Member-only story
Goodbye, “Mr. Wonderful”
I remember watching “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff on television when I was nine years old. He was feuding with Cactus Jack (Mick Foley) in World Championship Wrestling (WCW). In fact, all of my memories of actually seeing him wrestle were in WCW, but that is not where his career began.
Paul Orndorff began wrestling in 1976. I would have been -7 at the because I wasn’t born until 1983. His early career consisted of a feud with Jerry Lawler (the real King of Memphis despite what people claim about that impostor Elvis Presley) in Mid-South wrestling. His first championship came on June 7, 1977, when he defeated Lawler for the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) Southern Championship. He lost the title a short time later, but it would be the first of many wrestling titles Orndorff would hold.
Orndorff moved on from the Mid-South area and began wrestling for NWA Tri-State Wrestling, where he feuded with Ernie Ladd. During the feud, Orndorff captured the NWA Tri-State North American Title twice from Ladd, trading it back and forth with him on a couple of occasions in 1978. That’s not a long name at all, is it? I’m amazed they fit it all on a belt.
