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Early life. Rogers was the son of Herman Gustav Rohde Sr., and Frieda Stech, both German immigrants. He was athletic, and took up wrestling at age nine at the local YMCA, joining the Camden YMCA Wrestling League and winning its heavyweight championship. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II.
- 10 He Was An NWA Champion First
- 9 WWE Wouldn’T Exist Without Him
- 8 Lou Thesz Was Going to Win No Matter What
- 7 He Didn’T Actually Win The WWWF Championship
- 6 He Lost His Title Because of A Heart Attack
- 5 He Was An Innovator
- 4 He Was A Lot Like Ric Flair
- 3 He Wrestled Into His 60s
- 2 He Was A Manager in 1980s WWF
- 1 He Was Supposed to Wrestle Buddy Landel
Buddy Rogers is most famously associated with Vince McMahon Sr.’s promotion, the Capitol Wrestling Corporation, but he first made his name in the National Wrestling Alliance territories in Texas in the 1940s, becoming a seven-time NWA Texas Heavyweight Champion. In 1961, Rogers would defeat Pat O’Connor for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, i...
By 1963, the National Wrestling Alliance felt that Vince McMahon Sr. was being stingy with Buddy Rogers’ as far as loaning the champ out to other NWA territories, so the NWA decided to book Lou Thesz to beat Rogers for the World Title. McMahon did not want Thesz to be the champ, so he quit the NWA and formed a new venture, the World Wide Wrestling ...
The NWA feared that Buddy Rogers was going to refuse to lay down in his match with Lou Thesz, so they set up several fail-safes, just in case. One such fail-safe was making the match a one-fall bout instead of the NWA’s traditional 2/3 falls, but even more notable was Lou Thesz himself. RELATED: 10 Backstage Stories About Ric Flair We Can't Believe...
Being that the WWWF happened because McMahon refused to recognize Lou Thesz as NWA Champion over Buddy Rogers, they simply made Rogers the inaugural WWWF World Heavyweight Champion in 1963. However, for some reason the WWWF went an extra step by claiming that Rogers won the championship in a tournament in Rio De Janeiro that never actually happened...
Despite being crowned the top guy in Vince McMahon Sr.’s outlaw promotion, Buddy Rogers’ title reign lasted only 22 days, as the Nature Boy suffered a heart attack. The WWWF had to quickly take the title off of him, so they booked Bruno Sammartino to beat Rogers in under a minute -- just in case he had another heart attack -- beginning Sammartino’s...
In the first half of the 20th century, pro wrestling was a lot more slow-paced and based in maintaining holds for a very long time. Buddy Rogers did a lot of work to innovate an in-ring style that relies on moves like drivers, slams, and top rope maneuvers over mat-based work. On top of that, Rogers also developed the act of planning out a match fr...
The “Nature Boy” moniker wasn’t just a nickname that Ric Flairadopted. In the 1950s, upon leaving Texas for the Ohio territories, Buddy Rogers was given the “Nature Boy” gimmick, complete with bleached hair and a flashy heel personality. Sound familiar? RELATED: Ric Flair: His 10 Best World Title Reigns When he became the Nature Boy in the late 197...
A heart attack wasn’t enough to keep Buddy Rogers down. Throughout the 1960s, Rogers would wrestle tag matches and extremely short bouts so as to not overexert himself. He’d retire for about a decade, returning in the late ‘70s, working in Florida as well as in Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling. There, Rogers would feud with Ric Flair, who at the...
Older fans may remember Buddy Rogers from his brief time in the World Wrestling Federation in the early 1980s. There, Rogers most notably managed Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, helping facilitate Snuka’s turn from a heel into a babyface. He even wrestled a couple matches alongside Snuka: once in 1982 against Captain Lou Albano and Ray Stevens, and once in...
In the mid-1980s, Jim Crockett Promotions had two Nature Boys running around. First there was Ric Flair, a top guy in the company, but there was also “Nature Boy” Buddy Landel, a young upstart who was proclaiming himself to be the true Nature Boy in pro wrestling. Their big match never really happened, but in 1992, Landel was set to wrestle another...
- Senior Author
Jan 23, 2020 · by Stephen Von Slagle. “To a nicer guy, it couldn’t happen!” “Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers was one of the most inventive, talented, impersonated, controversial and, ultimately, respected champions ever.
Mar 19, 2021 · Photo Courtesy: Crowbar Press. At the end of 2020, Tim Hornbaker released his latest book detailing the life and career of former NWA and WWWF Champion Buddy Rogers entitled Master of the Ring – The Biography of Nature Boy Buddy Rogers.
Close. Rogers was a fourteen-time world champion, notably holding the top championship in both the NWA and the WWWF, today known as WWE (he was the inaugural WWWF World Heavyweight Champion). He is one of four men in history to have held both championships, along with Ric Flair, AJ Styles and Cody Rhodes.
Jan 10, 2023 · He had the look, attitude, body, and ability, but when he passed away in 1992, he left behind a complicated legacy. “Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers as the NWA World Heavyweight Champion. Rogers was a seminal influence in today’s entertainment product, as well as being the star that drove a major wedge between the NWA and Vincent J. McMahon.
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'The Innovator' originally written by Nick Wood at age 15 (1998) If the saying "Imitation is the greatest form of flattery" is true, then the "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers must have been very flattered while he was alive.
