Mummies alive!
One of my favorite gimmicks from wrestling’s past is that of the dreaded mummy. From Benji Ramirez’s version in the 1960’s all the way up to WCW’s debut of The Yeti, the sport has seen so many mummies running around, you’d think the museum curators in Egypt would have found a couple of them missing in their last inventory. Hell, as recently as a couple of years ago, there was one active in Puerto Rico (Faraon Zaruxx)! But the one running theme to these gimmicks is that one hated enemy of bad gimmicks everywhere:
It never…EVER…gets over.
EVER.
This particular Mummy none other than Bobby Duncum Sr., father of the late West Texas Redneck member Bobby Duncum Jr. A mainstay in Texas regional promotions, Duncum usually got by on his own worth, but for a short while, Southwest Championship Wrestling decided he needed some sprucing up. And so, he was wrapped in bandages, and thus was born THE MUMMY.
Or reborn, or raised for the dead, or something. Hell, I don’t know exactly how it’s supposed to work with these guys. Are they like zombies? Or just really really old guys who fart dust?
It really doesn’t matter I guess. In about the same time it took me to write this about him, The Mummy showed up in Southwest and quickly disappeared. While he was there, he was managed by Jonathan Boyd as part of his Commonwealth Connection stable (which also included The Sheepherders back when they were violent and really cool), and feuded with Bruiser Brody.
Think about it though. Exactly what are you supposed to do with a wrestling mummy? If you job him out, then you’re basically just throwing money away on all that bandaging (all $3.65 it cost), and yet, if you book him to go over everyone, then the locker room will bitch about the oldest guy in the promotion (by a couple-thousand years) getting a push and holding the youngsters down.
Now THERE’S a catch-22 for promoters everywhere.