Barry Windham: Bradshaw Is A Great Guy With A Good Heart

Barry Windham talks about his former Blackjacks tag team partner. 

In 1997, WWE put together a new iteration of The Blackjacks tag team. Barry Windham, real-life son of Blackjack Mulligan, was paired with Bradshaw. 

During a recent interview with Peter Rosenberg, Barry Windham praised Bradshaw as a good guy, saying he was paired with him so that Bradshaw could learn more from working with the former NWA World’s Champion. 

“Vince [Vince McMahon] put us together so I could train Bradshaw, just be around me and more or less learn from watching me work. He’s really a great guy. I guess he has a bad rap for being a bully, but he’s got a good heart, and he’s a great guy,” he said. 

Windham also said that Bradshaw likely learned a lot of his hard-nosed work from him, recalling a 30-minute dark match they had before their pairing. 

“I’m sure that he did. I remember when I worked with him the first night, Vince sent us out there against each other in a dark match. We ended up going 30 minutes. We were supposed to go five or six minutes. Vince kept telling the ref, ‘go longer.’ I ran through all my repertoire with John in 30 minutes. I could see it was there. He was snug. He was a little more than crisp. It was really there. I think that’s what Vince wanted me to do, just polish him and maybe show him how to work,” Windham recalled.

The pairing was short-lived but they did land a spot on WrestleMania 13, losing in a tag team Fatal 4-Way Match that was ultimately won by Mosh and Thrasher. 

Windham also took part in the very first WrestleMania. On that night in 1985, he teamed with Mike Rotunda as the US Express. They would lose the WWE Tag Team Championship to The Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff. 

The US Express will be getting inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2024. Learn more about that here.

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