Wrestling Cowboys
By Scott Keith on 25 July 2024
It always seemed strange to me that the majority of wrestling cowboys were heels. In pop culture they were the almost always the good guy (John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, various tv westerns). Was there ever a reason for this?
No way man, by far the most cowboys in wrestling were babyfaces. The heel cowboy deal is only a fairly modern reaction to the “old timey” nature of the gimmick. It was far more common to see guys like Cowboy Bill Watts or Cowboy Ellis as heroes in the south. I suppose if you grew up watching wrestling based in the Northeast, like the WWF, then they'd stress more of the evil cowboys like the Blackjacks or Stan Hansen because of the deal where New York is the big city and the cowboy is the opposing ideal to that. But even into the 80s in the Crockett territories you had the Windhams and Sam Houston and Nelson Royal pretty much playing the straight up cowboy hat and boots white meat babyface role and fans ate it up in those areas.