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Getbig Main Boards => Gossip & Opinions => Topic started by: BayGBM on April 09, 2012, 10:37:02 AM

Title: The Grand Wizard
Post by: BayGBM on April 09, 2012, 10:37:02 AM
Anyone else here old enough to remember the Grand Wizard of wrestling?  What was his story?  Was he ever a wrestler... a legitimate manager... or just a schmoe?  By the way, why do some wrestlers have or need "managers"?  Looks like a job for Lonnie Tepper.  :D

Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: tommywishbone on April 09, 2012, 10:43:08 AM
Another Grand Wizard, just not as stylist of a dresser.  Oh, I don't remember the Grand wizard manager from wrestling.
Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: Powerlift66 on April 09, 2012, 10:50:17 AM
Ernie Roth (Grand Wizard) never wrestled as far as I know..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernie_Roth
Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: Krankenstein on April 09, 2012, 12:12:16 PM
Anyone else here old enough to remember the Grand Wizard of wrestling?  What was his story?  Was he ever a wrestler... a legitimate manager... or just a schmoe?  By the way, why do some wrestlers have or need "managers"?  Looks like a job for Lonnie Tepper.  :D



Said wrestlers have no "mic" skills....managers help create/generate heat....also can help the "heel" win at times so as to add to storyline
Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: TrueGrit on April 09, 2012, 12:15:53 PM
Roth was revealed to be homosexual long after his death, although some were in the know at the time he was living.[2] He was the godfather of protege Don Muraco's daughter. His parents were Evrum Roth and Rizel Stern.[3]

...But at least bodybuilding's 'Mayor' is straight!
Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: Irongrip400 on April 09, 2012, 12:17:26 PM
Oh, he wrestled, just not in the ring.  Probably somewhere in The Mirage near the ice machine.
Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: HTexan on April 09, 2012, 12:19:28 PM
(http://colinfisher.net/images/GayWizard.jpg)
Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: BayGBM on April 09, 2012, 12:23:37 PM
Roth was revealed to be homosexual long after his death, although some were in the know at the time he was living.[2] He was the godfather of protege Don Muraco's daughter. His parents were Evrum Roth and Rizel Stern.[3]

...But at least bodybuilding's 'Mayor' is straight!

Really?  You mean the little guy who never worked out, was not an athlete, yet tried to hang around the big muscled guys as much as possible was actually a closeted homosexual schmoe?  Let me put on my big surprise face!  ;D

Pro wrestling... meet pro bodybuilding.  ::)
Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: Palpatine Q on April 09, 2012, 12:26:07 PM
I remember that dude...he was funny as shit

Damn I'm old. ack
Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: The Abdominal Snoman on April 09, 2012, 12:36:07 PM
Doesn't Lonnie Teper come from his bloodline?
Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: liberty on April 09, 2012, 12:36:47 PM
Right behind ya Groink....I remember this guy too................he was a riot
Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: BayGBM on April 09, 2012, 12:50:38 PM
I remember that dude...he was funny as shit

Damn I'm old. ack

Right behind ya Groink....I remember this guy too................he was a riot

Damn, you guys are old! Can even HGH bring back vitality to your lifeless husks?  ???
Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: Steelrabbitt on April 09, 2012, 01:04:04 PM
Ernie Roth (Grand Wizard) never wrestled as far as I know..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernie_Roth

"Roth was revealed to be homosexual long after his death, although some were in the know at the time he was living."

You think?
Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: BayGBM on April 09, 2012, 01:25:54 PM
Wrestlers managed:
"Superstar" Billy Graham
Ken Patera
Ivan Koloff
Don Muraco

He had good taste!  ;D
Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: Vince G, CSN MFT on April 09, 2012, 02:14:26 PM
Anyone else here old enough to remember the Grand Wizard of wrestling?  What was his story?  Was he ever a wrestler... a legitimate manager... or just a schmoe?  By the way, why do some wrestlers have or need "managers"?  Looks like a job for Lonnie Tepper.  :D




A wrestling manager is usually for people who can't speak well or cut promos due to being too new to the industry or just never good at it...or they are usually part of a storyline as a "handler of some time" that keeps control of a wild and out of control wrestler. 


With the right wrestling manager, they can put a wrestler over very quickly like Brock Lesnar, Undertaker, Yokozuma, Umaga, Greg the Hammer Valentine, Hillbilly Jim....etc.



The Grand Wizard is actually one of the most famous wrestling managers around and in fact he was one the "legitimate wrestling managers" who managed traveling arrangement, lodgings, bookings, contracts etc.  He's in the the WWE Hall of Fame in fact....

Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: Papper on April 09, 2012, 03:55:59 PM
As a grand wizard was his greatest trick to make the wrestlers sweaty battle underwear mysteriously disappear from the locker room?
Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: HTexan on April 09, 2012, 04:05:13 PM
As a grand wizard was his greatest trick to make the wrestlers sweaty battle underwear mysteriously disappear from the locker room?
So youre saying he could make a dick disappear and reappear?
Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: Papper on April 09, 2012, 04:22:17 PM
So youre saying he could make a dick disappear and reappear?

Are you implying that he's the escape artist who undid his chains and got out of room 7 at the mirage?
Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: BayGBM on April 09, 2012, 04:36:45 PM
So youre saying he could make a dick disappear and reappear?

If he did, he didn't do it alone!  ;)
Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: BayGBM on April 09, 2012, 05:07:55 PM
I don’t know about der fröhliche Grand Wizard, but Superstar’s arms look sick in this pic.

True. Now imagine him being groped by the Wizard!  Remember that creepy schmoe with the pix of himself sitting on a bodybuilders' laps and gropin their pecs?  Yeah, it's like that. ;D
Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: HTexan on April 09, 2012, 06:33:11 PM
If he did, he didn't do it alone!  ;)
so youre saying that he had a broke wrestler to help him perform that trick?
Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: tommywishbone on April 09, 2012, 07:26:43 PM
 :)
Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: tommywishbone on April 09, 2012, 07:29:17 PM
 :)
Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: Hurricane Beef ! on April 09, 2012, 07:44:11 PM
Loved the Wiz . . .

Ernie Roth got his start in the entertainment business as a disc jockey, and became involved in professional wrestling as a manager in the 1960s in Detroit-based territories. Roth first worked under the names "Mr. Clean" and "J. Wellington Radcliffe", but more famously, he also portrayed "Abdullah Farouk", a man from the Middle East who was sent by The Sheik's wealthy "family" to handle their son's affairs in the US.

Roth on many occasions (when out of character and greasepaint mustache) co-hosted the sydnicated "Big Time Wrestling" with fellow announcer Bob Finnegan until 1969 when the hosting chores went to Lord Athol Layton. For some of the Ohio Markets, Les Edwards would do the ring announcing for non TV shows.

Sporting a turban, Farouk took great pains in trying to control his madman protege. But he also carved a niche for himself as a deceitful, underhanded character who insulted US fans whenever he had a chance, laying a template for heels for years to come. Farouk was a pioneer of "manager interference", as he physically would attempt to alter a match's outcome in the Sheik's favor whenever he could (inciting a full-scale riot on one occasion). By the early 1970s, after establishing himself as one of the most hated managers in the wrestling business, Ernie Roth parted with the "Abdullah Farouk" character and began a stint with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) (now known today as World Wrestling Entertainment), where he became The Grand Wizard of Wrestling.

The Grand Wizard of Wrestling, playing the "heel manager" role to the absolute hilt, had an instant impact in the WWF. Almost immediately after arrival, the Wizard managed Stan Stasiak to defeat Pedro Morales for the WWF Championship in Philadelphia on December 1, 1973. Stasiak lost the title just nine days later to the "Living Legend" Bruno Sammartino, but the Wizard's reputation was still pristine. In fact, the Wizard guided a second protege, the flamboyant and chiseled Superstar Billy Graham, to the very same Championship on April 30, 1977, when Graham overcame Sammartino in Baltimore. Graham is now seen as the virtual prototype for later Superstars like Hulk Hogan, Jesse Ventura and Scott Steiner, and with the Wizard as his manager was seemingly unstoppable. Graham and the Wizard were arguably the first performers to be cheered without requiring a "push" as a babyface, once again laying a template for superstars to come.

On February 20, 1978, former amateur wrestling standout Bob Backlund took on Superstar Billy Graham for the WWF Championship at Madison Square Garden, and managed to dethrone the champion. The Wizard made it his duty to gain revenge on Backlund, sending charges such as Don Muraco, Ken Patera and Greg Valentine after the champion. The Wizard never managed a world champion again, however he did manage the very first Intercontinental Champion Pat Patterson, and later Patera (who defeated Patterson for the title in April 1980 after the Wizard and Patterson parted ways) and Muraco to the same championship.

Other proteges of the Wizard included "Beautiful" Bobby Harmon,[1] Killer Kowalski, "Crazy" Luke Graham, Sgt. Slaughter, "Big Cat" Ernie Ladd, Ox Baker, and Cowboy Bob Orton. In the 1970s the Wizard was known as one of the WWF's infamous Three Wise Men of the East, the other two being Captain Lou Albano and "Classy" Freddie Blassie. They were a loose conglomerate of heel managers that conspired to make life difficult for babyfaces.

A Boston radio program, The Sports Huddle, would feature in-character interviews with Roth portraying him as a hero. The program's hosts once called the White House on the air to ask if The Grand Wizard (referred to as TGW on the program because "only those closest to the Grand Wizard are allowed to call him TGW") was finished with his consultation with President Richard Nixon. When the White House operator said she was not sure, the program hosts said "we have an important message for him," and after being connected with a series of administration functionaries, succeeded in getting one to agree to take a message to the Oval Office. The host dictated the message: "Tell him to bring home a loaf of bread and a quart of milk."

A example of his interview style prior to an upcoming bout between the Sheik and Haystacks Calhoun Abdullah Farouk looked into the camera and said "Ashes to Ashes Dust to Dust if the camel clutch doesn't get you Calhoun the Fire Must" alluding to The Sheik's ability to toss fireballs

On October 12, 1983, Roth died of a heart attack. He was cremated. In tribute to the Grand Wizard, Sgt. Slaughter came out during a match, just after his death, and saluted the empty ring corner. In 1995 he was inducted into the WWF Hall of Fame by his longtime friend and roommate the original "Beautiful" Bobby Harmon.

THE BEEF
Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: BayGBM on April 09, 2012, 07:56:53 PM
:)

I could manage Billy Graham!  ;D
Title: Re: The Grand Wizard
Post by: MAXX on April 09, 2012, 08:04:08 PM
(http://www.nd.se/media/3057/C82911.jpg)