R.I.P Butch Reed

[MoS]

Terrible news. He was one of the best, most underrated wrestlers of the 1980s. RIP

[Blehschmidt]

That's terrible to here. 

I never knew the greatness of Reed until a couple years ago when I got hold of the comp done on him. I was blown away by how much I enjoyed him, having only really known him as "The Natural" before that. Definitely underrated both in the ring and on the mic. RIP Big Man

[El-P]

Really  underrated indeed, he's the caliber of guys who could have been NWA champ. Talk about big guys who could fly in the 80's, he was doing one hell of a Barbarianesque top rope clothesline. Carried Doom too, as Simmons was great for big spots but still green, Reed was the one keeping it together. Kinda wasted in WWF, he's the kind of guy you figure would have a big feud with Hogan.

[SirEdger]

Wish I had seen more of his Doom run. 2 massive heart attacks in such a short span will do that to you. Hell, my grandfather had 3 minor ones in a span of a week over 10 years ago and he got lucky.

[KB8]

Man, I loved Reed. He was such an awesome find going through the Mid-South stuff and I get hyped for every new Reed match I come across (the new Reed stuff from NWA On Demand was a treasure). Genuinely one of my three favourite wrestlers of all time. 

[MoS]

 

[Coffey]

Just wanna chime in that Butch Reed was great. Rest in peace.

[Sweet Brown Koko]

Loved Butch Reed. Awesome worker. Doom was such a criminally underrated team and he was great.

This is really sad.

[Dr. Dunk]

I saw Reed when he was in Georgia as a "Tough" babyface. I think he feuded with Buzz Sawyer and beat him in a hair match. Totally awesome as a heel and face in Mid-South and then he was wasted in New York.

[Dav'oh]

The constant parade of new talents I'd only read about in the newsstand magazines (I wasn't tape-trading, or even "smart", yet) was one of my favourite things about the old WWF. I got excited for everyone from Harley Race to Ron Bass, Dory Funk to Superstar Graham v.3, but the one I most wanted to see do well was "the Natural". I was disappointed not by him but by his run and he seemed to disappear. Fortunately he had that run in Doom to remind people how good he was. The Meltzer thread here at PWO talks about him being a possible NWA champion, and of course legend has it he was in line for an I/C title run. Great talent, I'm not sure what held him back from being a bigger star than he was but now's probably not the time. Rest in Peace, Bruce.

[MoS]

9 hours ago, El-P said:

he's the kind of guy you figure would have a big feud with Hogan.

He absolutely should have, but Ernie Ladd excepted, most promoters did not book black wrestlers as heels. And of course they were not going to give a black wrestler their world title. 

This might be a topic for another thread, but how many black wrestlers did Hogan feud with in his big WWF face run?

[MoS]

7 minutes ago, Dav'oh said:

Great talent, I'm not sure what held him back from being a bigger star than he was 

I mean I think it's obvious what held him back

[Dav'oh]

31 minutes ago, MoS said:

I mean I think it's obvious what held him back

"Not-being-better-than-Flair" was the reason he never got a run as NWA champ, rather than race, going by what I've read. I don't recall him being a standout drug-user in the All-Star Recreational Drug Abusers XI that was the WWF locker-room in the mid-late eighties. I don't think he ever dangled Vince out of a window. 
I was sort of allowing for the entrenched racism when I wondered why his ceiling seemed relatively low. Even if his skin colour was working against him, I think he could've gone higher. 

44 minutes ago, MoS said:

how many black wrestlers did Hogan feud with in his big WWF face run?

How big was the pool of credible-against-Hogan black wrestlers back then? Reed and Kamala. Bad News Brown. Abby? Heel Atlas, heel JYD? PWI pimped Larry Cameron pretty hard.

[PeteF3]

Don't forget Zeus.

1989 Ron Simmons would have been a perfectly serviceable house show opponent for Hogan. He could have faced either one of the Zambuies earlier on, though I don't see the WWF pushing a militant African gimmick. 

[NintendoLogic]

Hogan's best-drawing opponents were either giants (Andre, Kamala) or smaller guys who were super workers (Orndorff, Savage), and Reed was neither. At least not in 1987, because his work had fallen off greatly by that point. He had been scheduled to beat Steamboat for the IC title, but that went out the window after he no-showed a series of TV tapings because he was burned out from being on the road all the time. I certainly can't blame him. Mid-South and the WWF were probably the two toughest companies to work for schedule-wise, and going from the former to the latter was like jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.

[rovert]

The consensus around him and his work everywhere says a lot about Butch. Also, all are things this forum, in particular, have stated endlessly due to the DVDR Mid South project in detail.

This tribute by Nancy's sister is probably the hardest one to read.

 

[flyonthewall2983]

What happened to his WCW run in 92? I vividly remember seeing him and The Barbarian behind Cactus Jack cutting a promo (with emphasis on Reed being Ron Simmons' former tag team partner) followed by a real barnburner of a tag match with them against Dustin Rhodes and Barry Windham. Then, nothing. 

[funkdoc]

Guessing that would've been around the time he decided to retire to save his marriage?  Think that was the story anyway...

[C.S.]

12 minutes ago, funkdoc said:

Guessing that would've been around the time he decided to retire to save his marriage?  Think that was the story anyway...

I always heard he no-showed an event (or was late to one) and Bill Watts fired him because he had a zero tolerance policy at the time and was looking for cuts like that as any excuse to save money.