WWF Tough Enough 2: Introducing Trainer Bob Holly

Bob Holly, real name Robert Howard, hails from Talladega, Alabama, a fact which almost killed his wrestling career before it had a chance. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Trained by Rip Tyler, Bob started his wrestling career in 1990 with the gimmick “Superstar” Bob Holly. While he made his WWF debut in 1991, he remained mostly in independent promotions, teaming with Robert Gibson, formerly of the 80’s classic tag team known as the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express. Like Al Snow, Bob later joined Smokey Mountain Wrestling where he wrestled until he became a full-time WWF employee.

Unfortunately, this is where Bob’s home of Talladega came back to haunt him. What is Talladega known for? The NASCAR race, of course! So it’s a natural that someone from Talladega, Alabama aspire to be a racecar driver! He became Thurman “Sparky” Plugg (later “Spark Plug” Bob Holly, but that’s just as bad): Wrestling Racecar Driver!

Another Digression: WWF Booker and Tough Enough 1 dinner guest Pat Patterson seems to have a fascination with this type of gimmick. In the past, the WWF has been home to Dr. Isaac Yankem, DDS: The Wrestling Dentist; Duke “The Dumpster” Droese: The Wrestling Garbageman; The Honky Tonk Man: The Wrestling Elvis Impersonator; The Repo Man: Wrestling…er…Repo Man. Anyway, you get the idea. Another bad idea in a series.

Sparky debuted at the 1994 Royal Rumble, a card rife with bad ideas, most notably Kevin Nash’s first big push, and the “death and resurrection” of the Undertaker. In the next five years, Holly would job to nearly every wrestler in the federation, with very few bright spots to give him hope for his future career. One such spot was a Tag Team Title win with the 1-2-3 Kid (later known as X-Pac), however they would lose the titles the very next night.

Perhaps Holly’s best moment came thanks to the late, great “King of Harts,” Owen Hart. In 1997, Owen was a much-despised Intercontinental Champion, while Holly was a jobber with a stupid gimmick. In Holly’s home town of Talladega, Owen lost to Holly in a non-title match. It was by far Holly’s biggest win of his career at the time, and was the first step in giving the man some much-needed credibility in the eyes of the fans. The backstage story goes that Owen volunteered to let Holly beat him in Holly’s home town, in front of his family and friends.

A few months later, in a story much too dull to even attempt to tell here, the WWF started promoting “NWA” matches during WWF shows. Those contending for NWA titles were largely wrestlers with nothing better to do, and Bob Holly was a perfect fit.

Jim Cornette (who now runs OVW, one of the WWF’s ‘training leagues’) introduced a new tag team, The New Midnight Express. “Bodacious” Bob Holly and “Bombastic” Bart Gunn (I may have the nicknames reversed, but I really don’t care, to be honest) were seen as a joke at best and sacrilege toward the Greatest Tag Team in the History of Wrestling, “Beautiful” Bobby Eaton and “Sweet” Stan Lane, at worst.

Through the early months of 1998, Bob and Bart won and defended the NWA tag titles to audience apathy. No one even cared when the original Rock ‘n’ Roll Express were found, still dressed in their ‘80’s rocker-bandanna-around-the-thigh outfits, under a rock somewhere and sacrificed to the monster referred to as the New Midnights (allowing Bob to bring his wrestling career full circle). It was supposed to remind fans of the classic REAL Midnight Express vs. RNRs matchups of the mid-80’s, but all it did was remind fans how outdated and embarrassing the whole angle was. The NWA gimmick was scrapped soon after.

At this point, Holly joined Al Snow’s “J.O.B. Squad,” but soon became frustrated with the way Al ran the group. His split with the J.O.B. Squad would finally, FINALLY prove to be Bob’s breakout gimmick, as he began telling everyone that HE was more Hardcore than Al ever was. Thus the joke, “Spark Plug” Bob Holly became “Hardcore” Holly, a trash-talking wrestler who demanded that the fans and opponents take him seriously, and backed up his words in the ring.

This begun a few months worth of angles mentioned in the Al Snow article, with Al and Holly trading the Hardcore title back and forth, with other wrestlers added to the mix at times. As mentioned, many of these angles were extremely entertaining, with Snow actually helping Head or Pierre win the Hardcore Title just to annoy Holly.

As the Hardcore Title feud switched to Snow vs. the Big Bossman, Holly decided to aim higher, focusing his attention to fighting huge men like The Big Show and Kane. He declared that HE was the true Superheavyweight of the WWF, weighing over 400 pounds of pure muscle. Thus, to be fair, he could only wrestle other Superheavyweights.

He would come to the ring and interfere in Big Show or Kane’s matches, looking for a fight. Big Show would roll his eyes and shake his head at “The Big Shot,” treating him with a combination of pity and fondness. Kane, however, was much less understanding, at one point giving Holly four consecutive chokeslams and leaving him in a heap in the ring. No matter how many times he was beaten into a quivering mound of jelly, he always complained that he almost won, that he had ‘em just where he wanted them.

It was during this time that a friend of mine dubbed him “The Chickenhawk,” named after the character in the Foghorn Langhorn cartoons who constantly tried to fight the larger animals despite the fact that he was much, much smaller than they were. It was also at this point that Holly became one of my sentimental favorites, due to his willingness to get the absolute blue-eyed hell beaten out of him for the sake of the angle.

Soon after the “Chickenhawk” angle began, fans were introduced to Bob’s “cousin,” Crash Holly. Crash was actually Memphis wrestler and WWF prospect Erin O’Grady, who looked for all the world like a smaller version of Bob.

The two became occasional tag team partners and even more often, opponents, as the wacky Holly cousins competed to see which was the toughest Holly. Of course, they continued the “Superheavyweight” gimmick, even to the point of bringing a medical scale to the ring because they had to confirm that the other wrestlers deserved to be in their weight class. In true wrestling style, of course, the main purpose of the scale came to be using it to hit their opponents, helping them win matches.

Hardcore and Crash competed for the tag team titles and Hardcore title off and on, never really getting a good, ongoing feud. Hardcore’s most high-profile angle in this time period was a short feud with “co-Intercontinental Champions” Chris Jericho and Chyna, although Bob was just a third wheel in the larger feud between the two. Meanwhile, Crash was in the midst of his 12 Hardcore title reigns.

Later in the year, the dreamy Mona Gruenwald was brought in as the third Holly cousin, Molly Holly. This brought on the first real feud for the Holly cousins, a Romeo and Juliet-esque feud with the Dudley Boys over Molly’s romance with Spike Dudley.

Hardcore Holly’s most prominent WWF run came to an end on June 27, 2000, as he suffered a broken arm in a match with Kurt Angle. Angle’s moonsault attempt was slightly off, resulting in Angle’s knee handing square on Holly’s forearm, fracturing the arm. While Hardcore was out, Crash and Molly went their separate ways, Crash staying in the Hardcore title picture with occasional matches on the lower weekend shows, while Molly became Spike’s love interest before being stolen away by the superheroic Hurricane, becoming his sidekick, Mighty Molly.

Upon Hardcore’s return a few months later, it looked as if he would be given a sustained push against Angle with the “Loaded Forearm” gimmick formerly used by Lex Luger in the 80’s (where the metal plate used to fuse his forearm bones together gave him a powerful offensive weapon). However, as many pushes in the WWF go, it was abandoned without much comment shortly after it started.

Bob Holly hasn’t had much to do in the year or so since his push was dropped, mostly appearing sporadically on television in various nothing matches. Although he doesn’t have any training experience, he was tapped to become a Tough Enough 2 trainer late in 2001. He agreed, figuring that it would give him some quality camera time. I assume Bob will be the “Tazz” of this series, verbally and physically abusing the contestants for our amusement.

In Memoriam: In trying to find pictures of the Chickenhawk for this column, I found out that Chuck Jones had died of congestive heart failure in his home on February 22, 2002. Although I didn’t know it at the time, of course, Jones was a key influence in my young life. He created several of the best cartoon characters of all time, including the Chickenhawk himself and my personal favorite, Marvin the Martian. He also directed perhaps the most famous cartoon of all time, the classic “What’s Opera, Doc?”

Chuck Jones was nothing less than a legend in the world of animation, and will be sorely missed. I simply cannot express enough how much his work inspired me as a child, and still inspires me creatively to this very day. Please go to www.ChuckJones.com to learn more.

E-mail Mike at mikmaria@swbell.net.

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