Winning a world championship in professional wrestling is often considered a significant achievement and a prestigious accolade despite being a scripted honor. Becoming the world champion is often a testament to one’s skill, dedication, and ability to entertain audiences. That lofty rank usually elevates a wrestler to a more prominent position and, most of all, leads to better financial opportunities.
But that wasn’t the case for Stan Hansen after he won the American Wrestling Association (AWA) World Championship in 1985. Instead, his experience as the top man in the company was the opposite, which led to grave consequences for the AWA and its championship belt.
Before getting into professional wrestling in 1973, Stan Hansen was a standout football player at West Texas A&M University, where legends Terry and Dory Funk had gone to school. It’s also where Hansen met his future friend and longtime tag team partner, Bruiser Brody.
After failing to catch on in the NFL after college, Hansen, in a 2016 interview, said he turned to teaching, where he was making less than $500 a month. Realizing it was time to do something else, Hansen took Terry Funk up on an offer to get into wrestling.
Less than five years later, Hansen was headlining shows against Bruno Sammartino for the WWWF (now WWE) Championship in Madison Square Garden. During one encounter, Hansen accidentally dropped Sammartino on his head and broke his neck. The incident led to a feud upon Sammartino’s return, which Bruno won.
But Hansen was the real winner. His finishing move, a clothesline named The Lariat, received credit for breaking Bruno’s neck, which added legitimacy to Hansen’s most potent strike. He also gained extreme notoriety in the wrestling world for hospitalizing a legend.
That fame led the future WWE Hall of Famer to Japan and its booming wrestling scene, where Hansen would enjoy his ultimate success. But in 1985, AWA owner and retired wrestler Verne Gagne approached Hansen about coming to work for his company, which was losing ground to WWE and the National Wrestling Alliance. The two worked out a handshake agreement, and Hansen soon began performing regularly for Gagne between trips to Japan.
A career challenger who preferred chasing world titles rather than winning them, Hansen was surprised when Rick Martel, then the reigning AWA Champ, informed him that the company was putting its world title on him. On the Stories With Brisco And Bradshaw podcast in 2021, Hansen said:
“First of all, I never dreamed (of being world champion), didn’t want it, wasn’t even thinking about getting the heavyweight belt. I mean, I only need to go after the belt, not have the belt.”
As champion, Hansen was expecting a big push and counted on being in major storylines that would lead to bigger paydays. But as he told Gerald Brisco and John Layfield, the company did nothing with him.
“But then after about a month or six weeks, they’re just giving me these squashed jobs on TV, and there’s nothing,” said Hansen.
Though he was still working in Japan, where he was raking in the yen, the AWA’s poor promotion of him as champion frustrated Hansen. And it’s why when Gagne told him to drop the title to Nick Bockwinkel, Hansen balk