R.I.P. Buddy Landel, Professional Wrestling’s Forgotten ‘Nature Boy’

This past week, the professional wrestling world lost a legend in “Nature Boy” Buddy Landel.

While Landel’s passing made all the requisite headlines, it was not meant with the same level of admiration or sense of powerful loss that the passing of the “American Dream” Dusty Rhodes less than two weeks earlier.

Certainly, one would be remiss to compare the two performers. Dusty’s star shined brighter than just about any other professional wrestler you can name other than Hogan, Rock, Austin, or Flair.

Dusty’s name belongs in that conversation, and Landel’s might have as well, had his career and talent not been torpedoed by his own addiction and penchant towards the party.

In professional wrestling’s history, there have been three “Nature Boys.” The original, Buddy Rogers, helped to redefine what a professional wrestler was by introducing what we now know as the “sports-entertainment” element to the in ring product. Rogers was the prototype for the cocky, arrogant heel, strutting his stuff in the ring, arriving in resplendent garb and talking down his opponents. Rogers and his adoption of this charismatic persona became the biggest star in the business during the “Golden Era” between the 1950’s and 1960’s, and became the first man ever to hold the NWA World Heavyweight Championship as well as the WWWF World Heavyweight Championship, of which he was the first.

Of course the most famous and most notorious “Nature Boy” that wrestling fans will remember is Ric Flair, regarded as many as being the greatest in ring performer ever. Following an airplane accident in October of 1975 that left Flair with a broken back and doctors claiming that Flair would never walk again, Flair returned with an altered technique inside the ring. Previously a buff street brawler, a leaner Flair began to utilize many of the same charismatic traits as Rogers had: the bleach blond coif, the cocky, arrogant manner of carrying himself, custom robes that he wore to the ring, and even Rogers patented strut and “WHOO!” In 1978, this led to a confrontation between the two “Nature Boys,” with Rogers passing the torch to Flair.

However, Flair wasn’t the only talented and charismatic ring technician at the time to lay claim to Rogers’ “Nature Boy” persona. Buddy Landel, a southern wrestler to Flair’s Minnesota northeast, out of Knoxville, Tennessee, started his career in the late 1970’s with Bill Watts’ legendary Mid-South Wrestling promotion. Landel, a well-built, iron jawed hero would soon adopt the cocky “Nature Boy” moniker as well, mimicking Rogers cocky strut and cheating tactics. Landel and Flair shared more than just the appreciation and tribute to Buddy Rogers. Landel, like Flair, was a smooth tactician inside the squared circle capable of having excellent matches with anybody. Like Flair, it was said of Landel that he could have a great match with a broomstick. By 1985, Jim Crockett Promotions, then the biggest affiliate of the National Wrestling Alliance and the only alternative to Vince McMahon’s growing World Wrestling Federation, was ready to push Landel to the top of the card, gearing up for a battle of the “Nature Boys” with Landel facing off against then NWA Heavyweight Champion Ric Flair.

Landel, however, was far from ready.

Still a youngster in his early-20’s, Landel struggled with his early fame and fortune. As Mike Mooneyham of the Post and Courier reports, Landel would recall in his later years that what was so obvious to others as not only a maturity, but also an alcohol and drug dependency problem, was not initially so obvious to him.

“I was 23, cocky and had a hundred grand in the bank. I didn’t see that I had any problems.”

On the eve of what was allegedly intended to be an angle between Landel and Flair that would see Landel defeat Flair for the NWA championship, Landel went on a bender, imbibing in cocaine, alcohol, and painkillers, leading Landel to be late to the television taping where he was supposed to cut a promo that would launch the march toward the title match. When he arrived, Landel was fired on the spot by then booker Dusty Rhodes.

“I was just too young to handle it. It was too much too soon.”

The next decade would see Landel continue to try to overcome hurdles that would prove to derail what so many were so certain was the fulfillment of Landel’s potential as one of the greatest of all time. Landel continued to wrestle following tax trouble with the IRS, trouble that Crockett would help bail him out of. Landel eventually returned south working for Jim Cornette’s Smokey Mountain Wrestling where he was again positioned as a top talent. Following a match with then WWF superstar Shawn Michaels, Landel was hired by the WWF and had several quality television matches, but was again sidelined by a freak knee injury that would not only take Landel out of action, but also push him back toward his addictions.

In recent years, Landel had cleaned up his act. He attributed helping to raise his grandson as an impetus toward sobriety and would often counsel younger wrestlers about the pitfalls of fame and fortune in an attempt to help them steer clear of the mistakes that had cost him so much. While Landel was always cognizant of the fact that those demons were always lurking in close by, Landel had rededicated himself as a family man, raising his grandchild and living out his golden age with his wife of 34 years, Donna.

Landel’s is a tale too familiar in professional wrestling. Talent, potential, destroyed by vice and addiction. Landel’s story, however, much like that of Jake Roberts, has an element to it that more should have: redemption. Landel owned his mistakes and took responsibility for his actions and decisions, and before it was too late, he remade himself and overcame his demons. He made no excuses for his shortcomings, never blamed others for his failures. And in the end, instead of trying to make “one more run,” Buddy Landel spent his time trying to help others learn from his mistakes, as it had become obvious that he also had.

Buddy Landel, professional wrestling’s forgotten “Nature Boy,” will be remembered for excellent matches with the likes of Flair and Michaels and Brian Pillman and Bret “Hitman” Hart. He will also be remembered as a “shoulda been.” But most importantly, Buddy Landel, birth name William Fritz Ensor, will be remembered as a father of two, a loving husband, and a devoted grandfather.

“Nature Boy” Buddy Landel will be remembered.

[Image via Getty]