"Wildfire" Tommy Rich: Overrated or Underrated?

Publish date: 2024-05-03
Underrated, and it's only for one reason: His feud with Buzz Sawyer.

Honestly, Tommy Rich vs. Buzz Sawyer in the early eighties is one of the greatest feuds in wrestling history, but it hardly gets any recognition. Why? That's simply because Georgia Championship Wrestling, for whatever reason, wasn't anywhere near as respected as the other territories from that time. Mid-South gets praised to this day; WCCW gets praised to this day; Championship Wrestling from Florida gets praised to this day; Don Owen's Portland Wrestling gets praised to this day; however, you hardly ever hear anything about Georgia Championship Wrestling. I guess that's because they never had any real big stars, but for a while there, if you look at the facts, Rich vs. Sawyer was the hottest thing in professional wrestling for quite some time. And that feud was very important to the business because after Sammartino/Zbyszko, all that was left in the industry that was hot was the NWA Championship. The WWF had Bob Backlund, but he wasn't a draw at all. Texas and Mid-South had yet to get going really, and there was frankly nothing worth noting to make fans excited at the time. But then the Rich/Sawyer feud happened, and it just blew people away. I've heard Raven say fans think that feud was legit to this day. It was filled with such hatred, and had so much brutal shit for that time, people just really got into it.

So, yeah... that plus his run as NWA Champion makes him underrated. All most fans know him for was being the ridiculous guy in the FBI, but he contributed much, much, MUCH more than that to this wonderful business, and I highly doubt his accomplishments and contributions will ever got noticed by the majority.

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