Ric Flair was not the first wrestler to use the moniker of Nature Boy. Before Flair, there was “The Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers, who began his career wrestling in the 1940s and ended up becoming a huge draw by the 1960s, putting on matches that set attendance records and box office sales.
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That said, there’s a lot that wrestling fans probably don’t know about Rogers, given that wrestlers that predate Hulk Hogan only get brief and infrequent shoutouts on WWE television. Without further ado, let’s take a closer look at Buddy Rogers and run through the things wrestling fans need to know about the original Nature Boy.
10 He Was An NWA Champion First
Buddy Rogers is most famously associated with Vince McMahon Sr.’s promotion, the Capitol Wrestling Corporation, but he first made his name in the National Wrestling Alliance territories in Texas in the 1940s, becoming a seven-time NWA Texas Heavyweight Champion. In 1961, Rogers would defeat Pat O’Connor for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, in a 2/3 Falls match that was not only promoted as the “Match of the Century,” but would also have record attendance that would only be broken in the 1960s.
9 WWE Wouldn’t Exist Without Him
By 1963, the National Wrestling Alliance felt that Vince McMahon Sr. was being stingy with Buddy Rogers’ as far as loaning the champ out to other NWA territories, so the NWA decided to book Lou Thesz to beat Rogers for the World Title. McMahon did not want Thesz to be the champ, so he quit the NWA and formed a new venture, the World Wide Wrestling Federation, making Buddy Rogers the first WWWF World Heavyweight Champion.
8 Lou Thesz Was Going To Win No Matter What
The NWA feared that Buddy Rogers was going to refuse to lay down in his match with Lou Thesz, so they set up several fail-safes, just in case. One such fail-safe was making the match a one-fall bout instead of the NWA’s traditional 2/3 falls, but even more notable was Lou Thesz himself.
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Thesz was a legit shooter, and a real good one at that, so if Rogers refused to lose, Thesz would make him lose. In fact, before the match, Thesz infamously warned Rogers that they could do it the easy way or the hard way.
7 He Didn’t Actually WIN The WWWF Championship
Being that the WWWF happened because McMahon refused to recognize Lou Thesz as NWA Champion over Buddy Rogers, they simply made Rogers the inaugural WWWF World Heavyweight Champion in 1963. However, for some reason the WWWF went an extra step by claiming that Rogers won the championship in a tournament in Rio De Janeiro that never actually happened. Hardcore WWE fans may remember the fake Brazilian tournament as the same way Pat Patterson became the first WWF Intercontintental Champion.
6 He Lost His Title Because Of A Heart Attack
Despite being crowned the top guy in Vince McMahon Sr.’s outlaw promotion, Buddy Rogers’ title reign lasted only 22 days, as the Nature Boy suffered a heart attack. The WWWF had to quickly take the title off of him, so they booked Bruno Sammartino to beat Rogers in under a minute -- just in case he had another heart attack -- beginning Sammartino’s legendary reign of over 2,800 days or nearly eight years.
5 He Was An Innovator
In the first half of the 20th century, pro wrestling was a lot more slow-paced and based in maintaining holds for a very long time. Buddy Rogers did a lot of work to innovate an in-ring style that relies on moves like drivers, slams, and top rope maneuvers over mat-based work. On top of that, Rogers also developed the act of planning out a match from beginning to end for maximum storytelling, a process then called “sequencing.”
4 He Was A Lot Like Ric Flair
The “Nature Boy” moniker wasn’t just a nickname that Ric Flair adopted. In the 1950s, upon leaving Texas for the Ohio territories, Buddy Rogers was given the “Nature Boy” gimmick, complete with bleached hair and a flashy heel personality. Sound familiar?
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When he became the Nature Boy in the late 1970s, Ric Flair not only took the nickname from Buddy Rogers, but also adopted Rogers’ signature maneuver: the Figure Four Leglock.
3 He Wrestled Into His 60s
A heart attack wasn’t enough to keep Buddy Rogers down. Throughout the 1960s, Rogers would wrestle tag matches and extremely short bouts so as to not overexert himself. He’d retire for about a decade, returning in the late ‘70s, working in Florida as well as in Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling. There, Rogers would feud with Ric Flair, who at the time had become The Nature Boy. At an event called Battle of the Nature Boys in 1979, Flair would successfully defend his NWA United States Heavyweight Championship against the aging Buddy Rogers.
2 He Was A Manager In 1980s WWF
Older fans may remember Buddy Rogers from his brief time in the World Wrestling Federation in the early 1980s. There, Rogers most notably managed Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, helping facilitate Snuka’s turn from a heel into a babyface. He even wrestled a couple matches alongside Snuka: once in 1982 against Captain Lou Albano and Ray Stevens, and once in 1983 against Albano and The Magnificent Muraco.
1 He Was Supposed To Wrestle Buddy Landel
In the mid-1980s, Jim Crockett Promotions had two Nature Boys running around. First there was Ric Flair, a top guy in the company, but there was also “Nature Boy” Buddy Landel, a young upstart who was proclaiming himself to be the true Nature Boy in pro wrestling. Their big match never really happened, but in 1992, Landel was set to wrestle another Nature Boy, a 71-year-old Buddy Rogers, for Tri-State Wrestling Alliance. The promotion would fold before this could happen, and Rogers died months later.
