Goliath.com recently posted an article about the 10 greatest jobbers in professional wrestling history. It was a great list listing greats like
The Italian Stallion,
Special Delivery Jones, Jim Powers and of course the three greatest of all time
Iron Mike Sharpe, Steve Lombardi and Barry Horowitz. When it comes to enhancement talent, and guys who went out of their way to help make other guys shine as much as they could, no one did it better than those three guys. That's for sure. However, there are some other jobbers, who Goliath did not include on their list, that I feel deserve recognition. The role of a jobber has all but disappeared in the world of professional wrestling. A lost art, that is only displayed through the memories of those of us who were around when they were performing.
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Phil Apollo
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25-30 years ago, us wrestling fans didn't have the internet to look people up and find out about their past. All we had was what we saw on television, what we read in magazines and what we were told by fans who were alive before we were. While Apollo had a fairly successful career in the independents before joining the WWE in the early 1990's, I never knew anything about it. To me he was simply a guy that when I saw him standing in the ring, I knew might get in one or two offensive moves in a 5-7 minute match that would always end with him taking a butt whopping. Apollo was a man's man, who simply got into the ring, did his job, got paid his money and went home. It's funny to think that in this day in age, where wrestlers are more "normal" sized individuals that he would probably be a mid-card contender. Never had much of a gimmick or a personality, but that seems to be the trend of today's superstars.
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| Big Bully Busick |
I don't know how you can make a list of "Greatest Jobbers of all time" and leave
Big Bully Busick off of it. Here's a guy that was always fun to watch. For many years of his career, he was a weekend jobber. A wrestler who had a day job as a police officer, who would work matches on his days off and on the weekends when he wasn't busy being a cop. What I loved about Busick, was that despite losing nearly every match, he always gave his opponents a decent match. Looking back, I hate watching matches where the star wrestler, just goes out and destroys his opponent. I realize that it is supposed to make him look invincible and unstoppable but I enjoyed the "Busick" type jobber matches much more. The times when he'd look to have an upperhand, then make a mistake and end up pinned, looking around all confused, "What? Wha?!? What happened!!?!?" Busick was a very entertaining wrestler, who didn't get all bent out of shape about losing. He made the most of his opportunity and always gave the fans something fun to watch.
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| Damian Demento |
It's hard to believe, as crazy, out-there and eccentric as the character
Damian Demento was, that the person who played him Phil Theis is even crazier. Despite how insane, Theis may or may not be, there is not questioning his talent as a professional wrestler. Most of the time, jobbers were regular people, with regular names, wrestling in either a plain colored singlet, tights or trunks. They had no personality, no colorful ring gear and there maneuvers and mannerisms were very plain and uneventful. Not Damian Demento. Here's a guy who took the characters of
Papa Shango, The Warlord and The Legion of Doom smashed them together and created a very memorable gimmick. While other jobbers resembled your local school bus driver, Demento made your turn your head and pay attention with his lunatic interviews and whacked out attire. Despite the fact that he used to do jobs for Virgil, I always took him seriously because of how intimidating his look and personality were. I used to think he was one Hell of an actor, and I still do to an extent. Yet the more I learn about the real life Phil Theis, the more I question if he wasn't simply being himself to a large extent.
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| Sonny Rogers |
Now I realize that to be fair,
Barry Horowitz and
Steve Lombardi are unarguably the best enhancement talents of all time. However, my personal favorite and one that I feel gets the shaft is
Sonny Rogers. I love watching Rogers wrestler, and don't understand why he isn't remembered and loved by more hardcore professional wrestling fans like myself. There have been many wrestlers throughout the years that were great at selling. Mr. Perfect, for example comes to mind. Yet, I don't know if anyone knew how to sell better than
Sonny Rogers. He would flop around the ring, taking bump after bump for anyone. When you hit him with a big move, he would act like you shot him with and AK-47. Hit your finisher on him, he sold for you as if you shoved a grenade down his pants. I remember once he wrestled
Stone Cold Steve Austin in a match when Austin has first made his transition from
The Ring Master to
Stone Cold. Austin hit him with the Stone Cold Stunner and Rogers flopped around the ring like a fish out of water as Steve crawled around the mat trying to get a hold of him to pin him. It was hilarious. There is nothing that
Sonny Rogers wouldn't do to help you get over and make you look like $1,000,000. He's extremely underrated and someone that some of today's talent should be watching. Professional wrestling is all about entertainment, and Rogers was a top notch entertainer, even though he lost all the time.
