Wrestler was an original member of popular Four Horsemen group
Ole Anderson, a professional wrestler who starred as an original member of the Four Horsemen team in the 1980s and was later critical of the sport’s corporate greed, died Monday. He was 81.
The Carter Funeral Home in Winder, Georgia, said that Anderson died at his home in Monroe, Georgia, and that he “passed away peacefully.” The funeral home did not share a cause of death.
World Wrestling Entertainment, known as the World Wrestling Federation when Anderson wrestled, said in a statement Monday that he was known for his “hard-nosed style and gruff demeanor.”
Anderson wrestled professionally from the late 1960s through the 1980s, after training under Verne Gagne, a member of the WWE Hall of Fame.
Through the 1970s and early 1980s, Anderson was a member of the tag team known as the Minnesota Wrecking Crew, which over the years included
Gene, Lars and Arn Anderson, who called themselves brothers and were popular around the Midwest. They were part of regional circuits like the Mid-atlantic Championship Wrestling and the Georgia Championship Wrestling that were united under the National Wrestling Alliance, which regularly crowned them tag team champions.
In the 1980s, Ole Anderson
teamed up with Arn Anderson, Ric Flair and Tully Blanchard to become the Four Horsemen, who went on to dominate the National Wrestling Alliance and later World Championship Wrestling, which competed with the WWF.
“The group set a standard of style, attitude and success that has inspired every stable that followed,” WWE said in its statement, calling it “one of the greatest stables in sports-entertainment history.”
After retiring from wrestling, Anderson booked matches for World Championship Wrestling in the 1990s, when its popularity rivaled the WWF (which later bought out World Championship Wrestling).
As professional wrestling became more popular and commercialized, Anderson grew increasingly disparaging of it. In a 2003 book, Anderson wrote about his disdain for the corporate transformation of the sport and his clashes with executives, including Vince Mcmahon, the longtime head of WWE.