Terkay counts as a Fumble. I’m super serial.

This probably goes without saying, but Vincent Kennedy McMahon apparently has a thing for big, muscular, mean-looking guys.

Now, I’m not implying he’s gay, but think about it: Prior to taking over then-World Wrestling Federation, his father Vincent J. McMahon always saw talent over everything else, and knew who the fans would pay to see defend the WWF title. These weren’t pushovers, and actually very talented men. It’s because of the matches they put on that men such as Bruno Sammartino held the WWF championship for such a long period of time.

His son, however, was always more about taking talent from other territories of the day, crossing into said imaginary boundaries to perform his shows, and of course, putting big men with great muscles but little real ability on the top of the card. Sure, there’s been many exceptions to this way of thinking, but even then most of those wrestlers never held the belt for as long as, say, Triple H, John Cena, or Hulk Hogan ever did.

Okay, Triple H does that on his own, but you get my point.

So it’s actually surprising, somehow, to see a large man get called into the WWE and somehow end up lost in the roster.

This is Sylvester Terkay, who was not only a two-time Zero-One US Champion and otherwise a mixed martial artist, but also had early ties to another wrestler, namely the Olympic gold medalist, Kurt Angle. Kurt and Terkay wrestled in a 1992 NCAA Division 1 tournament, with Sylvester losing to Kurt and ranking second in the tournament. He would, however, become champion in the 1993 tournament.

It actually makes me wonder a few things. I can understand that by the time Terkay debuted Kurt had already jumped over to TNA, but knowing this, why couldn’t WWE have made a feud out of these events? Why didn’t they try to put Terkay over with some storyline where he tells Kurt, “I came here to avenge my loss to you”? And with that mind, why didn’t they debut him sooner just for that? It might have worked. Or not. But it could have done something for the guy’s career.

Regardless of that, Terkay would eventually begin wrestling, learning through the development promotion Ultimate Pro Wrestling. The place itself has also been the starting grounds for wrestlers such as John Cena, The Miz, Samoa Joe, and other big names. In fact, Sylvester himself became UPW’s very first World Champion. Heck, WWE even looked interested in bringing him in, allowing him to start off in OVW under the name Sly Scraper.

Geddit? Sly Scraper? Cuz, yanno, it sounds so much like “skyscraper”? HA, that writing team…

Strangely enough, though, after just a short amount of time there, Terkay was let go from his contract. I don’t think a reason was ever given, but I think it might have been to cut their rosters. That sort of thing always seems to happen. Nonetheless, Terkay himself seemed to enjoy himself after his WWE release, because he did well in his MMA career, fighting in places such as Zero1 and K-1 Fighting. Apparently his success here was enough that he caught Mr. McMahon’s attention yet again, and signed back to WWE and started off in the farm leagues.

I joke that Vince forgot he was still paying Terkay after all those years and needed him back to not feel so foolish.

Eventually, Terkay would begin his national US exposure to the wrestling world, debuting on Smackdown, which by this point was airing on Friday nights. Along for the ride was Elijah Burke, who acted sometimes as a mouthpiece to Terkay, as well as announced Terkay for his fights. This way you could tell that WWE had big plans for the man. I mean, letting someone else announce his talents, having announcers call him an MMA fighter (and yes, this is apparently a common gimmick in a fake sport), and have them also talk about how VICIOUS, how BRUTAL this man would be to his opponents would do wonders for a push!

…Yeah, sure.

To be honest, I can’t see Sylvester as a major threat. I mean, he just can’t look like a particularly menacing guy. Just look at that expression on his face with that beard on him and try to convince me it’s menacing. I’m not hating on the guy, but…he just looks more like a sad teddy bear you want to hug to make feel better. (And of course I mean that in the most hetero way).

Of course, I can’t exactly mock the guy’s name, seeing as how it actually is his real name…but either way, I can’t hear that name without thinking of Sylvester the cat and turkies. But what really needs to be mocked is the nickname he’s given, which was also the name of his theme song (which, to be quite honest, sounds like a generic rock band was playing next to some alien technology). Are ya ready for it?

“Man Bear”. Yeah. “Man Bear”. So, in essence, if we were to combine Terkay’s DNA with that of a swine…we’d basically have ourselves ManBearPig. There ya go. Now with that said, I fully expect Al Gore to “fly” his way over to Terkay’s house to take care of him once and for all.

Back on track. Terkay’s debut would be against Matt Hardy, who at this time was relegated to jobber status. Cuz, yanno, that’s apparently what happens to anyone in the Cruiserweight division when your name isn’t Rey Mysterio. Terkay would go through jobbers to build up his status as a guy who quickly takes out smaller opponents. Nothing to complain about there, since the bigger names and guys they’re looking to push will inevitably be pushed using this formula. After all, it worked for guys like Goldberg, Lesnar, and even Ultimate Warrior, why should this be any different?

In a weird way, though, fans didn’t care about Terkay. You’d think for someone that looked like him, at least for his size, fans would greatly hate the man for squashing a guy like Hardy, and for attacking a smaller guy like Rey. Amazingly, the fans weren’t sure how to take the guy as. they knew he was supposed to be a bad guy, but he wasn’t really showcasing those tendencies too much. It’s amazing how fans see this guy and can’t care for him, yet when a guy like Great Khali faces off against Undertaker, it really grabs the fans’ attention.

With no other alternative and not giving up on the Sylvester experiment, they decided to send him and Elijah to ECW, where they would debut with an interview, being done by the very robotic Rebecca DiPietro.

Yanno, if I had a nickel for everytime they tried to get a Diva Search reject to do interview duties in WWE, I’d have at least twenty cents.

So with new territory came some changes. Rather than let Sylvester wrestle solo, he and Elijah finally became a tag team in ECW, where in their first match…they lost. Yeah. Not really a great sign of their futures, but to be fair this was back when the Hardy Boys were reuniting the first time around and hyping up their match for December to Dismember, which is where the two would face the ECW version of the Full Blooded Italians, and win. Then do the same thing again on regular ECW.

Then for the last few weeks of his WWE run, Terkay would be the one managing Elijah Burke until he left WWE. Although Terkay himself has talked about returning to WWE, his future is yet unknown. Burke, on the other hand, lasted a little over a year more with WWE before heading to TNA as Pope D’angelo Dinero.

So basically, Terkay looked to be in a promising position for WWE, but nothing came out of it. In fact, what surprises me more is that a year after I wrote about Terkay originally, I was surprised to find out he’s actually done some acting. Granted, most were bit parts in not-so-memorable films like “My Favorite Martian” and “Slammed” (The latter where he looked like a mild-mannered Superman with a huge beard). Heck, one of his early UPW promos had him acting like a maniac. Why couldn’t we have seen THAT Terkay in WWE instead of the “Man Bear”?

To end this article, Terkay could have been utilized better, but somehow for a guy of his size he was overlooked on Smackdown, and was phased out of being the focal point of him and Elijah, with Burke basking in the spotlight instead. But yanno what? If he had lost the singlet, maybe cut his hair a bit, and grew the beard longer, he might have had a career in WWE. I mean, hey, why not? It worked for this guy.

 

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Tags: FoW, Sylvester Terkay, Top Story, WWE

This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 8:43 pm and is filed under Columns, Featured Stories, Top Story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.