AAMS Presents: Cult Superstar! 4: The Challenge

[Cult Icon]

Cult Icon here, welcoming you all to the fourth edition of Cult Superstar!, an AAMS production and the column that Disco Inferno wants in on (but only dancing Germans are allowed in this room). Good to be back after almost a week loyal viewers, as I just couldn’t keep away from you any longer. We’re gonna have an excellent showing today, with an all new segment called All Things Cult and a special challenge that was laid out for me last week. You ready? Then in the words of James Woods shamelessly ripping off Michael Buffer in Hercules (I like the movie, what you gonna do about it?) LET’S GET READY TO RUMBLE!!!


All Things Cult


Basically for my fantastic new segment here, I wanted to give my loyal viewers a taste of the Cult Life. Each week I will give you a cult film, song and fact for you to chew on for the next week. Let’s begin.


Cult Film of the Week-Howard the Duck: Based off the cult comic by Marvel comics, this quacktastic (yes the pun sucked I know) has the reputation of the Mega Maid in Spaceballs; going from suck to blow (cover your eyes from the language kids). Seriously, I love this movie but it is completely horrible. It holds no truth to the comic at all, has lousy dialog, horrible special effects and the acting…let’s just say John Cena looks like an Oscar winner compared to this movie (yeah, I said it). Still, if you are a fan of so-bad-its-awesome films, this is the film for you. It had me laughing throughout its 5 hour long running time (please note, it’s not actually 5 hours, it just feels like it). So if you’re in the mood of wasting time, don’t care about movie quality, and want to see how George Lucas and the American Graffiti writers slacked off so bad on this project, well my friend, this is for you.


Cult Song of the Week-My Bloody Valentine-You Made Me Realize: Just to note, those loyal viewers looking for rap songs must know that I am like the general from the South Park movie (in short, I don’t listen to hip hop). However, I am a huge fan of the music known as shoegaze, and this song is shoegaze/alt rock at its finest. Many may note that it sounds very similar to the Smashing Pumpkins, to which would be correct as the Pumpkins were heavily influenced by Valentine. Like another favorite band of mine The Pixies, My Bloody Valentine may not be the most well known band ever, but they certainly paved the way for certain bands to go mainstream succeed, while having a dynamic legacy all their own. If you’re looking for something weird, noisy and just plain different, go to the link below and check out this song.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njqRt7PH-5I


Cult Fact of the Week: The love of my life Buffy Summers (aka Sarah Michelle Gellar for those living in the non delusional world unlike myself) has announced that she is expecting her first child this past week. A congratulations to the mom and her babies daddy…yours truly! (you didn’t really think that Freddie Prinz Jr. was the father did you? Suck it Freddie)


Alright, it’s time to get serious (lights dim, candles lit, all that jazz). Time to move onto the main event.



Cult Superstar! Skando Akbar


Last week after posting my latest edition of Cult Superstar!, I received a challenge from the newest member of the LOP Main Page and loyal fan Mazza. His challenge was to do a piece about a wrestler named Skandor Akbar, a wrestler who even I loyal readers, had never heard of before (I’m pretty sure half of you haven’t heard of him either). Needless to say, I have accepted his challenge and jumped into research almost immediately. This, loyal readers, was a lot more difficult than many of the others I’ve had to right, but needless to say you are going to get a good story here. It’ time to begin.


The Career


Skandor Akbar was born Jim Whebbe on September 29th, 1934 in Wichita Falls, Texas(this would make him the oldest Cult Superstar! to date, and also proves that he is not related to Star War’s Admiral Akbar like many of my twisted readers were probably thinking). Whebbe’s parents were of Middle Eastern decent, his father from Lebanon and his mother from Syria. This was to be inspiration for his wrestling character later on in his career. Whebbe grew naturally strong and was interested in wrestling from a young age due to having two uncles in the business. At 29, Whebbe would begin his career as a wrestler around Texas, working with Lou Thesz and going under the name Jimmy Wehba. He would remain in Texas for the majority of his career.


After an uneventful three years, Whebbe was approached by Fritz Von Erich, the father of the famous Von Erich family. Fritz suggested that Whebbe change his name to something that sounded more Arabic, to play off his Middle Eastern heritage. Whebbe decided to do so and from then on became known as Skandor Akbar, which in fact translates to “Alexander the Great”. With his new name, Akbar’s career started to take off as a wrestler, forming a fairly successful team with Danny Hodge. Together, the duo twice won the NWA (Tri State) United States Tag Team titles on two occasions in the late sixties. Despite being a successful face though, Akbar was to find more success late on as a heel.


Sure enough, Akbar turned on Hodge towards the end of their second Tag Title run, starting a feud between the two. The feud would springboard Akbar’s career, as he quickly became a hated heel in the Texas area. From 1969 to 1977, Akbar would enjoy a steady career which included numerous title reigns, as well as working in Texas, Georgia and even Australia. His most notable reigns were as the NWA Tri State North American Heavyweight Champion in 1974. However, he was mostly successful in Tag Teams, winning a total of 5 tag championships (he would total 7 all together with six different partners). After competing in Australia for a couple years, where he won the Heavyweight and Tag titles during his time, Akbar retired as a wrestler in 1977. At the time, his legacy seemed to be that of a solid career, but he wasn’t quite done yet.





Despite retiring as a wrestler, Akbar would remain in the business, becoming a manager. Remaining as a heel, he would go onto lead a stable known as “Devastation Inc.”. Now dubbed “The General” Akbar lead “Devastation Inc.” to great success in the state of Texas, where the stable appeared in Bill Watt’s UWF (Universal Wrestling Federation) Promotion, the Von Erich’s WCCW (World Class Championship Wrestling) promotion, and Mid-South Wrestling. Akbar would become even more hated as a manager, coming to the ring smoking cigars, harassing fans and even throwing fireballs at his opponents. He also became more charismatic and clever in interviews, mostly mocking the opponents of his stable at the time.


“Devastation Inc.” would go onto be a successful stable in Texas for almost 20 years. The stable included many top superstars of the business today and yesterday, such as Abdullah the Butcher, Ahmad Johnson, Big Bossman, Butch Reed, Dan Spivey, Dick Murdoch, “Dr. Death” Steve Williams, Kamala, Dustin Rhodes, Greg Valentine, Hercules Hernandez, JBL, King Kong Bundy, The Undertaker, One Man Gang, Ted Dibiase and Stone Cold Steve Austin. After “Devastation Inc.” finally ran it’s course, Akbar briefly turned face and managed Kevin Von Erich in 1995, before turning on him as well. After that, Akbar eventually faded out of the spotlight and retired shortly after. Today, Akbar still keeps busy in the wrestling business training wrestlers. He has appeared at a few WCCW reunion shows in recent years and is featured on both WCCW DVD’s that have been produced thus far.



Conclusion


The importance of Skandor Akbar to wrestling cannot and shouldn’t be overlooked the way it has been for all these years. Akbar was able to be successful in two aspects of the wrestling business, first as a wrestler and then as a manager. As a wrestler, I would say that Akbar had a solid, yet unspectacular career that wouldn’t give him much notoriety today. As a manager though, he is both impressive and perhaps even in a league of his own. Look at the list of wrestlers he managed in the last paragraph. Many of those wrestlers have gone on to have impressive, if not Hall of Fame, careers. Steve Austin and the Undertaker are considered to be two of the best wrestlers ever and both spent time in their earlier career being managed and tutored by Akbar. You cannot deny that this man had something to do with their success later on, and it is truly a great thing that he is training wrestlers today, for they will be able to learn a lot from this man. It’s a shame that a time of managers and stables have been disregared, or else maybe Akbar and “Devastation Inc.” would hold a higher place in wrestling fan’s minds. There is no doubt in this fans mind though, Skandor Akbar may be the most underrated and underappreciated wrestling figure of all time, and definitely deserves a spot in the WWE Hall of Fame.


Alright, that does it for this week’s Cult Superstar!, and quite an educational one at that. As this is the month of the cult, this month will host the first annual Cult Hall of Fame on Friday April 24th. Today, I am announcing our second member to be inducted and first in the celebrity wing of the Cult Hall of Fame. The lucky inductee is…





Florida Gators Quarterback (and some say Superman himself) Tim Tebow! Check in next week to see who will be the third of the four members inducted into the Cult Hall of Fame, which is once again on April 24th. Be there kids.


Well now, that was quite a write if I do say so. I apologize if this isn’t long enough, but I did the best I could with the information I was able to get and I guarantee you will definitely learn something new here. It’s time to go but fear not kids, I’ll be back next week with the first woman to gain the mantle of Cult Superstar! Till then though, I am the Cult Icon telling you to go outside and play. Here ends the motion sickness.

(Note: If there is a problem viewing any of the pictures of Akbar go to the link listed after this message. sorry for the issue and hope you all take a look at the man as both a wrestler and manager. Thanx dudes).

http://www.onlineworldofwrestling.co...ndorakbar.html

[Martin Riggs]

You are a hero. You took someone you didn't even know and managed to profile him excellently. Once again, buddy, you're really shining here in the CF. Keep this up, you're going far

[The Maz]

OH MY GOD... You did it! Just attempting it makes you a hero. I have but my Waltman column on hold for a few minutes to read this and I have to say I am highly impressed. You found out quite a bit more than I could and I think you can see exactly why I was so intrigued to find out more.

Your new section did not really call out to me this week but that is only because of your choices. I think it is a nice addition to your column and hopefully it will be something I like next week.

[ca$hmoney]

Cult,

This was very informative and you taught me a lot about someone I didn't know anything about and you definetly did you research.

Of course, Mazza only wanted you to write this to get an edge in Stable Wars, but it's a good thing he did because this was great!

[Captain Awesome]

First off, any column that incorporates Howard The Duck is worth a read. Second of all, very nice profile of a man whose name I had only heard but knew nothing about. Very informative!

[Cult Icon]

feedback to my loyal readers

j-boom, thank you for lumping me into the likes of superman, batman, spider man and all those other heroes out there. hopefully i can continue to live up to that. glad you enjoyed it and extremely glad you learned something.

mazza, im especially proud i impressed you here, as you did lay down the challenge for me to do. sorry you werent interested in the first section much, i suppose my choices just depend on taste. hopefully you will enjoy my future selections.

ca$hmoney, i did indeed do my research for this. the goal was for you and other readers to learn something new and it seems that i have in fact succeeded. glad you took the time to read.

captain, you r incredibly right about that howard the duck statement. more ppl should incorporate him in. like the others, glad you were able to learn something new from this, as it just shows that wat im doing is working.

more feedback is always appreciated loyal readers. thanx to those who have read and given feedback already

[Stinger]

Nice read here Cult.

It seemed a tad short, but completely forgivable considering you didn't know anything about the guy (to that extent, you did a good job on the piece). Skandor Akbar was fantastic manager, and because he was a WCCW guy, he is most often forgotten or seriously underrated in favor of the more known, but less talented, managers. The same can be said for Devastation Incorporated, a great stable for years.

Akbar was a big part of making WCCW a really good promotion with some cutting edge material.

One notable wrestler Akbar managed in Devastation Inc. that you didn't mention is Cactus Jack. Foley was in the group, a great in it, during the time period of WCCW that I am most familiar with.

Good job tackling the challenge.