Going Ringside With The Local Station

On Wednesday’s packed episode of “Going Ringside,” we start with WWE Smackdown Tag Team Champion Grayson Waller. Waller recently won the Smackdown tag team championship with Austin Theory at WrestleMania 40.

Waller will perform in Jacksonville when WWE Smackdown comes to the city on May 17.

The Australian-born Waller is known for his brash style and willingness to say things that make him a lightning rod for controversy. He courted the most media attention late last year when he called music superstar Taylor Swift a “6″ and challenged her boyfriend Travis Kelce to a fight.

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At one point in her life Marilyn Monroe uttered this phrase: “We are all of us stars, and we deserve to twinkle.”

But in the past year, the star that is “Timeless” Toni Storm has done anything but “twinkle.” We’re now into the supernova portion of her career.

Traveling around the globe as a wrestling star was one thing but when Storm decided to change up her presentation inside and outside of the ring she truly became “Timeless” the world noticed. Taking on a persona that draws from stars like Monroe, Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly, Storm has become a singularly unique talent on Earth.

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If you take a moment and google the definition of hero, here’s what it will give you: “A person who is admired or idealized for courage, outstanding achievements, or noble qualities.” In the world of pro wrestling, that definition could easily have an image attached to it. That would be the image of Shad Gaspard.

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WWE veteran star Natalya stood in the center of the ring in St. Petersburg on January 27. More than 48,000 fans were screaming as she was the center with pink lights billowing throughout Tropicana Field. She was the first entrant into the Royal Rumble, but it was the second entrant who would steal the show.” As for what’s coming in 2024, expect big things.

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In 2022 Marvel Studios released the movie “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.” Well, you could argue the sequel has come to Going Ringside. Specifically “Macho Madness.”

Going Ringside has collected the top Macho Man Randy Savage impersonators from all over North America for one unprecedented interview. In this must-see segment, the Macho Men will discuss everything from Hulk Hogan to Miss Elizabeth to snapping into a Slim Jim.

The iconic wrestler whose real name was Randy Poffo passed away in 2011, but his character has lived on as one of the most popular wrestling costumes of all time. But some have taken it a step beyond a simple costume and developed what they refer to as “The Council of Macho.”

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In the performance art of professional wrestling, many of the top stars are assigned a gimmick. Some work, some don’t. But there was one, that on it’s face shouldn’t have worked. Unless you’re Brutus Beefcake (real name Ed Leslie), he made what seemed ridiculous into a wrestling sensation. It was 1988 when Beefcake had languished in the mid-card of the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) with some success.

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The day was March 30, 1987. Hulk Hogan was still on top of the world as he had just beaten his biggest foe ever (literally and figuratively) the day prior at the historic WrestleMania III in front of 93,000 people at the Pontiac Silverdome in Michigan.

His opponent however, now billed at more than 500 pounds was entering the last phase of what had been a larger than life existence in every sense. Andre Roussimoff was only 40 years old when he lost to Hulk Hogan. He had lived a life that was really unprecedented in the human experience. He had massive size, yet travelled in airplanes and on long car drives daily for decades in the grueling life of a professional wrestler.

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The pro wrestling world lost two globally known names last week: Ole Anderson & Virgil. Anderson was a longtime wrestler and booker from the 1960s to 1990s and Virgil became famous overnight in the late 1980s as the muscle-bound on-camera bodyguard of the “Million Dollar Man” Ted Dibiase.

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Whether you’re a Division I college football star or just a person who watches pro wrestling on television, getting into the industry is not as simple as just showing up. You need training. From taking a punch or bodyslam to giving one, training is key to avoid injury and do it well. In late January, Sam Shaw (who WWE fans know as Dexter Lumis) opened Hatchet Pro Wrestling in St. Augustine. 

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The stigma of pro wrestling for being a pre-determined sport has been the basis of criticism for the industry for several decades. And with that comes questions about whether pro wrestlers are legitimately tough in real life.

So naturally there are debates on who’s legitimately the toughest. In practically every conversation on this subject, one name sits atop all others. He wrestled primarily under two names during his career, Haku and Meng. For the purposes of this article we’ll call him Haku. His real name is Tonga ‘Uli’uli Fifita. He was born on the Island of Tonga in 1959.

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