As such, I was a little too old to really get into the show.īeing familiar with Captain Lou from wrestling though, I watched anyway. I only saw reruns a few years later, after the SMB 3 and SMW cartoons had finished their run. I never saw the Super Mario Brothers Super Show during its original run. Years later, he came back to manage The Headshrinkers, a team comprised of the son and nephew of his old tag charges The Wild Samoans. Without his friendship with Lauper, who knows if the WWF ever would have gotten as big as it has.įrom then on, Cap’n Lou was a beloved fixture in wrestling, notably managing the British Bulldogs to tag team gold (alongside Ozzy Osbourne) at Wrestlemania 2 and attempting to civilize George “The Animal” Steele. The rest is history.Īlbano was a central figure in the wrestling boom of the 80’s. At TWTSTS, heel scumbag “Rowdy” Roddy Piper kicked Lauper in the head, which led to the first Wrestlemania, as Hulk Hogan and Mr. You can draw a direct line from there to the next special, The War the Settle the Score. Albano’s face turn is classic wrestlecrap – he supposedly had an operation to remove “calcium deposits on his medulla oblongata”, which were the cause of his evil nature. Lauper and Albano feuded on television, before he turned face and became on-screen friends with her after the WWF’s first major special on MTV, The Brawl to End it All. But the importance of the Lauper/Albano storyline shouldn’t be downplayed. Obviously, Hulk Hogan gets most of the credit for the wrestling boom in that era, and he was certainly the figurehead.

His friendship with Cindy Lauper was the impetus for the entire “Rock n’ Wrestling Connection” that helped cement wrestlign into the mainstream. But really, I think Albano’s legacy is as a face (good guy). There were definetely moments when Albano may have been the most hated man in wrestling. Fuji (who was a damn good manager in his own right). Speaking as Button Mash’s resident wrestling historian/nerd, I’ll correct Ben that Cap’n Lou wasn’t really the “ultimate heel of a manager.” That honour is reserved for Bobby “The Brain” Heenan.Ĭap’n Lou was certainly hated at many points in his career, either as a member of the Sicilians team, or acting as the “guiding light” to such vile tag teams as The Wild Samoans, The Valiants and Mr.

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