12 Wrestling Superstars From The 80s: Where Are They Now?

3. ABDULLAH THE BUTCHER

There’s never really been another wrestler quite like Abdullah The Butcher (Lawrence Shreve). Oh sure, there have been many hardcore wrestlers in the past, but few of them have ever really achieved the notoriety for participating in the kind of unbelievable acts of violence that Abdullah does, and few of them were doing the violent things that Abdullah was doing back in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Abdullah was rarely a regular for any one promotion and spent most his prime years as a gun for hire that was called whenever someone had to get bloody.

That’s actually still what Shreve is up to these days as he spent most of the last decade participating in random hardcore matches. Shreve was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2011 and lost a legal battle in 2014 related to accusations that he gave wrestlers hepatitis C as a result of his regular blading.

4. JACQUES ROUGEAU

Whether you know him as a member of the Rougeau Brothers or for his brief stint as Canada’s most evil Mountie, it was hard to watch WWE in the ‘80s and ‘90s and not remember Jacques Rougeau Jr. as a pretty good professional wrestler who just rarely was given anything of substance to work with. Even still, he certainly made the most of every storyline WWE gave him during his eight-year stint as a member of that organization, and he proceeded to make the most out of relatively little as a member of WCW. In fact, he once beat Hulk Hogan at a house show in Montreal.

Rougeau went on to open a wrestling school where he helped train the likes of Kevin Owens and even tried to join the Montreal Police Department in order to become an actual Mountie but was denied due to his lack of a high school diploma.

5. TONY ATLAS

One of America’s all-time great bodybuilders, Tony Atlas actually managed to win Mr. USA three times before he decided to become a professional wrestler. He bounced around quite a bit between various federations during his prime, but he was a pretty successful tag team wrestler for NWA and is even technically the first man to have pinned Hulk Hogan even though the victory was tainted by the referee not seeing Hogan’s foot on the ropes. After spending a year in World Class Championship Wrestling under the moniker of “The Black Superman,” Atlas battled a drug addiction before returning to WWE in the early ‘90s as Saba Simba.

Many younger fans will likely remember his run in WWE as Mark Henry’s manager and his appearance on the WWE Network show Legends’ House. Mostly, though, Atlas has embraced the private life and spends time with his family in Alabama.

6. THE BARBARIAN

What would a conversation about The Warlord be without taking a look at what his good friend The Barbarian has been up to these last few years? Much like The Warlord, The Barbarian (Sione Vailahi) got his big career break part of the Powers of Pain in WWE. Following the end of that team, Vailahi bounced between WCW and WWE but was never able to recapture that same magic he found as a member of The Powers of Pain. He was actually a member of the WCW roster from 1995 to 2000 (even though he rarely ever made an appearance during that time), but eventually, his contract was terminated due to cost cutting measures.

He was actually able to find a little success in the indies as he briefly served as the NWA Virginia Heavyweight Champion, but he spends most of his time running a construction business in North Carolina. He is also involved in that WWE class action lawsuit.