Step into the captivating world of professional wrestling and discover the legend who revolutionized the sport. When we think about wrestling people like Hulk Hogan, Macho Man Randy Savage Randi, The Ultimate Worrier, The Undertaker, Ric Flair, Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock, Sting and so on will cross our mind. They made such impact on the fans and viewer because of the character that they created and played. There was one man behind all this, Gorgeous George. Known for his flamboyant persona, theatrical entrances, and undeniable charisma, Gorgeous George was more than just a wrestler—he was a pioneer who forever changed the landscape of pro-wrestling and WWE. Join us as we pay tribute to the "Human Orchid" and uncover how Gorgeous George's innovations and unforgettable style made him a true trailblazer, ensuring his place in wrestling history as the man who changed pro wrestling forever.
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You can also visit our site: https://www.sportskeeda.com/wwe
#gorgeousgeorge #muhammadali #wrestling #wwe #sportskeedawrestling
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00:00 If you've been a long time professional wrestling fan, you know well that the biggest
00:06 drawing factor sometimes isn't those incredible wrestling matches bell to bell themselves.
00:11 Sure, they have a big role in driving ticket sales, or at least return ticket sales the
00:16 next time a show comes to an arena near you, but simply putting on matches together and
00:21 saying "here they are" doesn't exactly sell all of the tickets.
00:25 What truly moves the needle, what truly drives viewership on TV and all the different media
00:30 platforms, what really drives up the hype are great stories, and maybe even more importantly,
00:37 great characters that everyone can attach themselves to.
00:40 Think of the biggest names in the business, Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, Stone Cold Steve Austin,
00:45 The Rock, John Cena, The Undertaker, Heartbreak Kid Shawn Michaels, Bret Hart, Sting, Macho
00:52 Man Randy Savage, Dusty Rhodes, and we can name many more.
00:56 Sure, your in-ring skills, your athletic prowess, you have to be great, not just good, to be
01:02 a main eventer and make it to the dance, but it's always their characters that made those
01:07 names into the biggest names in the industry.
01:11 What do they all have in common?
01:12 They're all the product of maybe, just maybe, one man's success.
01:18 One man that, before the term "sports entertainment" ever existed, was sports entertainment in
01:25 pro wrestling.
01:26 He's a man who most of you, especially if you're on the younger side of wrestling
01:30 fandom, may not be super familiar with.
01:33 To understand who this is, and why he's so important, we need to go back several decades,
01:39 to the history of professional wrestling, before World War II.
01:43 This is Sportskeeda Wrestling, I'm Kevin Kellum.
01:46 Let us know who you think is your most influential wrestler of all time.
01:50 We'll get to who we're talking about here in just a little bit.
01:54 We often refer to the boom period of the rockin' wrestling time of the 1980s with Hulk Hogan,
02:00 or the Golden Era, as a decade of putting professional wrestling on a pure international
02:06 or national scale.
02:08 There's no denying the Golden Era, led by Hulk Hogan, was directly responsible for professional
02:13 wrestling going mainstream, making it even as big as a Saturday morning cartoon show.
02:18 But the reality is that the pillars and foundations of it were laid decades before the 80s.
02:24 Wrestling popularity actually rose increasingly with an emphasis on personalities and characters
02:30 that wrestlers carried, but it wasn't always that way.
02:33 Going back further, the origins of pro wrestling come from the 19th century in Europe.
02:38 Pro wrestling is a scripted "worked" sport, a choreographed one, was done as an attraction
02:45 in circuses that would also travel across Europe and the United States.
02:49 Start off with legitimate Greco-Roman wrestlers evolving into the "catch" wrestling style,
02:54 a distinct style that allowed grappling below the waist, something that was sort of banned
02:59 in the Greco-Roman circles.
03:02 By the 19th century and early 20th century, catch wrestling would split apart into a specific
03:07 subsection that's more akin to what you see in pro wrestling somewhat today.
03:12 There was a greater emphasis on the theatrical and entertainment aspects of it, with predetermined
03:16 outcomes becoming a secret from the public watching.
03:20 What started off as being an attraction within circuses and strongman shows became enough
03:25 of a draw to separate itself as its own show.
03:29 This is when wrestling promotions and wrestlers started to tour various territories.
03:34 It was still about athleticism at the time and when kayfabe was still very real.
03:39 They were protecting the business and making sure it was viewed as a legitimate sport,
03:44 with athletic commissions and different groups overseeing some of the action.
03:49 What people don't know is that professional wrestling actually had a boom period decades
03:53 before the 1980s.
03:55 Between the 1940s and 1950s, an era when sports like boxing and baseball were hurting in attendance
04:01 numbers, wrestling was actually becoming one of the most popular sports in the United States.
04:06 It was a golden era, before a golden era that we know of, at least some of us under the
04:13 age of 40.
04:14 But before the golden era was to come, wrestling would take a major hit by having the business
04:19 publicly exposed.
04:21 Jack Pfeffer, one of wrestling's most notorious promoters and a bitter man who was iced out
04:27 by other wrestling promoters.
04:29 He managed to burn all of the bridges at the time, bridges that had been built in secrecy
04:33 in back rooms.
04:35 After getting isolated from other promoters, he decided to take down the kingdom with him,
04:40 or at least attempt to do it.
04:42 He went to the press and exposed the business of professional wrestling, revealing its scripted
04:47 nature and predetermined outcomes on a grand scale.
04:50 Longtime wrestling personality and manager Jim Cornette on his podcast revealed information
04:55 that didn't get out as heavily or as easily in the 1930s, so the exposure of the business
05:01 was sort of controlled.
05:03 But Pfeffer went on to become the most notorious promoter, threatening other promotions that
05:08 if they didn't cut him in on the business, he would continue to run more exposures of
05:15 the business and hurt their ability to make money, or at least that was his idea.
05:19 Pfeffer was also the source of one of the first books exposing wrestling and how it
05:24 put together, The Fall Guys, written by Marcus Griffin.
05:28 And in circumstances, this is where the need to embrace larger than life characters came
05:33 in, and it eventually became a tried and tested formula for driving ticket sales and creating
05:39 a compelling show that pro wrestling actually was.
05:43 With the benefit of hindsight 80 years later, we can now see that this was one of the biggest
05:48 turning points in the business.
05:49 A young man from Nebraska who would spearhead this change would not only go on to become
05:54 one of the biggest stars of his generation, but the foundation for what would become the
05:59 driving force of the rise of pro wrestling.
06:02 This is the story of Gorgeous George, the most influential pro wrestler in the history
06:09 that some of you may not know enough about.
06:12 Gorgeous George, or just George Wagner as he was known, came from a rough childhood
06:17 like many Americans in the working class during the Great Depression era.
06:21 He was born in 1915, his family moved from Nebraska to Houston, Texas when he was just
06:26 seven years old, and he lived in a rough neighborhood, which meant he was associated with a rough
06:31 crowd.
06:32 He dropped out of school at just 14 years old to become a pro wrestler.
06:36 He was a tough young man with very little personality and was struggling to find his
06:41 way in life.
06:42 To make matters worse, in a wrestling business still dominated by shooters who could legitimately
06:46 hurt you, he wasn't very big by wrestling standards overall, standing at just 5 foot
06:52 9 inches.
06:53 It was his first wife, Betty Hanson, who gave him the idea of embracing a persona that would
06:59 make him undeniable.
07:02 By listening to his very wise wife, he was about to become a lot bigger than 5 foot 9
07:07 inches.
07:08 To do this, George got a clean cut look and began to dress a bit flamboyantly in custom
07:15 made robes while donning blonde beautiful hair.
07:21 And that just wasn't something you did back in the era of palm aid and men being dark,
07:26 tall and handsome.
07:28 George continued to feel holier than thou and more glamorous than the people in the
07:33 seats with his male servant curling his hair to perfection as he wore luxurious styled
07:40 robes.
07:41 Perfume sprayed before he entered the ring and even sprayed on his opponents because
07:47 he didn't want their lowly scent rubbed upon him.
07:51 Wrestling fans have long joked about the length of entrances for legends like the Undertaker
07:55 with the joke sometimes being that his entrances were longer than his matches.
07:59 Well gorgeous George was doing stuff like this over 25 years before the Undertaker was
08:04 ever born.
08:05 This showmanship is one of the biggest factors in drawing viewers to professional wrestling
08:10 especially in the 1940s.
08:12 Nobody did it in a way that gorgeous George did.
08:15 The timing of George bursting onto this scene couldn't have been better as American households
08:22 were beginning to have the hottest new affordable technology at the time, the television.
08:28 George was so smart and ahead of his time by embracing the idea of making himself so
08:34 hateable that people would want to pay money to watch him get his butt kicked.
08:38 You know, the heel vs babyface concept but taken to a whole new level with a new platform
08:43 for fans to see it.
08:45 Something that would transcend professional wrestling and make it a part of the early
08:49 breakout years of television as a medium.
08:52 That's right, pro wrestling and gorgeous George were some of the first big breakout
08:56 TV shows of all time.
08:59 Gorge would be billed as the human orchid around this time and became so popular that
09:03 he was a national attraction in all sorts of wrestling territories.
09:07 A celebrity who transcended the business at the time.
09:11 That's right, a breakout superstar.
09:13 We're starting to use those terminologies in a way that maybe you understand in comparison
09:17 to today's big names.
09:18 In 1948, Time Magazine, one of the most respected national publications reported that gorgeous
09:25 George earned around $70,000 which was a lot of money at the time.
09:32 To put that into perspective, that's around $917,000 in today's money.
09:38 Only two years later, they reported that he earned more than double that at $160,000 out
09:44 earning some of the biggest names in professional sports.
09:47 That's over $2 million with an adjusted inflation.
09:51 Three years later in 1953, he was featured in the Looney Tunes cartoon where he was parodied
09:57 as Ravishing Ron with Bugs Bunny playing the role of the manservant Jeffries.
10:03 That's right, Hulk Hogan got a cartoon in the 1980s but Gorgeous George beat him to it
10:08 in the 1950s.
10:09 Amid all the success he was enjoying at a mainstream level, he legally changed his name
10:15 to Gorgeous George.
10:17 According to a biography on him by Jaron Kapoia, he even made his children call him gorgeous.
10:23 Yeah, wrestlers live in the gimmick.
10:25 Sounds a little bit traumatizing.
10:27 The fame seemed to get to his head because he began acting like his character outside
10:31 of the ring, even when it wasn't needed.
10:34 The biggest cause of his downfall would be escalated with alcoholism.
10:39 His drinking habits got out of control and he even led to situations where George reportedly
10:43 would gamble away $20,000 in a single night.
10:47 This was in the 1950s, so assuming it was 55 for example, the kind of gambling would
10:53 burn through about $233,000 in today's money.
10:57 Yeah, we gotta do a lot of inflation numbers in this video.
11:00 George would get a young lady by the name of Cherie Dupree to be his valet and she would
11:04 soon become his real life wife.
11:06 All of the drinking problems were mounting up, but Gorgeous George was still Gorgeous
11:11 George.
11:12 To give you an example of how relevant he was despite these problems outside of the
11:17 ring, he influenced a very young Muhammad Ali.
11:22 Just imagine that, the guy who would become one of the most iconic personalities in sports
11:28 entertainment of all time got that spark from a chance meeting.
11:34 Yes, a 19 year old named Cassius Clay would meet a 46 year old Gorgeous George who invited
11:41 him to a wrestling event.
11:43 Despite knowing it was predetermined in nature, the young Cassius Clay was enamored by a promotional
11:50 interview where Gorgeous George was verbally cutting apart classy Freddie Blassie.
11:56 Clay remembers being bored with most of the show until George came out and realized that
12:01 the 10,000 people in attendance were there to see him get beat up and were reeled in
12:07 by his gift of gab.
12:09 He talked them into the building and sent them home with a smile on their face.
12:14 George briefly took the future of Muhammad Ali under his wing and played a direct role
12:18 in him adopting a persona of a brash, trash talking young man.
12:23 George was aware of Ali's then immense potential as a boxer but pushed him to take it to the
12:29 next level.
12:30 He was aware of their similarities in show business that pro wrestling could see being
12:35 influential in boxing, a legitimate sport and one of the most popular at the time.
12:40 George had the foresight to see that a young, angry, outspoken black man in the 1960s would
12:47 garner something we all know as pro wrestling fans, heat and how right he was.
12:53 The iconic personality of Muhammad Ali, one of the most globally influential figures of
12:58 the 20th century was directly inspired by Gorgeous George.
13:03 He would meet a young Bob Dylan and even influence the Godfather of Soul, James Brown to adorn
13:10 beautifully colorful robes.
13:12 So his influence in professional wrestling and sports was now dipping into entertainment
13:17 but his career was in its final stages.
13:20 There was no doubt up to this point that Gorgeous George was the single most important wrestler
13:25 that the industry had ever produced.
13:27 There may have been NWA world champions but he was bigger than a belt.
13:32 This isn't to say that George wasn't doing right by the pro wrestling business as in
13:36 the final years of his career in 1960 he would tangle with someone who would go on to become
13:41 one of the big headliners and one of the greatest WWE champions of all time, Bruno Sammartino.
13:47 George's post wrestling life turned out to be anything but glamorous.
13:51 He opened a bar and struggled to turn a profit and when his wrestler friends like Nick Bachwanco
13:56 came in to visit him, they could see the ugly reality of what his life had sadly become.
14:01 A divorce would follow and he was also diagnosed with some level of liver failure but despite
14:07 this George still enjoyed red meat steaks and Jack Daniels.
14:11 The financial failure of the bar saw George get more desperate so he turned to another
14:17 wrestling friend, superstar Dick "The Destroyer" Bear to convince promoters to book him once
14:23 more.
14:24 How would a character whose entire persona was built on beauty end in grand fashion with
14:30 the fitting star power playing up the outlandish circus that pro wrestling needed to be long
14:35 after this star had faded away?
14:38 With one big performance left and his body failing him through the rigors of pro wrestling,
14:44 something he had been in since he was 14 and his vices outside of the ring, Gorgeous George
14:49 would have his final match in 1962 at the Olympic Auditorium for the WWA promotion against
14:56 The Destroyer in a 2 out of 3 falls hair vs mask match.
15:02 Destroyer would win, beating the human orchid, besting him 2 falls to 1.
15:07 George losing a hair match was nothing new, this wasn't the first time it had happened
15:11 but things would take an eerie twist.
15:13 While a younger more boisterous Gorgeous George would have been truly playing up the moment
15:18 in everything that it was, this now older 50 year old George looked genuinely defeated.
15:24 It could have been a satisfying moment for fans, for a wicked villain getting his comeuppance
15:29 turned ugly.
15:31 People in attendance realized the ugly reality of it all very quickly.
15:35 The crowd went from cheering the moment, wanting to see George simply be left alone, some fans
15:40 even left early to prevent seeing his head getting shaved.
15:44 This marked a sad end to what was undoubtedly the greatest career a wrestler had ever had
15:50 at that point, he would never wrestle another match again.
15:53 Just over a year after this, around Christmas 1963, Gorgeous George would pass away from
15:59 a heart attack and liver related issues in a hospital in Los Angeles.
16:03 In many ways, Gorgeous George was the one to usher in the first real wrestling boom
16:09 on television in the 40s and 50s, and one of the first big names to truly save the industry.
16:16 When it was exposed and kayfabe was first revealed, he was the one who simply made it
16:21 so entertaining that it didn't matter.
16:23 His influence on a larger scale cannot be denied.
16:27 Around the time of his passing, Bruno Sammartino was only beginning his legendary 8 year run
16:32 as WWE Champion.
16:34 That just shows you how long Gorgeous George was around for, and how long he was one of
16:39 the top names in the business.
16:40 It wasn't just the fact that George introduced the importance of being a larger than life
16:45 character, he's responsible for introducing a good deal of the psychology into wrestling
16:49 matches with a fantastic work ethic as a villain you needed to chase and a villain you needed
16:55 to defeat, which made people in the wrestling industry realize the importance of being able
17:00 to tell stories in the ring and in new ways with new mediums.
17:05 Let me put this in perspective for younger fans to understand once again how truly great
17:10 Gorgeous George was.
17:12 There's no Nature Boy Ric Flair if there isn't a Nature Boy Buddy Rogers if there
17:17 wasn't a Gorgeous George.
17:18 Who was Shawn Michaels favorite wrestler?
17:21 It was Ric Flair.
17:22 It all ties back generations before the one we're in now.
17:26 There is no top floor if the first floor wasn't built first.
17:31 Gorgeous George was the first floor of modern televised professional wrestling.
17:36 Gorgeous George is the man who inspired your favorite wrestlers favorite wrestler.
17:41 What other deep dives in the history of pro wrestling do you want to see us cover on this
17:44 channel?
17:45 Let us know in the comments below.
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