On Wednesday, I asked readers to name the greatest tag team that never won tag team gold in WWE. While The Rockers constantly came up, one team in particular caught my attention:
Beau and Blake, The Beverly Brothers.
In a 2018 interview with Pro Wrestling Stories, their former manager, “The Genius” Lanny Poffo, said their finishing move, The Shaker Heights Spike, was something no one wanted to take after they injured enhancement talent with it.
The move saw Blake launch an opponent into the air as if
setting up a back body drop. While the opponent was airborne, Beau would leap up and spike the opponent’s head into the canvas.
Poffo called the move dangerous, and though he described Beau and Blake as “nice people,” he said they didn’t care if they broke people’s necks. That could explain why the Beverly Brothers never came within sniffing distance of tag team gold.
Why WWE management allowed them to use such a dangerous move is a topic for another time. One possible reason is that their original finisher, the Doomsday Device, belonged to the Road Warriors, who were also in WWE at the time.
Before joining WWE, Beau and Blake gained fame in the dying days of the AWA. Known as the Destruction Crew, “Mean” Mike Enos and Wayne “The Train” Bloom were one of the promotion’s few bright spots as it inched towards the grave.
Building Monsters
Once preliminary wrestlers in the AWA, upstarts Enos and Bloom were teamed up and remodeled. Dressed as construction workers and named the Destruction Crew, they carried sledgehammers to the ring long before Triple H made it fashionable.
Entering the arena to Queen’s “We Will Rock You,” they lived up to the tune as they battered and bloodied men like Olympic star Brad Rheingans and the legendary Wahoo McDaniel.
Immediately, I fell in love with the young team, who were mean and nasty. I especially enjoyed their promos, which were a highlight of the show. Enos rarely said more than a few words before Bloom jumped in: “Hold on, Mike, I’ll handle this one.” It became a running gag that Enos played along with as he let his partner take the floor.
Initially managed by “Luscious” Johnny Valiant, Enos and Bloom won the AWA Tag Team Championship in the summer of 1989. That same year, they won Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s Rookie of the Year award. As champions, they held the titles for nearly a year, becoming the promotion’s second-to-last champions before it folded.
After the AWA went under, I couldn’t wait to see them bring their carnage to WCW or WWE. They seemed destined for WCW, where they appeared briefly in 1990 during their AWA title run. Wrestling under masks, they were dubbed the Minnesota Wrecking Crew II and managed by Ole Anderson, a member of the original Minnesota Wrecking Crew.
Instead, they landed in WWE in 1991, but they were no longer the Destruction Crew. They were repackaged as the Beverly Brothers, supposedly spoiled rich kids, and paired with Poffo.
This. Gimmick. Sucks.
Their new finishing move was the extent of their brutality, as their brand of violence was toned down to fit the cartoon mold of WWE programming at the time.
The team’s iconic look was also completely demolished. Gone were the construction vests and orange and black tights; in were shiny capes and purple tights with silver stars. Their wild manes were now slicked back and corralled, and the faux brothers’ WWE-produced entrance theme seemed more fitting for a car wash commercial than a duo’s anthem.
Worse, the charisma Enos and Bloom showed in the AWA seemed to have been left behind in their old territory. Poffo, their new manager, did most of the talking. Though they had good matches with teams like the Steiner Brothers, that was all they were: a team having solid matches yet going nowhere.
To this day, I resent WWE for ruining two guys who seemed poised to be one of the top teams of the ‘90s. I was especially disappointed for Bloom, whose son later wrestled for WWE as Von Wagner in NXT. Bloom could talk his ass off and came across as deeply unlikeable in a way that made him fun to hate.
Rather than make slight improvements to their existing structure, WWE took a wrecking ball to the Destruction Crew. However, Enos and Bloom weren’t the only victims of a WWE overhaul, as several past and future greats received a makeover from “the machine” that stripped away their former aura.
Sound Off
Now, I ask you, dear readers, which wrestler or team do you think was absolutely ruined by WWE? Drop a line or more in the comments section.
