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Lanny Poffo - greatest ever camp/effeminate heel?


JerryvonKramer

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Just happened to watch two of his performances as The Genius recently: the Beefcake match from the 90 Rumble and vs. Hogan and Warrior on SNME before Mania 6.

 

Struck me, not for the first time, that the dude was fucking incredible. I reckon he did that schtick better than Georgeous George.

 

Think he deserved a much much bigger push, think of the matches he could have had in, for example, Honky Tonk Man's spot.

 

How do people rate him here? To me this is a guy that totally gets it like Heenan. I mean everything he does is good, nothing wasted. Played his role to perfection.

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I don't mind Lanny. I think he did his job well. The things I recall more about what I've seen from Lanny are his "Leaping" days before The Genius as a jobber. There's a SNME Battle Royal where Andre head butts him and he just bleeds buckets from it. I'm not sure if it was hard-way though. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but I also believe he wrestled Terry Funk in Funk's WWF debut back in 85. I remember the one time I saw that thinking it was a great squash.

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I really don't care for any effeminate gimmick. It reeks of very cheap and stereotypical gay bashing, so it's no better than a race baiting gimmick to me. Poffo did a good job at it certainly, but a gimmick designed to get "faggot" chant from the audience doesn't get any consideration from me, it's just not fun.

 

Plus there were much better than Poffo in the role, Adrian Street was much better because he was portraying a queer that would actually kick the shit out of you, Street was a though character. And Goldust was also much better because it was more ambiguous, a character that played on stereotypes to make people uneasy. Of course the WWF wasn't nearly subtle enough to book such a character in a compelling way and reverted back into sheer homophobia with Piper. Anyway, Poffo was good at an always embarrassing gimmick, but he certainly wasn't the best nor the most inrtriguing at it. And he wasn't a very good worker contrary to Street or Dustin. Just about decent and totally carryable.

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His shoot is really interesting actually. I heard it while stuck on a train marooned in the snow once. He mentions getting absurd levels of heat in texas to the point where they dialed things back, and I believe that.

 

He has a certain athleticism that Adrian Street did not, but Street had the amazing wrestling and more of an uncomfortable physicality. Poffo was cowardly. Street was coy.

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His shoot is really interesting actually.

Yes. Really one of the best I've heard. It's too bad he never got to work in WCW during the Nitro days, he probably could have had some good TV stuff. The most infamous "paid to stay at home" WCW contract.

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His shoot is really interesting actually.

Yes. Really one of the best I've heard. It's too bad he never got to work in WCW during the Nitro days, he probably could have had some good TV stuff. The most infamous "paid to stay at home" WCW contract.

 

But I wonder how much would Lanny's hands would be tied by Standards & Practices if Lenny & Lodi nixed.

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I read that Macho paid for the Georgeous George gimmick for Lanny to play it in WCW but they literally never called him. He was on $150,000 a year and they never used him. This when Renegade was regularly on TV.

 

I can see the argument that it's cheap heat, but Poffo did it SOOO well, especially working heel. Every little mannerism is just pitch perfect. He's such a total mincing ponce. It's almost impossible not to love it from where I'm sitting. All the little things like bending backwards to go under the ropes, the dainty little cartwheels, doing his hair when he backs off. Just amazing, amazing embodiment of the gimmick. The fact it might have caused riots in Texas is more an endictment of those crowds than the gimmick.

 

Where I see it, is the the heat isn't coming from homophobia, it's coming from the fact that you've got this poncy prancing character who is doing all he can to back out from a real fight. That heat, to me is just another version of the sort of heat that Heenan has as a wrestler. It's an elaboration on the chicken shit heel.

 

I've got to be honest, when I look at that and I look at Adrian Street manhandling Linda, I know which one I find more offensive to 2012 sensibilities.

 

In any case, I think Street and Golddust belong to a slightly different category. They are clearly manifestations in some way of glam rock and psychodrama weirdness. They are as much Bowie or even Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel as they are Georgeous George. Adrian Adonis was much more of a cross-dresser.

 

Poffo as the Genius is just a straightup nancy boy, and that's a pretty unique and awesome gimmick. I don't even think sexuality comes into it. I don't think he was meant to be gay as in liking men, but just a bit of a "big girl's blouse". (do you have that saying in the US? -- like a bit of a girly wimp)

 

The big thing hurting my argument here is that the time period I'm talking about 89-91 is quite limited and he didn't have a huge amount of matches in that time because he was doubling as Perfect's manager for much of it.

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Adrian Street and Lanny Poffo were only KIND OF playing the same gimmick. In the ring, their matches were very different because Street's character was supposed to maybe distract you, or get you off your game so he can start kicking your ass. The Genius was never going to kick your ass. One of them played the gimmick as threatening and the other played it as a total chickenshit "god I wanna see this guy stop running and get killed" type.

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Tracked down the Poffo shoot and only an hr in to it I agree it's really awesome.

 

The fact it might have caused riots in Texas is more an endictment of those crowds than the gimmick.

 

Where I see it, is the the heat isn't coming from homophobia, it's coming from the fact that you've got this poncy prancing character

In the shoot he flat out says homophobia is what he was playing it for. Talks about Terry Funk asking him to "fag it up" a bit more as he originally toned things down when he first got to Texas. Tells a funny story about having heat with Ole Anderson, Ole calling him gay so in retaliation he went around the territory and banged all of Ole's rats.

 

Anyone know anything about Ricky Star? He says that's who he riped the gimmick off from. A few youtube matches poped up on a quick search but I don't have time at the moment to check them out.

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I bought Poffo as an effeminate heel manager for Mr. Perfect far more than I bought him as the repackaged Genius in-ring performer. I think it was just too many years of watching him getting his ass kicked by everyone getting even the slightest push in the WWF...and as well as he did The Genius, I was more like "Why, why, WHY did they not give him this gimmick right off the bat?"

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Anyone know anything about Ricky Star?

As far as I know he was a pretty big star in the 50's who basically used ballerina moves in the ring to frustrate his brawny opponents. I think he was mostly a babyface though, which is funny when one thinks of the stereotypical 50s homophobic crowd, but I'm not 100% sure about that.

 

Edit: Not a ton of info on Starr out there (not even a wiki page apparently), but this blog looks to offer some good info on him: http://rickystarr.blogspot.ca/

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I love the story about how the Poffo family won't accept an induction of Randy Savage into the WWE Hall of Fame unless Angelo and Lanny are inducted too. I can understand them pushing for Angelo, but even with Koko in the Hall, Lanny would easily be the worst guy in there. What an awesomely carny thing to do. I hope it works.

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Anyone know anything about Ricky Star?

As far as I know he was a pretty big star in the 50's who basically used ballerina moves in the ring to frustrate his brawny opponents. I think he was mostly a babyface though, which is funny when one thinks of the stereotypical 50s homophobic crowd, but I'm not 100% sure about that.

 

Edit: Not a ton of info on Starr out there (not even a wiki page apparently), but this blog looks to offer some good info on him: http://rickystarr.blogspot.ca/

 

Starr was a huge attraction across the country at the time, and yeah, I don't think he was a heel, ever. Like Street he was also a legit tough guy and trained shooter.

 

In the history of territorial wrestling was there ever an unlikelier development than Adrian Street getting pushed as the #1 babyface in the mid '80s in Alabama?

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I love the story about how the Poffo family won't accept an induction of Randy Savage into the WWE Hall of Fame unless Angelo and Lanny are inducted too. I can understand them pushing for Angelo, but even with Koko in the Hall, Lanny would easily be the worst guy in there. What an awesomely carny thing to do. I hope it works.

Worst than the limo driver ? Worst than Koko B. Ware ? I mean, Lanny did work a match with Hulk on SNME at least. That's more than Koko ever did. The HoF is bullshit anyway, but objectively Lanny isn't any worse than some of them already in it.

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I love the story about how the Poffo family won't accept an induction of Randy Savage into the WWE Hall of Fame unless Angelo and Lanny are inducted too. I can understand them pushing for Angelo, but even with Koko in the Hall, Lanny would easily be the worst guy in there. What an awesomely carny thing to do. I hope it works.

If they did it as a family unit like the Von Erichs, it could work okay. Hell I could probably come up with a great WWE HALL OF FAME CLASS OF 2013 LANNY POFFO video, going on about how he was one of the first (if not the first) published wrestler authors, the suit of armor, Poffomania, how he managed Perfect and the Beverly Brothers, how he was one of the first people to popularize the moonsault in NA. That he's one of the few people with a win over Hogan. They could spin the hell out of it pretty easily.

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