Cultureshark Remembers S.D. Jones

Longtime WWF performer S.D. Jones died recently, and though he was a forgotten man in recent years, he received tons of exposure from being around in the so-called expansion era, as Vince McMahon took his father's wrestling group from a Northeast-based concern to a huge promotion with international reach. "Special Delivery" seemed to be on TV just about every week as the WWF became part of mainstream culture.

If the guy got his butt kicked just about every week, well, that doesn't mean he is any less deserving of our respect, does it? It's tempting to write something about how the eternal loser will finally be at peace now, or that he "lost one more match," or to go the other route and talk about how he was more of a winner than anyone in the federation, or something like that. But really, I just want to say he seemed like a cool guy, and in his own way he was a vital part of 1980s WWF programming, and therefore my childhood.

S.D. was actually a champion before becoming a preliminary wrestler/jobber/enhancement talent, but I knew him as the guy who either got squashed by King Kong Bundy or wrestled interminable 20-minute matches against the likes of Rene Goulet on "Prime Time Wrestling." Every now and then, he'd team up with a superstar like Andre the Giant against, say, Bundy and Big John Studd, and while it was nice to see him in that spot, there wasn't much suspense as to who was gonna get the beating in THAT match.

His claim to fame in the Modern WWF era was losing in what was billed as "record time" to Bundy at Wrestlemania II. In typical pro wrestling fashion, the match time was announced as 9 seconds, even though if you watch it today and pay attention, you realize it's practically longer than your average Duran Duran video.

I don't know if he had a finishing move per se, other than a rollup or a devastating headbutt (in pro wrestling, anyone with pigment darker than Pat Boone has an indestructible skull). I do know he had a mysterious crevice in his back that always made me and my friends wonder. What was the deal with that dent? Why didn't he use it to his advantage and hide some foreign objects in there? Just imagine how much we would have speculated about that thing in his back if he hadn't spent so much time getting pinned on it.

He lost his share of matches, all right, but he was a reliable performer and a mainstay on a lot of popular WWE shows. As either an acknowledgement of his popularity or a tribute to his good-soldier status, LJN made a doll of Jones in its popular Wrestling Superstars line. It's a great likeness, and I'm proud to say I used my own S.D. figure for more than just getting beaten up by my King Kong Bundy figure.

(Thanks to the website A Tribute to the WWF's LJN Action Figures for the great scan)