Down Under With Outback Jack

Like any genre, wrestling is full of hits and misses. Sometimes what appear to be great ideas on paper just don't translate well in person or on-screen. Such is the case with the character known as Outback Jack. Many fans don't even remember Outback very well, as it seems that if you weren't on those early pay-per-views your run can be largely forgotten. Nevertheless, other fans do remember him and it's surprising to learn that he lasted as long in the company as he did. Most notably is that he inspired quite a bit of memorabilia for a character who had a short shelf life.

The year was 1986 and the film Crocodile Dundee was banking coin and bringing laughs at the box office. It told the story of an Australian bushman finding himself in America lost in the culture of New York City. What better story for a new WWF character? The company found a man named Peter Stilsbury to portray the character and thus began the adventure of Outback Jack. As said above, it isn't a bad idea on paper. As chronicled by the vignettes shown on WWF television to introduce the character, the Australian bushmen are tough. I'm sure that many fans were eagerly awaiting Jack battling and defeating the biggest and baddest that the WWF had to offer such as King Kong Bundy and Kamala.

For whatever reason, Outback Jack didn't turn out the way that the company expected. He wasn't the greatest in the ring, but this was an era where that didn't matter as much as character and charisma. Perhaps he needed more of a rub such as the one that Hillbilly Jim received from Hulk Hogan. Maybe he needed a mouthpiece, though babyface managers were few and far between at this point. In my opinion the character may have worked had they turned him heel quickly similar to how The Honky Tonk Man was introduced, but that transition was happening at the same time.

Needless to say, Outback Jack was a failed experiment. To the surprise of many fans today, Jack lasted about a year and a half, seeing his last WWF matches in mid-1988. In a bit of trivia he even teamed with a young Steve Blackman in one of those matches, the same "Lethal Weapon" who would make a bit of a name with the company a decade later.

What is also surprising to some fans is the amount of merchandise that was released for the character. Outback Jack had several cards in the much remembered 1987 Topps WWF card set, even getting a "face" card that only the top superstars received. He also had a rarely seen set of promotional photos that showed Jack in and around Australia in some of the same situations shown in the introduction vignettes. There was an Outback Jack t-shirt sold through the merchandise catalog and at events, but most famous is his figure in the beloved Wrestling Superstars line by LJN. To date this remains the only figure of Jack, and it even has a removable slouch hat.

The WWF didn't give up on the idea of friendly wrestlers from "Down Under" after the Outback Jack failure. Just a few months later The Bushwhackers from New Zealand would debut and last in the company for almost a decade. Maybe their out-of-control zaniness is more of what Jack needed to win over the fans. Personally, I feel that he physically looked more like a heel and may have thrived a decade earlier as a bloodthirsty Australian roughneck. Regardless, even without any pay-per-view appearances and even few matches featured on WWE Network thus far, Outback Jack will live on thanks to the merchandising...the aspect of any wrestling career that we've been celebrating on this blog for ten years.