I've never quite known how I'm supposed to feel about Bob Backlund. On the one hand he was the eighth of nearly a hundred and fifty WWE champions, holding the belt from according to WWE.com over two thousand one hundred days between 1978 and 1983. Roman's got a fair way to go still to beat that. Bob would actually lose the title briefly in '79 to Antonio Inoki, but WWE has never officially recognised this change. When Inoki passed away in October 2022, Corey Graves actually called Inoki the first Japanese WWE champion, but this is still not officially recognised. Backlund would eventually lose his title to the Iron Sheik in early 1983, who in turn would lose four weeks later to the up and coming Hulk Hogan, beginning his first and longest reign as champion.
You might think that someone who held the WWE championship for that long might receive the legend treatment for life, but on the other hand, Backlund has been presented as a pretty weird bloke for the last thirty years. Backlund would win the WWE title for the second official time at Survivor Series 1994, defeating Bret Hart, and would lose it at a non-televised event three days later to Diesel in just eight seconds.
The first time I ever saw Bob Backlund was his entry in the 2000 Royal Rumble match, in which he in the arena he competed in many a time Madison Square Garden, lasted exactly two minutes. This is the same man who at the time held the record for longest Royal Rumble performance, a sixty one minute showing in 1993. This was likely booked to surpass Ric Flairs legendary 59 minute run in the '92 Rumble, since he was on his way out of the company, and would be back in WCW by early 93. The current record for longest royal rumble appearance is held by Daniel Bryan, who lasted seventy six minutes in the Greatest Royal Rumble in Saudi Arabia. A record that will likely never broken unless they do another Greatest Royal Rumble, which had fifty participants, more than any other to date.
In the 2000 match Bob would enter at number 14, to the tune of Hail to the Chief, and a massive pop from the Madison Square Garden crowd. Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler on commentary express confusion at Bob being here, with JR noting that he was running for congress, more on that in a minute. As he enters the ring he is immediately attacked by Big Boss Man and Test, and is quickly part of a group effort to eliminate Rikishi. When I say part of, I mean he was at on the outside of a pile of blokes joining forces to eliminate the biggest man in the ring. The rest of Bob's two minutes in the match is fairly unimpressive, as he blends in before being eliminated by Intercontinental champion Chris Jericho. Upon being sent over the ropes, Backlund wouldn't leave up the centre aisle, rather he would go up into the crowd.
While I'm on the subject, the 2000 Royal Rumble was one of the stranger ones in history. At repeated intervals in the match, Kai En Tai's Taka Michinoku and Funaki, as well as the Mean Street Posse would interfere and be promptly thrown out of the ring. They were doing this in protest at not being officially entered into the match. Unfortunately for Taka, on his second attempt he would be thrown out by Boss Man and Gangrel, and would smash his face on the floor, injuring him in the process. Jerry Lawler on commentary, who had history with Taka over Brian Christopher trying to take the Light Heavyweight title off him in '98, revelled in this, repeatedly laughing as the clip was aired throughout the rest of the match. This Rumble also ended in dodgy fashion, as in storyline, Big Show threw the Rock out, only for himself to topple out over him. Over the next few weeks Big Show would protest that Rock's feet touched the floor first, and to my eyes they did, but we were supposed to pretend that Big Show was complaining without a case. This would be solved at No Way Out the next month, where Big Show would earn his way into what would become the messy "McMahon in every corner" four way at Wrestlemania.
After this appearance, Bob would have a brief run with WWE where he would manage the at the time fresh faced Euro-Continental champion, Kurt Angle. This union would come to an abrupt end at Wrestlemania 16 though, as on Sunday Night Heat before the event Kurt would find out that Backlund was behind the idea of him having to defend both of his titles in one match, which he would lose that night to Chris Jericho and Chris Benoit. Angle would apply Backlund's own trademark move, the cross face chicken wing, ending Bob's brief 2000 run.
When Bob was in the Rumble, JR and King were repeatedly making political references. As I noted earlier, Bob was running for congress in Connecticut which he would eventually lose. Some in the media at the time saw Backlund's run as a dubious attention grab following the success of Jesse Ventura being elected as Governor of Minnesota. Bob's prior political experience was crass at best, declaring on an episode of Raw in '95 that he intended to run for President, even going as far as to get into an altercation with a Bill Clinton impersonator at that years Survivor Series. Hulk Hogan also announced a presidential bid on WCW Nitro in 99, and that went about as well as you would imagine it would. I'll level with you here, as someone whose knowlege of US politics mainly comes from The Daily Show when Jon Stewart was on it, I feel about as qualified to go further in US politics as Backlund, ie not very far.
Remember how I started this video not knowing how to feel about Bob Backlund? As best I can tell from here the weird stories about Backlund seem to build up. Legend has it that he would refuse to sign an autograph for a fan unless they could on the spot recite the names of every US president in order. From there he would later emerge in TNA in 2007, where he would be portrayed as an absolute madman. He would briefly have an unexpected WWE return in 2016 where he would act as a life coach for Darren Young, offering such unhinged advice as "never ever take advice from anyone". Many of these segments were filmed in such a weird way, with the two having a conversation while looking into the camera in separate locations, as if the two weren't allowed to be in the same room for some reason. The catchphrase from these segment was "make Darren Young great again." I wonder where they got that idea from?
In 2013, Bob would be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. In what felt like an odd choice, he was inducted by Maria Menounous, who explained on her Facebook page at the time that the two had a long friendship, and that she had grown up as a fan of Bob during his time as WWE champion. As you can likely imagine, his speech was eccentric, but honestly rather inspiring and if you haven't see it I'd recommend you watch it. He spoke well of Bruno Sammartino, who was also inducted that night, and he noted that Bruno paved the way before him. He also repeatedly called back to three words in reference to John Cena who was sat on the front row. Those three words that were pushed by John for many years, never give up. He goes on for so long that Vince McMahon goes on stage to hint that he is running long, but honestly I could have listened to him for hours. Bob's a weird dude, but also inspirational, in his own way.
