Top 5 Rapping Wrestlers: #1: Nick Bockwinkel

In case you didn't already know, Nick Bockwinkel is the best. At everything. When other wrestlers were grunting and stuttering and bellowing through interviews, Bockwinkel was speaking calmly and using multisyllabic words. When other other wrestlers were wearing stupid underwear, Bockwinkel was rocking classy suits and glasses with tinted lenses and smoking cigars like a stud.

Pocket squares: so goddamn classy.

When Bockwinkel insulted you, all you could do was hang your head in shame and agree with him, because he was so much smarter than you that you had to take his word for it.

And he was the only man in the AWA that could rap.

Bockwinkel's segment is at 1:43. Think about this: the Wrestlerock Rumble happened in 1986 (suspiciously soon after the Chicago Bears recorded the Super Bowl Shuffle!), which was the last full year of Bockwinkel's 32-year wrestling career. He was the seasoned veteran of the AWA at this point. He was the oldest man on the card. And he's the only guy in the entire video who can rap to the beat. (To be fair, Larry Zbyszko comes close.) The other elder statesman of the AWA, Verne Gagne, couldn't even memorize his verse. And even the Midnight Rockers, the supposedly hip youngsters, are horrific on the mic, despite wearing those giant metal earmuffs.

At 52 years of age, it's entirely within reason to think that Bockwinkel had never heard rap music before and quite possibly didn't even know what rap was. I'm guessing his limousine dropped him off at the recording studio––let's assume it was Paisley Park––and Bockwinkel just heard the beat and laid down his smooth diss of Stan Hansen in one take. That's the genius of Bockwinkel.

Bobby the Brain wouldn't just shake any normal humanoid's hand.

Also: check out the Beastie Boys-like tandem rap delivered by a mustachioed Scott Hall and Curt Hennig. Could his terrible performance and his subsequent rejection by the hot pool babe be the incident that drove Hennig to a lifelong hatred to rap??