Buddy Landell?

By Scott Keith on 13 April 2014

Scott,

I grew up a WWF kid, so watching old NWA/WCW is brand new to me and I'm curious what the deal was with "Nature Boy" Buddy Landell? He dresses exactly like Flair, even had the hair but is essentially a curtain jerking jobber. Was he a territory guy with the same gimmick brought in to feud with flair? Why are there two guys with the same gimmick not feuding?

Here's another funny facet to the Budro story: There is some shaky evidence that he might have been the guy in 1987 to get Ron Garvin's World title run, but he apparently got dinged with a drug test failure and thus lost his promised run. The story differs depending on who's telling it.

Anyway, yes, Buddy was similar to Flair, but they were both kind of doing their version of Buddy Rogers rather than Flair originating and Landell copying the deal. Plus they didn't tend to overlap and Landell usually had more of a comedy twist to his act. I'd recommend seeking out The Bill And Budro Show on YouTube for some good examples.

I always liked Buddy, but he was just such a colossal fuckup outside of the ring that he was never going to be anything past what he was.