Buddy Rogers

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GWE season is here, and I've been slacking, so with about one year to make a ballot, I'm starting to review wrestlers I've considered, but not fully formed an opinion on. So we begin with Buddy Rogers, a guy who has two of my favorite matches of the Golden Era, against Lou Thesz in 1950 and Pat O'Connor in 1961.


 

Buddy Rogers/Magnificent Maurice/Johnny Barend vs Bobo Brazil/Art Thomas/Dory Dixon - Chicago 3/15/1963

There are 10 complete Buddy Rogers matches out there, and this is one of them. He's barely in this, it is mostly a showcase for the face team, Buddy spends a lot of time on the apron playing a chickenshit. In some ways that is Buddy Rogers' greatest contribution to modern wrestling, he sort of codified what it meant to be a heel, and you can see a glimpse of why he was so successful, but its only just a glimpse. 

Buddy Rogers vs. Cyclone Ayana - Chicago 1/5/1951

From a modern perspective, so much of the Golden Age stuff just seems boring or stall-y, and you could levy that criticism against this. I'm not saying it's great, but what stands out here is something that I think that guys from this era, and those directly influenced by this era, knew and something that subsequent generations have pretty much forgotten. Rogers spends a lot of this looking like a chickenshit and outclassed, but when it hits the home stretch, he kicks ass. 

Buddy Rogers vs Abe Jacobs - Chicago 11/16/1960

This is a showcase for Rogers, and serves as a prelude to a match with Haystacks Calhoun. It is very short, and Rogers eats up a lot of this, as he should. It's not anything worth writing home about, but Rogers does hit a bunch of good-looking stomps near the end. 

Buddy Rogers vs Haystacks Calhoun - Chicago 4/14/1961

This is a spectacle and it's a lot of "work." Calhoun dominates with his size, Rogers stooges around, until he pokes Calhoun in the key and dropkicks him out of the ring. It's effective, but not setting the world on fire. 

Buddy Rogers vs Killer Kowalski - Chicago 2/22/1963

This is the best of the crop of matches I've watched for this post. It is a pretty standard 2 out of 3 falls, and I've never been very impressed by Kowolski, and that continues here. Rogers wins this with a sick piledriver, which he always makes look great. 

Buddy Rogers/Jimmy Snuka vs Lou Albano/Ray Stevens - WWF 11/25/1982

Buddy is 61 here, and you know what, he looks pretty good. He's not carrying the match, but he comes out hot and then takes the heat to build up the moment for Snuka. It's interesting that this is against Ray Stevens, a guy with a pretty incredible reputation for his prime, and a pretty horrid reputation for the entirety of his work on film. I don't have a good read on Stevens, but if you went into this completely ignorant and somebody told you one of these guys was a great wrestler back in the day, I don't think any person on earth would think it was Stevens. 

Verdict

I think the highs are high enough, the sample small enough, and the rest good enough to say that Rogers was a great wrestler, but it's hard to say much more than that. I think I'm still considering him, but not for anything above 90 or so. 



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