In the words of the late, great Merle Vincent: “Here’s your God Damned Goon.”
Merle always wanted to say that. You see, since we started WrestleCrap back in April, we’ve been flooded with requests. Some of them we agreed with, some we didn’t. Some we got just a couple of times, while others were seemingly requested every other day.
None, however, compared with the sheer amount of requests we’ve gotten for the Goon. We got so many that we were really getting sick of it, and Merle would say the line above at least once a day. Neither of us could wait to get the Goon on, so we would never have to hear the name again!
Mind you, we don’t disagree with including him. You see, there’s a really good reason we got so many requests for the Goon – it really was one of the dumbest gimmicks in the history of the WWF.
For the one or two of you who have never heard of the Goon, the gimmick was that he was an evil hockey player who was, according to Vincent K, so rough he got thrown out of every league he was ever in. To illustrate this point, the WWF showed us footage of some hockey games from the Goon’s playing days. Of course, the “games” consisted of the Goon skating around an empty hockey rink against ONE player, but who’s counting, right? Right?
The Goon was one bad mutha. He would slam his opponents into the walls of the rink…
…and use his hockey stick as a weapon. He was evil, see, and he didn’t abide by the rules! He’d be a perfect fit for the WWF!
He would come out acting like he was skating to the ring, with big hockey gloves and a hockey stick. His theme “song” was actually organ music much like you’d hear at a hockey game. He also had probably the stupidest pair of boots in the history of the business – they were made to look like ice skates!
Of course, the Goon was actually a wrestler by the name of Bill Irwin, a fact that color commentator Curt Hennig quickly pointed out. Irwin had competed for years throughout the US in various organizations. Too bad for him that he got his only shot at the big time with such a lame gimmick.
I know this will probably shock you, but the Goon didn’t last very long. Even in the WWF’s darkest hour, they realized the gimmick stunk and threw Irwin in the penalty box for good.