Where Wrestling's Regional History Lives!
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Where Wrestling's Regional History Lives! |
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- Mike Norris This month I would like to take a look at what I consider the "backbone" of any professional wrestling promotion: the preliminary wrestler. And I do not mean "jobber". That term derives from the kayfabe term "doing the job", meaning to put your opponent over. The trend towards television "squash" matches in the 1980s made a "jobber" someone who mounted no offense against the main guys in a promotion and mainly just went out and got killed. But a true preliminary guy always made good showing of himself and always made a match better. Their main purpose was to get the crowd warmed up and to set the pace for the rest of the card. Usually a prelim guy was someone fairly new to the sport, or a veteran whose best days were behind him. But in some cases, prelim guys never got out of the prelims. But still they were professional wrestlers and good ones at that. In the Gulf Coast, we had all three types over the years. I would like to take a look at them from each category. For the ones who were always basically preliminary guys we had several. The following is a list of those that I can recall: Pedro Columbo - Pedro was of many Latin wrestlers in the Gulf Coast area from 1970 to 1972. Short and stocky, Pedro always made his opponents work to beat him. He wrestled all comers, and therefore was considered a babyface sometimes and a heel at other times. Pedro also worked quite a bit for LeRoy McGuirk’s Tri-State promotion in Oklahoma. Rick Sanchez – A big, stocky brawler. Rick Sanchez made things tough for his opponents. He worked in the Gulf Coast area in 1971 and 1972. Later worked many places as an Arab named Sheik Abdul Zatar. Rick worked as Zatar into the early 1980s. Hurricane Rivera – A popular Latin wrestler whose main offense was dropkicks and flying headscissors, Hurricane was in the Gulf Coast in 1970. He went on to make a bigger name for himself in his native Puerto Rico under his real name Juan Rivera. Ramon Perez – Ramon was another who worked for McGuirk at times. He was a popular high flyer. Young and handsome, he was quite popular with the ladies as well. Although Ramon had two stints as ˝ of the Gulf Coast tag team champions (w/Eddie Sullivan in 1967, and w/Bob Kelly in 1969), mainly was a preliminary worker in 1970 and 1971. More...
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