Opinion by S_D

According to Bradshaw’s latest overseas WWE.Com entry, it looks as if Ron Simmons is calling it a career. And he had quite a career to be proud of.

Simmons made his name known to the public in another world: college football. The All-American linebacker was a legendary player for the Florida State Seminoles who became only the 2nd person in Seminoles history to have his jersey retired. The other was “Prime Time” Deion Sanders.

He debuted in the NWA in 1989 with Butch Reed, who had recently departed from WWE, and formed the tag team “Doom” and had WWE official Teddy Long as their manager. In May 1990, Doom rose to prominence in the NWA as they defeated The Steiner Brothers for the NWA World Tag Team Title. This was during the midst of a disagreement where the NWA broke away and WCW became their own promotion, so Doom is widely credited as the first WCW World Tag Team Champions. They enjoyed a nice 9 month reign as tag champs until February 1991, where they lost the titles to the Fabulous Freebirds. If you want to know how far WCW taped shows ahead of time back in 1991, they had already taped a match of the Freebirds losing the tag titles to the Steiner Brothers before Doom even lost the titles! Let’s see WWE try something like that nowadays. After they lost the straps to the Freebirds, they began feuding with each other. Ron was turned babyface and won the blowoff of the feud in the Thunder Doom cage match at SuperBrawl 1991 in May.

Ron quickly shot up the ranks, and the WCW braintrust went to Ron when they faced a huge problem in the fall of 1991. You see, the original main event for Halloween Havoc 1991 was originally going to be Lex Luger defending the WCW World Heavyweight Title against their latest big-talent signing, Jerry “The King” Lawler. However, on an unidentified radio show months prior to this, Paul E. Dangerously gave it away and things had to be changed. Dangerously was suspended, and instead they built up to a Luger\Simmons 2 out of 3 falls main event. The match was one of Luger’s best during his reign as champion.

Simmons, after bailing WCW out, quietly fell back into the mid-card for a while until a man named “Cowboy” Bill Watts took over WCW’s booking. WCW was under the midst of racial scrutiny, so Watts decided to prove them wrong. On August 2nd, 1992, Sting was scheduled to fight Vader for the WCW Title at a TV taping in Savannah, Georgia. Before that match, Rick Rude was defending his WCW U.S. Title against Nikita Koloff. Rude started brutalizing Koloff, and Sting came out to make the save. Then, Jake “The Snake” Roberts made his WCW debut and viciously attacked Sting, DDTing him on a chair three times. So Vader was left without an opponent. The Cowboy decided to hold a makeshift lottery with names inside of a paper bag and name he drew would be the one to get the shot against Vader. The name he drew? Ron Simmons. Simmons got the shot against Vader. The match finish came out of nowhere with Simmons hitting his unbelievable powerslam on Vader, which was quite a sight since Vader was billed at 448 pounds, to capture the WCW World Heavyweight Title. All of the babyfaces came out of the locker room to celebrate with Ron, who had just become the first ever black world heavyweight champion. That was Watts’ answer to the scrutiny. Ron enjoyed a healthy 4 month run as the World Champion, until Cowboy Bill Watts was removed for making comments that were translated as racist. Eric Bischoff took over and immediately put the title back on Vader, jobbing Simmons to him on a house show two days after Starrcade 1992.

Simmons remained quiet and didn’t do anything of note in WCW until late 1993, when he began to show the first signs of a heel turn. Simmons had taken a young newcomer by the name of Ice Train under his wing. However, Simmons was very abusive towards him. This eventually let up to Simmons completely turning heel, and a match being set up between the two at the Clash Of The Champions in January 1994. Simmons quickly disposed of Train and disappeared from WCW soon thereafter due to a contract dispute.

In 1994, Simmons had a brief run in Extreme Championship Wrestling. He didn’t last long however, but he was marketed around being the man with the most brutal spine buster ever. And in ECW, he could be as stiff as he wanted with it. And trust me, he was.

Simmons sort of dropped out of notice from the wrestling world until July 1996. The night after WWE’s In Your House: International Incident PPV, Shawn Michaels & Ahmed Johnson were fighting The Smoking Gunns for the WWE Tag Team Championship. Ahmed was thrown out of the ring, and out came this man dressed up in a gladiator outfit and kicked Ahmed right in his kidney, which legitimately ruptured it. Who was the man in the goofy outfit and plastic helmet? Why, it was Ron Simmons! His new name in McMahon-land was “Faarooq Issad” and later got changed for some odd reason to “Faarooq Asad”. Apparently, he was the latest find for Sunny.

However, a brief injury put Ron on the shelf temporarily, and it was during this time period that Vince decided to make a drastic change to Ron’s character. Coming to his senses and realizing how stupid the gimmick was, he turned Faarooq Asad into simply “Faarooq” and had him head up a new stable called the “Nation of Domination”, which was meant to be a take-off on the Nation of Islam. The gimmick was birthed on an episode of WWE’s Saturday morning show “Livewire” when Faarooq, the scheduled guest, came in dressed like Lou Farrakhan with a slew of bodyguards and his new associate Clarence Mason. He talked about the new Nation, which would later be finalized as he, Crush, and Savio Vega. This is where Faarooq’s career peaked, as he came close many times to becoming Intercontinental Champion and even got a WWE Title shot in the main-event of the 1997 King of the Ring against The Undertaker.

The members of the Nation soon went their own way, and Faarooq formed a new nation with new members. Those members were D’Lo Brown, Kama Mustafa, Rocky Maivia, and Mark Henry. Ahmed Johnson was even a temporary member of the new stable, before he was quickly trashed.

However, in March 1998, The Rock pulled a power play on Faarooq, and overthrew him as the leader of the Nation. Faarooq soon turned babyface and dwindled out of public view for a while.

In October 1998, The Jackyl took notice of Faarooq’s losing ways and offered to guide him back to prominence. He promised the same to Bradshaw. They wrestled one tag team match under The Jackyl before Jackyl was unceremoniously fired from the promotion. However, they remained as a team. They partook in a strange angle where they abducted Dennis “Mideon” Knight and several videos were played with Mideon being chained in a dungeon while Faarooq and Bradshaw taunted him. It was revealed that they were doing the dirty work of The Undertaker so that he could begin his Ministry of Darkness. The Acolytes, Faarooq and Bradshaw, eventually rose to the top of the tag team ranks as they defeated Kane & X-Pac to win the WWE Tag Team Titles in May 1999. They lost them two months later to The Hardy Boys, but quickly regained them back a mere two weeks later.

After losing the belts back to Kane & X-Pac in August 1999, the Ministry began to dissolve due to Triple H and Undertaker’s in-fighting, and everyone went their own way. Faarooq and Bradshaw went from being devil worshippers to beer drinkin’ tough-guys and even started their own protection\bodyguard agency tagged “The Acolyte Protection Agency”, or The A.P.A. for short. After about a year and half, the A.P.A. finally regained WWE Tag Team Championship by defeating The Dudley Boys in July 2001. Their reign only lasted a month before losing the titles to Diamond Dallas Page & Chris Kanyon.

In March 2002, the WWE split into two separate brands. And with this separation, we also saw the end of the A.P.A. Bradshaw was designated to RAW, while Faarooq was designated to SmackDown. Faarooq just never seemed to find his niche by himself, and after May 2002, Ron took some time off to be with his wife, who was suffering from some very strange blindness in one of her eyes.

Faarooq returned, however, in September 2002 once again using his real name, Ron Simmons. Ron formed a tag team with Reverend D-Von and the two began teaming regularly and were starting to find their place together, until D-Von was abruptly traded back to RAW and reunited The Dudley Boys with Bubba Ray, leaving Ron by himself once again.

It seems as if at this point, Ron has accomplished all he has wanted to in his career, and has decided to hang up the tights. Ron certainly had a storied career, and it’s going to take a while getting used to not hearing the stray “Damn!” anymore.

Congratulations on a great career, Ron.

S_D

©2002, WrestlingDB.

Last Edited: Saturday, December 7th, 2002 - 10:49 pm EST