#122 – The Army of Darkness
The Old School Wrestling Podcasts explores the dark side of wrestling this week on the show with a visit from Abudadein, the Chairman of the Board, and Kevin Sullivan. Dre and Black Cat also partake in a few cosmic cookies while they’re at it and then spend a few minutes talking with Robert from the Atomic Elbow discussing the newest Atomic Elbow, Georgia wrestling, and who knows what else. Please support the Old School Wrestling Podcast by visiting flairchop.com to purchase our book “The OSWP 500,” the collected volumes of the first 75 episodes, an OSWP t-shirt, or one of our beautiful posters.
Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:41:48 — 58.7MB)
The description of the PWI experience and the significance of captivating pictures of talent one couldn’t actually see on TV was spot on.
Kevin Sullivan’s greatest inspiration for his promos and characters was “King” Curtis Iaukea, which is where most of the Singapore mumbo jumbo comes from.
I forgot about Iaukea, I had heard that at some point. Here’s an interview of his:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQW-Dq_BA5Q
No, Vince McMahon is the “Hower Power”, don’t you remember?
How could we forget that amazing moment in wrestling history?
King Curtis actually was doing the voice over for that Vingette where the Purple Haze comes out of the Ocean. he is the one saying “this is the chairman of the board speaking..”
and the girl is not the fallen angel!
they did this spot twice, the one at midnight is from 1982 and they did it again (with fallen angel) in like ’85.
i watched all the ’82 stuff as it happend on the local UHF Spanish station that would show CWF on tuesday nights at 10PM.
Awesome info, Frankie! Free free to share any other memories you have of watching this.
Was the Chairman of the Board ever a real person? And was he the same of Abudadein?
Kevin Sullivan never said he was Satan or the devil. however in 1983 he did wrestle the midnight Rider under a mask as Lucifer and he was unmasked!
I must be getting on the same old school wrestling mental wave as you guys because I randomly watched the same Sullivan/Mulligan match a few weeks ago when i was looking for a good Mulligan match. I hadn’t seen much of Florida wrestling before but I will now. What a freaky scene that ring entrance was. Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” was so out of place, WTF? Then a few days ago I went down the same worm hole of Fallen Angel/Nancy photos. It brought me back to 12 year old me seeing Rick Steiner’s nerdy girlfriend become the ultra hot super vixen Woman.
After you mentioned that Mark Lewin and Bob Roop were former collegiate wrestlers I got to thinking that maybe the Varsity Club was originaly intended to be a reforming of the Army of Darkness. I watched some video of Sullivan trying to recruit Mike Rotunda into joining him and when Rotunda finally does the commentators mention that he must have finally been brainwashed. This might explain why Sullivan continued to wear the druid robe through most of 1988. Maybe they backed off the Darkness angle because Ted Turner bought the terriory around that time and didn’t want any satanic stuff in his rasslin’ program?
Flash forward to 1999…oh how wished it would have been Kevin Sullivan revealed as the “higher power” in the Undertaker’s Ministry of Darkness. He could have made the kidnapped Stephanie McMagon into the new fallen angel slave girl. Instead they just rehashed it into part of the Vince/Austin feud.
Nice catch there on the connection between the collegiate guys in FLorida and the Varsity Club in the late 80s…would’ve loved to see a crazy Mike Rotunda.
Fantastic, fantastic episode!
I vaguely remember a period from early ’80s Georgia Championship Wrestling when Sullivan was booked as a babyface and was feuding with Mark Lewin (apparently Lewin would do the white meat babyface thing in some territories and the “Maniac” thing in others). I can’t remember exactly when/how Sullivan turned into The Prince Of Darkness, but it couldn’t have been long after these clips were filmed. Nothing incredible in this footage, but it is kind of interesting seeing early ’80s Sullivan sans proto-corpsepaint and light bondage gear.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9c4ufqzXs8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl6nbEikA1E
What little I remember of ICW/ICCW was of course from the APTER mags. The big star was Vic Steamboat, who I believe actually was Ricky Steamboat’s brother. There was also the Boston Bad Boy Tony Rumble, who I believe was the owner/booker. I do recall Sullivan being listed from time to time. The Tazmaniac may have wrestled there before ECW as well. I’d have to go through my stacks of old wrestling magazines that I have yet to cut the pictures out of (even though I have no idea what I’ll do with all the pictures).
I loved Andre’s story about holding back fans next to Bobby Eaton. Somehow Dre seems to have met every old school wrestler, and have an amazing story to go alongside it. I mean, I can say I met Virgil, but all he did was sign my WWF Classic Trading Card (he was still wrestling at the time, so he wasn’t yet Lonely Virgil). Or I could tell the story about how the Texas Tornado showed up and hour or two late for an autograph signing at a kids’ fair. He did stay late to make up for showing up late, but he appeared to be in a very altered state. I’m pretty sure this was weeks or months before he took his own life. So I guess I can’t be too mad. But I was a kid, so I didn’t know any different.
Sullivan Turned in florida.
it started in some kind of tournament for i think the florida title.
he and mike graham were a team or friends but they were drawn to wrestle each other and the match was a very scientific and well wrestled match but at some point sullivan started to use cheap tactics and wound up winning.
gordon solie was outraged!
then the follwing weeks during promos sullivans eyes would roll back in his head and he would start mumbling and speaking incoherently
the rest is history.
one of his first angles in florida was him and Jake roberts attacking barry windham and starting a fued with the family, which consisted of Dusty, Blackjack, Barry Windham and Ron bass.
this led to the christmas day loser leave florida match in a cage between dusty and Sullivan. santa klause cloroformed dusty and sullivan won. the camera followed santa and sullivan to the back where it was revealed that santa was actually Jake the Snake!
dusty was gone for 60 days but luckily for the family the midnight rider showed up to pick up the babyface slack.
This was all new to me. Great episode. It inspired me to youtube these events (on break of course……eye roll). I am surprised this stuff flew on television back in the day. Parts of it wreaked of the “attitude era”.
look up the Ballard of the midnight rider on you tube for start of kevin Sullivan turn to darkness vs the midnight rider . to quote the midnight rider cross my heart I am not dusty Rhodes . dre impresstion of the rider would great on this topic
What a great angle that midnight rider was.
Then when dusty would come back they would have Mulligan dressed as the midnight Rider!
nice Kevin Sullivan Interview.
talks about his turn in florida, apparently i had some of my facts wrong! although Mike Graham was involved, but the scientific match was with Barry Windham.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwpxLiT5ARA
You know what’s really offensive about all of this Prince Of Darkness stuff? The fact that the Sports Review reporter was back on her feet within 5 seconds of Sullivan hitting her. Thanks for exposing the business, lady.
Great podcast, guys. I enjoyed hearing some history on The Army of Darkness and Florida wrestling. Also enjoyed the interview with Robert and legit LMFAO’d at his comment on Vince McMahon scheduling his cartoon program’s special on his wedding anniversary.
I remember seeing Kevin Sullivan eating the breakfast buffet at Shoney’s in Johnson City, the night after a Smokey Mountain show. It is hard to be the Princess of Darkness when you are in line for pancakes under a heating lamp. However, he still looked crazy, so we did approach him.
Is it weird that I’m feel challenged by someone else claiming to be SMW’s biggest fan. There is only one way to settle this, I bet I can do squats longer than you.
I’ll be there to call it right down the middle.
The Satanic Panic!! Love hearing you guys cover something from this period. I wonder why Geraldo Rivera didn’t bring these guys on during that infamous show when he talked about the fall of America into the hands of Lucifer.
Kendall Windham…he and Angelo Mosca Jr. are in a category of their own with their promos.