Back in the summer of 1996, I was working full-time at the grocery store that I would go on to work at for a decade. I had just graduated high school and was fortunate to be in the position of having friends from school and friends from work to hang out and do stuff with.
When the ads for Independence Day started dropping, several of those friends and I were getting excited to see this latest summer blockbuster. The little two-screen theater in the town where I worked was a weekly stop for us as we took in at least one movie every week. When Independence Day weekend rolled around, there was no question as to what movie we were going to be watching.
Independence Day is the story of an alien race coming to Earth to take it over for its resources. After a first strike that wipes a lot of major world cities off the map, the US stages a counter attack that is ineffective. Fortunately, the world has an ace up it’s leave in genius Jeff Goldblum. He figures out a way to weaken the aliens, and a rag-tag group of former combat pilots led by the President show the way to bring down the hostile invaders, and the world lives to see another day. One of the hooks of the movie is that the events take place across July 2, 3, and 4 in the movie, leading to the United States declaring it’s freedom on the 4th of July once again.
Independence Day was the major summer blockbuster of 1996, and all of the hyp leading up to it had me very excited to see it. Watching it in the theater there was an electric mood as the packed house loved every minute of the spectacle.
It was also a breakout performance for Will Smith. Up until this point, he had starred in the movie Bad Boys and was still a sensation on the hit TV show Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, but this was his coming out party as a major leading man in Hollywood.
With it’s massive scope, incredible effects, and all-star cast, Independence Day became one of the biggest movies of the ’90s, and one I still go back and watch every Independence Day weekend.
I was always a fan of the Marvel Comics series What If?, where they would take classic stories, give them a twist, and give us readers a look at what might have been. I’m doing the same thing here with a classic moment in wrestling history.
Let me set the stage for you. In 1993, Yokuzuna was the WWF champion and portrayed as an evil Japanese bad guy. He was dominating the competition, and at over 500 lbs. he was a massive wrestler. In celebration of Independence Day, the WWF brought Yokuzuna to the U.S.S. Intrepid that was harboured in New York City for a body slam challenge. They invited several celebrities to come and try slamming the big man, as well as several good guys from the WWF. No one was able to get Yokozuna off his feet and slam him.
Just when it looked as if no one could pull it off and the challenge was over, a helicopter came into sight and landed on the deck of the intrepid. Off stepped Lex Luger, who up until this very moment was a bad guy in the WWF, but had a history of being a very popular good guy. He came off the helicopter decked out in an American flag pattern shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. He climbed into the ring, gave Yokozuna a shot and then lifted him into the air and slammed him to become the WWF’s #1 good guy and all-American hero.
What followed that event was a summer tour on a bus to drum up support for his title match against Yokozuna at that year’s Summerslam event. The push didn’t go as anticipated, and Luger never really captured the imagination of fans across the country the way the WWF was hoping, and the whole thing fizzled out when he didn’t win the title at the end of the summer.
But let me give you an alternate version of events that I think might have went a little better for everyone involved…
By 1993, Sting was solidly the face of World Championship Wrestling, the WWF’s chief rival. While he had a contract with WCW, it was not impossible to get out of them at the time, and if the WWF had shelled out a buyout payment, they could have probably gotten Sting’s services for their company. Imagine if when the helicopter landed, instead of Luger getting off, it was Sting wearing his American flag ring coat and American flag face paint like he wore at Great American Bash ’90. It would have been patriotic as hell.
The shock of the crowd in attendance would have been off the chart as they would have just watched WWF alumni and celebrities alike try and fail to slam Yokozuna. Then there would come the most popular wrestler from another company, give one of the passionate promos that Sting was known for, and then be the one to give Yokozuna the slam for all of America.
Sting would have been on a wave of popularity, unlike anything he had seen up to this point. If he had gotten the bus tour, he likely would have gotten over much better with the people all around the country and probably would have been popular enough to get the title win over the evil sumo wrestler at the end of the summer.
Who knows what the future would hold from that point forward, but certainly a feud with former best friend and still bad guy Lex Luger would have been very likely. It may have even led to a showdown at Wrestlemania the following March.
We’ll never know, but I like to sit around and wonder, What If?
Days of Thunder hit theaters in 1990, and I was all in on it. All in except for actually going to see the movie itself in the theater. Back then, it was rare to convince my folks to go to a theater to catch a movie, so I usually had to live vicariously through whatever promotional tie-in merchandise was available when new movies came out. That task was made more difficult by the fact that a lot of my friends at school were getting to go to the movies on a regular basis to see whatever the hot new thing was, and I just had to stand around and listen to them talk about how awesome it was, and Days of Thunder sure sounded exciting.
Sure I had seen the trailers for it during television commercial breaks, and I have some faint memories of reading about it in a magazine. Maybe something like an issue of Cinescape, or maybe there was a special one-shot magazine released for it or something. I don’t know, but either way, I knew what the movie was even before my friends were describing all the details to me.
But anyway, Hardee’s rolled out these Thunder Racer cars, and I really wanted them. First, they were tied to a hot new movie that I wanted to see. Second, they were 1/64 scale die-cast cars and I was already a lover of both Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars and had quite the growing collection. And third, it was an additional toy I could snag on the weekend. I say additional because I would spend my weekly allowance on a toy while shopping on the weekend, but this gave me an opportunity to get a freebie.
You could get a Thunder Racer car for just $0.99 with any purchase…not just a kid’s meal. But it might as well have been offered with the kid’s meal as far as I was concerned because that was probably what I was ordering then, and there was no way I was leaving Hardee’s without a Thunder Racer car!
But you couldn’t just get them all on one visit, as a different one was available each week as you can see in the earlier photo. This meant that four separate trips had to be made to Hardee’s to get them all. A feat that I was unfortunately unable to pull off. I managed to get the first three…the City Chevrolet, the Superflow car, and the Hardee’s car but missed out on the Mello Yello one for some reason. Luckily for me, they were quickly released by Racing Champions as well and I was able to get the Mello Yello car that way. I never end up with Rowdy Burns’ Exxon car though.
I’m not sure what, if anything, was actually included in the Funmeal Pack meal promotion that was out at the time. I know the box featured Days of Thunder artwork, but I distinctly remember having to purchase the cars separately.
As I continued to get the various ones I had, they began to dominate play time in my room. At the time I had a few other Racing Champions cars as well, so NASCAR races were taking place on a regular basis that summer. Most of those races were won by the green and yellow City Chevrolet, but every now and then, that beautiful orange Hardee’s with Russ Wheeler at the wheel snuck out a win.
But now let’s talk just a bit about the Days of Thunder cups you could also get from Hardee’s. My brother was a big fan of special cups in general, but Hardee’s cups in particular. He has a full set of those Moose cups at one time, and numerous others as well. At this point in time, he had no trouble attaining whatever special merchandise like this he wanted as he had a job and was driving.
While I never personally cared for most cups like these, the Days of Thunder cups were ones I really wanted. I guess I just wanted to show my support for a movie that I hadn’t seen for some reason. Or I just thought they were really cool looking. Or both.
The artwork on the cups is great, and the colors really pop. I like how the Days of Thunder title logo appears on the cup in the same color as the car featured on each one. You can’t see it in the photo above, but on the backs of the cups were stats on the drivers of the cars. That could be perceived as a little lazy though since Cole Trickle drove three of the cars featured, and the stats could all be the same.
I can’t begin to calculate how much money my mom had to spend at Hardee’s on me that summer. But the food had to be bought to purchase the cars. They were $0.99 each. And you had to buy a 32oz drink to get a cup. Well, now that I think about it, I guess you could purchase a 32oz drink and get the cup, and make that the purchase that qualified you to buy a Thunder Racer car. Maybe she didn’t spend all that much after all.
Regardless of how much was spent, it was all worth it in my eyes because I can remember that summer better than most, and I always refer to it as the “summer of thunder”.
The Hot Wheels Freight Yard was one of the several Sto and Go playsets that were so popular in the ’80s. It was also the largest of the bunch as it not only opened up vertically into a playest but had train tracks that folded out horizontally as well.
And unlike Hot Wheel’s other Sto and Go sets, the Freight Yard came with vehicles in the form of a locomotive, 2 freight cars, and a caboose. Item B pictured in the shot with the Freight Yard was an additional Freight Master Train Set that could be added to your Freight Yard fun.
Notice that the ad states that no electricity or batteries are needed. Since this was 1984, electric train sets were still sort of en-vogue, and no one wanted market confusion with this playset.
The 1984 price tag of $34.99 on this Freight Yard translates to $101.65 in 2023 dollars, making it quite an expensive playset. Other Sto and Go playsets of the time retailed for $23.99, or $69.69 in today’s dollars. Back when I had a couple of Sto and Go playsets in the mid-’80s, I never knew how expensive of a toy I was playing with.
But as I’ve documented before, I loved train toys when I was young. The trains that Matchbox produced, the Micro Machines train sets, and even an old series of Happy Meal boxes that were train cars in vacuum form. I loved them all, and I pined over this Sto and Go for years. Heck I still pine for it today.
From the late ’80s through the early ’90s, one of my daily rituals in the summertime was to go inside during the hot part of the day and veg out in front of the television and cool off for an hour or two. Back then, I didn’t have many television channels, so there wasn’t much channel surfing to be done. I could watch soap operas on the networks, or watch whatever was on the local PBS station, and boy was I lucky with what my local PBS station, Blue Ridge Public Television, was showing every afternoon.
Blue Ridge Television offered up a block of cooking shows for two hours, followed by Bob Ross. While I didn’t care much for the Julia Child cooking show that started the block, it was followed by Justin Wilson whom I enjoyed, then Yan Can Cook which was also fun, but the last cooking show in that block was my favorite, and one I still watch episodes of today via YouTube, and that show was Cookin’ Cheap. No matter what else was going on in my world on those summer days, I was intent on being inside from 1:30 to 2:00 PM to catch the show.
Cookin’ Cheap was a popular comedy cooking show that was produced from 1980-2002. For most of its run, it was hosted by Laban Johnson and Larry Bly who prepared recipes and shared a lot of laughs. The show was recorded straight through with no stops and no rehearsals so if the guys dropped or burned it, we the viewers got to see it.
In 1980, Laban Johnson, who was already an established cook on local TV came up with an idea for his own television show. He was a funny guy, but fortunately, he realized that much of his humor came from playing off of someone else, so he decided to invite a friend, Larry Bly, on to the show as his sidekick. Larry’s quick wit was already well known in the area, thanks to his radio and TV on-air shenanigans, as he was a local radio DJ.
Laban Johnson (left) and Larry Bly (right) on the set of Cookin’ Cheap in the Blue Ridge Public Television studio in Roanoke VA.
After deciding that the show could work as a comedy cooking show using mostly viewer recipes, it was decided to pitch the show to a local TV station. Shortly after that, a “pilot” was shot, shown to some local potential sponsors, and the rest, as they say, is history.
What made the show great wasn’t the food. The recipes come from viewers, the ingredients from the freezer, cans, and cardboard boxes. In the poor studio light, the dishes, casseroles, meatballs, bean salads, and dips most times ended up looking like glop.
And it wasn’t the culinary skills either. The hosts were amateurs. They struggled to open zip-lock bags and fumble in their oven mitts the way you or I would. Their kitchen would get messy and sometimes dangerous, as they juggled hot trays and employed questionable knife skills while chopping. They puzzled over pronunciations, and spent a lot of time on boring prep work, because, as Larry would confess, if they didn’t, the show would be a lot shorter.
The way that they incorporated more comedy into the show than technique made it feel like they were your neighbors instead of professional cooking show hosts. What I loved most is that it wasn’t just more of that fake Southern thing, which is all around us these days, as Laban and Larry were the real deal. They were both from Roanoke VA where the show was filmed, and just 2 hours up the road from where I lived.
While the show was filmed in Roanoke VA to air on the local Blue Ridge Public Television station, it was so popular that it was picked up and syndicated by other PBS affiliates all around the country. It was the only original program of Blue Ridge Public Television that got syndicated, showing just how good this show was.
More than any other cooking show I’ve seen in my life, Cookin’ Cheap made you feel like you could truly replicate what they were doing in your own kitchen. My mom was a big fan of the show as well, and we would watch it together every afternoon. And we would end up trying a lot of the recipes we saw them cook on the show. And that might be the biggest reason I’m so fond of this show. We would attempt those recipes, and others, together. Both of us in the kitchen at the same time, each creating a dish that we would sit down and share for dinner. Without even acknowledging that we were copying the format we had learned from watching Cookin’ Cheap, we were performing our own version a couple of nights each week.
Laban Johnson passed away suddenly in 1999. Larry Bly tried to keep the show going, bringing in one of Laban’s friends to replace him, but the chemistry wasn’t there, and the experiment only lasted one season and then the show was canceled. It was the end of an era for a show that helped instill in me a love for cooking and helped to create so many great memories of cooking with my mom. If Retro Ramblings had a Hall of Fame, Laban Johnson and Larry Bly would be first-ballot entries for that fact alone.
I’m including this post as part of the Retro Ramblings Summer Vacation ’24 because it was a part of many of the summers of my youth. I wanted to feature one of their videos, and what better one to pick to go along with the summer vacation theme than this episode where they are preparing a couple of cook-out dishes. Check it out and see what you think.
When Backdraft originally debuted back in 1991, I desperately wanted to see it. As I’ve explained before though, my parents weren’t the movie theater type. And as I was only 13 at the time of its release, I wasn’t going to be going by myself. The closest I got to it was having to hear my brother talk about how great it was after he and his friends saw it. But a year later, it was on HBO and other channels like it all the time so I got to see it finally thanks to the cable descrambler we had. My brother and I probably watched in a dozen time that summer it debuted on PPV and HBO.
It’s about a group of Chicago firefighters on the trail of a serial arsonist who is targeting various victims who are contractors who are connected to each other and a high-ranking city official.
Stephen McCaffrey (Russell) is the Lueinent of Engine Company 17, and his younger brother Brian (Baldwin) is a probationary fireman assigned to the company after graduation from the academy. The two brothers are the sons of a legendary Chicago firefighter who lost his life battling a blaze while young Brian watched on. As the movie reveals, the two brothers have never been close, and are at odds with each other more than on the same page.
After several firehouses are shut down due to budget cuts, the arsonist starts taking out the decision-makers behind those cuts by setting deadly “backdraft’ fires to murder them. Company 17 finds itself as the company that ends up fighting those fires, while Inspector Donald Rimdale (DeNiro) is the one tasked with finding the arsonist behind the attacks. It all climaxes at a large fire at a chemical plant where the killer is revealed and the McCaffrey brothers must stop him once and for all. All while battling the huge blaze.
Growing up in the ’80s with a Dad who was the local fire department chief, I was always fascinated by firemen and firefighting in general. Now while I was never a fireman myself, I do know more about it than most others who were not. And what you see in Backdraft is pretty close to how things are. The camaraderie displayed between the firemen in the film feels real and on point. And the firefighting sequences are top-notch. The arson investigation is pretty straightforward, but you can’t really guess who is behind it until near the end of the film when everything comes together. The writers did a pretty good job though of trying to lead you to one conclusion of who the killer is before revealing the true villain.
Backdraft was a blockbuster in the truest sense of the word, and everything about the movie was well executed. The story arc of Kurt Russell’s Stephen McCaffrey may be the best thing about the film. From being the overprotective brother to being the ultimate badass fireman, right through to the final confrontation and climax, Stephen “Bull” McCaffrey was a story well told. Kurt Russell was more than the commander of Engine Company 17…he also carried a commanding presence in his performance.
Backdraft was a blockbuster in its time for a reason and is still a yearly summer re-watch for me even now. It was a “big” movie with a big cast who were hitting on all cylinders at the time, and it lived up to the hype with its special effects and storytelling. There’s not much more that you could ask from a movie like this.
I didn’t grow up a Star Wars fan. While I knew of the series’ existence, was familiar with how popular all of the movies were, and had even seen a little bit of Return of the Jedi at a birthday party in the mid-80s, I had just never searched out the movies out to watch them. I even played with my brother’s hand-me-down toys. I enjoyed playing with the action figures of Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Darth Vader, Chewbacca, Storm Trooper, Tuken Raider and more, along with the Ewok’s treehouse and the Millenium Falcon. But I still didn’t fell the need to try and watch the movies.
Then sometime around late 1992 or early 1993, USA was showing Star Wars on a Friday night, and I decided to make it my entertainment for that night. I really enjoyed it, but they didn’t show the other two. But in the late spring or early summer of 1993, they showed all three movies on consecutive nights from Tuesday through Thursday, and I made it a point to watch all three. Over the course of those three nights, I became a fan. I even watched all three again the following Sunday when USA ran them back-to-back-to-back throughout the afternoon and evening.
Later on, I picked up a few of the Dark Horse comic book series to be able to experience more of the universe, but that was as far as I went with my fandom. But in early 1999, I became aware that a new prequel series would be dropping, and I was excited. Not like true blue Star Wars fanboys, but I was excited nonetheless.
My local theater was relatively new having only opened two years earlier, so the technology there was still top-notch. As a matter of fact, they were one of the first theaters in the world to install the Lucas-designed surround sound system ahead of The Phantom Menace being released. Add in the fact that they would be offering the first showing of the new release at 12:01 AM that fateful Friday, and the fact that they would be playing it in multiple theaters around the clock earned it the designation of the number one place in the world to see the new Star Wars movie.
While I didn’t go to the 12:01 AM showing, I did reserve tickets for the 7:00 PM showing on opening night and bought ten tickets so that any of my friends interested in going would have seats. I found no shortage of people who wanted to go that night. The crowd roared its approval as the familiar Star Wars “crawl” rolled up the screen and we all settled in to enjoy the unique experience together.
Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace features Obi-Wan Kenobi as a young apprentice Jedi knight under the tutelage of Qui-Gon Jinn; Anakin Skywalker, who will later father Luke Skywalker and become known as Darth Vader, is just a 9-year-old boy. When the Trade Federation cuts off all routes to the planet Naboo, Qui-Gon, and Obi-Wan are assigned to settle the matter. Along the way they meet the underwater race of the Gungans, discover a new Sith apprentice is after them, and have to help free the Naboo from the Trade Federation and battle the Sith apprentice known as Darth Maul.
Now in the years since the film was released, the prequel has caught a lot of crap. But for someone like me who was never a serious fanboy, I had no issues with the prequels in general, or The Phantom Menace in particular. I thought it was an amazingly fun film and a great experience in the theater.
Having watched the movie another dozen times since that initial viewing, I still feel the same way. What Lucas and team was able to put on screen was beautiful and captivating. While I never cared much for the character of Jar Jar Binks, I’m not overly annoyed with him like most of the fanbase. I really don’t care either way.
The cinematography is top-notch in The Phantom Menace, with every shot being epic and beautiful. The story filled in some gaps and questions from the original trilogy, and you couldn’t really ask for much more action than the film provided.
The initial battle scene between the Jedi and the Trade Federation droids, the underwater chase scene, the pod race, the big battle on Naboo between the Gungans and the Droids, the fighter battle in space, and the fantastic final showdown between the Jedi and Darth Maul were all packed with excitement.
So while a lot of serious Star Wars fans pick nits with the film, as a casual fan, I think it’s great, and recommend it to anyone who has never seen it, and urge those who have to give it another look and appreciate what was accomplished by the filmmakers.
Dazed and Confused hit the silver screen in 1993, but somehow I didn’t notice at the time. It took another couple of years for me to become aware of its existence. I was sitting in English class one day and one of my friends was quoting it. I had no idea what he was talking about, so he clued me in and stressed that I needed to see this movie. It still took me a couple of years to get around to it, but when I finally did, I was an instant fan.
Dazed and Confused tells the story of the last night of school for a group of high schoolers and junior high schoolers. A party is planned, a party is busted, and another party is planned to replace the first one. In between all of this, the many characters of the film weave in and out of each other’s storylines and spend their night cruising around, hanging out at the local game room, drinking, getting high, and thinking about the next phases of their lives. It’s hard to imagine how you could pack so many characters and storylines into a movie about a single night, but Dazed and Confused pulls it off perfectly without it seeming like too much is going on.
The movie is a good interpretation of a night in the life of a teenager in the late ’70s. In those days before the internet when people had “nothing to do”, so they spent their time hanging out with and talking with each other. What a novel concept. The fashion, the cars, and especially the soundtrack combine for an amazing cinematic experience. And the actors all pull off their characters well, and some shine as bright as the sun in theirs. Personally, Matthew McConaughey’s “Wooderson” is not only my favorite character in this movie but is one of my favorite movie characters of all time.
I was a teenager in the ’90s just before the big boom of the internet, and some of my fondest memories of those times is doing exactly what the kids in this film did to kill time. Cruising around town, hanging out with friends, and talking about everything that mattered to us, even if those things didn’t matter much in the grand scheme of things. This movie brings those times back to mind every time I watch it, and I connect with it on a nostalgic level.
But you don’t have to have that kind of connection to Dazed and Confused to enjoy it. It’s a great coming-of-age comedy with a fantastic soundtrack that just breezes by while you watch it.
4.0 stars for the movie thanks to the whole vibe it puts off, and the nostalgia connected to it.
Now while I don’t remember very much about this toy, I DO remember being super pumped when I saw the commercials. The producers did a very good job at making these things sound incredible. Supposedly, you could walk around playing “air drums” but actually produce drum sounds. Pretty cool concept.
They were a combo of fluorescent orange and yellow, a pretty extreme and eye-catching color combination back in the early ’90s. Each stick had a thin cord running from it to a sound box that you wore on a belt. All you had to do was make a striking motion in the air like you would while playing actual drums, and the sticks registered this “hit” and sent a signal to the soundbox that emitted a sound as if you had just rapped a snare drum.
I wanted these things so much. I would lay around and daydream about being the coolest kid in school if I had those things. Walking through the halls, playing a radical solo, with lots of girls following me and talking about how cool I was. I even joined the school band and chose to play percussion, just in the hope that the band director would let me play Hit Stix instead of an actual snare drum. Sigh. It just wasn’t meant to be I guess.
Pizza Hut has had some of the best premium items in the history of fast food, and maybe one of their coolest offerings was their Street Balls they rolled out during March Madness for a few years in the early ’90s. Kinda like I’m doing with this post…trying to capitalize on the season. The street balls were non-standard-looking basketballs with custom prints that reflected what Pizza Hut thought the culture on the streets was like.
I had the one featured in the video above and used it all the time in my driveway shooting hoops by myself or playing a game of Around the World with my neighbor. I somehow felt like it made me a better player, but it probably just made me look like an even bigger doofus than I already did as a skinny, pasty-white white boy in the rural Appalachians trying to dribble between my legs on the way for a layup.
While I actually did play basketball in school and was a really good shot from downtown, I just didn’t look like a real ball player. What made matters worse was the fact that every one of us lanky kids who got one of these balls would bring them to practice trying to look cool. That doesn’t work when everybody brings one.
But I’ll say again, these street balls were a great piece of promotion by Pizza Hut, and anyone who was around back then surely remembers them.
The Texas Taco Sandwich hit the market in 1995 with a fun commercial starring Jack Palance. Palance was coming off a resurgence thanks to the movies City Slickers and City Slickers II, so he lent credibility to Taco Bell’s latest offering with a Texas flair. I was driving by the time this came out, so as soon as I saw the first commercials, I was making my run for the border to try one.
It featured Taco Bell’s traditional taco profile of seasoned ground beef or chicken, lettuce, and cheese, but also added diced tomatoes and a “special southwest sauce”. Some folks say they remember, and others theorize, that the southwest sauce on this was the same sauce used on the Bacon Cheeseburger Burrito that was also released in 1995 as part of another promotion. The real focal point of the Texas Taco Sandwich though was the shell. It was advertised as “Texas flatbread”, which was unique for the time since it was thicker than a tortilla shell. I personally can’t confirm this, but I believe it was an early version of the Gordita shell they would debut in 1998.
The Texas Taco Sandwich was a unique item that captured my attention, as well as my taste buds while it was on the menu. I do seem to remember it being larger than the later Gordita, but it probably had to be since it was marketed as being associated with Texas. Everything is bigger in Texas I hear.
Damn. Two RIP posts in back-to-back days. Just yesterday I wrote about the passing of Ole Anderson. It’s been a tough stretch for old-school wrestling fans. They say these things come in threes, but I hope that superstition doesn’t come true.
If you were a pro wrestling fan in the late ’80s and throughout the ’90s you know who Virgil was. For several years in the late ’80s, Virgil was paired with “The Million Dollar Man” as his servant and helped play a hand in all of Ted DiBiase’s dastardly deeds, drawing the ire of the fans along the way.
Virgil’s WWF run came to its apex when he finally had enough of DiBiase’s treatment of him and stood up to The Million Dollar Man at the 1991 Royal Rumble. He blasted DiBiase with his own Million Dollar title belt, and went on to win that belt from him at Wrestlemania 7. Virgil went on to moderate success as a good guy before finishing his mainstream career as part of the nWo in WCW in the late ’90s.
While most fan’s memories of Mike Jones are as Virgil, my favorite memories of him were from his early days in the Memphis circuit when he went by the persona of Soul Train Jones (pictured above).
He was a middle-of-the-pack performer back then, but I didn’t know things like that back then, and he was one of my favorites. We got the Memphis television show on a couple of week’s delay here in my neck of the woods, and it was on at midnight. I had to record it each week and watch it the next day, and I was always excited to see how Soul Train Jones each week. His battles against the likes of Tojo Yammamoto’s men, Goliath, Big Bubba, and a young Cactus Jack always thrilled me. He was such an electric performer in that persona.
Whether you were more of a fan of Virgil or Soul Train Jones like me, the fact remains that another one of our wrestling heroes has left us, and that leaves another hole in my heart. Rest in peace Soul Train.
