Tag: Wrestlers

Over two decades have passed since the Monday Night War came to an end with WWE buying out WCW. That business move marked the end of an era. For as much as modern critics cite bad business practices, poor choices in how WCW was booked, and chaos in the locker room as reasons why WCW collapsed, there’s also the reality that they had a wildly popular product that many fans are nostalgic for to this very day.

The bedrock of a segment of fans remembering WCW through rose-colored glasses came down to their talents. The company had a veritable who’s who of top names in wrestling on their roster at one time or another, capturing the imagination of everyone who engaged with the product. It can be easy to forget that wrestlers are people too and that they came from their own humble beginnings as awkward teenagers who grew up to do remarkable things.

Sting

Sting Was In Many Ways The Face Of WCW

• Sting moved up to the main event just as the WCW brand formally launched under Ted Turner.
• When Ric Flair moved to WWE, Sting was cemented as WCW’s franchise player.
• Sting played basketball in high school.

When WCW first officially got rolling under the ownership of Ted Turner, Sting was positioned as a franchise player. In 1988, he wrestled Ric Flair to a time-limit draw that cemented The Stinger as not just another babyface challenger to The Nature Boy, but the future of the company. It would take two years, but in 1990, he won his first world championship and, particularly when Flair defected to WWE, it was Sting who held down the fort as the promotion’s top star.

In 1996, Sting reinvented himself, switching from a colorful character to the iconic Crow version of the character who’d stand up against the nWo, not to mention work the very last true WCW match, beating Ric Flair live on the last Nitro in 2001.

This picture of Sting in high school is taken from his days as a basketball player, demonstrating his legitimate athletic background, not to mention the good looks that would lay a foundation for his success as a professional wrestler across the decades to follow.

Madusa

Madusa Was WCW’s Defining Female Star

• Madusa was an ahead-of-her-time female talent, with few skilled women to wrestle against.
• Madusa returned to WCW by infamously dumping the WWE Women’s Championship in a trash can.
• Madusa described herself as a “mess” in high school.

In a time before WCW–or much anyplace else in the United States–was prepared to take women’s wrestling seriously, Madusa was an outlier. A sensational athlete and an attractive woman, she had honed her craft in Japan only to return to the US as a woman without other women to really compete with. So it was that she found herself in WCW playing The Dangerous Alliance’s femme fatale and half-heartedly feuding with broadcaster and valet Missy Hyatt.

After a better run in WWE, Madusa iconically returned to WCW by dumping the WWE Women’s Championship belt into a trash can, live on Nitro. The run to follow was largely overwhelming as WCW overcomplicated things by having the face of their women’s division lose in her bids to capture their new women’s title, only to spend more time in that run wrestling men.

The picture of Madusa in high school comes from her book, The Woman Who Would Be King: The MADUSA Story, and she describes herself as a mess as a teenager. Whatever she may have thought of her self, it’s noteworthy how gracefully she aged over time, looking much the same across decades.

Jeff Jarrett

Jeff Jarrett Factored Into The Horsemen And The New World Order

• Jeff Jarrett bettered his booking and paydays by leveraging WWE and WCW against each other repeatedly.
• Jeff Jarrett’s WCW resume established a foundation for him to play the top star in his upstart TNA.
• Basketball was a big part of young Jeff Jarrett’s life.

The Monday Night War had few greater beneficiaries than Jeff Jarrett, who skillfully played the field to bounce from WWE to WCW to WWE to WCW over the course of the war’s six years. Along the way, he bettered his paydays and ultimately arrived as a world champion in WCW, which would provide vital credibility in him ultimately launching and for some time being the de facto face of TNA.

Jarrett’s WCW career was deceptively noteworthy. While a segment of critics tend to dismiss him as a mid-carder, his resume boasted four reigns as WCW World Champion and three reigns as United States Champion. That’s not to mention factoring into The Four Horsemen and the nWo in noteworthy ways.

The photo captures Jarrett as part of his high school basketball team. As listeners to Jarrett’s My World podcast in particular are well aware, basketball has been a big part of Jarrett’s life and was particularly so back when he was a teenager.

Goldberg

Goldberg Was One Of WCW’s Biggest Homegrown Stars

• Goldberg was a rare megastar WCW built up for themselves in its final years.
• Goldberg has continued appear in wrestling into the 2020s.
• A teenage Bill Goldberg had a full head of hair.

There are only a handful of wrestlers who all but universally come up in conversations of WCW’s biggest defining stars. Goldberg is one of the very few who were “homegrown” in the sense he hadn’t been a wrestling star elsewhere first, and all the more noteworthy for rising up to top star status in WCW’s last four years in a crowded field that included major names established a decade or more earlier. Indeed, it’s telling just how popular he was that WWE has been able to continue trotting him out as a special attraction into the 2020s.

The most striking thing about a picture of Goldberg from high school is probably his full head of hair. It’s also telling that he looks beefy from this age, hinting at his future in pro football that would pave the way for him to break through in the squared circle.

Hulk Hogan

Hulk Hogan’s Arrival Fundamentally Changed WCW

• Hulk Hogan became an icon in WWE.
• Hogan used his previous clout to elevate WCW.
• This picture from high school is one of the last fans know about before Hogan grew his famous mustache.

Though Hulk Hogan is probably most synonymous with WWE, there’s also little question he was the single most important on-screen talent in making WCW competitive with WWE. His signing immediately resulted in a record PPV buy rate for Bash at the Beach 1994. After working as a main event babyface, his heel turn to launch the nWo launched WCW on the whole into the stratosphere. A babyface Hulkster would factor into the 1999 and 2000 WCW main event scene as well.

Hogan in high school had a full head of hair and, perhaps even more remarkably, no mustache. He’d go on to pursue music before finding his true calling as a wrestler, enjoying some success as a monster heel, then a powerhouse babyface in the AWA, before he became arguably the biggest wrestling star of all time in WWE, en route to his iconic WCW tenure.

Kevin Nash

Kevin Nash Played A Starring Role For WCW In The Monday Night War

• Kevin Nash’s original WCW run was defined by silly gimmicks.
• After a main event run in WWE, Nash returned to WCW as a star.
• As a teenager, Kevin Nash looked clean-cut.

Kevin Nash was signed to WCW before he ever made it to WWE, where he ran through a series of lackluster gimmicks that included Master Blaster Steel, Oz, and Vinnie Vegas. It was only after WWE had pushed him to the moon as world champion Diesel that Nash was able to come back to WCW and thrive as a founding father of the nWo and main event star both as a heel and face. That’s not to mention his work backstage, include a spell as head booker.

This high school yearbook picture captures Nash as a clean-cut youngster. He’d pursue basketball at a high level–little wonder given his impressive stature–before ultimately crossing over to his career in pro wrestling.

The Giant

Before Defecting To WWE, The Giant Was A Young Main Eventer In WCW

• The Giant was a star immediately upon his WCW debut.
• The Giant bounced back and forth between being a heel or face, with or against the nWo.
• In high school, Paul Wight showed the size and athleticism that would make him a wrestling star.

In 1995, WCW introduced a brand-new monster heel the world had never seen before. With the hokey suggestion that he was the son of Andre the Giant, The Giant became the top heel for a hot minute, including taking the WCW Championship off Hulk Hogan in his debut match. Like many talents in WCW, and like he would for much of his WWE career too, The Giant wound up bouncing back and forth between being a face or heel, but never moved too far from the WCW main event orbit.

The man who’d eventually become The Big Show looked notably clean-cut in his high school yearbook photo. He was already tall and the combination of his height and natural athleticism allowed him to thrive in high school and college basketball. These very same qualities made him a can’t-miss prospect in the world of professional wrestling.

Diamond Dallas Page

Diamond Dallas Page Rose Through The Ranks In WCW

• Diamond Dallas Page is an inspirational speaker and yoga master nowadays.
• DDP’s unlikely success in WCW–starting in his mid-30s–was the foundation for him to inspire others.
• Page played high school football.

Today, Diamond Dallas Page may be best known as an inspirational speaker and a life-saving fitness guru. The underpinnings of him inspiring others in a direct, literal way nowadays came in his WCW career. Despite hanging around the business, including serving as a manager for years, he didn’t actually start wrestling himself until his mid-30s. Hard work and perseverance paid off as he moved up the ranks to become one of the most popular wrestlers in the company and a world champion.

Page was always big-bodied, and it makes sense that he’d develop some of his signature work ethic on the football field. This picture captures a young DDP posing with his teammates, no idea about the roundabout road to the top of the wrestling business that awaited him.

Ric Flair

Ric Flair Was A Defining Wrestler For WCW

• Ric Flair was already a main eventer and became the de facto top star when WCW launched.
• The Nature Boy was WCW’s most decorated world champion.
• This photo shows Ric Flair at his high school prom.

Ric Flair was the defining world champion and top star of WCW when the brand launched in the late 1980s and it’s telling he also wrestled in the main event of the very last Nitro. Brushing past a year and a half away in WWE, Flair was a staple player for WCW as the leader of many incarnations of The Four Horsemen, the company’s most decorated world champion, a top heel, a top babyface, and even an authority figure in the later years of the company.

It’s fitting that this picture would capture young Ric Flair in a tuxedo. His immaculate style became a part of the gimmick he lived and that at times over-extended Flair, complicating his financial situation. Back in high school, though, a suit like that only came out on a special occasion, such as this one when he attended his Senior Prom.

Randy Savage

Randy Savage Proved He Still Had Gas In The Tank With A Great WCW Run

• Randy Savage became an icon in WWE’s Golden Era.
• The Macho Man was known as a great in-ring worker and proved he still had a lot of wrestling in him when he jumped to WCW after WWE had “benched” him at the broadcast table.
• Randy Savage looked very different in high school and would pursue baseball at a high level before wrestling.

The Macho Man Randy Savage was one of wrestling’s greatest icons. He was quite arguably second only to Hulk Hogan in balloting for the most popular WWE Superstar of the wildly successful Golden Era. More so than Hogan, he was also a consummate great in-ring worker known for absolute classics with fellow technical wrestlers like Ricky Steamboat and Ric Flair. Though WWE essentially wrote off Savage, relegating him to the broadcast table, The Macho Man proved he could still go with a remarkable WCW career. He renewed rivalries with Hogan and Flair alike and wound up huge part of multiple nWo angles, both with and against different versions of the faction.

It’s wild to look back at a young Savage if only to see how normal he looked. Clean-cut, no beard, let alone any of the eccentric accessories The Macho Man tried on across the years, he may be one of the hardest wrestling megastars to recognize from his teenage years. A serious pursuit of pro baseball awaited him, before he’d attain his destiny as one of the greatest wrestlers of all time.