Hasil Adkins, The Real Elvis of West Virginia

HASIL ADKINS April 29, 1937 – April 25, 2005







To me, Hasil Adkins is the definition of a true rock n' roll hero. He never did anything for money other than rock (and odd repair jobs), he was a total outlaw, and he never compromised his expression for anyone ever. During his long run in Boone County West Virginia he wrote nearly 9000 songs and was incarcerated several times for everything from bar fights to backwoods shootouts. Most of his music career was spent simply gigging at local bars. During the sixties some of his records were extremely popular in parts of Europe but he refused to capitalize on the success by touring.

Hasil did gain some success in the states later in his life. The Cramps and some other bands covered a few of his songs and he was featured in a few movies. Anyway im gonna stop rambling. Here's the documentary that will do him alot more justice.

Jefferson Ave Cr(ack)onicles PART A Krack Kokaine Kindergarten.

i have seen the devil. i have looked into its eyes and denied its power several times in my life. i used to even deny its existence but now i know its real. i have personally never smoked crack cocaine in my life although i have smoked a few blunts spiked with soft. im not really sure what it is that makes a person try crack cocaine for the first time. i think for many it is something that comes from alienation and depression and it gives them a reason to wake up in the morning sadley enough. others just get sucked in through the party scene and just think it will be alright. the first time i was ever offered crack i turned it down. some of the guys smoking rock that night tried to soothe me telling me "its just crack".thats like fucking a bitch you know has AIDS and saying "ITS JUST AIDS". im pretty sure all of those guys are in or have been in jail and the pen by now. crack is extremely appealing to people in this area because its the purest dose you can get other than shooting it. when you burn it or cook it up you get a 100 percent pure shot of cocaine which is almost impossible to find in this area. most cocaine in northeast tennessee is pure when it gets here but is quickly sold to small time dope peddlers who usually have a habit and bulk it up to maximize profit and take a larger cut for their personal use. if you know the right people in this area you can get pure soft. but usually if youre buying coke youre getting a mixture of a little tiny bit of coke maybe enough to make your throat numb for like 5 minutes a little b12 and alot of meth. a casual partier either doesnt notice or doesnt care cuz they get super fucking sped out and high so fuck it. but a real cokehead knows whats up and eventually a real cokehead gets to know a real crackhead then a crack dealer and then their lives are over because they can finally get that PURE FEELING that theyve been hunting for hurting for losing sleep over.


in late 2005 me and casey moved into an apartment on Jefferson Avenue just at the edge of the highland community in kingsport. highland is notoriously one of the more rough places in kingsport. jefferson avenue actually didnt look all that ghetto. it had all these nice little cookie cutter houses probably built in the seventies. the street loops and on the loop there are about 5 or 6 small apartment complexes with maybe 4 apartments in each building. we lived at 1717 in apartment 4. the apartment complexes are where the cuteness stopped.
the day we got our keys i rounded up some friends to meet me and casey there so we could break it in by getting super fucking blazed in the living room. i think hambone and dody and maybe drew and tgood were there. we were having a pretty chill time till we got a knock on the door. we naturally did that crazy group stoner freakout "do we hide, do we eat the weed, wait chill out see who it is, its cool, no its not, FUUUCK WE'RE FUCKED,flush it!, just see who it is" i went to the door and peeked out through the curtain covering the window and saw a black lady who appeared to be maybe in her mid 40s in a housecoat and an erykah badu sort of head wrap. obviously not a cop. i opened up the door and she asked i for the guy who used to live there. of course i had no clue who she was talking about so i quickly said no and tried to shut the door in her face but FUUUUCK NO. you couldnt just shut the door in ruby's face. especially if it was your first meeting with her. she invited herself into my living room where i realized that she was wearing a huge cast on her right leg. she began talking about how it smelled like "some good shit in here" and wanted to know if anyone wanted to trade some bud for some loratabs. no one was really into painpills then so we all said no. i asked her what was wrong with her leg and she told me that she got attacked by someones pitbull down the street and watch out for so and sos pitbull cuz its a fucking bastard that just randomly attacks and it ought to be shot blah blah blah. after she realized that she couldnt get any drugs, money, or rides from us she eventually went away and then my friends scurried back to their mommies houses in the suburbs.

A couple of nights later me and casey were woken up by psychotic screaming and sounds of domestic assault. our next door neighbor angie and her old man were having a crazy fist fight because she had apparently caught him getting head from Ruby which he paid her for in crack. I think that angie wasnt so mad about the head as the fact that he gave her a crackrock that would have otherwise been hers.anyway, the fight got so bad that some neighbors had to break it up one of which being the crack dealer who lived upstairs. "yall gotta stop this shit, theres kids around here, crazy shit like this is why i left the hood" he said to the raving lunatic heads that he had helped create. I remember being horrified and slightly amused....

One Man Gang, Akeem The African Dream, Krusher Broomfield

Its been a while since Ive posted anything. Tonight I had some time so I decided I would throw something together about pro wrestler George Gray. Gray started wrestling in the Northeast Tennessee, Kentucky territories under the ICW promotion when he was only 17. He basically was a jobber with the promotion and wasnt very successful. *During the time he was with the promotion Ronnie Garvin was the Heavyweight champion and his ring moniker was "One Man Gang".

Gray left ICW for the NWA where he would develop the character we would come to know as One Man Gang. He would also go from having long hair and dressing very dully to the mohawk punk rock biker guy thing.
One thing that never changed about Gray was his size. The behemoth was 6'9 and 457 pounds at his largest. An early gimmick of his was the 5000 dollar bodyslam challenge. His manager, Oliver Humperdink the third , would get wrestlers to come out and try to bodyslam them and everytime a babyface would start to get him up over their shoulder that dirty little bastard Humperdink the third would get involved. The gimmick was great ring psychology. Here's a sample:


During his time in the NWA wrestling he also was doing time in the UWF, WCCW, and worked in Japan. His hard work brought him success. He won many titles including NWA's Brass Knuckles and United States Tag Team belts. He became one of only four UWF Heavyweight Champions after Terry Gordy forfeited the title due to an injury. He would lose the title 5 months later to Big Bubba Rogers.

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One Man Gang made his debut in WWF in 1987. Gray was accompanied to the ring by his new manager simply known as Slick.
He mostly did squash matches with the likes of Reno Riggins. You remember that guy right?


The problem with Gray was that he wasnt great with promos. He pretty much relied on a manager to speak for him. I think his lack of "personality" is what screwed him during his time in the WWF. Although his size and presence and talent should have spoke for themselves the WWF's biggest stars were the most absurdly expressive with all the "OOOOOH YEAS" and "WHAT YA GONNA DO'S" of that era Gang was pushed back into the spot of the big guy who gets the super hero's like Hogan and Savage over.


After a short period of wrestling low and mid card matches feuding with Don Moracco, Bam Bam Bigelow and others One Man Gang dropped out of site. During his absence Slick begain hyping a new mystery wrestler. He promised to reveal the new wrestler to Mean Gene Okerlund. Of course the new guy was Gray's new gimmick, Akeem the African Dream. Apparently One Man Gang needed to get back to his African roots. The new gimmick teetered on the line of being racist and just stupid but whats for sure is that it was totally absurd.

Heres a video of the transformation:


During the Akeem phase Gray teamed up with former UWF rival Ray Taylor, now wrestling as Big Boss Man. As the Twin Towers the two giants wreaked havoc on the tag team scene and came close to winning the tag titles a couple of times.Its totally ludicrous that the Towers didnt gain the titles due to the fact that they were so damn dominating but sadly these two former UWF Heavyweight Champions were given stupid gimmicks and used to get over other tag teams and, like before the gimmick change they were stuck getting over Hogan and Savage during their Mega Powers phase. Heres the Twin Towers with Andre Vs. Hacksaw and Demolition.



After the Towers split Akeem fueded with the Bossman until Wrestlemania IV where he lost and soon after left the WWF. In 1991 Gray went to WCW and brought the One Man Gang gimmick back to life during a strange "voodoo ritual" with his new manager Kevin Sullivan. During this time his only fued was with El Gigante.Heres a great video from that period http://en.kendincos.net/video-fjhnjl-el-gigante-vs-one-man-gang.html He lost a Loser Leaves WCW match to Gigante and didnt return until 1995. He joined up with Kevin Sullivan again joining "The Dungeon of Doom". During this short time in the WCW One Man Gang did hold the WCW United States title winning it from Kensuke Sasaki then losing it to Konnan on his way out. Konnan VS. One Man Gang can be seen here: http://en.kendincos.net/video-djdfrn-konan-vs-one-man-gang-u-s-title.html

One Man Gang spent a very short time in ECW wrestling one match with Abdullah the Butcher. After this he spent some time wrestling in indy promotions here and there but has basically been semi-retired since 2000 when he had a heart attack. He now is a prison gaurd in Angola prison in Louisiana. The last match he had in a big promotion was in the Gimmicks Battle Royal at Wrestlemania 17:

IWA King of the Deathmatch Tournament 1995

I saw IWA's King of the Deathmatch Tournament when i was maybe 13 years old at a friends house. It blew my mind completely. The most hardcore thing i had ever seen in professional wrestling up to that point was some chair shots or something like that. I had definately never thought that two dudes would get in a ring with barbwire ropes or bodyslam eachother into thumbtacks and c4 explosives. It destroyed my concepts of wrestling and made all those wwf and wcw guys look like total cartoons. Imagine Hulk Hogan taking a barbwire baseball bat to his shiny tanned bald head. It would never happen because hes a big pussy just like the most of those monday and thursday night primadonnas of today and yesterday.

If you dont get why Mick Foley is so respected in the wrestling world you will understand after watching this. The guy was paid 300 dollars to go through this legitimate life shortening physical hell. The main event of the tournament features Foley as Cactus Jack taking on the "Hardcore Legend" Terry Funk. Some would say that this match is the most legendary and best hardcore match ever. I dont think its the best but i would definately put it in my top ten. What is for sure about this match is that it sparked a life long friendship between the two hardcore legends that would bring us many great wrestling moments for years to come.

This video has some true legends of hardcore but is lacking some people that would have made it a dream tournament but that fact does not take away from the sheer awesomeness of this tape.

I have found every match from this event on Youtube. If you havent seen this tape youre not a real wrestling fan and you dont know shit about hardcore. Watch now.

*Also i recommend FOR LAUGHS the version of this tape with overdubbed commentary from the Insane Clown Posse.


The Card:
1. Tiger Jeet Singh vs. Mr. Gannosuke (Barbed Wire Barricade match)
2. Leatherface vs. Terry Funk (Barbed Wire Barricade, Chain match)
3. Cactus Jack vs. Terry Gordy (Barbed Wire Baseball Bat, Thumbtack match)
4. Shouji Nakamaki vs. Hiroshi Ono (Barbed Wire Baseball Bat, Thumbtack match)
5. Flying Kid Ichikara vs. T. Okano
6. Iceman vs. Kamakaze
7. Funk vs. Singh (Glass, Barbed Wire Barricade match)
8. Cactus vs. Nakamaki (Bed of Nails, Barbed Wire)
9. Gypsy Joe Ceremony
10. Headhunters vs. Silver King & El Texano
11. Dan Severn vs. Tarzan Goto (NWA title)
12. Funk vs. Cactus (Tourney Final-No Rope Electrified Barbed Wire Barricade Explosion match)

Bruiser Brody

The reason my first post is about Bruiser Brody is because he was a true artist who was brutally murdered for his wit and integrity. I see him as a true martyr of nihilism, hardcore, and liberty. Bruiser Brody is one of my favorite wrestlers. He never gained the popularity that he deserved in America due to his unpredicability in the ring and his unwillingness to take shit from scumbag promoters. However in his short span in America he held nearly every title of relevence in pro wrestling at the time. His matches with Terry Funk, Abdullah the Butcher, and the Sheik helped revolutionize pro wrestling and basically laid the groundwork for hardcore wrestling.

Heres a classic Brody VS Terry Funk brawl.




Probably one of the coolest wrestling promos ever:


On July 17 1988 Brody was stabbed to death by another wrestler/promoter in puerto rico. The story is too fucked up to even tell in this blog. If you want the gory details you can go here: http://www.solie.org/articles/brodeath.html

Here is Tony Atlas giving a detailed, eye witness video account of the murder:



The story of Bruiser Brody's life and death is one of the most shakespearean in modern sports history. It makes the Aronofsky's film look downright cartoonish.Its a real shame that he doesnt get more recognition and that his story doesnt get more attention.

The legacy of Bruiser Brody lives on today in hardcore pro wrestling organizations like CZW,BJW,and FMW. Many wrestlers homage and ape his style including Necro Butcher, Mick Foley, Undertaker(who he had his first match with), Mike Knox and countless otheres. Almost every indy promotion has a Bruiser Brodyesque character these days.

Im gonna end this post with a video of King Kong Brody putting over a young Leon "The Baby Bull" White who would later become Vader. Have a laugh.