Andrew Lutzke
Taped in 2005 by RF Video
Gang kicks us off with an energetic promo.
OMG was born in Chicago but was raised in South Carolina.
He broke into the business at 16 after being a huge wrestling fan his whole life.
Gang was able to watch Mid-Atlantic as his homebase promotion.
They didn’t have a local wrestling school so he joined an “outlaw” promotion and became part of the ring crew.
The first 3 or 4 years saw Gang barely make any money.
He worked various gimmicks and usual wrestled in front of tiny tiny crowds.
It took years for Gang to get a break in ICW which was owned by Randy Savage’s family.
While practicing his back breaker before his debut match, Gang tore up his knee and had to take several weeks off. The Poffos welcomed him back and dubbed him “Crusher Broomfield”.
OMG lived with Macho Man for a while and Gang says Randy was working out at all hours, was paranoid and seemed obsessed with Jerry Lawler and the other rival Memphis wrestlers.
Ronnie Garvin was the top babyface and OMG had some stiff matches with him.
Gang also received the chance to battle Ernie Ladd during this period.
OMG played Savage’s lackey until it was revealed that Savage was pocketing Gang’s money that was earmarked for his dying sister’s medical care. This led to Gang and Savage feuding.
Ernie Ladd went back to work for Bill Watts’ Mid-South and Ladd suggested OMG be brought in as a heel,
Ladd had to get legit knee surgery so they had Gang take him out in storyline.
OMG worked with Andre the Giant and Harley Race at the Superdome – a thrill for a fairly green worker.
Gang doesn’t drink and one time Andre held OMG’s arms back so Dick Murdoch could force feed him beer.
JYD worked a lot like Hogan – just eating offense until the big comeback.
Paul Orndorff roughed up a jobber in the locker room after he didn’t sell the piledriver long enough.
“Dr. Death” Steve Williams was hard to work with when he first broke in,
After Mid-South OMG went to Memphis and ended up quitting within weeks due to terrible pay. OMG feels they just wanted to bury him because of his ties to ICW.
Watts then got him hooked up with Jim Crockett.
Piper, Flair and the rest of the crew were fantastic.
Gang feuded with Jimmy Valiant and the matches were easy since Valiant was so over.
Nick Kiniski and Gang won the Mid-Atlantic tag belts – but OMG doesn’t understand why they were even made a team since they were so different.
OMG always wound up back in Mid-South at least for short stints. Watts really liked him.
A Japan tour turned Gang off of working there as he was just used a suplex dummy for all the local stars.
Bruiser Brody was a machine in the ring in Japan, compared to his American pace. Gang drove him around when Brody worked for JCP.
Japan had no proper hotel heating and very little English on TV so Gang couldn’t wait to get home.
Eddie Graham in Florida gave OMG a hard time for not “wrestling” – Kevin Sullivan came to his defense and told Eddie that Gang was a living gimmick – not a grappler.
Dusty Rhodes and OMG had a nice run on top in both Mid-South and Florida.
Blackjack Mulligan and Gang also feuded in Florida competing in all kinds of specialty matches. Working with barbed wire was the only gimmick match that Gang didn’t care for.
Dusty wore a lot of hats in Florida as he was also booking and helping Eddie run things.
JJ Dillon wasn’t flashy enough of a manager for Gang’s taste.
Gang was supposed to be a top babyface in Florida after Dusty headed to book for JCP. Gang went on a tour of Japan and came back to find Michael Hayes was in charge of Florida and Hayes told OMG he didn’t have a role for him.
Hayes hooked Gang up with a gig in World Class.
The Von Erich boys were stiff as Hell, always late and sometimes pretty messed up.
Kerry was to wrestle Ric Flair for the title and he was missing – the crew found him passed out in his car messed up on drugs.
The Von Erichs messed up their hotel rooms constantly as well.
The WCCW fans were rabid and OMG had dead animals put on his door step and his car vandalized.
Kamala and OMG had some stinker matches with each other since both worked monster heel styles.
Gino Hernandez traveled with OMG once – but Gino’s cocaine use bothered Gang and he stopped that arrangement.
Mid-South changed to Universal Wrestling Federation and tried to expand but Gang was on the UWF tour of California that drew poorly and he knew the expansion was a mistake.
Gang accidentally sent Hacksaw Jim Duggan into a bolt that was on the ringpost – Duggan suffered a vicious wound and Watts made sure to film all the bloody aftermath in order to put heat on Gang.
OMG was thrilled to work with The Freebirds.
Gang got a WWF contract and agreed to drop the UWF title to Big Bubba Rogers before he ran off to New York.
The WWF had tried for months on end to sign OMG but he was happy being the top heel making decent money for Watts.
Vince told Gang they wanted him to work on top with Hogan right off.
Gang missed his first WWF booking as they held a TV taping in the boonies of Canada and OMG couldn’t find the place.
Working against Hogan was a great experience. The fans roar was incredible.
Working PPVs were nice for the paydays and Gang never felt extra pressure,
WWF wouldn’t let Gang work a wild style he desired. Gang got sick of working the same guy for weeks on end as they traveled the loop.
Morphing OMG into Akeem was a secret for a while as first they told him to grow out his hair and a later asked him to learn to dance.
Vince told him that OMG was bland and he would be fired if he didn’t do the Akeem gimmick.
No African Americans ever confronted OMG about the racist overtones of the Akeem gimmick.
Fuji, Bob Orton Jr. and Piper would do drugs in front of everyone in the locker room.
Slick was sexually propositioned by a WWF employee but OMG doesn’t know who it was.
After Gang started getting de-pushed he got sick of the travel, the jobbing and the grind and quit without giving his notice.
Vince assumed he was coming back and even booked him on a Japan tour – Gang ignored all of it.
Gang’s biggest payoff was between 5-8 grand.
No good road stories since it was just the same crap every day.
Slick told Gang that the WWF was “full of fags” and they all doinked each other and that’s why the WWF didn’t care that some of the guys had wives and kids they never saw.
Gang went to WCW and dragged matches out of PN Newz and El Gigante. OMG refused to put over Newz and was fired.
His 1995 WCW run was a mess too as he was asked to put over foreigners whose styles clashed with Gang’s.
Gang never got a fat WCW contract when they were signing everybody in the world – he was stuck with a 500 dollar a shot contract.
Bischoff wouldn’t agree to a $100,000 a year contract and they had a yelling match – Gang was never booked after that.
OMG was sick of the business after that and stuck to working indies.
Puerto Rican fans would chuck rocks and batteries at the heels.
OMG worked some ECW dates until Paul Heyman started to not pay for Gang’s plane tickets.
RVD knocked Gang out with a kick to the chin and his leg broke when he fell over.
OMG did a few WWF tryout matches and was ultimately not signed – he was booked for the Gimmick Battle Royal at Wrestlemania though.
The WWF guys came up to him and marked out over seeing him.
Gang is now working for a prison and has a nice benefit package.
George “The Animal” Steele was stiff and hard to get a decent match out of.
The Bulldogs cut off the leg of Terry Taylor’s pants – Taylor put the pants on and walked away without selling the missing leg.
The Bulldogs also drugged a midget and shaved his eyebrows.
Final Thoughts: Gang comes across as a good ol’ boy with no regrets, no ego and no agenda. That tends to make for the best shoot subjects, as they have nothing to lose. RF ignored a lot of potential questions (Why did he ask about a Wrestlemania match with the Rockers and nothing about his feud with Big Bossman, for example). RF’s usual crap aside this was an entertaining two plus hours with one of the top heels of my childhood.
