FRED OTTMAN The Official Website!
BIOGRAPHY PART 5
A NATURAL FRIENDSHIP
The next part of my life was going from Tugboat and making the big heel turn in the midst of a big tag match, which involved Hulk Hogan, the Bushwhackers, and I. Honestly, I wound up turning into a bad man!
I became the next Jimmy Hart management project and was introduced as Earthquake’s new tag team partner, Typhoon. And that’s when the Natural Disasters were formed; the biggest, baddest professional wrestling tag team in the business! People would think that the Road Warriors were tough and that many others were tough. They weren’t the Natural Disasters! Not only were we big, strong, but we could move like the smaller guys did. We imposed the biggest fear in the business. That's right! And Jimmy Hart, our mouthpiece, he was the igniter! When we spoke, people listened.
Earthquake and I became the best of partners, the best of friends. He's my brother from another mother. We are a 2025 addition to the WWE Hall of Fame - The Natural Disasters - look out! Here we come!
We won the tag team belts together. So many tag teams were afraid that we would steal their fire! Out of respect, I will not say anything further about that!
But I tell you that Earthquake was one of the greatest partners I've ever had in the professional wrestling business! Quake wrestled in the United States for Louisiana State University (LSU). He was so talented! While he was an alternate on the Canadian Olympic team, he should have been the major deal because he was the major deal! He also played rugby and lacrosse.
During his first time in Japan, he entered into pro wrestling. He was undefeated. He was there for a year for sumo wrestling training and was indeed undefeated.
But sumo was a very different thing, and he was very apprehensive about continuing. And that's when he broke into pro wrestling with Giant (Shohei) Baba. He was amazing! The people loved him! He was a big, huge monster that was very agile, very scary and larger than life. One of the things I love is the fact that we could interact together. Sometimes, when you’re in a tag team, you need to worry about being a babysitter towards the other partner.
With Quake, it was not that way. We looked after each other and we were family. My family and his family became close. I have a picture somewhere of Quake and me, when we took our families to Disney World in Orlando while we were tag team champions and people were noticing us our presence. And it’s true: we got on the Dumbo ride with Mickey Mouse ears on! We were an attraction Disney World with both of our families. And so it was… and it was awesome! That's the kind of, that's the kind of partner, that I appreciated and loved being with.
Jimmy Hart rode with us most of the time when he was on the road. Either Earl or Dave Hebner, the referee twins, would also ride with us.
It made for a cool career! But I try to tell people, back then, we were on the road more often than with our families. For almost 30 years in this business, we were a minimal of 300 days a year on the road. Our lives were planes, trains, automobiles, and sometimes a boat to get to where we needed to be to wrestle!
But Quake, I couldn’t ask for a better partner. I wish he was there for all of my career, but I feel blessed to have had spent all that time with him. He's was blessing and his family's wonderful. (You can read my heartfelt message to John Tenta / Earthquake at the bottom of the WWE Hall of Fame page of this website by CLICKING HERE.)