How About That Thing?

Ah, The Headbangers. If ever there was a tag team I loved in the late 90s, it was definitely these guys right here.

Back when I used to listen to Jim Cornette’s podcast (before it became him and Brian Last hate-watching AEW for three hours and reminding the world how much Jim fucking hates The Young Bucks and Kenny Omega), I remember him telling the story of how The Headbangers were first created. Glenn Ruth and Charles Warrington had been tag-teaming in the indies for a few years under names like The Spiders. Then, they came to Smoky Mountain Wrestling: the last great wrestling territory for old school wrasslin. I don’t remember the specifics, and knowing what the podcast has become in recent years, I dread the idea of sifting through rant after rant of “I fucking hate The Young Bucks!” to find it, but as memory serves, Cornette and co either went to a Marilyn Manson concert, or they heard about it from one of the guys backstage. After hearing about it, and realizing they had two dudes with nothing really going on at the moment, a decision was made, and a legacy was born.

The concept of The Headbangers was simple: two dudes who loved their music loud and shocking. They had all the 90s shockrock cliches going for them: piercings, tattoos, black eye makeup… And skirts. Warrington’s usually being pink, and Ruth’s usually being… I want to say burgundy? Either way, it was two dudes who basically looked like they were too macho to commit to full-on drag, but not punk enough to be taken too seriously. And, in defiance of logic, it worked.

I don’t know why, but there was something about these guys that I absolutely loved. True, much like The Truth Commission, these two were well established by the time I showed up. Unlike The Truth Commission, however, it appears I didn’t miss as much backstory as I thought. They were just two baldies in skirts who competed on Monday Night Raw every now and then. Sometimes, they’d get in the tag team title picture, and other times, they were there to make other tag teams look good. Or bad.

In due course, they got their own T-shirts. And while not remarkable designs on the surface, they did give us the official slogan of the team: “Real men wear skirts.” Let’s face it, nobody else could make that slogan work. And lord knows there have been others who’ve tried in the years since. Poor Vito.

I was a kid who wanted a whole closet of wrestling shirts. I wanted the classic Austin 3:16 shirt, I wanted several of the DX shirts… Hell, I even wanted the Cactus Jack “wanted dead” poster shirt. But as much as I loved The Headbangers… Yeah, that was a shirt I was more than happy to pass on. Lord knows my fandom of pro-wrestling was ALREADY something the local school bullies homed in on. The last thing I needed was something that’d only encourage them to aim all their homophobic slurs my way.

The Headbangers got a few shots at the tag titles in their time, and some time before I was a hardcore fan, they even had a tag title reign. A very short-lived tag title reign, but a reign all the same.

Then, in typical fashion for WWF/WWE, the team was broken up. Ruth went down with a knee injury, and Warrington… *sigh* Oh boy. Poor Charles Warrington.

Buckle up, kids, because this story is about to get painful.

At first, Warrington originally redebuted as, and I swear I’m not making this up, Beaver Cleavage. Yes, it’s EXACTLY as dumb as it sounds.

See, there was this dude in professional wrestling by the name of Vince Russo. He knew nothing about wrestling, but he loved him some Jerry Springer. His philosophy on writing captivating wrestling angles? Copy Jerry Springer. Make wrestlers edgy, make storylines that twist and turn until the entire plot looks like a god damn pretzel, etc. And, love him or hate him, it worked for a time.

Unfortunately, not EVERY idea Vinny Ru ever had was gold. In fact, WWF’s Attitude era may’ve very well been a fluke. Or Russo had the likes of Cornette across the table to tell him no. Either way, with Ruth injured, and Warrington left with nothing better to do, he was changed into Beaver Cleavage: a Leave it to Beaver parody who REALLY loved his mommy, if you know what I mean.

Setting aside the pure concentrated ick that came with the angle, really? Leave it to Beaver? That show wasn’t even relevant when my parents were kids! And my dad could tell you all about Lost in Space, and Johnny Socko and his Giant Robot.

I would comment further, but I’m pretty sure every wrestling site from Wrestlecrap to Wrestling with Wregret has long since done it to death already. The gimmick was so bad, Warrington literally abandoned it on week two, and just started wrestling as Chaz from that point on. He had no gimmick, he had no fancy ring name, he had no fancy ring attire… He did have entrance music, and… Well, I remember liking it when I first heard it back in the day, at least.

Basically, he was just Chaz. His entire gimmick was that he was that he had no gimmick, which… Well, it’s definitely subversive. Going into a profession full of cartoonish, bombastic personalities, and saying “Yeah, I’m Chaz. That’s the character.” It’s like the professional wrestling equivalent of Ron Paul or something.

I admit, I was actually kind of digging Chaz. Like, I knew he was never going to be WWF champion. Hell, he’d probably have been lucky if they let him anywhere near the European title, and pretty much everybody had a run with that belt at some point. But there was something about the idea that, to teenager me, honestly wasn’t without its charm.

And then they started heavily implying he was beating the shit out of his girlfriend. Yeah, that was definitely a dark turn.

BACKSTORY: throughout that year, completely unrelated to the saga of Chaz at the time, there was this segment called GTV. It was black and white hidden camera footage that caught wrestlers doing embarrassing things in their downtime. IE, Mark Henry taking a dump so massive that it clogged the toilet, Al Snow picking his nose when he thought no one was looking, Billy Gunn getting his ass hairs shaved, etc. But as GTV continued to show up, the anti started getting upped as well. And one shocking thing it showed was Chaz’s girlfriend cheating on him with another wrestler! DRAMA!

Furious, Chaz dumped her. But then, she kept showing up with black eyes, and telling local law enforcement that Chaz was beating her. As a result, every match, whether he won or lost, ended with Chaz getting arrested.

But then, Glenn Ruth came back from injury one night, revealing that the G in GTV was Glenn TV, and the last thing he revealed was that Chaz’s girlfriend was faking her bruises with makeup as revenge! How dare you make me suffer consequences for my actions! I’m going to smear your reputation and get you arrested every chance I get! That’ll show you!

there’s probably a commentary on modern dating and social networking in this twist somewhere, but we’ve already gone too far off the trail on this one.

Yeah, even in the wacky world of wrestling, it was awful, nonsensical, and while the GTV side of things was fun most of the time, the Chaz storyline never needed to take that turn.

And in a way, I feel like the Chaz storyline tainted The Headbangers reunion significantly. True, they came back sillier than ever, adding sports bras full of stuffing to their already ridiculous ring attire, and occasionally putting on mockeries of their opponents. But after Chaz, things were never truly the same. And I think The WWF was aware of it.

Shortly after the reunion had begun, Glenn Ruth was let go from his contract, and Warrington became one third of Lo Down.

I won’t get too far into it, but if you have to know, Lo Down was a team consisting of D’lo Brown, Chaz Warrington, and Tiger Ali Singh. It was a do-nothing trio that went nowhere, and I wasn’t sure if I felt more sorry for D’lo, or for Warrington for having to take part in it.

And that was pretty much it for the team. The reunion was cut down before anything could really come of it, and there hasn’t been so much as an attempt at a reunion since, to my knowledge. Which considering the corpses of nostalgia litter the 2020s like a battlefield where both sides lost the war, I’m actually kind of okay with.

As the 2000s became the 2010s, and the WWF became WWE, it seemed like The Headbangers became a sort of punching bag, criticized for being “a gimmick that overstayed its welcome”, and insisting that their one and only tag title reign was a fluke. It’s honestly a critique I didn’t agree with then, and I don’t really agree with now.

Did The Headbangers light the world on fire? Probably not. They were silly enough to stand out, but apparently not really successful enough to endear themselves to future fans. But for those two or three years before Chaz, they were definitely one of the tag teams I enjoyed watching the most.