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The G.O.A.T. 100 #79 | Ray Stevens
- Peter Edge
- Jun 29
- 14 min read
Welcome to the G.O.A.T. 100 where we will count down with PWM wrestling historian Peter Edge the 100 greatest wrestlers of all time, based on many different stats and criteria. A new wrestler will be added on Mondays and Thursdays every week. Here is a link to an introduction essay with Peter explaining his GOAT100 concept. At the bottom of the article you can find the GOAT 100 Portal with links to all profiles so far published, as well as a visual key... Enjoy learning more about the history of our great hobby!
The words “ahead of their time” has been used for great minds like Hedy Lamarr, the Hollywood star who during World War II co-invented a "frequency hopping" spread-spectrum technology to stop torpedo guidance systems from being jammed, with her visionary concept becoming the foundation for modern Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth technologies.
In the sports world, Steve Nash would have been an even bigger contributor to a NBA team with his prowess from beyond the 3 pt line with how the NBA has turned into a “shot from downtown” league.
In wrestling, the wrestler that was ahead of his time was Ray Stevens.
The bumps he took around the ring, selling for his opponents – making them look great inspired other heels in their working style. When you watch Ric Flair and Shawn Michaels, you can see the fingerprints of Ray Stevens all over their matches.
In the 60s, the general consensus within pro wrestling was that Stevens had followed in the footsteps of Buddy Rogers as being the best all-around performer in the business. He combined not only having great matches and the ability to make an opponent look great, but also was consistently one of the biggest money draws.
His early life isn't that well known. He was born September 5, 1935 in Point Pleasant, WV and was raised by an aunt in Columbus, Ohio.
It was a career that started early, turning pro at the tender age of 15 after being a YMCA wrestler out of Columbus, OH.
He was a main eventer by the age of 17, when he first made his name in a 1952 feud with Gorgeous George. The matches were promoted by posters with publicity pictures of Stevens wearing a diaper, nicknamed, “The Diaper Kid” because he was a heel and so young in the role of working the main events against the biggest drawing card of the era.
Getting reps in tag team matches, holding tag gold with Don Stevens (known as Don Fargo, of the Fabulous Fargos in Memphis) and Ed Francis in Ohio, another former tag partnership would lead Stevens to get a call that landed him the run in the first place (of several) that he would help to make one of the hottest territories in America.
Roy Shire, who opened up a territory in Northern California in 1960, brought in Stevens – his former tag team partner from Ohio, Indiana and Georgia, where the two, as the Shire Brothers, Roy & Ray, had held a version of the world tag team titles in Indiana and made national headlines with a feud against Archie Moore, one of the great boxers in light heavyweight history.
On Shire’s second show at the Cow Palace, Stevens (who came into the territory billed as United States champion having supposedly beaten Bobo Brazil in Detroit, the title over which Bobo feuded with The Sheik – as mentioned earlier in the G.O.A.T 100) defended against Bill Melby. Stevens came into town and immediately began running down the city of San Francisco, talking about what a horrible place it was to live. (Didn't I say the bloke was ahead of his time?)
While this was old-hat in pro wrestling, it worked like crazy in San Francisco because it had never been done there before, and because Stevens was particularly rude about it, in the mold of a Fred Blassie – right down to calling foes, fans and television announcer Walt Harris pencil-neck geeks. People in San Fran – one of the biggest tourist centers in the world – had never heard anyone insult their city before, and never had a promotion used television as strongly as Shire to promote cards. And the result was a sellout crowd for the debut of Stevens and the United States heavyweight title. When that was combined with Stevens’ ability to work the crowd in the ring as well, it started a run of big houses with him on top that lasted the next 11 years.
Pepper Gomez, a former bodybuilding champ in the early 50s who turned wrestler, became a big draw in the area particularly among the Mexican-Americans, coming off a run as a headliner in Texas. He was being pushed in the area as the top babyface with a gimmick of being the man with the cast-iron stomach.
In every match, wrestlers would punch him in the stomach and then sell it as if they had damaged their hands while Gomez would laugh at the blows. A demonstration was set up once where a car drove over his stomach to no effect. Another demonstration was set up where a group of wrestlers would jump off a ladder onto his stomach, also to no effect.
During this angle, Stevens came out and started yelling that the competitors weren’t jumping hard enough onto Gomez’ stomach. So Gomez let him jump off the ladder. Stevens wasn’t successful. He now claimed the other wrestlers weren’t jumping from a high enough distance, since the previous jumps were from halfway up the ladder. So being the leading daredevil of his time, he climbed to the top of the ladder, jumped onto Gomez’ stomach. Again Pepper wasn’t hurt. So Ray did it one more time, and instead dropped his knee to Gomez’ throat.
Gomez was coughing up blood, something unseen in those days by fans in the Golden State, and he left the territory for several weeks with the story being that he may not ever be able to talk again let alone wrestle because of ruptured vocal cords. When Gomez returned for the grudge match, it broke a record set by Elvis Presley for the largest crowd ever to attend an event at the Cow Palace in San Francisco – in excess of 17,000 fans – roughly 2,000 fans more than the building's capacity at the time (so maybe a “working number”?) with thousands more turned away and a $65,000 house. This haul stood as a Northern California wrestling gate record for nearly 20 years.
Stevens selling out the Cow Palace wasn’t all that unusual in those days, as during a 12 month period in 1961-62, he was arguably the biggest draw in pro wrestling averaging 12,000 fans every two weeks and drawing approximately $1 million in the Palace overall in his career – figures that were totally unheard of anywhere in the world during that time period since there were few arenas of that size that drew crowds that large so regularly.
But there was something different about the night Gomez and Stevens was the main event. It was like nothing ever seen before in the area. When it was over, with so many turned away, Shire started talking about doing the rematch at Candlestick Park – the home of the San Francisco Giants baseball team until 1999 and the San Francisco 49ers until 2013 – with the aim of breaking the record for the biggest crowd in pro-wrestling history set the year before by Pat O’Connor and Buddy Rogers in Chicago.
It never materialized… Stevens broke his ankle in a go-kart race accident and was out of action for eight months. By the time he could return, Gomez had been programmed in another direction and by the time the two could be brought back together, the timing wasn't possible to do a ballpark show nor was the interest from fans still there. However, largely based on that angle, Stevens and Gomez were able to draw against each other for the next five years in both singles and tag team matches before briefly forming a tag team winning San Francisco’s version of the tag belts in 1968.
While the Gomez angle and subsequent match was clearly the most famous, his matches with the likes of Dick the Bruiser, Bobo Brazil, Dominic DeNucci, Bearcat Wright, Bill Watts and Fritz Von Erich were also long remembered. He also faced Bruno Sammartino, with Stevens – at the time billed as world heavyweight champion on the West Coast – facing the WWWF world champion in a battle of the kings of the East and West Coast.
Stevens scored a count-out win in the July 15, 1967 match after using his Bombs Away diving knee drop finisher in a title vs. title match at the Cow Palace. Back then, NWA rules allowed titles to change via count out and count outs were considered clean finishes in the territory, although this not the case on the East Coast. This enabled Sammartino to keep his title, while Stevens could be regarded as having beaten him based on the standards of his area.
A title change via count out was a regular thing outside of New York. Lou Thesz once lost the NWA Worlds Heavyweight title to Whipper Billy Watson via a count out finish and Stevens’ U.S. title changed hands in a similar way several times. Stevens was actually announced as unified world champion that night, which fully established him in the San Fran fans’ eyes as the best professional wrestler in the world.
The person who is most closely associated with Ray Stevens is Pat Patterson. Known as “The Blond Bombers” in their heyday, the two were considered by many as the best tag team in the world in the 60s and were the total prototype of numerous teams. Again you can see elements of the team in the Midnight Express and The Hollywood Blondes team of Steve Austin and Brian Pillman, just to name two.
Pat Patterson is seen as one of the greatest of his era and is a contender to be one of the G.O.A.T 100 but there is also overwhelming and believable evidence that he sexually abused under-18-year olds who worked on the ring crew for the WWF in the 80s. So any praise for the work of Pat Patterson should also have the thoughts of his heinous credibly alleged crimes with it.
Around the time Patterson first arrived in Northern California, Stevens was on a tour of Australia with Jim Barnett’s Australian promotion called World Championship Wrestling, (long before the Atlanta version) where he won the IWA Heavyweight Title twice. But when Stevens returned to San Francisco, he was teamed with Patterson and for the next few years, and they became one of the biggest acts on the West Coast.
The pair had two reigns with the AWA World Tag Teams Title (San Francisco version) feuding with the team of Bearcat Wright and Bobo Brazil and also with Ciclon Negro, Pepper Gomez, Luis Martinez and Bill Watts who teamed with varied partners in their quest to dethrone the champs.
When Pepper and Pedro Morales beat The Blond Bombers to take the titles in front of 10,693 at the Cow Palace on April 8th, 1967, Patterson left San Francisco to go to Amarillo and the territory owned by The Funks. After years as a consistent villain, the now-solo Stevens would turn face.
Stevens would become the most popular wrestler ever to appear in the area before the national expansion of the WWF that Patterson would later be a major architect of. Even then, while Hogan’s pops would match Stevens’, dollar for dollar he couldn’t match what Stevens had accomplished at the box office when the WWF came to San Francisco and the Palace.
Stevens was already getting cheers from fans even back when he was a heel. He even won Most Popular in the year-end awards organised by Roy Shire at the same time as Most Hated. So it wasn’t a surprise that he turned out to be a great babyface in the area.
When Patterson returned to the San Francisco territory six months after the Blond Bombers title loss, he wanted to resume the area's "best ever tag team" with his "Blond Bombers" partner. But Stevens had expressed regret for his rulebreaking antics that he had engaged in and vowed that he would wrestle within the rulebook. Stevens would regain the NWA U.S. title from King Curtis Iaukea that he had lost a month before. Patterson, stunned by his former partner's conversion, said that he should at least be the #1 contender for the title.
Ironically, the feud with Patterson had a major similarity to the Gomez feud. The two were set to have a grudge match on August 9, 1969 at the Cow Palace for Stevens’ title, but two days before the match, with a big house expected, Stevens broke his leg while racing motorcycles.
Patterson won the vacant title and held it for an 11-month reign, downing one babyface after another before the inevitable showdown with the one person fans thought was going to master him. The first match between Stevens and Patterson and their most remembered match on July 11, 1970 was an old-style Texas death match. This match was a Stevens specialty, so it was no surprise when he captured the U.S. title from his rival for the ninth and what turned out to be the final time, with Haystacks Calhoun as referee. But he would return the favor on his way out, losing a Texas Death rematch one year later in one of his last couple matches in the Shire territory.
At 5’ 8” and 225-235 pounds, he was short and thick, with the most noticeable part of his physique – particularly after his late 30s – being his beer belly, which was well-earned with his love of socialising. A smaller size was never a detriment in California like it was in many other territories, as Stevens’ ability as a performer and a talker made people believe he could tear up anyone, no matter how big or how imposing they looked.
In most cases that was probably the case, as his success in out-of-the-ring brawls was also well known in the area. He had a propensity in those days for regularly getting press he wasn’t looking for regarding his out-of-ring antics, whether it be causing trouble in bars, brawls with people who challenged him at the beach, injuries picked from non-wrestling activities or his troubles with the IRS.
Stevens left San Francisco as a regular in 1971 to join the AWA, run by Verne Gagne. While Shire’s circuit had several more strong years, mainly built around Patterson, it never came close to the levels it had achieved with Stevens. After Patterson also left for greener pastures in NYC in 1977, business fell off and Shire was forced to close down his promotion in 1979. But he continued to run the Cow Palace for one-off events until early 1981, when Shire gave up the ghost completely in the wake of competition from Gagne and local football hero Leo Nomellini, who had both Patterson and Stevens in their camp.
In the AWA, he was given the nickname of “The Crippler,” largely based on an angle where he used his Bombs Away on Dr. X (Dick Beyer) to supposedly break his leg (allowing him to leave on an extended Japan tour). Although he maintained a reputation for being able to carry a meatbag to a quality match and being among the premier performers in the business, the Ray Stevens that fans in Northern California had seen had lost a step by the time he went to the larger AWA and WWWF territories in the 70s.
The AWA was largely a tag team territory in the early part of the decade since Gagne, who held its world title, was in his late 40s and only wrestled a few shots per month. So the territory was carried by its tag champions, Stevens and Nick Bockwinkel – the college educated, pretty boy type who was becoming a top heel in wrestling. The two were a contrast both in the ring and on interviews, with Bockwinkel using his erudite million dollar words, and Stevens immediately contrasting it with phrases like, (when talking about frequent rival Billy Robinson) “There are only two good things that ever came out of England and Elizabeth Taylor’s got both of them.”
Managed by Bobby Heenan, the pair held the tag titles for a combined 1,202 days over three reigns.
The first reign came in January 1972, when they dethroned Red Bastien and The Crusher (who was subbing for the recently-deceased Hercules Cortez). A feud with Dick the Bruiser and The Crusher were the main storyline of the company and feuds with the team of Billy Robinson and Red Bastien and The High Flyers (Greg Gagne and Jim Brunzell) were the main feature of reigns 2 and 3.
While still holding the AWA tag team title, Stevens ventured into the WWWF, at the time considered a big-men-only territory when it came to heels – for title shots against then-champion Pedro Morales including a couple of Madison Square Garden sellouts.
After Bockwinkel captured the AWA world title, Stevens made his babyface turn and was a frequent challenger to his former partner's title – but would still work as an exemplary heel in other cities.
Some 20 years after his match with Gomez – which had put San Francisco on the map as the country’s hottest territory, one that had since ceased to exist – Stevens again became the hottest heel in the hottest feud in pro wrestling, after dropping Jimmy Snuka on his head at a WWF television taping in Allentown, PA leading to a series of matches up and down the East Coast that included several major sellouts, turning Snuka into one of the biggest drawing cards in the world at the time. All in all, Stevens wrestled for 42 years, most of it as a headliner, with his final match just a few years before his death.
He was probably the only main eventer whose career started when wrestling was on national network television in the early 50s, and continued through, getting back on 33 years later.
He ceased being a full-time main event performer in the big territories shortly after the Snuka feud ended. A combination of age, injuries and conditioning had taken its toll by then, not to mention the oncoming era where steroids and monstrous size ruled the land and the older and smaller performers without great physiques – even with legendary names and resumes – appeared out of place.
All his excesses began to catch up with him as he underwent quadruple-bypass surgery at Stanford University after suffering a heart attack while living in Minnesota in early 1995. Having spent money as fast as he earned it for most of his wrestling career, he returned to California and moved back in with his first wife. He went right back to his old lifestyle without missing a beat. To the end he was a source of amazement among his peers, who joked morbidly when seeing him steadfastly ignoring his doctor’s advice about toning down his drinking and smoking. If anything, he stepped it up. But one thing had changed. Stevens hadn’t liked to attend reunions of old wrestlers because it cut into his valuable drinking time and he’d already missed enough of that in his years working last on the card.
But over the last year of his life, he changed, and attended as many of them as he could – not just the Cauliflower Alley Club and a Northern California wrestlers reunion, but also ones in Washington and Las Vegas and even in Pensacola, a territory that I can’t find any record that he worked in (to be fair, it is known as the “lost promotion”). The reason apparently was that he wanted to get together with Don Kalt (Don Fargo), who was one of his earliest tag team partners in the early 50s.
Ray Stevens passed away in his sleep on the morning of May 3rd, 1996 at the age of 60 at his home in Fremont, CA. The cause of death was a heart attack, after being out drinking brandy and beer and then taking some pills before going to bed the night before.
Ray would be posthumously inducted into the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2006, going in twice that year for his singles career and for his tag team with Pat Patterson. He was entered into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2020 in the legacy wing – basically because he wasn’t sexy enough of a name to be on the televised portion of the ceremony. But he was among the 100 inductees in the original class of the Observer HOF picked by Dave Meltzer himself for their in-ring achievements.
Being a Northern California native, it wasn’t a surprise that Dave picked someone who made their name in San Francisco but it's also fitting, because anyone who saw him work would tell you he was the best of his era.
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