BY GARY HAWKINS
Staff Writer
Additional Photos
It seems everything in the world of professional wrestling is connected to its past. So it’s no surprise that Jerry “Biff” Sags and Brian “Buff” Knobbs, aka The Nasty Boys, got their start when George “The Animal” Steele suggested they attend Vern Gagne’s Minnesota wrestling camp in the mid 1980s.
Few survived the torturous camp, which is why Steele sent them there in the first place. But Knobbs and Sags, who were childhood friends in Whitehall Township, Pa., emerged as a tag team with a catchy name, thanks to Gagne’s daughter, and an identity they perfected over the years.
The Nasty Boys will perform Sunday at the Augusta Civic Center as Big Time Wrestling returns to the capital area. They’ll be joined by seven-time world champion Bret “The Hitman” Hart, Matt Hardy, Dave “Fit” Finlay, Carlito Colon, The Genius Lanny Poffo, BTW heavyweight champion Shane Douglas, Luke The Bushwacker and Reby Sky among others.
Hart, who suffered a stroke in 2002, no longer wrestles, but along with many others in Sunday’s show, he’ll be on hand from 2-4 p.m. to pose for pictures with fans, chat and sign autographs. Fans with VIP tickets get early admission to the Fanfest at 1:30 p.m. Tickets are available at the Augusta Civic Center box office, Ticketmaster and Walmart stores.
The Nasty Boys perfected their repertoire in the late ’80s and early ’90s with a street look that included a lot of boots, chains and leather accessories along with mullet-hawk haircuts. They developed their persona with a little help from their friends.
“Adrian Adonis saw us wrestle,” Sags said in a phone interview this week, “and told us ‘I thought you guys were The Nasty Boys.’ “
The tag team grew a little nastier after that — among their signature moves is the Pit Stop where they shove an opponent’s face into their arm pit — and quickly rose up the ladder. They won a WCW tag team title and later a WWE championship by beating the Hart Foundation in WrestleMania VII.
Jimmy Hart, who managed the Hart Foundation, has also been manager to the Nasty Boys and continues to this day, although managers no longer play prominent roles in the actual wrestling, the way that Hart, Captain Lou Albano, Classy Freddie Blassie and others did in the past. Sags laments the loss of managers as performers just as he does the demise of the tag team, citing legendary duos like The British Bulldogs, Demolition, The Valiant Brothers and The Road Warriors.
“Tag teams they have now are just two guys they throw together and call them a team,” Sags said.
The Nasty Boys used to perform 300 dates a year but have cut back considerably since leaving WWE. They’re still busy, though. Sags said he’ll do about 15 dates this month, including Fanfests and signings. The business has changed, he said, comparing it to radio disc jockeys who used to have freedom to play and say what they wished, but today follow a strict script.
“We had more control to do what we wanted to do,” he said. “It was more from the heart. Ad-libbing has sort of slipped away from it.”
Gary Hawkins — 621-5638
ghawkins@centralmaine.com
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