Falls Count Anywhere

08-16-07

Ten more and I'm The Flaming Carrot.

Brian ‘Crush’ Adams Dies
One of the biggest rip-offs of all-time in wrestling was Demolition. They were totally copping the Road Warriors gimmick and Vince was shameless about it. Truth be told, I really liked the Demos. They were a decent team, had a great finisher and their theme song was beautiful.

Since one of them, the former Masked SuperStar, was getting on in years, they brought in a new guy calling him Crush. That was the first Big Time appearance of Brian Adams, who passed away this week at the age of 44.

Adams was from Hawaii and after graduating high school, joined the military. He was stationed in Japan and, according to some sources, was spotted and trained as a wrestler by Antonio Inoki. I don’t think that’s true, I believe he did start his training in Japan, maybe even under one of Inoki’s trainers, but I don’t think it was Inoki himself who trained him.

When he came back to the States, he was given the gimmick American Ninja and wrestled in the Portland territory. He teamed with The Grappler Len Denton. They worked for a while and won the PNW Tag Championships. After that, he won the PWN singles title, but lost that to Scott Norton.

Then it was time to move on. He had started working with the WWF as Crush even before he dropped the PWN belt. Demolition had their feuds and Adams was the third man. He wasn’t very good yet, but he had his moments. Sadly, this was at the end of the Demolition run and they fired him so he went back to PNW for a while.

What’s strange is that they were always very high on Adams as a performer. He had some charisma, but not championship-level charisma. When he came back, they were calling him Kona Crush and he was decked out in neon.

Dead at 44.

He was a face at first and feuded with Barry Darsow’s Repo Man character. Darsow was also in Demolition as Smash. Crush then got saddled with a feud against Doink the Clown. Guys used to complain about getting put in with Doink, but the Evil Clown gimmick that Doink used when he first started was really pretty good. After that it was Crush vs. Randy Savage in Savage’s last major WWF feud. They had an OK match at WrestleMania X.

Adams was arrested for purchasing steroids. He was a big user, but so was everyone back then. He came back after doing a little time and was brought in as a part of the Nation of Domination with the greatest underused manager of all-time, Clarence Mason III. Eventually the NoD broke up and we had Gang Wars with Crush leading the Disciples of Apocalypse, Savio Vega leading Los Boriquas and Farooq and co. as the Nation. It was a fun time.

Adams went to WCW after the Montreal Screw-job. He was wasted there. He did form a team with Bryan Clark, the former Adam Bomb, as KroniK. This was a decent idea, but the team only briefly worked.

Like everyone else, he went crawling back to Vince, this time as a part of KroniK and feuded with Kane and the Undertaker. They had a terrible match on PPV and he ended up bumped down to HWA and then released all together.

He worked some of the big show night tours, like the ones that did big business in Australia. He went to All Japan, a company that wouldn’t have touched him before the loss of guys like Kenta Kobashi and Mitsuharu Misawa, and KroniK won the All Japan Tag Team Titles. This was a far cry from the days when Toshiaki Kawada and Akira Taue would have 5 star matches night in and night out as champs. Adams left and the belts were vacated.

Adams tried boxing, but he never made it because of injuries. He did have one last match, against Rey Mysterio in Japan.

A long-time steroid user and a heavy partier to hear some talk about him, he was also one of the guys who really got along with the fans. More than once I saw him at things and he was really good to the little people.

RAW
Didn’t see it. I hear it was a pretty average episode with them teasing that Mr. Kennedy was Vince’s son. We know he’s on the roster, but other than that, we just don’t know. I think this’ll set up a feud with Vince’s real kids, and Shane in the ring is usually fun, but I’m still not sure this was a good idea.

OK, short edition today. More on Monday!!!

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Chris Garcia