If you came of age, like me, renting newly released pay per view tapes of the Hulkamania era, you know Rene Goulet, whether you know you do or not. If you’re a little older or, like me, spend hours and hours diving into old school wrestling from the 50s through the 80s, you surely know of Goulet’s singular accomplishments and noteworthy milestones in pro wrestling.
Sadly, last week Goulet’s family released the news that the Canadian wrestling legend and longtime WWF “enforcer” and scout passed away in May. Not even the WWE knew, and like the rest of us were slightly shocked and certainly saddened by news of his passing six months ago.
What better time then to look back and remember this seminal figure in pro wrestling.
As I said above, you most likely know Goulet (real name Robert Bedard, born in Quebec in 1932) as the stringy, straw-haired blonde from all those 80s and early 90s pay per views. No, I’m not talking about Hulk Hogan. Goulet had more hair. Goulet made many, many appearances à la Pat Patterson or the very young Shane McMahon as a part of a cohort of WWF “officials” who came in at key moments to break up brawls or attend to (kayfabe) injured wrestlers. Think Wrestlemania VIII when Savage had to be subdued from tearing into Ric Flair in the post-match brawl, or the attending officials when the Undertaker tombstoned Hogan on a Ric Flair-provided chair at Survivor Series 1991.
OSW fans reading will know this all too well. They highlight Goulet with hilarity every time his broom-like hair sweeps in to help restore order, referring to him as Worzel Gummidge, given his strinking similarity to the 1980s British TV scarecrow character.
However, before his run as a random suit clad WWF official and his Worzel run on OSW, Goulet was an accomplished wrestler. For instance, though he was was at Wrestlemania VIII separating Flair and Savage, it was Goulet who handed Flair his first ever loss in his second match (Flair’s first match was a ND). And that is just one interesting bit of a trivia in a career full of them.
Chris Taylor was quite a celebrity and super heavyweight in the 1972 Olympics where he competed in Greco-Roman freestyle, winning the bronze and holding the record as the heaviest Olympic wrestler on record until 2008 at 412 pounds. His move into professional wrestling was covered with the same media frenzy as Kurt Angle or Mark Henry in later years. When the big American got into the pro-wrestling ring, People magazine made sure to cover the event in its 3rd issue in March 1974, giving a full page photo to Chris Taylor and the man he had in a bear hug: Rene Goulet.
After the match, Chris Taylor went on the “Tomorrow” show with Tom Snyder to discuss professional wrestling. Taylor said about that first match: “If pro wrestling is fake, I sure wish somebody would have told that other guy.” Sadly Taylor passed away at the young age of 29, one of the most covered wrestlers in media to that point.
But that’s not the only pop culture milestone Goulet was a part of. The WWF, now WWE has been on the USA Network, with a few year break there on Spike, for nearly 40 years. Raw on USA is the longest running weekly broadcast show not called The Simpsons. The first ever WWF match on TV? Why, that was Rene Goulet versus Tito Santana of course.
These milestones are no coincidence. Goulet was seen as a great in-ring worker who could make others look great. Hence him being put into the contest with Chris Taylor in his early pro wrestling days. Hence him kicking off the WWF-USA relationship. Hence his breaking in a number of well-known wrestlers working the first or one of the first matches in the careers of the aforementioned Ric Flair, the Iron Sheik, Ken Patera, and Jim Brunzel.
Not a first, but a second: along with Karl Gotch, Goulet was part of the second team ever to hold the WWF tag titles in 1971.
He wasn’t bad at promo either. If you ever got caught up in a Piper’s Pit or Barbershop or Brother Love Show segment, well, you can thank Goulet for pioneering that too. WWF’s Tuesday Night Titans (ironically, TNT) on USA in the 1980s featured Cafe Rene, a talk segment hosted by Goulet. Any Sting fans in the crowd? It’s not hard to imagine his whole character was built around Goulet’s Scorpion Death Lock submission finisher. At one point, AWA and WWF staple Goulet wrestled with a Legionnaires gimmick as “Sgt. Jacques Goulet.” Later AWA and WWF staple Sgt. Slaughter certainly took a cue (even in his post-ring career, serving often in the 90s and 2000s as one of the order restoring suited officials at pay per views himself).
In an era that includes the Briscos and Dusty Rhodes and Harley Race and the emerging Hulk Hogan and the Funks and Andre the Giant and Verne Gagne, well, it might be easy to overlook a guy like Goulet. By the way, Goulet was so over in the NWA Florida territory in the 70s he won the NWA Southern Heavyweight Championship there, twice defeating NWA World Champ Jack Brisco, once in a Tornado 3-way match beating Brisco and Terry Funk.
But, in the same way you may have overlooked the straw-haired suited official on WWF pay per views, he was always there anyway. He played a major role in the AWA, NWA, and WWF at various points in his wrestling career, only the surface of which I have scratched here.
While Goulet may never be in the elite pantheon of pro wrestling history, he certainly deserves his due for playing a major part in shaping the modern day product. Pour one out for the Number One Frenchmen, Rene Goulet.
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