Okay, I'm going to stop you right there. Before
you even let your brain go to that smooth, soulful
place, just hit the pause button on the mental
record player. I know exactly where you're going
with this. You see the name Al Green on the research
packet, and immediately you're hearing, let's
stay together. You're picturing the Reverend
in a silk suit. Of course. Exactly. And I need
everyone listening to take that image, crumble
it up, and just... Toss it. Because the Al Green
we are deep diving into today, he wasn't singing
about love and happiness. Not even close. We're
talking about a 6 '4", 280 -pound behemoth who
spent 20 years throwing people around a wrestling
ring. Getting thrown around himself. Quite a
bit, actually. We are talking about Alfred Dobolo,
better known to the wrestling world as the Dog,
Rage, Blade, and yeah, Al Green. This is actually
one of my favorite kinds of deep dives. Because,
you know, usually we talk wrestling history.
Everyone wants to talk about the icons, the Hogans,
the Rocks. Yeah, that was on the martini. Right.
We obsess over them. But today we're looking
at something, I mean, arguably more important
to the industry itself. We're looking at a perfect
case study of the journeyman. The journeyman.
It it sounds like a character class in a video
game or something. But in wrestling, it's a very
specific, very gritty role, isn't it? Yes. Think
of the journeyman as like the essential worker
of the wrestling ecosystem. They're the guys
who travel the globe. They change their names
and their gimmicks at the drop of a hat. Their
job isn't always to win. It's to make the whole
show function. Precisely. They are the mortar
between the bricks. And Al Green, I mean, he
lived that life from 1989 all the way until his
passing in 20. And looking at these records,
what a chaotic life it was. I mean, the source
material here is basically a travelogue of the
highest highs and the absolute weirdest lows
of the business. The lows get really low. Yeah.
We're talking about a guy who tagged with one
of the biggest stars in history right before
that guy got famous. And then, what, 10 years
later, he was doing a gimmick involving a toilet?
We are definitely going to have to unpack the
toilet situation. Well, it's a lot. But you're
right. It's a career of just constant reinvention.
It's a survival story. So let's get into it.
Let's rewind to 1989. WCW World Championship
Wrestling is the big alternative to the WWF.
The Turner era. And Al Green enters the scene.
He's trained by Steve Kern, who is a legend in
his own right, famously part of the Fabulous
Ones. So Green has a solid pedigree. And physically,
the guy is a house. 6 '4", 280. I mean, in any
other sport, you walk in looking like that, you're
an instant star. But wrestling has a pecking
order. It sure does. I was looking at his debut
records, and it's brutal. June 15th, 1989, first
major TV taping. And who do they feed him to?
Sting. The Sting. Face paint, screaming, the
biggest rising star in the company. It's a classic
trial by fire. Al Green is a rookie. He walks
out there and he's staring down the WCW television
champion. And naturally, Green gets beat. But
he wasn't just losing, right? He was being established
as something specific. Yes. Enhancement talent.
Which is the polite term for a jobber. Well,
jobber can be a bit derogatory, but yeah, essentially.
His job was to be big and impressive so that
when Sting beat him, Sting looked even better.
Think about it. If Sting beats a guy who is five
foot eight, who cares? Right. But if he body
slams a 280 pound monster like Al Green. The
crowd goes wild. Green's value was in his size
and his willingness to fall down. So he's the
measuring stick. But that first year. Man, he
struggled. The notes show him bouncing between
partners constantly. He teams with Ron Simmons
for a minute. Damn. Ron Simmons. Yes. But this
was way before he was a world champion. They
were just two big athletic guys trying to make
it work. It was very much a throw him against
the wall and see if they stick face. And he teams
with a guy named Lee Scott. And this is where
I actually laughed reading the match results.
They were losing to a team called the Ding Dongs.
Please tell me they aren't what I think they
are. Oh, they are exactly what you think they
are. It's a tank team covered in bells. No. Oh,
bells, like legit jingle bells. Bells on their
ankles, bells on their wrists. The idea was that
they would ring every time they moved. It was
a disaster of a gimmick. But here is the harsh
reality for Al Green. If you are losing to the
Ding Dongs, you are at the absolute bottom of
the car. That's got to be tough on the ego. It's
the business. You take the paycheck, you drive
to the next town. So he's struggling. He teams
with Bill Irwin, gets a win here and there. But
then September 1990 hits, and this is the first
major pivot. The sources call this his first
real break. Right. WCW had a team called the
Master Blasters. Great name. Very 1990. Sounds
like a boombox. Very. They were modeled after
the Road Warriors, face paint, big muscles, spikes.
But one of the original members, a guy named
Iron, quit after one match. So WCW is stuck.
They need a partner. Enter Al Green. But he's
not Al Green anymore. He gets a makeover. He
is now Blade. Blade. And his partner is named
Steel. And this is the part that blew my mind.
I had to double check the photos. Who is Steel?
Steel is a very young, very tall guy who would
go on to become one of the most famous wrestlers
on the planet. Kevin Nash? Kevin Nash. Diesel.
Founder of the NWO, the guy who changed the business.
The very same. Before he was Big Daddy Cool,
he was Steel. And our journeyman Al Green was
his partner, Blade. That is such a sliding doors
moment. You have Al Green and Kevin Nash side
by side, effectively equals. And apparently they
were crushing it. They were. This is what we
call a monster push. October 1990, they go on
an undefeated streak. They get a match at Halloween
Havoc, a huge pay -per -view. They beat the Southern
Boys. For a moment, Al Green isn't a journeyman.
He's a contender. It's amazing how fast the air
goes out of the balloon, though. They're undefeated,
they're scary, and then they hit a wall. That
wall was named Tom Zank and Brian Pillman. Flying
Brian Pillman. A legend. November 22nd, Zank
and Pillman hand the Master Blasters their first
loss. Pillman pins Blade, our guy, Al Green.
And in wrestling psychology, for monsters who
rely on intimidation, that first loss is devastating.
The aura just evaporates. It's like when the
bad guy in a movie finally gets punched in the
face. Exactly. The office, the bookers, they
lost faith. The Master Blasters got a shot at
the U .S. tag team titles against the Steiner
brothers around Christmas. And the Steiners were
absolute beasts. The gold standard for stiff
working. They hit hard. The Steiners beat them.
But the real end, the moment they killed the
team, happened on TV February 2, 1991. I saw
this in the notes. The 52 -second burial. Yeah,
it's the only way to describe it. They had a
rematch against the Steiners. Yeah. And they
were decimated. It lasted 52 seconds. Less than
a minute. Less than a minute. Rick and Scott
Steiner just threw them around. That wasn't just
a match. That was a corporate memo sent via suplex.
That was the office saying, we are done with
this. And that's where the paths diverge. Kevin
Nash stays in WCW, becomes Oz, Vinny Vegas, then
a megastar, Al Green. Al Green leaves. He goes
back to the grind. He heads to the independent
circuit, Florida Championship Wrestling, the
IWF. He needs a new partner, a new vibe. And
he finds both. He starts teaming with the Terminator.
who later changes his name to Fury. So, naturally,
Blade reinvents himself. He's not Blade anymore.
Now he is Rage. Rage and Fury. The Wrecking Crew.
I gotta say, I love the simplicity of 90s wrestling
names. It's effective marketing. And it worked.
They win gold in the RWF and they look dominant
enough that WCW calls them back in 1993. So Rage
and Fury are back in the big leagues, but they
aren't getting the same undefeated treatment,
are they? No. By 1993, their role had shifted.
They were established as monster heels, bad guys.
But their function was to be the gatekeepers.
Define gatekeepers in this context. A gatekeeper
is the test. If you're a young, rising star like,
say, Too Cold Scorpio or Marcus Alexander Bagwell,
you have to beat the wrecking crew to prove you're
ready for the main event. So they would beat
the lower card guys to keep their credibility.
But when it came to the hot new acts, their job
was to lose. It's classic contrast. The wrecking
crew is big and scary. The good guys are fast
and pretty. When the pretty guys beat the scary
guys, the fans go crazy. But there's one feud
here that made me chuckle. The Cole twins. Ah,
Keith and Kent Cole. Identical twins. And the
wrecking crew feuded with them for months. It's
one of the oldest tropes in the book. The big,
mean brawlers versus the smaller, faster, identical
twins. And you know the drill. The twins probably
used twin magic to switch places. And eventually
that WCW run fizzles out too. But being a journeyman
means the journey continues. Literally. We're
going international. A huge part of the career
of a guy like Green. If the U .S. runs dry, you
go to Europe or Japan. In 1994, the wrecking
crew heads to the CWA, the Catch Wrestling Association
in Europe. And there's a really somber detail
in the notes here. They win the CWA tag team
titles, but the context is tragic. It is very
dark. They won the titles in a tournament. But
the reason the titles were vacant was that the
previous champion, a wrestler named Larry Cameron,
had actually died in the ring during a match.
God, that really puts it all in perspective.
It's a stark reminder of the physical toll. Green
and Fury win the belt in the shadow of that.
They only held them for about three weeks. It
was a short reign, but it shows Green was trusted
to carry the company during a crisis. He was
a safe pair of hands. And from Europe, they head
to Japan. Summer of 1995, all Japan pro wrestling.
AJPW in the 90s is the holy grail for purists.
hard -hitting, serious. The Wrecking Crew toured
there, and again, look at their role. They're
beating the rookies, but when they face the top
foreign team, Doug Furness and Dan Crawfett.
They lose. They lose. They were there to make
the legends look good. It's the same story in
a different language. Which brings us to the
late 90s. The Monday Night Wars are heating up,
and Al Green finds his way back to WCW one more
time. But this time, he's solo. And honestly,
he seems strictly there to fill out the card.
Cannon fodder comes to mind. But there is one
specific match in August 1998 that stands out.
Monday Nitro. Al Green versus Goldberg. Goldberg
was the man in 1998. If you were wrestling him,
you were getting speared and jackhammered in
three minutes flat. It was a ritual. But the
meta moment here is fantastic. Kevin Nash Green's
old partner was on guest commentary. He was.
And Nash, being one of the smartest guys in the
business, actually referenced it yeah he acknowledged
green was his former partner and then because
he's kevin nash he made a joke connecting him
to this soul singer of course he did but it's
kind of a full circle moment nash is at the announce
table making millions green is in the ring taking
the spear but the circle wasn't closed yet we
have to talk about the year 2000 oh boy the year
2000 in wcw the russo era notorious for being
chaotic and just Desperate. All of the above.
The company is sinking, bleeding money, and trying
anything to stay afloat. And in this chaos, Al
Green gets repackaged. He is no longer Blade,
no longer Rage. He is the dog. The dog. Okay,
explain this. Was he a cool dog, like the big
dog? No. He was a, well. A human acting like
a dog. He formed a hardcore tag team with Brian
Nobbs from the Nasty Boys. The story is he was
a last minute replacement for Sabu. So they needed
a body. They threw Al Green in there, gave him
a spiked collar and called him the dog. And the
behavior. The notes mention degrading. That's
the only word for it. He would bark. He would
act like an attack dog. And yes, as you teased,
there were spots where he would literally drink
out of a toilet. What? I mean, was he that desperate
for work? That's the question. But you have to
view it through the lens of a journeyman. It's
a paycheck. The writers come up with a gimmick,
no matter how stupid, and you do it or you go
home. Al Green was a pro. He went out there and
did the job. It feels like a humiliation ritual.
It might have been. He only secured five victories
in that whole run. Mostly he was just there to
get hit with trash cans and act like a canine.
Man. From teaming with Kevin Nash to drinking
out of a toilet, that is a rough ride. It was
the dying days of WCW. Soon after, the WWF bought
the company in 2001. And I'm guessing Al Green
wasn't on the must -keep list. His contract wasn't
picked up. And that was pretty much the end of
his full -time career. He didn't disappear completely,
though. He popped up in a few places. A little
bit. A masked gig in a promotion called WXO.
A match in 2007 against Abula the Butcher. And
reality TV, strangely enough. Right. Hogan knows
best. He lived in Florida. He was part of that
extended Hulk Hogan circle. You see him in the
background. Just another reminder, he was always
around the business, even if he wasn't in the
spotlight. So we come to the end. Al Green passed
away on June 14, 2013. He was only 57. COPD.
It had been affecting him for a while. 57 is
far too young, but sadly not uncommon for wrestlers
of that generation. When you look back at it
all... The rookie, Blade, Rage, the dog. What
do you see? He's not a Hall of Famer. No one
is wearing an Al Green t -shirt. No, they aren't.
But if you zoom out, you see a master class in
adaptability. He played every single role the
industry asked of him. Be a monster. Okay, tag
with this rookie. Sure. Put over the young guys.
Done. Act like a dog. Fine. He kept the machine
running. Exactly. He worked for the biggest companies
in the world. He shared the ring with Sting,
Nash, Goldberg, Hogan. You don't get to do that
for 20 years if you aren't dependable and professional.
It's the difference between the guys on the poster
and the guys who make the poster possible. And
that leads me to the big thought I want to leave
you with. When we write history, we obsess over
the Steeles, the Kevin Nash's who become icons.
But think about how different history would look
without the Blades. Without the Al Greens who
stayed behind, who took the losses, who made
the stars look like stars. You can't have a hero
without a villain. You can't have a winner without
someone willing to lose. Precisely. The Al Greens
of the world are the mortar that holds the bricks
together. You might not look at the mortar, but
without it, the whole wall falls down. Well said.
So next time you see a highlight reel of Goldberg
spearing someone, take a second to look at the
guy taking the hit. It might just be Al Green
doing his job. thanks for listening to this deep
dive see you next time