So I want you to picture a scene with me here.
It's October. 1995. Right in the thick of it.
Exactly. We are right in the absolute middle
of the Monday Night Wars. This is the peak of
professional wrestling's popularity. The crowds
are huge. And you're watching this broadcast.
Lasers are cutting through the smoke in the arena.
The crowd is just going absolutely ballistic.
And right in the center of the aisle, there is
a block of ice. And we should clarify, this is
not a classy ice sculpture. Oh, no, no. It's
a massive, theatrically fake, styrofoam -looking
block of ice that is supposedly frozen. solid,
sitting right there in the aisle in Detroit,
basically pausing the entire pay -per -view.
It's peak 90s wrestling chaos. It really is.
And the premise here is that inside this block
of ice is a man, a very, very large man. The
storyline is that he's some kind of prehistoric
monster who has literally been thought out for
one specific purpose, to destroy Hulk Hogan.
So naturally ice explodes, he breaks out. But
here is where my brain just completely stops
working when I watch the tape back. He isn't
wearing a fur coat. He isn't wearing like a prehistoric
loincloth or anything that says Ice Monster.
He is wrapped from head to toe in dirty white
bandages. He looks exactly like a mummy. Exactly
like a mummy. And yet the announcers, without
even a hint of irony in their voices, are screaming
at the top of their lungs, it's the Yeti! The
Yeti. A mummy wrapped in toilet paper gauze named
the Yeti. It makes absolutely no sense. He lumbers
down to the ring, stiff as a board, looking like
he can barely bend his knees, and he proceeds
to apply what is historically known as the double
bear hug on Hulk Hogan. It is awkward, it is
physically uncomfortable to watch, and it is
honestly one of the most infamous moments in
television history. And usually, when we see
a clip like that pop up on social media, we just
laugh, right? We scroll past it, we think, oh,
it's just another clumsy, uncoordinated stiff
in a terrible costume. But that is exactly why
we are here today, because that default reaction,
that assumption that this guy was just a carnival
attraction, it's completely wrong. The man inside
those bandages wasn't some clumsy guy they just
found on the street because he was tall. He was
Ron Race. And Ron Race was a legitimate, highly
skilled division. basketball standout. Right.
We're talking about a guy who could run the floor,
shoot with genuine finesse, and pull down rebounds
against future NBA players. It's just one of
the most jarring disconnects you will ever see
in the history of the entertainment industry.
Yeah. Because on one hand, you have this world
-class athlete. And on the other hand, you have
the mindset of 90s wrestling promoters, this
monster factory mentality that actively tried
to strip away every ounce of that athleticism
just to make him look like a Saturday morning
cartoon character. So today, we are doing a deep
dive into the man behind the mummy. We are going
to completely unpack the career of Ron Race.
We're tracking his journey from the hardwood
of Santa Clara University to the absolute insanity
of the Dungeon of Doom, his transformation into
a giant ninja, a grunge outcast, and eventually
a character literally just named Evil. And the
mission here for this deep dive is really bigger
than just laughing at bad 90s gimmicks. We want
to analyze what Ron Race's career trajectory
tells us about the industry back then. It's a
fascinating case study on how they utilized or
really how they misused size. If you were seven
feet tall, you were treated totally differently.
You're a commodity. But you're also kind of a
prisoner to your own genetics. We're going to
look at how a guy with record -breaking agility
was literally forced to walk like a zombie, just
because that's what a promoter thought a giant
was supposed to do. Let's start right at the
foundation. Because I think when people hear
basketball background for a pro wrestler, they
kind of roll their eyes and assume, you know,
OK, he played a little bit in high school. Maybe
he sat on the end of the bench at some community
college. Yeah, they assume it's padded on his
resume. Right, exactly. But that is not the story
here at all. We are talking about elite -level
pedigree. To really understand Ron Race, you
have to look at the genetics and the environment
he was raised in. He was born on April 26, 1970
in San Jose, California. But the athletic pedigree
in his family goes back a full generation. His
father, Ron Race Sr., wasn't just a guy who shot
hoops in the driveway. He was a serious, top
-tier player. He played for the University of
Cincinnati, right? He did. And not just play,
he was on the Cincinnati teams that won back
to back NCAA national titles in 1961 and 1962.
I mean, an NCAA title is the absolute peak of
the mountain in college sports. That is a massive
deal. It's huge. And even though that was a different
era of basketball, this is right around the time
Oscar Robertson had just moved on to the pros.
The standard of excellence at Cincinnati was
incredibly high. So Ron Race, the son, is born
into a household where elite athletic performance
isn't just encouraged, it's the baseline standard.
He grows up with this legacy, hits a massive
growth spurt, and ends up playing for Montevista
High School in Tupertino, California. And the
numbers he put up at Montevista are frankly absurd.
I have the stat sheet right here in front of
me and I honestly had to double check it when
we were pulling the sources for this deep dive.
He scored 2082 career points in high school.
Let's really pause on that number for a second
so you listening can grasp this. 2082 points
in the mid 80s high school basketball for a seven
foot kid usually meant exactly one thing. You
plant yourself right under the rim. You keep
your hands straight up in the air and you wait
for a rebound to fall into your lap. You were
basically just a piece of stationary furniture.
Exactly. You are an obstacle. To score over 2
,000 points, you cannot just be a garbage man
cleaning up missed shots and getting tip -ins.
You have to be the absolute focal point of the
offense. You have to have incredible stamina,
too. Massive stamina. You have to be able to
run the floor and transition, beat the defense
down the court. You have to have the footwork
to avoid fouling out. which is always an issue
for big men at that age. And crucially, you have
to have a soft shooting touch. You just don't
get to 2000 points strictly on dunks and layups.
And it's not like he was playing against terrible
competition either. He competed in the 1987 Central
Coast Section Championship. So he's a winner.
He's a high volume scorer and he is huge. That
naturally earns him a scholarship to Santa Clara
University, which is a division I program. And
this is where the story gets really, really interesting
to me, because he doesn't just go there and wash
out. He plays four full years. Which is a metric
that constantly gets overlooked when people talk
about big men in sports. He played a total of
116 career games at the Division I level. I want
you to think about the physics of the human body
for a second. When you are seven feet tall and
you're weighing somewhere close to 300 pounds,
your knees, your ankles, your lower back, they
are all under immense constant torque. pounding
on hardwood floors every single day. Right. For
a player of that sheer size, to survive four
full years of D1 basketball without suffering
a massive career -ending structural breakdown,
a blown ACL, shattered foot bones that tells
you volumes about his physical conditioning and
his biomechanics, he was put together right.
He wasn't fragile at all. He was a tank. A highly
mobile tank. Over those 116 games, his career
averages were 10 .7 points and 7 .4 rebounds.
But if you look at his peak season, the 1990
to 1990, He was an absolute monster. He led the
entire West Coast Conference in total rebounds
with 320. Averaging 11 rebounds a game. 11 boards
a game. And he was named to the all West Coast
Conference team twice. Once in that 90 -91 season
and again in the 91 -92 season. Averaging a double
-double. double -digit points and rebounds at
the Division I level is usually the golden ticket.
That is the giant neon sign pointing to the NBA.
But there is one specific stat from the sources
you highlighted in our notes that I think proves
his raw athletic ability even more than the rebounding
numbers. Yeah, it's his field goal percentage.
He actually holds the Santa Clara School record
for career field goal percentage at .606. So
he shot over 60 % for his entire college career.
For the non -basketball nerds listening to us
right now, can you break down why that specific
stat is so vital? Why does shooting percentage
prove he was agile? Because maintaining a high
field goal percentage for a center implies that
he had what scouts call soft hands. It means
that when a point guard threads a fast hard pass
through a crowded lane, Reece can catch it cleanly
in traffic without fumbling it. It means he has
supreme body control in the air. He isn't just
wildly flinging the ball at the backboard hoping
for a foul. He has touch. He understands spacing.
He understands angles off the glass. It requires
a level of hand -eye coordination that most human
beings that size simply do not possess. Oh, he's
also fifth in school history for career rebounds
with 851. So this brings up the most obvious
contradiction. We have a legitimate seven -footer.
He's durable. He has soft hands. He's an elite,
record -breaking rebounder. And he graduates
in the early 90s. This is an era where the NBA
is absolutely obsessed with size. You have Akim
Olajuwon, Shaquille O 'Neal, Patrick Ewing, David
Robinson dominating the league. Why isn't Ron
Reese getting drafted? Why isn't he on an NBA
roster? It comes down to the tweener curse of
that very specific era in professional basketball.
In the early to mid 90s, the center position
in the NBA was becoming incredibly, punishingly
physical. It was the era of the banger. You had
to have the sheer mass to push Shaquille O 'Neal
off the low block. Which almost nobody could
do. Right. And Reese, while he was tall, was
built a bit leaner. He was much more finesse
oriented. He wasn't a bulldozer in the paint.
On the flip side, the power forward position
was getting faster. So Reese was maybe a step
too slow to guard the quick new breed power forwards
out on the perimeter, but perhaps not heavy or
rugged enough to stop the true 350 pound monsters
down low. So he essentially falls into that tactical
gap, good enough to absolutely dominate the college
game, but maybe mechanically a half step out
of sync for where the pros were heading. Exactly.
And you have to remember, back then, there was
no G -League. There wasn't this robust patient
development system where a team could stash a
guy for three years to let him bulk up. If you
didn't stick immediately in training camp, you
were out. He could have gone to Europe to play,
sure. But for a seven -footer flying coach on
regional airlines across the Atlantic, playing
in freezing gyms with concrete floors, that is
a recipe for a very short, painful career. So
the NBA door gently closes on him, but the big
man paradigm immediately opens another door.
Because if you are seven feet tall, you're a
proven athlete, and you can't play in the NBA,
there is one entertainment industry that will
always, always take your call. Professional wrestling.
It is the classic pivot. But the cool thing about
Reese is that he didn't just walk into a local
armory gym and started throwing guys around.
He actually sought out a specific, highly respected
mentor. By 1994, he is being trained by Big John
Stud. Which gives him instant undeniable credibility
in the locker room. Big John Stud was a massive
legend. He literally main evented the first WrestleMania
against Andre the Giant. It's a crucial credential.
Stud knew exactly how to work as a giant. He
understood the psychology of being the biggest
man in the room, how you don't need to bump around,
how every movement needs to mean something. And
for a while, they actually teamed up together
on the independent circuit. They were billed
as the giants of wrestling. I love that. Yeah,
it was brilliant. This was basically Reese's
apprenticeship. He made his official debut on
March 12th, 1994, working for the International
Wrestling Federation, which was a New England
based promotion. He was learning how to be a
worker. I want to clarify that term for our listeners,
worker. because we are going to use it quite
a bit in this deep dive. In the context of pro
wrestling, a worker isn't just an employee on
the payroll. Right. Being a good worker is high
praise. It means you are someone who can execute
matches safely. You can tell a coherent physical
story in the ring, and you can make the live
audience believe in the struggle. Reeves wasn't
just standing there being tall. He was actively
learning the craft of the business. And he's
working the indies, figuring out his persona.
Initially he's just wrestling under his birth
name. But by 1995, he starts working for the
National Wrestling Conference out in Las Vegas
under the ring name SWAT. Which is a great 90s
indie gimmick. You assume it was based on some
kind of heavily armored police enforcer. And
this is where we start to see the distortion
of his physical reality. During the SWAT era,
he is officially billed at 7 '2 and 365 pounds.
That's the classic wrestling tax. Promoters will
always add 2 or 3 inches and 40 pounds to a big
guy. But even at his real, legitimate height,
which was around seven feet, he's an absolute
spectacle. And that kind of physical spectacle
eventually catches the eye of world championship
wrestling. WCW. It's 1995. This is the big leagues.
This is Ted Turner's checkbook. Monday Nitro
has just launched and they bring Ron Race in.
But they don't bring him in as Ron Race, the
agile basketball player. They don't even bring
him in his swat. They bring him in for a very
specific, incredibly bizarre angle involving
a faction called the Dungeon of Doom. We really
have to set the stage for the Dungeon of Doom
because it represents peak mid 90s camp. It's
almost hard to explain how weird this was. Their
sole purpose as a group was to eradicate Hulkamania.
It was a collection of cartoonish villains. You
had Kamala the Ugandan giant. You had a guy literally
playing a human shark. You had the zodiac. And
they were all managed by Kevin Sullivan, who
was playing this sort of screaming demonic wizard
hiding out in a cave. It felt very much like
a comic book or like an episode of Power Rangers.
It was very Batman 1966 energy. And as they were
building up to their big October pay -per -view
Halloween havoc, they had this massive main event
signed. The giant, who most people now know as
Paul White, or the big show challenging Hulk
Hogan for the world title. But the Dungeon of
Doom wanted an insurance policy. They needed
a surprise element to guarantee that Hogan would
be destroyed once and for all. So to build this
up, on the October 23rd episode of Nitro, they
unveil this giant block of ice, and out of this
ice comes the Yeti. Now we touched on the visual
a bit in the intro of the mummy wraps, but I
really want to dig into the why. Why on earth
did WCW creative take an elite Division I athlete
and wrap him so tightly in bandages that he could
barely even walk? This really gets to the core
of the insecurity of wrestling promoters. At
that specific time, the giant Paul White was
the shiny new toy in WCW. He was being billed
as the storyline son of Andre the Giant. He was
billed at seven foot four. But in reality, Paul
White and Ron Race were very, very close in actual
height. There was maybe an inch difference between
them. And in the deeply flawed logic of professional
wrestling, you absolutely cannot have your new
surprise monster look even slightly smaller than
your current monster. It ruins the illusion.
Precisely. The visual hierarchy has to be maintained.
So WCW management made a decision that effectively
neutralized every single athletic advantage Ron
Rees had. They put massive lifts in his wrestling
boots. We are talking three or four solid inches
of platform. And then when they applied the mummy
bandages, they didn't just wrap his face. They
kept wrapping upwards high above his skull to
create this weird, stiff cylindrical turban effect
on top of his head. So they're artificially engineering
his body to appear seven foot six. Yes. But think
about the biomechanics of what they just did
to this man. You take a guy who is used to planting
his feet firmly and pivoting quickly on a hardwood
basketball court, and you put him on platform
stilts. Then, you wrap his legs in thick gauze
so tightly that he literally has no knee flexion.
You have taken a world -class athlete and turned
him into a terrified statue. Oh man, that completely
explains the walk. When he breaks out of the
ice and comes down the aisle, he's doing this
bizarre, stiff -leg Frankenstein stomp. When
I watched it, I thought it was just terrible
character work. But it's not because he's uncoordinated.
It's because he is terrified of tripping over
his own platform boots on live television. Exactly.
He is just trying as hard as not to fall on his
face in front of millions of people. And that
mechanical limitation leads directly to the infamous
double bear hug. So he gets into the ring. The
giant already has Hulk Hogan trapped in a bear
hug from behind. Reece playing the Yeti comes
lumbering in from the front. But because he's
on those massive lifts, and because he literally
cannot bend his knees, he can't get low enough
to apply a standard wrestling hold. So he just
sort of leans forward. And wraps his arms around
Hogan's neck. And because he's leaning, he has
to continually thrust his hips forward just to
keep his balance. It looked like he was trying
to dry hump Paul Kogan into submission. It was
visually disastrous, just completely awkward.
But if you listen to the commentary during that
segment, it tells you everything you need to
know about the promoter's priority. Tony Chiavone
is screaming into the microphone, the Yeti is
taller than the giant. That was it. That was
the only goal of the entire stunt. They sacrificed
the performer's dignity, his safety, and his
skill set just to get that one specific sound
bite on the tape. They absolutely did. And the
grand irony of all this effort is that the moment
that segment ended, the gimmick was practically
dead. The Yeti costume vanishes entirely. It's
one of the great unexplained disappearing acts
in wrestling history. He never wears the mummy
wrappings again. Ever. I want to. So you would
logically think, OK, the mummy thing clearly
didn't work. The bear hug was embarrassing. Let's
strip the bandages off, put him in standard wrestling
trunks, and let the guy actually wrestle. Show
off that Santa Clara agility. But no, WCW creative
goes back into their lab and they come back with
a ninja. The super giant ninja. I just have to
say the name out loud again to let it sink in,
the super giant ninja. It genuinely sounds like
a character of five -year -old events while smashing
action figures together in the sandbox. It really
does. It's completely absurd. And it really speaks
to the total lack of long -term planning in WCW
at the time. They had this massive athletic human
being on the payroll, and they had absolutely
no clue what to do with him. So they literally
just threw a black hood over his head. Did Reese
have any kind of martial arts background? Was
he a black belt in anything that would justify
a ninja gimmick? Not that we know of, no. But
in the wrestling business, especially back then,
Ninja was basically just shorthand for foreign
bad guy who throws karate chops. They didn't
care about his actual background. He made three
televised appearances under this gimmick. He
was in the massive 60 -man battle royal at the
World War III pay -per -view in November 1995.
He had a singles match on WCW Prime against Barry
Houston. And he wrestled the one -man gang on
WCW Saturday night in January 1996. And it was
during that match with One Man Gang that he was
officially renamed the Supergiant Ninja, right?
Right. But again, the costume completely limited
him. In professional wrestling, conveying emotion
through facial expressions is 50 % of the job.
You have to show pain, anger, frustration. You
cannot do any of that when you are wearing a
full -face black mask. It completely isolates
you from the crowd. So the ninja phase inevitably
fails. Finally, later in 1996, somebody comes
to their senses. They let him take the mask off
entirely and he becomes Big Ron Studd. Which
was by far the most logical step they had taken.
It pays direct homage to his real -life trainer,
Big John Studd. It uses his actual size, it drops
the cartoon nonsense, but unfortunately by this
point he'd already been defined downward by the
booking. For the listener who might not know
the backstage terminology, what exactly do you
mean by defined downward? In the ecosystem of
professional wrestling, audience perception is
everything. Once the fans see you as a joke or
as a clumsy monster who can't win a match, it
is incredibly difficult to change that perception.
The fans had seen him stumble around as a mummy,
they'd seen him flounder as a ninja, and the
match -booking as Big Ron Stud didn't help rehabilitate
him. He transitioned into becoming what we call
enhancement talent. We often hear the term jobber
thrown around by fans. Break that down for us
because it's not just a guy who goes out there
and loses, is it? There is an art to it. Absolutely.
It's a vital necessary function in the industry.
An enhancement talent or a jobber is there to
make the star look like an absolute million bucks.
When a guy like Chris Benoit or Lex Luger wrestles
a seven -footer like Ron Reyes, the story being
told to the audience is, look how incredibly
strong Benoit is. He just suplexed a giant. Reece's
entire job was to be the mountain that the hero
struggles to climb. So he's actively selling
the offense. He's making their moves look devastating.
Exactly. He is giving them the rub, which is
the industry term for transferring credibility
to the other guy. And honestly, it takes a genuinely
good worker to do that safely. You have to know
exactly how to position your body, how to shift
your weight to help the smaller guy lift you.
If Ron Reece goes dead weight out of spite, Crispin
Hawaii could literally break his own back trying
to suplex him. The fact that Reece was consistently
trusted to work with top tier guys like Randy
Savage, Lex Luger, and Jeff Jarrett proves that
the boys in the back of the locker room knew
he was safe, athletic, and professional. But
the problem is, for the fans watching at home,
he's just the big guy who always loses. Exactly.
He had no heat, no emotional connection or momentum
with the crowd. He was just a very tall obstacle.
So seeing the writing on the wall, he leaves
WCW by the end of 1996. He goes back to the independent
circuit, probably to regroup, but then he returns
to WCW in early 1998. And this this next era
is the one I really want to dig into, because
I feel like this is the first and only time on
national television we actually saw the human
being, Ron Reiss. Yes. This is the Reiss era,
spelled R -E -E -S -E, and he makes his return
on the March 2, 1998 edition of Monday Nitro.
He joins a faction known as Raven's Flock. We
really have to contextualize 1998 for you listening,
because the mood of wrestling and pop culture
in general had completely shifted. We aren't
in the goofy comic book dungeon of doom era anymore.
We are in the era of Stone Cold Steve Austin,
extreme wrestling, and grunge music. Edgy, reality
-based storylines were taking over. Right. Pop
culture had totally embraced the anti -hero.
The Outcast. And Raven, the leader of the Flock,
was the perfect embodiment of that cultural shift.
He was this grungy, depressed, highly philosophical
cult leader who would sit in the corner of the
arena looking miserable. The Flock was his group
of societal misfits. And Raven brings Reese into
this group. But crucially, he doesn't dress him
up as a monster. He doesn't put a mask on him.
He dresses him like he's a roadie for Pearl Jam.
Just a flannel shirt, cut off jean shorts and
heavy combat boots. But the narrative explanation
that Raven provided for bringing him in was absolutely
brilliant. Raven claimed in his promos that Reese
was an outcast from society, specifically because
of his massive size. Which is, when you think
about it, profoundly true for a seven -foot human
being in the real world. It's the most grounded,
realistic thing any promoter ever did with him.
Raven essentially said, society looks at you
like a freak. You don't fit in their doorways.
You don't fit in their cars. People stare at
you in restaurants. You are totally isolated.
But here, with a flock amongst the other rejects,
you are accepted. That is actual nuanced character
development. It uses his real physical reality
to create genuine emotional stakes. It was a
great angle. And more importantly, it finally
allowed Reese to work a wrestling style that
actually suited his athletic background. His
role was the enforcer for the group, the heavy.
Yeah. Most of the time, he just stood menacingly
at ringside. But when he did get into the ring,
he was finally allowed to move without platform
boots or mummy bandages. There is a very specific
match that wrestling critics always point to
from this era. It's from the Great American Bash
pay -per -view in 1998. It's Reese going up against
Juventud Guerrero. Now, to set the scene... Juventude
is a legendary cruiserweight. He is incredibly
fast. And he is maybe five foot six and 160 pounds
soaking wet. This is the ultimate textbook David
versus Goliath setup. And this specific match
is the absolute proof of concept for Ron Reyes'
underlying athleticism. Why that match in particular?
Because wrestling a guy with that extreme of
a size and ski difference is inherently dangerous.
The speed discrepancy alone is a nightmare for
timing. There are spots in that match where Uvintude
hits a Hurrican Gerona, which is a move where
he literally leaps up, wraps his legs around,
raises his neck, and violently spins around to
take him down. For Reece to take that bump safely,
he has to have absolutely perfect timing. He
has to pivot, feed his body into the momentum
of the move, and carefully protect Uvintude on
the way down so neither of them gets carolized.
And that goes right back to the college basketball
footwork we talked about. 100%. A genuinely clumsy,
uncoordinated giant would have broken Juventude's
neck on live pay -per -view. Reese made Juventude
look like a spectacular giant killer. Now, Reese
lost that match, of course, because that was
the storyline they were telling, but purely from
a physical performance standpoint, it showed
everyone exactly what he could have been if they
hadn't wasted three years treating him like a
movie prop. The end of his run with the flock
was pretty brutal visually too. His last appearance
was on June 29, 1998. He wrestles Perry Saturn
and the finish of the match is Saturn hitting
him with a move called the Death Valley Driver.
Which is just insane to watch. Saturn literally
lifts a 300 plus pound man up across his shoulders
and drops him onto his head and neck. It was
a massive feat of strength for Saturn. But again,
people don't realize that Reece had to aggressively
post up and hold his own dead weight steady to
make that lift even physically possible. He was
the perfect structurally sound dance partner
for these smaller dynamic wrestlers. So as happens
in wrestling, the flock eventually disbands.
Storylines move on and Reece's WCW run quietly
fizzles out. But his career doesn't end there.
He has this really fascinating long tail to his
journey. In 2002, he travels over to Japan. And
the wrestling culture in Japan is a completely
different animal. In Japanese wrestling, which
is known as puroresu, they have a deep respect
for the gaijin monster, the massive foreign bad
guy. Think of legends like Big Van Vader or Stan
Hansen. They're treated like final bosses. Reese
goes over there and tours under the ring named
Big Bomb Jones. Big Bomb Jones, that is incredible.
It's a very clear, deliberate homage to Big Van
Vader. He was continuing that proud tradition
of playing the unstoppable American Kaiju. And
in Japan, the wrestling style is notoriously
stiffer, it's harder hitting, very physical.
Reese could handle it perfectly. He fitted incredibly
well over there because for the first time, his
sheer size was respected as a legitimate athletic
threat rather than just being used as a silly
carnival attraction. Then he eventually comes
back to the States. It's 2003, 2004, and he starts
working for Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling,
which was a promotion run by the legendary Dusty
Rhodes down in the Southeast. And he goes back
to the big Ron Stud name. But the best part,
he forms a tag team with Glacier. The irony of
that pairing is just delicious to me. You have
Ron Race, the man who debuted as the Yeti the
Monster, literally frozen in a block of ice,
teaming up with Glacier, a guy whose entire gimmick
was essentially a rip -off of Sub -Zero from
Mortal Kombat. What do you even call that team?
Fire and ice, or I guess ice and ice. Let's go
with cold front. But the amazing thing is, they
were successful. They actually won the TCW Tag
Team Championships on January 3, 2004. It really
showed that Reece had a good sense of humor about
his own career. He wasn't sitting at home bitter
about the mummy suit. He was still out there
working, enjoying the business, winning belts.
And then we reach what I can only describe as
the final boss level of weirdness in his career.
The year is 2005. He joins a promotion called
Ring of Glory. Now, this is a deep cut. Ring
of Glory was a passion project started by Vince
Russo. Russo was the highly controversial head
writer for the WWF during the Attitude Era. He
became a born -again Christian, and he started
this promotion with the explicit idea of using
professional wrestling to tell literal biblical
allegories. And in this faith -based promotion,
Ron Reese is given a brand new character name.
His name was simply Evil. Just Evil. No last
name, no edgy nickname. Just Evil. He was booked
as the literal physical embodiment of human sin.
That is incredibly heavy. I mean, from a basketball
player to a mummy to the concept of sin itself.
And who exactly did the concept of Evil wrestle?
On February 26, 2005, Evil had a match against
a character named Joshua the Carpenter. Joshua
the Carpenter. I feel like I'm sitting in Sunday
school right now. I mean, the theological symbolism
was about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the
face. Joshua the carpenter, clearly representing
Jesus, defeats evil in the center of the ring.
Reese did the absolute ultimate job. He literally
lay down on his back and let good triumph over
evil. And we're reporting this impartially, of
course, just looking at the narrative of the
promotion, but you have to admit it's a wild
booking decision. It's actually kind of poetic
in a deeply bizarre wrestling kind of way. If
you look at the arc, his career started out frozen
in a block of ice, went through a masked ninja
phase, transitioned into a 90s grunge phase,
and ultimately ended as a walking theological
metaphor. It really does cover the entire weird
spectrum of human imagination. There are very
few resumes in entertainment that look like that.
We should also briefly mention, just to cap off
his entertainment footprint, he had a quick cup
of coffee in Hollywood too. He was cast in a
movie called Assault on Death Mountain in 1999.
Which, funny enough, starred Hulk Hogan. It was
part of the Shadow Warriors series. Reece played
a character named Lassie. So even in Hollywood,
he was still orbiting the Hulk Hogan universe.
It seems like his entire professional life was
somehow tethered to Hogan in one way or another.
So let's try to bring this deep dive in for a
landing. We've looked at the high school scoring
records, the college rebounding stats, the terrible
costumes, the booking decisions. When you step
back and look at the absolute entirety of Ron
Reese's career, what is the ultimate headline
for you? For me, the headline is clearly The
misunderstanding of size. Ron Rees was ultimately
a victim of bad timing. He arrived in the mainstream
wrestling industry at the exact moment when the
business was trying to transition from the cartoon
era to a more reality -based product. But the
promoters in charge were still stubbornly stuck
in that cartoon mindset. They saw the height
and they completely missed the athlete standing
right in front of them. Exactly. They saw a seven
-foot man and thought, mummy. They didn't see
Agile Big Man. If a guy with Ron Race's exact
physical profile and basketball background shows
up in wrestling today, in 2024, think about how
drastically different his career would be. We
have guys right now like Lance Archer or Big
Bill, who used to be W. Morrissey. They are absolute
giants, but they wrestle like fluid athletes.
They wear standard gear. They cut their own promos.
They are respected for their athleticism. But
Reese was forced to be a special effect. And
being a special effect inherently has a very
short shelf life. Once the initial shock of the
mummy breaking out of the ice wears off, you
have nothing left to offer the audience. But
the real tragedy is that Ron Race did have something
left to offer. He had the physical skills. He
just rarely, if ever, got the permission to actually
use them. And yet here's the paradox we have
to acknowledge. Without that terrible mummy costume,
are we doing a 60 -minute deep dive on him today?
That is the ultimate paradox of professional
wrestling. If he had just been booked properly
from day one, if he had just been Ron Ray's solid
mid -card athletic big man, he might be completely
forgotten by history. But because he was the
Yeti, because he was forced to break out of that
Styrofoam ice and deliver that notoriously awkward
bear hug, he is immortal. He is an internet meme
that will live forever. It's a very strange kind
of fame, isn't it? He wanted to be the next Big
Jesus Ted, a respected giant of the ring, but
instead he became the one and only Yeti. And
maybe, at the end of the day, that's enough.
He provided millions of fans with one of the
absolute most memorable surreal visuals of the
1990s It definitely wasn't good wrestling in
the traditional sense, but it was undeniably
unforgettable television So here is my final
challenge to you listening right now when this
deep dive ends Don't just immediately move on
to the next thing in your feed. I want you to
pull up your browser Search for Yeti Bear Hug
Halloween Havoc. Look at the ridiculous bandages.
Look closely at the massive lifts hidden in his
boots. But this time, look past the absurdity
of it all. Look at the sheer size of the man's
shoulders. Look at the way he tries to move despite
being completely restricted. And remember, there
is a Division I rebounding leader, a man with
incredible soft hands and a family legacy of
champions trapped inside that suit. It completely
changes the viewing experience. Once you know
the backstory, you stop laughing at him and you
actually start rooting for him. You realize he's
just a guy doing the absolute best he can with
a terrible hand dealt by management. It brings
up a really provocative thought though, something
for you to mull over. wrestling industry, by
its very nature, inevitably pigeonhole anyone
over seven feet tall into these bizarre novelty
acts. Or was Ron Race simply an unlucky victim
of the chaotic, disorganized, creative environment
of WCW in the 1990s? Could a giant ever just
be a normal competitor? It's a fascinating question
about the psychology of combat sports entertainment.
It really is. Well, that is Ron Race, the man
behind the mummy, a genuinely fascinating career
that deserves way, way more respect. than a block
of Styrofoam ice. Thanks for taking this deep
dive with us. Take curious.