Tuesdays with Daddy: Week 1: Introduction - vs. Mr. X (12/22/79)

Introduction

MD: So just what are we trying to do here? Just what do I, an uncultured American, have to do with Big Daddy? Not a lot actually. I don’t have any core memories of him. I probably never heard of him until some time into my late 20s or 30s. I haven’t seen a lot of matches. I have a lot more to say about Otto Wanz and a lot more of a personal connection, even after the fact, to Jerry Blackwell. Honestly, the one Klondike Bill (UK) match we got from the French Footage probably moved me more than any thought I’ve ever had about Big Daddy. But I know he was a star. I know he was beloved. I know a lot about the behind the scenes reasons for that.

And I know no one’s ever seriously looked at his ringwork to see why and how he connected to crowds.

I have to think that he did. We’ve evaluated Hogan and Dusty, Backlund and Inoki. Even Cena and Reigns. Jackie Sato too! We’ve taken a look at stars and aces, lead babyfaces, and we’ve tried to distill what they did specifically that moved the fans. It’s not just presentation. It’s not just being booked to win. Plenty of wrestlers have been booked to win and weren’t national sensations. I believe, above all else, that details matter when it comes to pro wrestling. What the wrestlers do in the ring matter. 

I want to see up close and first hand what Daddy did and what he didn’t do. Even if he didn’t have conventionally great matches, that doesn’t mean he might not have been a great wrestler. Maybe great matches weren’t going to serve the purpose of what he was trying to do. Even if he wasn’t athletic or didn’t have a great workrate, that doesn’t mean he didn’t do other things well when it came to crowd control and engagement, in working to his opponents’ and partners’ strengths and working them into his act.

Or maybe he didn’t do any of this? Maybe the rep is true. Maybe conventional wisdom is right. Maybe we reevaluate and find that there isn’t much laudable there and the promotion and the framing was everything. That’ll be interesting too. 

But don’t you want to know? Wouldn’t any wrestler or wrestling fan want to know what, in a wrestler’s ring work, helped to make him a cultural sensation? I sure do. Maybe we can figure this out together. The goal isn’t necessarily to push back against this or that or even get him into the WON HOF. The point is that I don’t know, I haven’t seen for myself, and we’re willing to put in the legwork and write about it.

So we’re going to watch around ten matches picked completely at random, just what’s available and I can easily date. Singles where I can find them. Tags. We’ll look at him a little younger and a little older and in the middle. We’re not trying to be comprehensive in how the act changed over time, but we’ll point out things as we go. Feel free to play along and comment along. We’ll take firsthand accounts and extra bits of context if anyone wants to share, but for the sake of this project, the footage’s the thing.

Week 1: Big Daddy vs Mr. X 12/22/79 

MD: We're still early into this, and I'm trying to make sense of just what he does well. Why is he over? What does he do that connects with the crowd? It's not just "he's big." It's not just "he's pushed." The presentation is part of it, but there have to be performative elements, good or bad. Details have to matter. That's the world I want us to live in and quite frankly, when it comes to pro wrestling, that's the world that I witness no matter the place or era. 

So let's break this down. Daddy comes out with his hat and jacket. When he takes them off, the fans are happy to see the girth and he starts a celebratory chant with them, engaging immediately. He's got a white singlet with black "Big Daddy" letters on them. It is certainly memorable. Mr. X is a masked hairy bloke. 

Daddy moves around the ring fairly spry. He's fresh after all. He lets Mr. X get him in a couple of holds first to sort of invert expectations and get his points with the crowd in the escape. First he tosses him across the ring off the headlock to a big pop. Then he actually sells for a few long seconds in a top wristlock, grimacing, slapping Mr. X's back gingerly, before chucking him off with one hand. That matters. It creates a bit of dissonance, the hint of peril. It certainly got a pop because he drew people in.

Then he takes over and doesn't really look back over the rest of the round and the minute and a half or so of the next. He does have some varied offense though. There are corner whips which X takes face first. There are beales off the rope but he charges into them in a way that puts real impact behind it. He lets X bounce off him a couple of times, but when X throws a fit and jumps up and down, he's right there with a belly bump. 

Some things are more interactive with him engaging the crowd and giving them something to latch on to. He does a cross stranglehold and then goes for the mask, revealing that Mr. X has a beard. When he's done with that, he just chucks him to the mat. Mr. X is creating the motion, even running around the ringside area in frustration at one point, but Daddy more than helps him along. 

It gets a little repetitive at times, even in a short match, another headlock toss off, another set of whips. These don't have quite the same response with the fans, but as soon as that starts to happen, he brings things to a close, first with a thudding headlock takeover he rides X down with. Then at the end of Round 1 with a front chancery suplex. It doesn't look great but you get the point anyway and the fans liked it. Then in round two, with X beaten down and barely beating the count, he did a sort of hanging back body drop, almost a waterwheel drop, landing on him in a way that looked brutal. X didn't get up from that.

Not a bad first look, but the question, in part, is how much is going to be ritual and how much is going to be variance. He'll certainly have opponents of different types and there will be tags and other things. It's clear that he knew the sort of effect he could have on the crowd through something as simple as taking his hat off and something as complex as selling a top wristlock for a few seconds before dispatching X. He knew when it was time to wind things down too. It is telling, maybe, that he was in a tiny bit of danger of overstretching what he did have, but that was, in part because X really didn't pose a threat. Key bits of his offense looked honestly great in in 79 at least. Let's see how that progresses. You watch this and see a pretty talented wrestler who knew how to make use of both his skills and work around his limitations and really understood the crowd. But that's just a snapshot.

ER: Matt has been waiting so patiently for me to hop on this Big Daddy project, I don't know why I've been putting it off. Matt waited for me because he knows how much I love fat guy wrestling. Fat guys are what drew me to pro wrestling in the first place. Maybe it was because I had a fat dad, of the different kinds of dads we could have. He was shaped like Boss Man and maybe that's why I loved wrestlers shaped like Bam Bam Bigelow. I wanted to see fat guys even though I did not aspire myself to be fat. My neighbor friend Colin had a Vietnam vet electrician dad, so instead probably liked Jesse Ventura or Dutch Mantell. Sgt. Slaughter if he didn't know. Fat guys in wrestling make great shapes. WWF was nothing but great wrestling shapes. Big fat guys are the most pure, beautiful things Allowed by pro wrestling. Pro wrestling does this weird magic trick with the biggest and best fat guys: it makes them look more normal in their gear than in normal man clothes. Bam Bam Bigelow, John Tenta...I don't want to see them in jeans. Bam Bam found the perfect flame unitard to enhance the best features of his wrestling body. He looks perfect in his flame suits, literally every color, even though we all know the one with that rich blue is the best one. 

Big Daddy was a great shape. What a figure. Big Daddy's body is wrestling perfection. The British were right on this one. The Germans loved big fat Otto Wanz, Big Daddy discovered the perfect wrestling shape and the glowing white singlet to contain it, and the British rightly said "That's our guy." Imagine what that body would have looked like with American portions and American snack food aisles. Big Daddy grew this tremendous body on tinned mince and boiled potatoes. 

Big Daddy is a unique character, a dominant babyface who is literally never in trouble, never threatened, never on his heels. In control, at all times, effortlessly....but that shape. I gotta say, I get it. If you're going to be a dominant babyface, you have to bring a new way of executing offense, and Big Daddy is captivating to watch. 

Is this really just an Arthur "Buffalo" Bice project? Will this project, instead of being a Big Daddy love fest, turn into Matt and I discovering all the different no names who were incredible at getting run over by this sequined dump truck? Every week will it be something like "Did this just become a John "Bengal" Swynford project??" Here's Buffalo Bice pulling the Big Daddy Christmas match, which feels like a major deal. This program signs off with Christmas wishes for all, and Mr. X is tasked with taking two dozen dangerous bumps in the biggest match of his career. 

But this is no big bumping youngster pinballing for an old man, this is a man being forced to bump by an incredibly imposing megastar. Yes, Bice bumped big, but I don't know if he ever had a choice. Any time Daddy whipped or bieled X, X had no say in his landing. Daddy looked like he had the pulling power of Andre. Every time X got yanked full speed face first into the turnbuckles, it was like an ogre swinging a peasant into a tree. His biels are quick and violent and go farther faster than you'd think. His biels are a real satisfying motion, backing X into the ropes and letting him go at their most torqued, and just letting that man fly. This lad has no chance of stopping. His bumping was forced upon him by a double size Dick Murdoch with quick closing speed. By the time he escalates to his side headlock takeover or front chancery suplex, Bice is a corpse getting dummied. Bice makes it to the 2nd round, the last time any TV Daddy match went to the 2nd round. It may have been because the cat was enjoying the exercise, but it happened, and Bice weathered it. 

And God DAMN Fatty Thomas!! Did I hear 42 stone?? That's nearly 600 pounds! This is Daddy's next opponent? Ringing in the new year with Fatty "Bulk" Thomas? How great is it that he has a nickname that's a much nicer name than his first name. His name is true. His body no longer resembles the shape of a human man, his stomach bulging out low and farther than I've ever seen a belly bulge. Commentary is unsure he'll even be able to get into the ring. God what a business. Just find the fattest men you can and let 'em struggle to get into a ring without help. 

Read more!