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Brian Pillman

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Brian Pillman
File:Brian Pillman Memorial.jpg
BornMay 22, 1962
Cincinnati, Ohio
DiedOctober 5, 1997
Bloomington, Minnesota
Professional wrestling career
Ring name(s)Brian Pillman
Yellow Dog
The Loose Cannon
Billed height5 ft 10 in (178 cm)
Billed weight228 lb (104 kg)
Trained byHart family
Debut1986

Brian William Pillman (May 22, 1962 – October 5, 1997) was an American professional wrestler and American football player.

Football career

Pillman developed throat polyps at around 2 years old. They came back multiple times throughout his life, which resulted in him spending much of his youth in hospital. He underwent over 40 operations to remove it, leaving him with his signature raspy voice.

While attending Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, Pillman played football for the Miami Redhawks as a linebacker where he set records for "tackles for loss". He went undrafted to the National Football League, joining the Cincinnati Bengals (his home town team) as a free agent in 1984 and later the Canadian Football League for the Calgary Stampeders in 1986. He also played for the Buffalo Bills in preseason action in 1985, but was the last player cut before the start of that season. His attempts to make the roster of the Bengals were covered in a series of articles in The Cincinnati Enquirer. During his football career, Pillman began taking steroids and painkillers in order to perform, resulting in him having problems with drug addiction for the rest of his life.

Wrestling career

Stampede Wrestling

Following the end of his football career, Pillman remained in Canada and began training as a wrestler under Stu Hart and his sons. He debuted under his real name in 1986 in Hart's Calgary, Alberta-based Stampede Wrestling promotion.

Pillman quickly formed a tag team with Hart's son Bruce known as Bad Company. In April 1987, Bad Company won the Stampede Wrestling International Tag Team Championship, defeating Ron Starr and the Cuban Assassin in the finals of a tournament. Their reign lasted until October 1987, when the titles were held up following a controversial ending to a match between Bad Company and their opponents, Jerry Morrow and Makhan Singh. Bad Company defeated Morrow and Singh in a rematch in November 1987 to regain the titles, eventually losing them to Morrow and the Cuban Assassin in July 1988.

While in Stampede Wrestling, Pillman used his girlfriend at the time, Beulah McGillicutty, to get him over as a face by seating her at ringside and having heel wrestlers taunt her so that he could rescue her.

World Championship Wrestling

{{NFL.com player}} template missing ID and not present in Wikidata. In 1989, Pillman returned to America and began wrestling for World Championship Wrestling, where he was known as "Flyin'" Brian Pillman due to his athletic ability and variety of aerial maneuvers. He held the WCW United States Tag Team Championship with Tom Zenk and also held the short-lived WCW Light Heavyweight Championship, feuding with Brad Armstrong, Jushin Liger, Richard Morton, and Scotty Flamingo. Pillman later feuded with Barry Windham, who he harassed while dressed as the masked Yellow Dog after losing a retirement match (Pillman was eventually reinstated).

In 1992, Pillman turned heel, forming a tag team with "Stunning" Steve Austin known as the Hollywood Blondes. In March 1993, the duo won the WCW World Tag Team Championship, which they held for five months. The team quickly became popular for their brash attitudes, homosexual catchphrases and critically acclaimed matches with Ricky Steamboat and Shane Douglas. They also feuded with Ric Flair and Arn Anderson, mocking their ages and parodying Flair's interview show "A Flair For the Gold," with their own "A Flare for the Old."

After the Hollywood Blondes separated, Pillman became a tweener, feuding with wrestlers such as Brad Armstrong, Eddie Guerrero, Alex Wright and Marcus Bagwell. In late 1995 at Fall Brawhello l 1995, Pillman formed a team with Arn Anderson, and began feuding with Ric Flair and Sting. At Halloween Havoc 1995, Flair betrayed Sting and reformed the Four Horsemen with Pillman, Anderson and Chris Benoit.

In 1995 he wrestled the first match on the very first WCW Monday Nitro defeating Liger.

Throughout 1995, Pillman developed his "Loose Cannon" gimmick, cultivating a reputation for unpredictable behaviour. He frequently blurred fact and fiction with his worked-shoots, and outed Kevin Sullivan as booker during the February 1996 Superbrawl VI pay-per-view. During a live episode of WCW Clash of the Champions, Pillman grabbed commentator Bobby Heenan by the collar, causing Heenan (who had a history of neck problems) to blurt out "What the fuck are you doing?" on air. Pillman was fired by WCW President Eric Bischoff in early 1996. In Eric Bischoff's autobiography he said that Pillman was fired for a reason.

Extreme Championship Wrestling

Immediately following his departure from WCW, Pillman debuted in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based Extreme Championship Wrestling promotion, appearing at the annual ECW Internet convention, Cyberslam, on February 17, 1996. During an interview conducted in the ring by Joey Styles, Pillman insulted Bischoff, calling him a commentator, a "gofer" and a "piece of shit". After Styles attempted to end the interview, Pillman threatened to "whip out [his] Johnson" and urinate in the ring. Pillman was confronted by ECW owner Tod Gordon and wrestler Shane Douglas, who had him removed from the ring by security guards. While being dragged from the arena, Pillman attacked a plant sitting in the audience with a fork he produced from his boot. Although he did not wrestle for ECW, Pillman made several further appearances with the promotion, engaging in a war of words with Douglas.

On April 15, 1996, Pillman was badly injured after falling asleep while driving his Hummer H1 in Kentucky and driving into a tree trunk, flipping the vehicle. He was in a coma for a week and suffered a shattered ankle, forcing doctors to fuse it together in a fixed position. This injury severely limited his mobility, forcing Pillman to abandon his high-flying ring style and adopt a more conservative mat based style, and elevated his addiction to painkillers.

World Wrestling Federation

Pillman signed a contract with the World Wrestling Federation on June 10, 1996, with the signing announced in a press conference. He acted as a commentator while recovering from his broken ankle, transitioning to a wrestling role after attacking a "fan" during an episode of WWF Shotgun Saturday Night.

Following WrestleMania 13, Pillman aligned himself with Bret Hart, Owen Hart, Davey Boy Smith and Jim Neidhart as part of the anti-American Hart Foundation, all of with whom he was familiar from his Stampede Wrestling roots. He began feuding with his former partner, Steve Austin. In the course of the feud, Austin was given on-screen credit for damaging Pillman's ankle after placing it in between the seat and backrest of a folded chair and then jumping on the chair. (This particular style of attack has since been dubbed "the Pillmanizer," in honor of this incident.)

File:Pillman death certificate.png
Pillman's death certificate shows his official cause of death as "arteriosclerotic heart disease with left ventricular hypertrophy".

On the November 4, 1996 episode of Monday Night Raw, Pillman took part in the infamous "Pillman's got a gun" angle with Steve Austin. Austin and Pillman had been feuding for several weeks, and Austin had finally decided to take matters into his own hands and visit Pillman, whom he had already injured, at home. Meanwhile, WWF interviewer Kevin Kelly sat in Pillman's house with a camera crew and the Pillman family, while Pillman's friends surrounded the house to protect him. Austin was attacked by Pillman's friends as soon as he arrived but soon subdued them. He then proceeded to break into Pillman's home and advance on his nemesis. Pillman responded by producing the same 9 mm Glock that he had displayed earlier and pointing it at a hesitant Austin, while Kelly and Pillman's wife Melanie screamed for help. The camera feed was then disrupted, with the scene fading to black. The on-scene director contacted commentator Vince McMahon and reported that he had heard "a couple explosions." The transmission was restored shortly before the end of Raw, and viewers witnessed Pillman's friends dragging Austin from the house while Pillman aimed the gun at him and announced his intention to "kill that son of a bitch!" Pillman also slipped up by making the mistake of saying "fuck" on live television, which meant that it could not be edited out. The WWF (and Pillman personally) eventually apologized profusely for the entire angle, with Pillman claiming that the profanity "just slipped out".

Pillman wrestled sporadically throughout 1997, aligning himself with the Hart Foundation and feuding with Goldust. Some time during the night or early morning prior to the October 5, 1997 In Your House: Badd Blood pay per view in St. Louis, Pillman died in a Minnesota hotel room. He was 35 years old. While he had a documented history of abuse of prescription drugs, an autopsy found that a previously undetected heart condition - arteriosclerotic heart disease - had led to his death. Pillman did not know that he was about to become a father once again when he died.

Wrestling facts

  • Finishing and signature moves
  • Managers
  • Nicknames
  • Flyin' Brian
  • The Loose Cannon
  • Brian F'n Pillman
  • The Rogue Horseman
  • The Ticking Time Bomb
  • The Walking Time Bomb

Championships and accomplishments

World
National
  • PWI ranked him # 84 of the 500 best singles wrestlers of the PWI Years in 2003.
  • PWI ranked him # 50 of the best tag teams of the PWI Years (with "Stunning" Steve Austin).
  • Stampede International Tag Team Champion (2 times) - with Bruce Hart
  • Rookie of the Year (1987)
  • Tag Team of the Year (1993) - with Steve Austin
  • Most Underrated Wrestler (1994)
  • Feud of the Year (1997) - with the Hart Foundation, versus Steve Austin

Personal life

Pillman dated Terri Runnels while they were in World Championship Wrestling together before her marriage to Dustin Rhodes. He later married Melanie, with whom he had one son: Brian Jr. He had two other children, Brittany and Danielle, from previous relationships.

Media

See also

References

Wikiquote has quotations related to Brian Pillman.
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