It was the early 80’s and I remember being about 7 years old when I attended a WWF match. That’s when you had all the greats. Hulk Hogan, Jake ‘The Snake’ Roberts, Rowdy Roddy Piper, Brutus ‘The Barber’ Beefcake and of course, Captain Lou Albano. My memory of the entire event is a little fuzzy being I was only seven years old, but I distinctly remember him coming down the aisle towards the ring, a rubberband in his beard and maybe hanging from his face, and my hand being enveloped in his bear claw of a hand. It was awesome. What’s even more awesome is that he had a friendship with Cyndi Lauper and appeared in a couple of her music videos. Here’s a snippet from MTV.com…

But it was his legendary decision to mix music and wrestling, launching the so-called “Rock n’ Wrestling” era, that helped to bring him worldwide fame while dragging wrestling into the mainstream. Teaming up with then-hot girl singer Cyndi Lauper, Albano appeared in a string of her music videos for such hit songs as “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” “She Bop,” “Time After Time” and “The Goonies R’ Good Enough.” He even lured Lauper into the wrestling world by once claiming to be her manager and making derisive sexist comments about her that came to a head at a televised joint MTV/ World Wrestling Federation 1985 Madison Square Garden smack-down called “The War to Settle the Score,” in which the two buried the hatchet on their manufactured beef.

Captain Lou also had a second career as Super Mario…

We’ll miss you Captain Lou Albano, and thanks for keeping all us kids from the 80’s off drugs. Because we all know that if we do drugs we’ll go to hell before we die.

thanks to Erynn Roses’ Facebook page and MTV.com for the heads up

sean.