Inside Hüsker Dü’s Bob Mould foray into pro-wrestling in the 1990s
Bob Mould is a man of many talents. He’s a rock singer, guitarist, songwriter, composer, producer and record executive, of course, but he’s also a talented writer.
He’s expressed this in all the normal ways that musicians have, writing his own memoirs in 2011, but there’s one infamous period of his career that no one could have seen coming. Mould is an infamously private individual. The multi-talented artist was never the kind of guy to let people into his private life, and while that was mostly due to him wanting to keep his sexuality to himself, it also meant that no one really knew about his hobbies and passions outside of music.
It’s OK, Bob, I keep my love of professional wrestling on the down low as well.
It’s true, though, Mould had been a lifelong fan of professional wrestling, joining the likes of Billy Corgan in the ranks of alternative rockers with a love for the medium. However, like the Smashing Pumpkins’ mainman, Mould took his love for the Sport of Kings beyond being a fan of it. After his second band, the spectacular power-pop trio Sugar, split in 1996, Mould felt a desire to go beyond the world of noisy guitar rock and push himself out of his comfort zone.
It was the same drive that was pushing his musical interests into the world of dance music and electronica. However, it was also driving him away from music altogether. When looking for avenues to pursue outside of music, wrestling was a given.
Not to strap on a pair of tights and get body slammed, you understand, but to work behind the scenes. Something that Mould had actually done as a young adult. While in Hüsker Dü, Mould also wrote for a Wrestling fanzine like a proper little mark and made some friends connected to the Atlanta wrestling territory, Georgia Championship Wrestling.
When Ted Turner bought the company and merged it with the Carolinas-based territory Jim Crockett Promotions to form WCW, the main competitor to WWF (now WWE) – those friends Mould had made were now working for one of the most popular shows on mainstream TV, and needed all the ideas they could get for their scripts.
Over the next ten years, Mould would occasionally talk through ideas with them and help them out of any jams they were in. So, when Sugar split up, they called Mould and asked if he wanted to work for them full-time as a script consultant.
Mould had nothing but praise for his time in the industry, speaking to the New York Times in almost reverent terms about working out the start of an episode of WCW Monday Nitro with Hulk Hogan himself. He didn’t last long in WCW, however. Not because he wasn’t good at his job, to be clear, professional wrestling gets through writers the way it gets through bottles of baby oil, WCW in the late 1990s especially.
Combine that with the fact that his day job was undeniably music, and it’s a testament to his passion for the medium that he took the job at all. Hopefully, all of us can spend a little time making our childhood dreams come true like that.