Welcome back to another installment of Federation Fridays, where we once again travel back to the glory days of the World Wrestling Federation (and this week, even into World Championship Wrestling) to reflect on a man who was one of my favorite wrestlers growing up and someone I think deserves to be talked about more often. Someone who was “Ravishing,” and someone who was definitely Rude before there was Attitude. This week, we’re shining the spotlight on one of wrestling’s all-time greats.
On April 20, 1999, the pro wrestling industry lost one of its most gifted and entertaining performers. I’m talking about a guy named Richard Rood, known better to us wrestling fans as “Ravishing” Rick Rude. This ain’t a history piece per se, you can look the man up on Wikipedia yourself. Instead, this is a reflection of my thoughts about one of my all-time favorite wrestlers and the impact I feel he permanently left on the world of wrestling.
Rick Rude was just forty years old when he died of heart failure, with his death attributed to an accidental drug overdose. Forty years old, ladies and gentlemen. In the real world, Rick Rude was still pretty young, far too young to die. In the wrestling industry, especially around that time, dying at such a young age was unfortunately far from uncommon. Regardless of the circumstances surrounding his death, a wife lost her husband, three kids lost their father, many folks the world over lost a friend, and wrestling fans lost a great performer.
As I look around the wrestling community on the Internet today, I don’t see nearly as much discussion about Rick Rude as I think there should be. Amongst the deceased individuals discussed relatively often is Owen Hart, who died just a little over a month after Rick Rude. I reckon part of the reason for this is that the manner in which Owen died was unique in wrestling and a real tragedy. But then I also wonder if part of the reason is simply that some of the fans are products of the “Attitude Era” and only remember Rick Rude the manager, and not necessarily Rick Rude the wrestler. Or maybe, because I’m older than I sometimes realize, it’s because a good portion of the fanbase was born after he died. I could be totally off base in that assumption, but it just seems to me like Rude is underappreciated and overlooked. Though I guess if you’re not someone with the name recognition of Hulk Hogan or Ultimate Warrior, time works against you in the being remembered department.
Being born in 1986, I wasn’t able to appreciate Rick Rude’s run in the WWF in the late ’80s through 1990 until later, thanks to VHS tapes of WWF television shows and pay-per-views. It was in WWF that Rude had a great feud with another legendary performer, Jake “The Snake” Roberts. In classic Rude fashion, Rick got under the skin of the Snake by coming to the ring with Jake Roberts’ real wife Cheryl’s face airbrushed on the front of his tights. While maybe undervalued today, it remains one of the most classic and memorable WWF moments of the late ’80s. Hell, you just don’t paint another man’s wife’s face on your crotch, that’s downright rude, right? That’s why Rick Rude was so awesome, or ravishing as he proclaimed.
Most folks would probably tend to remember Rude in WWF for his feud with the Ultimate Warrior. I never liked the Warrior; he was just never my type of wrestler. I believe Randy Savage got the absolute best that could have ever been gotten out of Warrior, but Rude was able to get some good matches out of the Warrior as well, the two most notable being WrestleMania V (where Rude won the Intercontinental Championship) and SummerSlam 1989 (where Rude lost the Intercontinental Championship). Despite being one of, if not the most over heels of the time, Rude was never allowed to win the WWF Championship. He wrestled the Warrior for it at SummerSlam 1990 in a main event steel cage match that barely went 10 minutes, but he didn’t win it. That’s one of the things WWF really got wrong in the course of history, not giving Rick Rude the opportunity to run with the ball. Another would be not giving Mr. Perfect that same opportunity, but that’s for another column, aye?
It was when Rick Rude left the WWF and went to WCW that I really remember becoming a big fan of the guy, simply because being a little bit older at that time, I can actually remember things from that time period, whereas before I was just too young. This was in late 1991 when Rude came into WCW, debuting at Halloween Havoc as the mysterious Halloween Phantom. Immediately, he was paired with Paul E. Dangerously (more commonly known as Paul Heyman), and the two formed a stable that, like Rude himself, is severely underrated. That stable was, of course, the Dangerous Alliance, which also consisted of Steve Austin, Arn Anderson, Larry Zbyszko, Bobby Eaton, and Madusa. How a faction that had a roster that loaded tends to get ignored I’ll never understand, I thought the Dangerous Alliance was fantastic.
To show how big the stable was at the time, they competed in the main event of WCW’s WrestleWar ’92 against Sting, Barry Windham, Dustin Rhodes, Ricky Steamboat, and Nikita Koloff in a WarGames match. Up until that point, WarGames was the Four Horsemen’s territory. WarGames was a big deal in NWA/WCW, headlining it was major stuff, and this ranks right near the best of them.
The United States Championship has had a pretty rich history since its creation in 1975. A lot of individuals have held the title, and among these are some of the biggest and most talented names in wrestling. Rick Rude won the United States Championship in November 1991 by defeating Sting. Rude didn’t lose the title; he had to forfeit it due to a legitimate injury in December 1992. Rude enjoyed a reign of more than a year as the WCW United States Champion, and there’s no telling how long it would have lasted had he not gotten injured. His reign remains one of the longest in the championship’s history, surpassed only by Lex Luger’s record-setting reign. That’s pretty damn impressive if you ask me. Rude would come back from injury and have even more success, though, by capturing the WCW International World Heavyweight Championship three times.
I’ll never forget the classic matchup between Rick Rude and Ric Flair at Fall Brawl 1993, where Rude defeated the legendary Nature Boy to win the championship in a bout that lasted just over thirty minutes, or their Halloween Havoc 1993 encounter. Likewise, I’ll never forget the classic matches that Rude and Sting had over that same championship. I know history seems to forget or simply discard the WCW International World Heavyweight Championship as a meaningless championship that was only around for a little over a year, but at the time it was quite important and was on the same level as the NWA or WCW World Championship. In its short existence, Rick Rude held this title more than anyone, so it’s kind of sad when you see folks brush it aside and not treat it as a World Championship.
Rick Rude shined in WCW from 1991 through 1994. His work in WCW, as an in-ring competitor, blows away anything he did in the World Wrestling Federation before. He was a true superstar in WCW during that time period, and there’s simply no telling how bright his star would have shone had he not been injured. On May 1, 1994, Rick Rude won the WCW International Heavyweight Championship from Sting over in Japan for the very last time but the title was vacated a few weeks later. The storyline explanation was that Rude was stripped of the title because he had hit Sting with the championship belt during the match. Unfortunately, the reality was that he suffered a serious neck and back injury during that match, and as a result, Rick Rude would never wrestle again.
It’s hard to say what would have happened to Rude’s career had it not been cut short due to this injury that forced him to retire. He was a big thing in WCW, a tremendous heel, but a few months after his injury, Hulk Hogan arrived in WCW and was quickly followed by Macho Man Randy Savage. Clearly, the landscape in World Championship Wrestling was changing, and it was becoming all about Hulk Hogan. Would Rick Rude have remained a major force in the company? Would he have feuded with Hogan, and would he have won the WCW World Heavyweight Championship? I like to think the answer to all three would be a resounding yes, but then you could easily have thought the same about a number of WCW stars. It’s a shame that we as wrestling fans didn’t get to see what could have been, though, and that such a bright future was ended in a moment’s notice.
Even though Rick Rude couldn’t wrestle anymore, he showed that he could still be an asset to wrestling. He went to ECW in 1996 and managed and did color commentary. In 1997, he made a return to the WWF as the manager, or “insurance policy,” of Shawn Michaels and eventually D-Generation X. Rude didn’t like the way Vince McMahon handled the Bret Hart title situation, the Montreal Screwjob, so less than a week after that, he was gone from the Federation. He wasn’t under a regular WWF contract; he had a pay-per-appearance deal, and he was still doing ECW work at the time. On November 17, 1997, Rick Rude made history and gave us fans one of the most memorable moments of the Monday Night War. He appeared on Monday Night RAW, which had been taped six days earlier, with the beard he had worn since coming back. Before that segment aired on RAW, Rick Rude walked out on Monday Nitro behind Hulk Hogan, as the newest member of the New World Order, with his beard shaved and only his trademark mustache remaining. He then proceeded to give a great promo about what was right and wrong with wrestling, specifically how Shawn Michaels won the title and how McMahon screwed Bret Hart. This was great television, and classic Rude. Rude, of course, managed the NWO, and more specifically Curt Hennig, from that point on.
Rude ultimately disappeared from WCW in 1998 due to injuries. Some say that in early 1999, Rick Rude was actively training to make a return as a professional wrestler for WCW, others say for WWF. Those are rumors, to the best of my knowledge, but I definitely think Rude could have made a comeback. Unfortunately, we’ll never know what might have happened. On April 20, 1999, Rick Rude passed away at just forty years old, the tragic ending of one of wrestling’s most gifted and entertaining superstars’ lives, almost five years after the tragic end of his in-ring career.
You know, Lex Luger may have had the nickname “The Total Package,” but Rick Rude was definitely the total package. Where it matters the most to me, in the ring, Rude was great at wrestling. He could wrestle extremely well, but he also had the psychology of it down pat. On the microphone, Rude could cut a helluva wrestling promo in the style that promos should still be presented: raw and authentic to the character, not scripted by some writer. His airbrushed tights were always unique and cool, and in turn, they helped make him stand out even more. His antics in the ring, his gyrating hips aimed at playing to the female fans, and his arrogance made him the guy male fans loved to hate and the female fans just loved. I used to think Sean Morley was a good wrestler and an even better entertainer, but Val Venis never held a candle to Ravishing Rick Rude and so much of the character work was clearly inspired by Rude. And of course, Rude had the toned, great body that wrestling promoters love. As you can see, he was indeed the total package.
Every year around when WrestleMania season approaches, there tends to be a lot of Hall of Fame discussion about who should get inducted or shouldn’t be inducted. For years, Rick Rude was one of those names that I felt deserved the recognition, and each year I didn’t understand why the hell Rick Rude wasn’t getting inducted. I was ecstatic when he finally received his rightful place in the WWE Hall of Fame in 2017. I still think Rude deserves more attention than he gets, though. I’d love to see a proper documentary about his career, something that covers his WWF years, his tremendous run in WCW, and just how good he really was. The man deserves to be remembered for a hell of a lot more than standing around as DX’s insurance policy. I’m still bummed that WWE quit making DVDs and that we never got a Rick Rude DVD at all, let alone one with one of those fantastic documentaries they used to produce.
The Rick Rude character pushed the envelope in wrestling long before the Attitude Era came about. In doing so, Rick Rude provided me and millions of other wrestling fans with many great matches and memorable moments. It’s hard to believe that one of my favorites growing up has been gone for more than a quarter of a century now.
In Wolfgang Petersen’s epic film Troy, the main motivation behind Brad Pitt’s character (Achilles) is immortality. He sought to be a great warrior because he wanted his name to live on through the ages. He went with the Greeks to Troy only because he was told that the war would never be forgotten, nor would the heroes who fought in it. He wanted, in his own words, “what all men want, I just want it more.” Immortality, to live on after death, to never be forgotten. In the opening, we hear Odysseus giving us a voice-over, and he says, “Men are haunted by the vastness of eternity. And so we ask ourselves: will our actions echo across the centuries? Will strangers hear our names long after we are gone, and wonder who we were, how bravely we fought, how fiercely we loved?”
Richard Rood has been gone for more than twenty-seven years, yet the memory and legacy of Rick Rude still live on, and thanks to video, the Internet, and books, they will for a long time. Hell, here I am writing a column about the man. His actions may not echo across the centuries, but they’ve echoed throughout the years since his passing. And for as long as I shall live, unless I develop Alzheimer’s, the actions of Rick Rude will forever echo in my memory.
In closing, I leave you with this quote from Bret Hart about his friend, Rick Rude:
“Rick Rude was anything but…rude. In any circle of friends and phonies, you take the good with the bad. And the bad makes you appreciate the good even more. At the height of my road days, when 300 flights in 300 towns a year was normal, strangers became family and family became strangers. You can’t pick your family but you can pick your friends. Rick Rude was one of the best picks I ever made. He was a great family man. He loved his wife. He was one of those kind of guys who never took his wedding ring off. He put a white piece of tape around it when he went into the ring. He was the kind of guy that when you needed someone to back you up, he wouldn’t flinch at all. Not for money. Not for anything. When McMahon and his sidearm barged into my dressing room in Montreal, Rick was there. He was one of the guys who refused to budge. Refused to allow me to be put in a compromising position. Rick Rude stayed there to make sure my back was watched. There were, and are, some people who think the whole thing that happened between McMahon and I was a hoax. Rick was the one who called Eric Bischoff to say he was there, and told him what had happened. When I was forming new business relationships in WCW, Rude’s call protected me and saved me from a lot of doubt, because even Eric Bischoff had to question whether this was a set-up or not. I was always grateful to Rick for making that call and for being with me in the room that day.”
IN MEMORY OF:
December 7, 1958 – April 20, 1999
