 | | Hacksaw Jim Duggan |
Hacksaw Jim Duggan is in the back of the arena, listening. When he's on the card, he hears the chants so associated with him over his Hall of Fame career. "U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!" He's not too far from doing what he's done many, many nights over the past 32 years - kicking the locker-room door and making his way to the ring to do what Hacksaw Jim Duggan does best: beating people up. But he wasn't always the Hacksaw. Nope. Jim Duggan used to be plain ol' Big Jim Duggan, whose look was, as Duggan describes, "short hair, clean-shaven, red and black trunks, and a long, gold bathrobe." "A wrestling promoter came up to me and said, Kid, you might have a future in this business, but come up with something better than Big Jim Duggan, and get rid of the gold bathrobe," Duggan said. Duggan then tried a gimmick in which he was the masked Convict. The mask had Cs on either side to denote him being, you know, The Convict. "And people were saying, Why did you put those ears on your mask?" Duggan recalled. Next up, he was Wildman Duggan. He grew his hair and beard long and scraggly, and wore an outfit with fur and chains on it. "Didn't work, either." Four years into his career, he finally hit it - as Hacksaw Jim Duggan. "I had the opportunity to see this business come from National Guard armories and high-school gyms to going all over the world in huge, giant arenas," Duggan said. "It's evolved to where it's not just two guys rolling around in trunks no more. It's costumes, it's music, it's fireworks. But if you want to keep the people's interest, if you want to have the people standing up and going, Ho-o-o-o, you've got to give them something more than fancy-dan outfits. And that's what Hacksaw Jim Duggan does. Nothing fancy-dan about me. A 2×4, the flag of the United States of America." _______________________________________________________________________ Fit Finlay talks wrestling  | | Fit Finlay |
Fit Finlay asks himself, Where did the sport of wrestling go? His answer: "For a while, it went down the toilet." "We need to bring it back, and AWE is doing that in a great way," said Finlay, a former champ in both WWE and WCW, who will be wrestling on AWE's Night of Legends pay-per-view on Oct. 15. Finlay has seen a lot change in wrestling in his 37 years in and out of the ring. He sees wrestling returning to its grassroots, with Awesome Wrestling Entertainment promoter Marvin Ward leading the way. "The way it used to be was competitors. The way it used to be was heart and passion, desire, athletes making a difference so that you or anyone else could tag on to these people and make you believe in the bad guy or good guy or whoever it might be in your case." Wrestling needs to get back to giving fans something they can watch and believe in. That's the gamble that Ward is making with the debut of AWE on pay-per-view. "This gamble is going to pay off, because I know that people want to watch one of the most watchable events that ever came to any town, any city in any part of the world. I know. I was there," Finlay said. _______________________________________________________________________ | 
WHEN: Sept. 17, 2011