Butch Reed's passing at 66 made me think of how good he was and like so many athletes, questions of what might have been.
Reed started his career using his given name Bruce Reed after a college football career at Division II Central Missouri and a training camp spent with the Kansas City Chiefs in 1976.
Reed had parallels to Tony Atlas with the press slams and dropkicks, but Reed's ringwork was much more solid than Atlas's as Reed's shoulder block off the ropes or off a turnbuckle seemed more realistic than Atlas's more cartooney moves.
Reed wrestled in the low-end Central States territory before I first saw him on Georgia Championship Wrestling on one of those yearly chances to watch the show (I've written about this in the past) as Bruce Reed, but it was his next stop that stamped Reed as a star.
The Florida promotion put Reed on top of the card with several challenges of Ric Flair for the NWA world championship, feuding with Big John Studd with the obligatory bodyslam of the quasi-giant, and matches with former NWA champion Dory Funk and his protege, in the only heel run of his career, David Von Erich.
Reed's matches with Flair were excellent and had the time been right and the NWA remained in the same shape it had been before the WWF national expansion, Reed being in line (with others) as a possible future NWA champion would not have been out of the question.
Florida may have been the foundation of "Hacksaw" Butch Reed's rise to stardom, but Reed's best work came in the Mid-South area where he arrived as a fan favorite but shortly thereafter turned on the Junkyard Dog.
Reed would hold the company's biggest title, the North American title, on three occasions and his feud with the Junkyard Dog was the main feud of the company for over a year, but just as the pair were about to hit the high point, the Dog left for the WWF.
After the first of what would be several attempts to replace the Dog with another African-American wrestling in George "Master G" Wells failed, the next attempt would be the one that would come closest with Reed turning on his heel comrade Buddy Landell and Devastation Inc.
Reed would hold the North American title again and meet up with Ric Flair again for title matches that often ended in time-limit draws.
Reed never reached the heights of JYD in Mid-South, but he was easily the best of the rest until he left Mid-South for a brief stint in a return to the Central States before moving to the WWF along with his Central States manager Slick.
Dubbed "The Natural" with dyed blond hair, Reed never seemed to really click in the WWF although he wrestled at Wrestlemania's III and IV defeating Koko B.Ware in the former and losing to Randy Savage in the first round of the WWF title tournament in the latter.
The "Natural" gimmick patterned after the Sweet Daddy Siki version of the 60s and 70s didn't seem to infuriate fans even when Reed "ended" the career of Superstar Graham and few were upset when Reed returned to the NWA as a single for what proved to be a tepid run in the middle of the card.
Reed would team with Ron Simmons under masks as Doom in the worst secret in the history of wrestling managed by "Woman" before losing the masks, moving to new manager Teddy Long and holding the company's tag team titles.
Reed and Simmons would split up and then feud with Simmons gaining the upper hand after winning a steel cage match at Superbrawl I.
That was the end of Reed's career in either of the major promotions, although he would return to WCW briefly in 1992.
Either in the ring or on the microphone, Butch Reed has been almost forgotten through the years and the only reason that I can think of is that his best work wasn't on national television.
Butch Reed was an underrated wrestler and only by watching him in Mid-South or Florida can one truly appreciate how good he really was.
Most will remember Butch Reed as the Natural or as one half of Doom, but I'll remember him best from the territorial days and for what might have been.
If his timing had been a little better...
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