Making his way to the ring... Dracula! (Part One)

When we say Dracula has truly permeated all aspects of culture, we really do mean it – and today we’re going to tackle one of my personal guilty pleasures, professional wrestling.  
 
Horror icons appearing in the ‘squared circle’ is certainly nothing new – this has been particularly prevalent in Japan, where wrestlers have depicted Leatherface, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger and more, generally with some small name tweak to get away with the legalities. Leatherface making his way to the ring, chainsaw and all, has become something of a legend in its own right – here’s a classic from IWA Japan…

This is all part of a wrestling trend of the industry trying to gain recognition in popular culture, which has often had mixed results. A short-term boost in eyeballs on the show might be at the detriment of the in-ring product – though well-known names like Logan Paul and Bad Bunny have delivered surprisingly good matches of late in WWE. However, it's a long-time rival.

WCW, was renowned for some of the worst celebrity crossovers of all time, including Robocop’s appearance at 1990’s Capital Combat event and David Arquette winning the WCW World Championship in the year 2000 – a move often listed as a big factor in the company’s demise. The documentary You Cannot Kill David Arquette is a fascinating one, looking at the actor’s efforts to redeem himself in an industry he loved and felt that he had damaged by accepting his (admittedly short) title run.

So it seems only natural that our Dracula could be on the slate, though appearances from anyone depicting the character himself in wrestling have been relatively rare – there’s been the odd Hallowe’en visit from the Count, Mystery Wrestling being one company who have produced seasonal specials and featured the renowned vampire. And fan favourite CM Punk even appeared one Hallowe’en as CM Dracula in a silly seasonal segment for the WWE.

But has there ever been a longer-running Dracula on our screens? The most notable I could find was a depiction of the character from Titanes Del Ring in Chile, who made a substantial number of appearances in the early eighties. He makes his way to the ring to spooky synth music, along with a ‘bride of Dracula’ in tow.
 
Those of you paying particularly close attention will notice that Drac here is inexplicably wrestling a Roman gladiator – yes, pro wrestling can certainly be pretty wacky when it puts its mind to it. Thankfully Dracula did wrestle without the cape – which would surely have been wildly impractical – though it does little to help here as our vamp is trounced, getting little offence in against the rapid high-flying of our gladiator.

There’s also 1981 footage of Dracula wrestling Robin – yes, the one from Batman – in another losing effort, though he does land a few more power moves in this match. Dracula’s wrestling presence lasted all through that year and well into 1982, bringing us one of wrestling’s most unlikely match-ups ever: I give you Tarzan vs Dracula...

Dracula also wrestled performers including Mister Chile, El Hombre Arana, El Dragon Chino, Super Raton and Rayo Jalisco, not to mention another truly surreal match with Spiderman – which left me wondering most of all how that one got by the legal department. So it looks as though the trip from Transylvania to Santiago was worth the while for the Count.

Join us next time where we’ll be keeping it ‘luchador’ with a look at the filmic encounters between legendary wrestler El Santo and Dracula.