Former Southern Champion Rick Link passes away at 66 years old
Image: Mike Kalasinck
Rick Link, a former wrestler in the Carolinas who once defeated Jerry Lawler for the Southern title, has passed away at 66 years old, just several weeks after he entered hospice care after he made the decision to discontinue his kidney dialysis.
Link’s last match came in May 2023 for a North Carolina indie promotion, his first in 22 years.
The following is Dave Meltzer’s write-up from the December 29 Wrestling Observer Newsletter on Link’s career when news of the hospice care first emerged.
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Link wrestled from 1975 to 2012. He did television enhancement work on Georgia Championship Wrestling during its heyday and got a first push around 1983 during the dying days of the Poffo family’s ICW promotion as Sir Rickton Link. In 1983, he had a main event run in Tennessee which saw him beat Jerry Lawler for one week to become Southern Champion. He was managed by Jimmy Hart and would eat raw chicken in the background while Hart would do promos for him. Hart once listed Link as his least favorite wrestler he ever managed.
In his biggest match on June 27 before 7000 fans, Link & Ken Patera faced Lawler and a mystery partner and if Lawler’s team won, he would get a match with Andy Kaufman. Austin Idol was the partner and Lawler’s team won. He ended up leaving Memphis after losing a loser leaves town match to Stagger Lee (Koko Ware under a mask). However, he returned 90 days later in November for a brief run where he was part of a heel trio with The Moondogs (Randy “Rex” Culley & Larry “Spot” Booker/Latham) on top against the likes of Lawler, Ware, Dutch Mantel, Bobby Eaton and Idol.
He held the Southern title twice that year and came back in 1985 as Mid-American champion.
He also wrestled as MEB in the Central States and was pushed as 666 in 1984 for Ole Anderson’s Championship Wrestling from Georgia that formed as the new NWA promotion in the state after Vince McMahon purchased Georgia Championship Wrestling that year.
During that run, he worked with top babyfaces in Anderson, Bob Armstrong, Jerry Oates, Ron Garvin and Masked Superstar (Bill Eadie). He was also pushed in New Zealand on a tour that year. In 1985, he came back to Tennessee as Man Mountain Link, the Mid American champion, losing it to Lawler on July 15 in Memphis. Jimmy Valiant had been champion and left the territory and Link was brought in as the new champion. He only worked there a month that year.
But from 1987 on, it was mostly indies in the Carolinas where he worked bloodbaths with the likes of Abdullah the Butcher, Wahoo McDaniel, The Iron Sheik, Valiant and Buddy Landel, often being billed as the World Brass Knux champion, and also working with the likes of The Rock & Roll Express, Ivan Koloff, The Barbarian, Bobby Fulton and Eaton. For years, he would tour indie promotions with traveling buddy Manny Fernandez and they would do bloodbath matches and chop and beat the hell out of each other.
He actually started as part of the newsletter world in the early 70s around the same time I did before getting into pro wrestling and ran the Ronnie Garvin fan club. He was trained by Johnny Hunter along with George South and others and had a ring set up in his backyard. He started his career at 16, working for Johnny Powers’ IWA promotion, which was running opposition to Jim Crockett Promotions in the area after Eddie Einhorn bailed on the group.
He worked on IWA television against names like Bulldog Brower, The Love Brothers, Don Fargo and Killer Karl Krupp. He worked on the Stampede Wrestling tour of Antigua and Montserrat in the West Indies and very briefly worked as Squasher Link for Stampede Wrestling in western Canada.
Since 2011, Josh has been a contributing editor to Wrestling Observer/F4WOnline.com and also hosts the Punch-Out podcast. He has also written for Fight Magazine, Bloody Elbow, Bleacher Report, and other websites. He's a 2000 graduate of the University of Maine, worked in pro sports, and once was an indie ring announcer.