The Bushwhackers should be an inspiration to everyone

As a kid in the late-1980s and early-‘90s, I and other WWF fans (not a lot of NWA or WCW fans in California back then) had a lot of opinions on various wrestlers. (This was before lots of us grew up and had more strident opinions about them on the Internet. Times were simpler then.) Some kids were split between Hulk Hogan and the Ultimate Warrior. Some kids preferred Demolition or the Rockers. But one thing everyone agreed upon was that the Bushwhackers were weird and dumb.

Now The Bushwhackers are set to be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. The announcement was met with ample amounts of derision on Twitter and elsewhere, because for their entire WWF run, the Bushwhackers were a joke. (It was also met with derision because as wrestling fans, we have a difficult time enjoying anything, but that’s neither here nor there.)

The Bushwhackers, if you don’t already know, were a mostly-comedy team of backwoods Australian (actually New Zealander) cousins, Butch and Luke, who marched to the ring swinging their arms, licked each other’s -- and fan’s -- heads, ate sardines and went “WHOOOAAAA” a lot. Their finishing move was Butch hitting someone in the stomach with Luke’s head:

Here’s one of their incomprehensible promos from their WWF run:

As kids, none of my friends or I really knew quite what to make of the Bushwhackers. All of us, being uncouth children, somehow leapt to the conclusion that they were meant to be adults with developmental disabilities. None of us, of course, knew anything about the 20-plus years they had been tag-teaming all over the world before coming to the WWF. We just knew they acted stupid and lost almost all the time. One of the things for which they are best-known is having one of the fastest elimination times in a Royal Rumble.

The truth is, even if you only know the Bushwhackers as a joke -- if you know nothing about their lengthy runs-in every territory all over the world as The Sheepherders, if you’ve never seen their wild and groundbreaking hardcore brawls, don’t know anything about their worldwide reputation as violent savages -- you should look to them as an inspiration:

Look at the faces of the people in the crowd during their entrance:

That happened every night the Bushwhackers wrestled in the WWF. My friends and I may not have admitted we cared for the Bushwhackers, but everyone in that crowd is grinning like a goof, doing the arm motion along with them. The Bushwhackers just connected with people, which is all a professional wrestler is ever trying to do.

If you’re ONLY measuring them by their WWF run, this is what they did:

- Had an eight-year run in the biggest wrestling company in the world, during the Hulkamania heyday
- Sold lots of merchandise
- Got popular (without ever really winning) solely on the strength of “are weird” and “move their arms”

Yes, the Bushwhackers in the WWF are just the tip of the iceberg of what “The Bushwhackers” actually represent. But their WWF run is how the vast majority of current fans remember them. So let’s celebrate them for that. They shone on the largest stage for nearly a decade, without doing much at all and by doing just about the simplest thing you can do.

We should all be so lucky.