Wrestler Death thread

[Bandit]

He made music too

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Dr. Zoidberg]

[Dr. Zoidberg]

https://x.com/CACReunion/status/1895286225021599789

https://x.com/ShinsukeN/status/1895309227104862538

[Bandit]

World Class announcer Bill Mercer died at 99

Dave Meltzer on the life and career of Bill Mercer .

Former World Class Championship Wrestling announcer Bill Mercer, a newsman who covered the assassination of president John F. Kennedy in 1963, was later a local sportscasting legend, passed away on 3/23 at the age of 99.

Mercer, who was also at one point a television sports anchor in the Dallas market, was known worldwide as the voice of the heyday of the Von Erich brothers. Mercer was 99 when he passed away from an aortic aneurysm. His daughter, Laura Tiedemann, said that he had his aorta repaired a few times but it wasn’t possible at this age.

“He lived a very full life,” his daughter told the Dallas Morning News. “He was a great dad, grandfather and husband, and also had a fantastic voice and career.”

While Mercer was most proud of his work as a teacher of radio and television journalism at the University of North Texas, he was noteworthy as the person who told Lee Harvey Oswald that he was being charged with the assassination of Kennedy in covering one of the biggest U.S. news stories of the last 65 years. He was also the radio voice of one of the most famous NFL games in history, the famed 1967 Green Bay Packers last play win over the Dallas Cowboys in the NFL championship game in a blizzard “on the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field.” But he noted that outside of Dallas, and in foreign countries, he was more recognized for being the announcer of World Class Championship Wrestling, which aired all over the country and the world in the 80s.

In that era, most wrestling announcers were sports guys or television guys who happened to work at the television station that was broadcasting the local wrestling show. The wrestling people liked them generally because they had credibility in the market, and it was a once a week sidelight and not a full-time job. There were exceptions, notably Gordon Solie, Vince McMahon and Larry Matysik who were full-time pro wrestling guys, and later almost all the announcers were that way. Mercer was never great at calling the matches, but he had a great voice and local market credibility. His effusive praise of the Von Erichs and the other babyfaces helped build their popularity on the way up, both because people knew him from other sports and also among wrestling fans he’d been around so long, dating back to the start of the career of Jack Adkisson, who became Fritz Von Erich. I don’t know if this is accurate or not, but late in his career when Fritz Von Erich was doing the build to his first retirement with Mercer, he talked about Mercer being with him and announcing his first matches.

He was actually better at the skits, where heels like The Freebirds and Jimmy Garvin would give him hell, or he’d go on the ranch or to the lake and interview the Von Erichs, marketed as local heavily religious polite at athletic young men who were heroes to the teenagers during their heyday like pop icons.

Mercer broadcasted famous matches in the area where Fritz Von Erich challenged Terry Funk and Harley Race for the world title, and later sons David, Kevin and Kerry’s matches with Race and Ric Flair. He did the famous Christmas night 1982 cage match with Flair vs. Kerry with Michael Hayes as referee to set up the boom period of 1983-85. However, he had other commitments and was not the announcer for the most famous match of that period where Kerry beat Flair at Texas Stadium and a Von Erich finally won the world title, nor did he do any of Kerry’s title defenses.

“Man, I just read about the passing of a true World Class Legend, Bill Mercer,” wrote Michael Hayes. “So sorry to hear that. We gave Bill a really hard time and he took it all in stride like the true Pro he was.”

“I literally found out a minute ago that Bill Mercer passed away,” wrote Missy Hyatt. “What a life he lived. Military veteran, news journalist, wrestling announcer, college professor, and more. Boy did he squeeze in so much in 99 years. Class act.”

To show how respected he was in the sports journalism field, he was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 2020, The Texas Radio Hall of Fame in 2002, The University of North Texas Athletic Department Hall of Fame in 2011, The Texas baseball Hallof Fame, The Texas Intercollegiate Press Association Hall of Fame in 2009, The Press Club of Dallas in 2011 named his one of the Legends f North Texas journalism, and in 2012, the press room at Apogee Stadium in Denton, TX, the football field North Texas plays at, is named The Bill Mercer Press Club.

As a teacher, he trained many of the best sports announcers in the state of Texas. He created and managed the college radio station and taught sports broadcasting and journalism there from 1966 to 2006. He was the radio voice of all the school’s sports for more than 30 years.
He was also the President of the Dallas-Fort Worth branch of SAG-AFTRA in the 60s.

Mercer was believed to have been the oldest still-living person in the pro wrestling business in the U.S. until his death, and second oldest in the world. He was born February 13, 1926, weeks before former Rikidozan tag team partner and early Japanese star Kokichi Endo was born. It is believed that Endo is still alive. The only person in the wrestling business older than Mercer at the time of his death was Avelino Paloma Hernandez, best known as Dick Medrano, who is now 103, who wrestled mostly in Mexico but also worked in the U.S., Canada and Europe in a career from 1941 to 1971.

Of all known pro wrestling personalities, Mercer was believed to have had the seventh longest life behind Hernandez, former Northwest promoter Harry Elliott (who was nearly 102 when he died in 2006), wrestler Abe Coleman (who was 101 when he died in 2007), wrestler/referee Joe D’Orazio (who was 99 whne he died in 2022) and wrestler/promoter Angelo Savoldi, who was 99 when he died in 2013.

Mercer was working as a television news reporter for KRLD when Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas on November 22, 1963. There are clips of him asking questions at the press conference. With his contacts in the police department, he was the first reporter to find out that Oswald was going to be charged with murder in the killing. There is even a clip that still survives where Mercer was part of a group of reporters interviewing Oswald and he was the first to tell him he was being charged.

He, along with other local reporters later wrote a book “When the News Went Live” about the day of the assassination.

He was the local radio voice of the Dallas Cowboys from 1965 to 1971, including announcing Cowboys Super Bowl games in 1971, when they lost to the Baltimore Colts, and1972 , when they beat the Miami Dolphins. But it was the 1967 NFL championship loss to the Packers on the last play that was generally regarded as the most famous game of that era.

His pro wrestling career started in the early 50s, when he broadcast the local matches in Muskogee, OK, where he grew up, on radio. He at the time did all the local sports on radio. He broadcasted many of the early matches of Jack Adkisson when the future Fritz Von Erich was first starting out.
He moved to Dallas in 1959 and announced the Dallas Rangers AAA baseball team as well as had a stint as the area wrestling announcer when KRLD was the wrestling home during the 60s.

He was the full-time lead announcer in the market from 1976 to 1987, after Dan Coates retired. At the time, the television was taped every Monday night in Fort Worth and aired on Saturday night where it was a highly-rated staple of local programming.

In the early 80s when a deal was cut with the Christian Broadcasting Network to run a pro wrestling show on the local religious station since Fritz Von Erich, as the top babyface star, had for years pushed the family’s religion and his sons were marketed as the good Christian athletes, who didn’t smoke, drink or do drugs, even if the reality was quite different.

World Class Championship Wrestling was born, taped at the Sportatorium in Dallas, which became one of the most famous wrestling arenas in the world during this time frame. They ran every Friday, and every other show would be a television taping where they would tape two one-hour shows which were start-of-the-art in production for that time. Mercer was the voice during the 1982-85 heyday of the family, where he also had to inform the audience on the air of the death of David Von Erich and later Gino Hernandez and Mike Von Erich. Hernandez had died just after an angle was shot where he threw powder into the eyes of tag team partner Chris Adams, in the angle to turn Adams back babyface after the memorable Kevin & Kerry vs. Gino & Chris angle which culminated in a crowd of 26,000 fans.

Mercer had to open the show with the story that this past week we’ve had two horrible tragedies, “Gino Hernandez is dead and Chris Adams is blind.”

At the time there was immediate furor of the tastelessness, and of course Mercer was just following orders, of linking the very real death of Hernandez to a pro wrestling angle with Adams.

It was never said publicly why Mercer left the show in 1987, but he would always speak fondly of the few year heyday of the promotion, calling it wrestling Camelot, where every Friday night was a sellout filled with old time fans, but more teenagers and young adults, particularly women and as time went on, people romanticized the period, remembering the big matches and forgetting the drug issues and the death toll. He did a local television documentary years later looking at the heyday after the deaths of David, Mike, Chris and Kerry Von Erich. He also participated in other documentaries on the subject. He was considered a key invited guest at the Dallas premiere of “The Iron Claw,” In the movie, Michael Harney, who in no way shape or form resembled him or his style of commentary, played Bill Mercer.

As a play-by-play announcer for wrestling, he was far from the best. When the new 80s style came in with new moves, he didn’t know them and often couldn’t keep up with the pace. He had some historical knowledge of the territory, but wasn’t the local wrestling expert like a Jim Ross, Solie, Lance Russell or a Matysik type. But he had the voice and came across as credible. When he’d tell the fans that Kerry Von Erich was the uncrowned world champion, it made his quest for the title bigger.

Where he shined was on skits, making the lead heels like Jimmy Garvin and The Freebirds come off as outsider assholes coming to our area that the Von Erichs would take care of. Or he’d make a heel like Gary Hart come across as evil, like a newsman looking for a story where the white collar criminal or corrupt politician was squirming or trying to lie his way out of trouble.

Perhaps his most famous was the skit where Garvin and Sunshine had to be David Von Erich’s valet for a day and Von Erich had him doing ranch chores in the heat, bailing hay, cleaning the horse stalls in a skit that countless promotions tried to remake after similar stipulation matches and none ever came close to matching. While Garvin was clearly the star, Mercer’s coverage of it also helped make the skit.He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II from the age of 17 to 20. He was part of five major invasions in the Pacific, in the Marshall Islands, Guam, Leyte, Luzon and Okinawa. He was considered something of a war hero.

After the war he went to college where he got his degree from the University of Denver.

He did minor league baseball radio from 1959 to 1971 for teams out of Dallas. He was the radio voice of the Texas Rangers in their first season in 1972, working with Don Drysdale. He also did the 1974 season with the Chicago White Sox.

He was the radio voice of the Dallas Texans of the AFL in 1960, before they became the Kansas City Chiefs. He did the Cowboys from 1965 to 1971. While he was the announcer for World Class Championship Wrestling he was also doing Southwest Conference football and basketball for the Mutual Radio Network. He did the Cotton Bowl on CBS radio for seven years.

Brad Sham, the voice of the Dallas Cowboys, said, “He was a trailblazer and pioneer and an example for everyone who knew him. He did everything. He did it all with incredible gentility and humanity. He was the sweetest man and well active well into his 90s. He lived a great life.”

[Dr. Zoidberg]

RIP Bill Mercer

[Ocelot]

Big part of my childhood. This one hurts. RIP.

[Bandit]

And people don't even realize that's Bill on the original Dallas Cowboys games announcing when NFL Network show them and he was the first reporter to talk to Lee Harvey Oswald. So he was the one wrestling announcer where wrestling was the least interesting thing he did

[Dr. Zoidberg]

https://x.com/GCWrestling_/status/1910117695485591676

[Ocelot]

I feel bad for her, but fuck Nick Gage.

[Bandit]

https://x.com/RicFlairNatrBoy/status/19 ... 0321885250

[Dr. Zoidberg]

RIP Mongo

https://x.com/WrestlingCovers/status/19 ... 1232166194

[Big Boss Man]

Very sad news about Steve, RIP

[Ocelot]

Bless him. He wasn't the smoothest worker but he gave 300 percent trying to learn the business after coming away from a legendary football career and be the best worker he could be.He loved the business and was a tremendous asset towards bringing legit credibility from the public onto it back in the day. A good human being, a hard worker, and I've never heard anyone say a bad thing about him. May he RIP.