The Legion Of Doom make a pretty cool entrance on motorcycles at SummerSlam 1992… with their ventriloquist dummy Rocco riding on the front of one of the bikes (wearing a leather jacket, blue jeans, and even a little pair of sunglasses).
Rocco was “found” in a pile of garbage in the slums of Chicago by the Legion Of Doom and their manager Paul Ellering in an effort to “return to their roots”.
Rocco was then used to remind them of their home town of Chicago (huh?) and the dummy would give them encouragement and advice from ringside with “help” from Paul.
Of course, they looked like complete idiots.
Here’s an alternative video link if the above one goes dead.
Remember, these guys were always portrayed as total badass tough guys throughout their entire career up until this point. There was never anything cartoony or silly about them even when they were watered down a bit during their first few years in the WWF compared to their NWA run. This whole Rocco thing was really out of left field and bizarre.
So now, instead of acting tough, they were hanging out with, and getting advice from a dummy that their manager had inexplicably found in a random pile of trash.
Nobody looks cool carrying around a ventriloquist dummy (well; except for our own Blade Braxton, of course!).
I could not make any of that up if I tried, Crappers. This really was a storyline on WWF television. R.D has inducted it if you don’t believe me!
I’d like to think that Rocco is Stubby’s slightly more successful, sober well-dressed Uncle who tried to steer his blockheaded rapscallion Nephew in the right direction, but failed miserably.
I…I just can’t.
I remember it well. Not a shining moment for LOD for sure.
It’s really jarring to watch the Road Warriors DVD. You see all their old AWA and NWA matches where they’re total badasses, destroying everyone in their path. Then you get to the WWF years where Hawk is always the Face In Peril, and they’re hanging out with a ventriloquist dummy. It’s even funnier to listen to the commentators refer to Rocco like an actual, integral part of the LOD, and watch as the cameramen zoom in on him at ringside as Ellering is making him talk.
Stubby would take Rocco in a sixty minute IronDummy match with the loser being burned alive by Mrs. Deal
Mrs. Deal with a gas can and a lit torch! Yowzers!
I can imagine the angle the unit turning heel by burning the puppets …
Now that would have been kind of cool… so of course they didn’t do it.
puppet not puppets, one is freakin’ enough, although I can imagine Terry Taylor and Jacques Rougeau becoming the Puppeteers and feuding with them
I was at a show in Hamilton ON just before they shot these vignettes. They had LOD come out for a live interview with Mean Gene and ellering introduced their puppet, Freckles. Hawk kept yelling “Freakin’ Freckles!” Anyway, they had to shoot it three times; don’t know why they thought the crowd would appreciate it more the second and third time, but they crapped all over it, as you can imagine.
What’s funny is that they had to scrap that interview footage altogether when they changed the name of the puppet to Rocco.
It’s too bad this wasn’t during the time when the NWO was in full force and went off the rails with approximately 167 offshoots of the New World Order. Rocco could have been the leader of the Puppet World Order and the WCW merchandising machine would have had a totally rad revenue stream making NWO sized shirts for puppets.
Having one puppet in wrestling is silly, having a whole legion of them on the other hand would be downright terrifying.
Imagine some of the names that would come out of that…
Puppet World Order
Legion of Puppets (LOP)
Demopuppet (Demolition)
Razor Puppet
The Puppet Outsiders
Degeneration P
The Four Horsepuppets
Mr. Puppet (Perfect)
THe New Age Outpuppets
Wierd. This list can go and it be like an alternate universe
Wow, and I thought Paul Ellering as Mr. Dot Com during the A.E. was bad….