Mean Gene Okerlund happens to catch Mad Dog Vachon in the middle of constructing a pine box on AWA television in 1982! Mad Dog has been hammering this box together in anticipation of an upcoming bout with Jerry Blackwell! Blackwell had attacked the Mad Dog and put him out of wrestling for some time! According to Vachon, he spent two and a half years working in the mines to get back into wrestling shape! This world is not big enough for these two! One of them will have to leave! Jerry Blackwell won’t be able to take the Sheik’s money with him where he’s going!
This photo of Stan Hansen and Verne Gagne is pretty funny when you think about the stories from behind the scenes about the big cowboy’s reign as AWA world champion. Hansen made most of his money wrestling for All Japan, where he was one of their top American wrestlers up until his retirement in 2001. Wrestling insiders were well aware of that fact and probably wondered what Verne was thinking having his promotion’s world title around the waist of a man whose loyalty was to a Japanese company. You might guess that this arrangement did not end well. Hansen refused to lose the belt to Nick Bockwinkel and was subsequently stripped of the title. Bockwinkel was awarded the championship by default, but Hansen had walked out of the AWA and began defending the title in Japan. He finally sent the belt back after the AWA threatened legal action, but included a final “fuck you” to Verne by running it over with his truck! Nick Bockwinkel said on WWE’s Spectacular Legacy of the AWA DVD that the mud tracks were still embedded in the belt and that the front plate had been crushed under the truck’s weight!
