Captain Lou Albano, the crazed and charismatic wrestling icon who played Cyndi Lauper‘s dad in her “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” video, has died. He was 76.
Albano – known for his wild goatee, usually tamed by a rubber band, and his half-open Hawaiian shirts – was a wrestling world fixture for more than a half-century.
He was inducted into the World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame in 1996, paying tribute to Albano’s management of 15 WWE tag team champions and WWE title holder Ivan Koloff.
No one ever said the Ultimate Fighting Championship didn’t know how to market itself, its sport and its fighters.
There may be no greater proof than the job it’s done with Kimbo Slice, the famed YouTube street fighter who crashed and burned under the weight of ridiculous hype that his last promotion and CBS television put on him. One year ago this week, it took 14 seconds to prove he wasn’t really the comparable figure to Tiger Woods that the network laughably claimed.
Kimbo lost again Wednesday on Spike TV’s “The Ultimate Fighter” reality show. In a match taped in June, he was smothered by Roy Nelson, a round mound of fighting experience who twice exploited Slice’s inexperience, laid him out in a crucifix position and dropped dozens of light but unanswered punches.
Referee Herb Dean, who allowed Kimbo to be saved by the bell at the end of the first round, called it early in the second.
