That's pro-wrestler Ox Baker from his scene in Escape from New York where he beats the holy hell out of Snake Plissken. You can't tell due to the chainlink fence in the background, but that club has a bunch of nails sticking out of it.
I've only seen a couple of matches of Baker's, but one of them really impressed me, a tag team outing where he and his partner was up against Andre the Giant and Dick the Bruiser. Ox was well past his prime at this point (Not as much as Dick, though. Owning the promotion means you get to main event no matter how old you are.) I was impressed by Ox's ability to look like a real threat to the Giant while also convincingly selling Dick's offense, who looked like a midget standing next to the other three guys in the ring. Being a decent badguy in wrestling is always a needle-threading act, since your job is to make the other fellow look good while retaining the ability to credibly threaten the next good guy to come along. There might be a lesson about DMing in that.
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Thanks for the post, I watched wrestling during the 70's and into the 80's. Ox Baker, Dick the Brusier, Harley Race and Rick Flair were some of the mainstays of Saturday Night wrestling at the Chase in St. Louis. I remember when Pat O'Conner's sleeper hold was a game ender as well as the iron claw of the Von Erich's.
ReplyDeleteA timely post, as I'm currently working up a Wrestler class for Mutant Future.
ReplyDeleteKeen insight on the villain's role, Jeff.
(and Padre is right- those Von Erichs were gnarly!)
That fight scene was filmed in Union Station, Saint Louis (my home town). Just prior to making the film it had been 90% empty and derelict (Amtrack still ran 1 or 2 tracks and had a ticket office; the rest was empty) --- the place was filthy and falling apart (which was a shame since it is such a fantastic 19th century building). When I was ~12 years old I used to catch the train there to go to visit my cousins in Milwaukee every summer. Then when I was in high school, Hollywood came to town to film some scenes of Escape from New York there.
ReplyDeleteIn the 1985 they undertook a big renovation of the station and turned it into a mall, tearing up the tracks to create an indoor lake and beer garden, etc.
But it's pretty cool to remember the station before renovation... when I was there to catch the train, it looked just like it did in the movie --- a total wreck!