF Hall of Fame (yes, this really exists) next to the likes of the Hulkster and even The Million Dollar Man. For some reason, things didn’t quite go that way…
Well, at least he spent more time on MTV than Jesse Camp.
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