Erik Visits an American Grave, Part 2,026

This is the grave of Ravishing Rick Rood, though he would be known as Rick Rude on the wrestling circuit.

Born in 1958 in St. Peter, Minnesota, Rood grew up there and a lot of his friends were into wrestling. In fact, quite a few boys from his high school became professional wrestlers. He graduate from high school and went to the local community college. He got a AA degree in physical education, but was a just young strong guy without much ambition career-wise. He worked as a bouncer and got involved in the local arm wrestling scene. I have no idea–does anyone still do arm wrestling?

Anyway, it didn’t take long for Rood to get into the wrestling scene, which was already pretty big locally. He rose quickly and by 1982, started to be on TV.

Now, I know absolutely nothing about professional wrestling except to say that I think it’s dumb but harmless. And to say that those people really put their bodies through the ringer for this stuff. It might not be a sport. In fact, the recent ESPN move toward covering professional wrestling makes me sick, you might as well cover the ballet. In fact, I insult neither professional wrestlers nor ballerinas when I say this–both activities take tremendously athletic people doing amazing feats, but both have predetermined outcomes, which is the absolute opposite of a sport. That said, I did grow up around it because my brother has been an absolute fanatic for pro wrestling ever since he was a kid and he very much remains so today. Maybe I should have outsourced this post to him. Anyway, this is not going to be a long discussion of how good the now Ravishing Rick Rude was. But he was good enough that I’ve heard of him before this.

By 1984, Rude was leaning into a villain performance, based in the Memphis scene around Jerry Lawler. Later that year, he moved to Championship Wrestling from Florida. That only lasted a year then he signed with World Class Champion Wrestling, out of Texas. Finally, in 1987, he ended up with the World Wrestling Federation, which as the WWE became the conglomerate dominating that fake sport. He was immediately one of the top wrestlers, challenging Hulk Hogan, getting involved in all kinds of escapades with Jake The Snake Roberts, etc. He won the WWF Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship in 1989, which demonstrates what a good character he had become.

Well, there were moves to this and that federation, blah blah blah. This might matter to people who understand this activity more than I do.

In 1999, Rude died at the age of 40. It surprised people, but you know, these guys are often not very healthy, due to their size and the steroids that most of them have taken, especially back then. He was found dead in his sleep by his wife. Incidentally, for a guy whose persona was as a womanizer, in real life he was a dedicated family man. He was training for a return to the ring and was taking god knows what in preparation for that. He was on a drug that prevents narcolepsy, and that might have contributed to his death. But it’s hard to know. This was shocking at the time, but of course not many wrestlers live to old age.

Ravishing Rick Rood (or Rude) is buried in Green Lawn Cemetery, Roswell, Georgia.

Rude was elected to the WWF Hall of Fame in 2017. If you would like this series to other mediocre posts on professional wrestlers, you can donate to cover the required expenses here. Dr. Jerry Graham is in Riverside, California and Haystacks Calhoun is in McKinney, Texas. Previous posts in this series are archived here and here.