Scott Bowden presents Kentucky Fried Rasslin

Two former icons of their respective industries: At least Ron Jeremy was passionate about his work–and could last longer than 30 seconds.

Now living on a remote 30-acre property in Bonsall, Calif., former WCW/WWE World champion Bill Goldberg recently told the San Diego Union-Tribune that he’d love to return. But only, of course, “if the money was right.”

He tells The Union-Tribune: “I’d go out there and do it in two seconds,” Goldberg said. “I’d have to be totally prepared for it, because I wouldn’t want to tarnish my image, but I’d like to be in the ring one more time so that my wife and my son can see me wrestle live.”

Tarnish his image? That must be a rib. Hmmm…what would that be? The memory of his grueling 30-second squashes? His Superman push to the WCW World title, which came so effortlessly because of his unique charisma-so much in fact that he never seemed to appreciate it. Is he referring to how he ended Bret Hart’s career because he insisted on throwing his ridiculous MMA-style kicks with little regard for his opponent’s safety? His refusal to work with Chris Jericho because of his size?

Admittedly, Goldberg’s WCW run was a classic throwback of the fans making a guy a superstar, i.e., the people decided-not the booker. By all accounts (though dozens of people have taken credit for “The Streak”) no one in WCW knew what they had in Goldberg initially. The plan was to hide his massive shortcomings in 30-second squash matches and hope for the best, a formula that exceeded expectations, with the fans exploding for the guy the moment he stepped through the curtain after about six weeks of one-sided wins. In one of the last great booking moves for the company (they were certainly few and far between after 1998), WCW rode the momentum and built up the former Georgia Bulldog for a showdown with heel champion Hulk Hogan, despite the fact that Goldberg couldn’t do much beyond a spear and jackhammer suplex finisher.

Of course, Hogan’s ego cost the company millions of dollars when he insisted that the World title switch occur at the Georgia Dome Nitro less than a week before the show, which had already sold about 35,000 tickets. Hogan knew WCW brass would be in attendance, so he expertly manipulated his way into the main event to appear that he had drawn the house under the guise of “taking one for the team” and dropping the belt to the rising star and “making him.” If they had instead waited for these two seemingly unstoppable forces to meet at Starrcade ’98, WCW likely would have shattered PPV records or come close. Instead, on that Starrcade show later year, Kevin Nash booked himself to defeat Goldberg with a ridiculous finish. The Goldberg character never recovered.

After the sale of WCW, Goldberg eventually was signed by WWE (too late to save the ill-fated invasion angle), but Vince McMahon and WWE Creative seemed determined on breaking him down before building him back up, ignoring the simple formula that made him a dominant superstar to begin with. He was booked to look like a fool in his hometown at the hands of the Rock, who seemed to delight in making fun of the former WCW champion instead of getting him over as a force.

He had a forgettable series with Triple H in bouts that were booked to last far too long, exposing Goldberg as a less-than-credible worker. The fans caught on, and by the time he had dropped the WWE World title back to Trips, his era as a big star was over as fast it had begun.

Coupled with the fact that Brock Lesnar was also leaving the company, the two were booed out of the building while going through the motions during his last bout at WrestleMania XX. Once viewed by WCW fans as a superior bad ass to Steve Austin, WWE had the last laugh, with the retired Rattlesnake stunning Goldberg following the bout and sealing the lid on his career.

My disdain for Goldberg goes beyond his limitations in the ring. He’s always looked down on the business and never made the effort to understand it. His own ignorance doomed a potential feud with Jericho, who later taught the big guy a lesson backstage about respect when the two were reunited in WWE. Even now, he talks of putting smiles on kids faces for one more match while maintaining it would only happen if the money were right. Then again, it’s always been about the money to guys like Goldberg and Lex Luger, who were never big wrestling fans and always acted like the business was beneath him.

But with the 2011 WrestleMania live from Atlanta, where his greatest accomplishment occurred, Goldberg’s likely to get the “main event” Hall of Fame induction spot ahead of far-more deserving stars like the Freebirds and Arn Anderson, who would most likely be insulted to even be mentioned in the same class with the two-time World champion. (Personally, I think former Atlanta superstar and NWA World champion  Tommy “Wildfire” Rich would be a logical candidate-or at least more deserving than Goldberg-but that’s not going to happen.)

Goldberg’s induction after such a limited career would further illustrate that WWE’s Hall is nothing more than a shameless marketing tool. When watching the recent DVD release about the life of Ricky Steamboat, I was struck by how emotional the Dragon became when discussing his induction and the footage of him crying backstage when shaking hands with Vince prior to his speech. This was a stark contrast to a guy like Jerry Lawler, who sees the Hall for what it really is. When I jokingly called Lawler to congratulate him on his HOF induction a few years ago, knowing he was livid about missing a Cleveland Indians exhibition game that was to held in Memphis on the same night of the ceremony (and fearing that HOF status would make the King seem “old”), he snapped, “Yeah, right-that’s like somebody calling and congratulating me for winning a fuckin’ belt.”

I suppose if the WWE HOF is meaningless, then Goldberg is a perfect fit. You know, if the money is right.

Even wrestling fans couldn't believe it when Memphis crowds dropped to less than 4,000 fans at the Mid-South Coliseum in 1979.

I’m pleased to announce that I’ll be interviewing Jim Cornette for Kentucky Fried Rasslin’ as soon as the controversial manager comes up for a breath following the upcoming NWA Legends Fan Fest in Charlotte. Jim and I finally met again at the 2009 Fan Fest, years after we briefly worked together in the the Memphis-based USWA in 1991, and we had a nice time discussing what made Jerry Jarrett’s territory so special in its heyday.

Similar to my four-part interview series with Dutch Mantell, Jim and I will be discussing all the great Memphis angles from the ’70s and ’80s, getting his perspective as a fan, photographer and, eventually, as a performer before Jerry Jarrett traded him, Bobby Eaton and Dennis Condrey (among others) to Bill Watts and Mid-South Wrestling, where the dastardly trio found their niche as the Midnight Express.

As most of you may know, Jim has his own Web site (confirming that, indeed, hell has frozen over), where he often recall’s wrestling’s history while lamenting the changes that have made our beloved onetime caricature  of true sport into a sports-entertainment caricature of itself. Case in point, Cornette’s excellent column from May 20, 2009, where he details booker Robert Fuller’s final days as booker in Memphis in 1979 and the angle Jarrett conceived in the days after his departure to spark the territory…unwittingly creating the now-beaten-to-death concept of “hardcore” wrestling.

Cornette writes: “The real birth of…what has come to be known as “Hardcore” wrestling, came June 17, 1979, in, of all places, Tupelo, Mississippi. Promoter Jerry Jarrett, who had started his own promotion two years earlier and taken over Gulas’ area, had a problem. Over the previous four months or so, his booker had been Robert Fuller. Fuller had installed his own crew of talent over that time, and only a few Memphis mainstays were currently working the area. The problem was, for whatever reason, the success Fuller and his crew had in Knoxville for brother Ron’s Southeastern Wrestling had not translated to the Memphis end. On June 11, the crowd at the weekly Monday night matches in Memphis had dropped below 4,000 fans, an alarming level at the time, and previous weeks’ houses showed it wasn’t a fluke. Jarrett replaced Fuller (and I would love to someday hear the first-person account from Jerry of that conversation), and took the book back himself. Now he was in another quandary-almost all the top names featured on TV and in angles over the previous several months were gone-Fuller, the Mongolian Stomper, Gorgeous George Jr., Mr. Fuji & Prof. Tanaka, Ronnie Garvin, Jimmy Golden, Dick Slater, Boris Malenko, Tony Charles, all were gone from the territory instantly after the June 11 Memphis card. Jarrett, in my opinion a booking genius, realized he had to take the talent left available to him on short notice and do something that would get such attention, cause such talk, and most importantly, sell enough tickets, that the territory could weather this storm until he had time to build new programs and import new stars.

As Cornette pointed out, the June 11 card proved to be Fuller’s last. The following week, nearly all the wrestlers Fuller brought with him from the Southeastern promotion were packed up and gone-presumably in Robert’s van. Again, on paper it doesn’t seem like a bad card, but the chemistry just wasn’t there. Following Idol’s departure, there were no personal feuds that captured the imagination of the fans, which would drastically change in the months ahead.

Jarrett followed the July 18 card up with a hot crowd for the July 23 Memphis card, which drew about 7,000 fans for a main event of the Freebirds vs. Jerry Lawler and Bill Dundee. In the audience that night were fans from the WFIA Convention (including the late Brian Hildebrand), Cornette…and 8-year-old mark Scott Bowden, which I wrote about here. The Bombers/Lawler and Dundee drew several strong houses along the way-as Cornette pointed out, Jarrett even called on area legends Jackie Fargo and Roughhouse Fargo to join the fray to spike attendance, which always worked for a few weeks out of the year when business was a little slow. After that feud ran its course, the King turned against the Superstar, once again giving the area one of the hottest heels in the business. After cheating his way past Dundee the week before to win the opportunity, Lawler challenged Bockwinkel for the AWA World title on Aug. 27 , drawing over 10,000 fans-and the Robert Fuller era was a distant memory.

For more information on how you can relive virtually the entire 1979 season of Memphis wrestling, click here.

Look for the Jim Cornette interview on Kentucky Fried Rasslin’ in mid-August.

Take a walk on the wild side: Landel at the top of his game with Nikki Sixx and Vanity.

As you might imagine, Motley Crue’s The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band includes  hair-raising tales of sex, alcohol and drug abuse that make the wrestling business seem tame by comparision (with the possible exceptions of WWF 1985, ECW 1995 and WCW 1997).

In the book, Nikki Sixx recounts how he and recording-artist Vanity (today a born-again Christian) would binge on coke for weeks at a time, a whirlwind of excess that nearly killed him. But even then, they had trouble keeping up with “Nature Boy” Buddy Landel, who recently posted photos of he and the Crue partying on his Facebook page.

Landel has been forthright that his addictions derailed his promising career in the mid-’80s, when Dusty Rhodes was pushing him strong as a rival to NWA World champion Ric Flair, “that other Nature Boy.” Landel has maintained that at the time of his firing, he was scheduled to win the strap from Flair, who needed time off for a personal issue. According to Buddy, the scenario laid out was that Landel would win the belt through devious means, with Flair returning as a babyace months later to feud with his brash, younger replacement over the 1o pounds of gold and the Nature Boy name.

Flair has since said that he despised how Dusty was building up Landel at his expense, which no doubt would have helped the planned feud because fans would have picked up on the real-life animosity.

Landel might have a been an inspired choice as NWA champion–that's right, I said it.

Landel was the National champion managed by J.J. Dillon when he was abruptly fired in December 1985, shortly after winning the belt from Terry Taylor at Starrcade in November of that year. I believe he missed a TV taping because he’d been out all night partying, infuriating Dusty, who clearly had big plans for the kid.