RIP Tracy Smothers

[cjh]

www.pwinsider.com/article/140864/tracy-smothers-passes-away.html?p=1

PWInsider.com regrets to report the passing of Tracy Smothers, who had a long-spanning career that includes runs in WCW (as one half of The Southern Boys/Young Pistols), Extreme Championship Wrestling (as a member of the FBI), the WWF (as Freddy Joe Floyd), Memphis Wrestling, Smoky Mountain Westling, Continental and countless other promotions following a long battle with cancer.

Smothers announced in November 2019 that he was battling lymphoma. In recent weeks, Smothers was also dealing with heart issues and a pending hernia surgery. He was only 58 years old.

[I'm Team Bayley and Indi]

R.I.P. Saw him wrestle and was really entertaining

Met him after the match, and I'm sure many will echo this but he was an extremely nice person

[BorneAgain]

I saw Smothers at an indy show 20 years ago and he was one of the most entertaining jerk heels I'd ever seen. Guy was talented enough to work as a southern style babyface and an ECW heel. RIP

[corndog]

Very sad, I've heard nothing but good things about him. Also, I loved his crazy heel run a handful of years back in Cleveland and other indies where he said the most absurd things possible.

[cassonova]

I always got a kick out of him, seeing him live. He had clearly lost a step in the ring (but considering his age...), but so very entertaining on the mic and, despite what was coming out of his mouth, you could tell he was having fun.
I will always joke about the highlight of my indie wrestling fandom was taking a pee next to Tracy at a card in Pekin IL.

R.I.P. Tracy.

[jason1980s]

This is not something you want to come into but we will always remember the good times. I had the pleasure of briefly meeting him in 2017 and the honor of taking a picture on his phone and Savio Vega's phone with him, Savio and Nikolai Volkoff. It's so awesome how so many guys know each other from working different promotions together either independent or non-WWF at various times.
I am shocked he was only 58. He's been around so long and had this really old school veteran look to him. He's one of the guys you hear so many good things about. Anyone who met him at an indy show and posts about it, you normally hear about him making the time to talk with them during the show or before or after. He was supposed to do a signing with Tommy Rich and Little Guido just a few weeks ago but he wasn't able to make it obviously. It would have been great for the fans of course but I'm sure the guys would have loved seeing each other. Having met all of them, I'm sure they got along really well during their time together. All three are absolutely "do anything for anybody" or "give the shirt off your back" type of guys. All three deserved bigger positions in wrestling IMO but all three would probably agree they were happy doing what they did.
I thought Tracy in WWF would have been a huge success in 1996 but it wasn't meant to be. He wrestled in all three major promotions of the time and it was always great seeing him no matter the promotion.

[XIII]

RIP to one of the good guys.

Could have sworn that he was way older than 58, dude was around forever it seemed.

[Susan "Poison" Candy]

RIP Tracy

[The Heartbreak TWERK]

RIP

[WoodStoner1]

Inevitable, it seemed, but still sad. Leave us alone already 20!

He was supposed to be at a show in NJ a couple weeks back but called out for his health reasons :-(

["Evil Brood" Jackson Vanik]

RIP Tracy - going to have a pizza today to honor my fellow Italian.

[Mozenrath]

Something of a journeyman, and a guy who never could seem to catch a lasting break in wrestling. One of my favorite stories involving him was if a turnout was bad. Oftentimes, this would be rationalized by the promoter or wrestlers with statements like, "well, the highschool is playing football tonight, so it stands to reason-", "A concert tour just went through", etc, to downplay the failure. Tracy would joke, "McDonalds is open 24 hours a day. How can we compete with that?"

[toodarkmark]

Very sad to hear. His Midnight Express program and top face work for SMW are great memories. RIP.

[ANuclearError]

One of my earliest memories of wrestling was Smothers & Armstrong versus the Midnight Express at the 1990 Great American Bash. Absolute tremendous tag match.

RIP.

[fw91]

Rip

[agent817]

The crazy thing about this is that I have been watching a lot of ECW from 1998 lately. I haven't really seen a lot of his stuff oh, but he was very entertaining as one of the Full Blooded Italians. I even read that he was only 58, the same age as my dad. I thought he was a bit older than that even back in the 1990s.

May he rest in peace.

[Ryushinku]

Ahhh....RIP Mr Smothers.

Such a great tag worker back in early nineties WCW, and solo in Smoky Mountain. Think the first thing I ever saw him in (many years later) was actually that Bash '90 match as well, which was hell of a deal.

Don't know why he didn't break out bigger, never thought to check.

[WoodStoner1]

Oct 28, 2020 11:04:16 GMT -5 ANuclearError said:

One of my earliest memories of wrestling was Smothers & Armstrong versus the Midnight Express at the 1990 Great American Bash. Absolute tremendous tag match.

RIP.

Still one of the best PPV openers ever. And it hasn't been outclassed by the later WCW cruiserweight stuff necessarily. It still holds up on its own.

[Crappler El 0 M]

RIP

[Ultimo Gallos]

Back in 2015 or 2016 at a Wrestle Birmingham show. We had set up the cameras and commentary table on this big stage. The curtain behind me in the pic lead to the dressing room. During a match I see the curtain move and Tracy Smothers walks out and joined us on commentary for a match.

I mentioned to Mr Smothers how we had met the previous year in Lula and I got a pic with him that was so blurry you can't make out who was in it. "Well we need to correct that right now." And I got the pic with Mr Smothers.

Super nice dude that wanted to just entertain every fan at every event.

I have a bunch of signed 8x10s. So I rotate out most of the ones on my wall. But the signed pic of Tracy has been on my wall since the day after the above pic was taken.