(Bristol, PA – September 13, 2010) Ring of Honor officials are excited to announce that we have come to terms with “The Pretty Boy Pitbull” Kenny King on a contract extension. One-half of The All Night Express, King has been a part of the ROH roster since “Motor City Madness 2007” and has slowly evolved into one of the most exciting in-ring performers around.
From exciting singles performances against the likes of Tyler Black, Bryan Danielson, and Jay Briscoe just this weekend, to his tag team success alongside “Addicted to Love” Rhett Titus, Kenny King has proven to be arguably the most athletically gifted wrestler in Ring of Honor. And with the likes of Austin Aries mentoring his career, King is certainly a future world champion.
“There are big things on the horizon for this talented young man.” said ROH Executive Producer Jim Cornette. “He is a stellar athlete with a tremendous upside. Despite his general attitude, we are excited to see what the future has in store for Kenny King here in ROH.”
In addition ROH officials would also like to announce that, following a stellar outing against the aforementioned Austin Aries that saw him kick out of Aries’ Brainbuster, independent standout Kyle O’Reilly has also been signed to a contract with Ring of Honor. This young man from Canada has been impressing people across the wrestling world in recent months, and has signed on to ROH for the foreseeable future. If he continues to impress as he did against a 2-time World Champion, O’Reilly has a bright future ahead of him.
I was saddened to hear of the death over the weekend of Mike Shaw, 53, who apparently died of a heart attack. Mike was an interesting guy. In the late 80’s when I was a member of one of the many, infamous, WCW booking committees, I had the opportunity to hire Mike who had been a fixture for many years in Calgary for the Hart’s Stampede Wrestling organization.
The Makhan Singh persona that Mike portrayed in Calgary was solid in my view but others wanted to create a new persona for Mike and, thus, Norman the Lunatic was hatched. I can remember when WCW flew Mike into Atlanta and then meeting him at the old, TBS studios and working on Norman vignettes even though neither one of us were quite sure of the description of the new persona. We did our best and subsequently launched the character on WCW on TBS. If my memory serves me correctly, I think that WCW head honcho Jim Herd had the basic idea for the Norman character.
I do remember speaking by phone with Stu Hart, an experience in its self, about Mike. Stu gave Mike a stellar reference and told me that Mike was loyal, hard working, reliable and a talented, athletic big man. All those things were true.
Mike was also a superb conversationalist and might have made a great sports talk radio host. He was a major fan of many sports and was quite the athlete in high school in multiple sports. Plus he was excellent at providing entertaining and provocative sound bytes.
Bastion Booger was likely Mike’s most memorable role of which he portrayed in WWE in the 90’s. Mike never embraced that particular persona but he had moderate success with it and was never a problem to deal with in WWE and was, as Stu Hart told me years prior, no problem with which to work.
Actually, Norman got ‘over’ to some degree in WCW as I recall him getting 100’s of teddy bears when he made the turn to fan favorite. That persona likely got cut off prematurely, looking back in hindsight, and had the potential to be a ‘character’ fan favorite along the lines of a Bugsy McGraw and a George ‘The Animal’ Steele.
The last time I saw Mike was in December of 2007 at the 15th Anniversary of Monday Night Raw and we had a nice visit and talked football and the fact that his son was being recruited at the time by multiple schools as an offensive lineman. Mike was extremely proud of that fact. Little did I know that I would never see Mike again.
One last thing on Mike, he told me he kept copious notes on his years working in Calgary and had kept a journal detailing tons of hilarious stories of working for the Harts and traveling in Stampede Wrestling. I don’t know what ever became of the journal but it might be diamond in the rough if it is still around. Mike told the best stories, in colorful and vivid detail, about the Hart Family and the adventures of working in Stampede Wrestling back in the 80’s.
RIP Mike until we meet again.
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