Dan Spivey
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Born the eldest of five children, his father working for a phone company and his mom drove the local school bus. He has stated that times were hard growing up and there was not a lot to go around in the family of seven. He dreamed of being a rich and famous professional baseball star, but whilst in high school he found that he naturally excelled at American football and went down that road after being named as an All County and All State athlete.
He claims to have been contacted by two hundred colleges that all wanted to recruit him. Spivey signed with the University of Georgia, while there he unfortunately suffered a knee injury that Dan could never really recover from and prevented him from being signed by the New York Jets.
At the end of Spivey's senior year in University he became involved with a group of bookmakers that eventually led to his first arrest and a sentence of six months probation for being a commercial gambler. Spivey quickly got out of the bookmaking game but he has said that it was too late and he was firmly set in his first vice and continued to be an obsessive gambler.
Spivey has been very open about his past before his days in wrestling and has come clean that he used to be a drug trafficker; focusing mainly on marijuana and cocaine. He remembers being a poor drug dealer as he broke the number one rule that is don't dip into your own supply. Knowing he had to do something to seriously change the course of his life Spivey decided to move to California. For around a year Dan stayed in California and managed to hold down a normal every day job, not knowing where to score any drugs it made him easy to stay clean.
After the year had passed Spivey moved back to Florida. He was thirty-two and still desired to find a way to become rich and famous. With this determination set in his mind he looked into professional wrestling and through a coincidental encounter with the 'American Dream' Dusty Rhodes that he found his in.
Dusty Rhodes needed a guy for a new tag-team he had in mind, he already had Scott Hall and was preparing him for the tag-team and Dan Spivey was chosen to be the second member. After being trained the pair debuted as Starship Eagle and Starship Coyote, the American Starship. Dusty barely used them in Championship Wrestling from Florida, but he took the nearly formed tag-team along with him to the Carolinas.
The first recorded match I can find took place on October 21, 1984, at the 'Old' Charlotte Coliseum, Charlotte, North Carolina, where American Starship defeated Gary Royal & Jeff Sword for Jim Crockett Promotions. Dusty had planned on having the duo be as big as Hulk Hogan and based their gimmick around him, even including the t-shirt ripping routine. It was not to be though and their stay in JCP was fairly short.
Due to the part-time schedule they were working in the Carolinas they had additional duties such as maintenance work around the Crockett owned baseball parks. The pair moved on to the NWA Central States territory in 1985 and the last recorded match I could find for them was on June 5, 1985 at the Convention Hall in Hutchinson Kansas, they did battle with a very young Shawn Michaels and his partner Art Crews, the winner is not recorded. Later that night there was a battle royal featuring Art Crews, Bob Brown, Dave Peterson, The Great Pogo, Gary Royal, Marty Jannetty, Rufus R. Jones, Shawn Michaels, Super Destroyer, and American Starship, again the winner is not mentioned.
By June 15 of the same year Spivey was back in JCP still working as Starship Eagle, but this time with various partners and also in singles efforts against the likes of the Koloff's, Ivan and Nikita and also Krusher Khrushchev.
With Barry Windham leaving the World Wrestling Federation's U.S. Express tag-team in October 1985, Spivey was lucky enough to receive a call from the WWF to replace Windham and join Mike Rotundo as the new U.S. Express. Spivey has stated that "Mike and I traveled the road and during our trips we talked about matches and how to do certain things, he was a big help." It was during this run that Spivey felt he developing as a talent.
Rotundo and Spivey feuded with the Dream Team and Spivey competed in the Wrestlemania II Wrestlers and Football players Battle Royal. The tag-team had been on a brief hiatus during this period, it did not take long for them to reunite and ignite notable feuds with the likes of the Moondogs, the Hart Foundation, and the Islanders who would be their last feud before Mike Rotundo left the WWF rendering the team defunct.
A repackaging was in order for Dan at this point and he became the 'Golden Boy' Dan Spivey. He was knocked out of the 1986 King of the Ring tournament by Nikolai Volkoff in the first round. He had a few sporadic thrown together tag-team opportunities and a very stop-start singles career, including being knocked out again in the first round of the King of the Ring tournament in 1987, this time by Rick Martel though, a man who had helped train him with Barry Windham on behalf of Dusty Rhodes.
Dan Spivey tells a story that took place during this time in the WWF; 'There was a guy here named Adrian Adonis and he was beating up the younger guys, hurting them and cussing them. Everybody was scared of him, I think that Adrian thought that I was a young kid that hadn't been anywhere, so he tried to do the same thing to me and I beat him up pretty bad. After that, I didn't have a problem with anyone.' This is when Spivey first received his locker room reputation as a legitimate tough guy.
With his career in the WWF going nowhere fast Dan Spivey parted ways with them in March of 1988, the last match I can find in the WWF took place on March 16, at the D.L. Logon Coliseum, Wichita Falls, Texas, he defeated Lanny Poffo early in the night before again winding up his stay in a territory by taking part in a Battle Royal featuring Bad News Brown, Demolition Ax, Danny Davis, Hillbilly Jim, Jacques Rougeau, Sika, Demolition Smash, Sam Houston, Raymond Rougeau, the Junkyard Dog, King Harley Race, the Ultimate Warrior, Lany Poffo, and the winner, Jim Duggan.
Next up to add to his growing list of territories Dan visited All Japan Pro-Wrestling. Spivey recalled of his time in Japan, "There are no managers. There are no women. There are no animals. You just come in there and beat the Hell out of each other" He thanks Terry Funk for opening the doors of AJPW up to him, and squaring him off with such legendary names as Dr. Death Steve Williams, Terry Gordy, and Stan Hansen. Spivey says, "Those matches probably took five years off my career."
Spivey returned to Japan many times over the next nearly ten years, but in June of 1989 he decided to make JCP/World Championship Wrestling his home. He wrestled in Park Gymnasium, Chiba, Japan on June 8 with Terry Gordy to defeat Akira Taue and the Great Kabuki and then appeared in Harrisonburg, Virginia for WCW defeating Ricky Santana on June 16.
Dan Spivey joined with his old partner Mike Rotundo and become a member of the Varsity Club as a replacement for Rick Steiner. The first port of call was a series of matches with Rotundo against old friend Scott Hall and Brian Pillman. That was another short lived gimmick for Spivey only having a real feud with Rick Steiner and the Road Warriors, it was a feud for the group though, rather than being focused on specifically on Spivey.
In late 1989 after the Varsity Club dissolved, Dan Spivey under the guidance of Teddy Long , he teamed up with Sid Vicious to form a physically awe-inspiring tag-team known as the Skyscrapers. They teamed together for a few months until Sid suffered a punctured lung due to a broken rib and had to bow out.
All was not lost as Dan Spivey found himself teaming with another physically impressive wrestler who was going by the name of Mark Callous. Mark Callous went on to be the Undertaker in the WWF. The pair teamed together from November to February until Spivey left WCW and went back to AJPW for an 18 day tournament through-out March and April, where he partnered with Stan Hansen for most of the tour, adding David Sammartino to the dup for one of the dates.
Following a short tour for AJPW in May and another in July, Spivey returned back to WCW in September 1990 as a full time competitor. There was a short lived reunion of the original Skyscrapers but Sid was involved in other storylines and it prevented anything being long-term.
From around mid-1989 to 1992, Spivey had also been competing in his home state of Florida and he recalls a story with his partner at the time Sid Vicious from Florida, "We were in a place having drinks and Sid, who is 6-foot-8, got in an argument with Mike Graham, who is about 5-foot-2, so Sid leaves the bar and comes back in with a squeegee to beat him up with. Sid's 300lb's and he's using a squeegee to fight Mike Graham!!"
His run back in WCW in 1990 hadn't been successful, so Spivey frequently embarked on tours of Japan in between his work in Florida and also with Herb Abram's, Universal Wrestling Federation. That was his life for the next five years, never really reaching what many saw as his full potential in the North of America, he will however be remembered for his time in Japan fondly, mainly for his tag-team with Stan Hansen.
In 1995 fans saw a new side to Spivey as he turned up in the WWF with a new name, a new look, and a new attitude toward life. He had dyed his blonde hair black, slicked it back and had added a hawaiian shirt, white pants, and white vest to his wardrobe. Spivey recalls, 'That persona was inspired by the Robert De Niro movie Cape Fear, I had the idea of bringing the southern way of being polite and nice, yet also very devious. It was easy for me to do.'
He also recalls a match against Doink the Clown, "I had a Raw match against Doink the Clown and the people were yelling, 'Kill the clown!' He's supposed to be the good guy, but everyone's cheering for Waylon Mercy."
Not even a year into his run as this unique and refreshing character in an otherwise cartoon filled era of superstars, Spivey was feeling the strains of his time in Japan and being on the road, he was over 40 years old and he felt his body just could not do it anymore. Spivey found it the most difficult decision of his life, but he had to hang up the boots and he remembers how hard it was given how much potential he and the WWF felt that particular character had.
Following his retirement from wrestling Spivey attended a rehab facility for his drug problems, mainly pain killers, however, he was set in his ways and convinced he could do it his own way. He speaks of briefly abstaining from pain killers until he just started replacing them with other drugs and finally learning how to administer intravenous injections. He says, "I took anything to get high."
Spivey talks about his horrible experiences going through withdrawal and nearly dying from his mistakes with drugs. He speaks of having to spent time in a mental hospital it was during this time that he remembers, 'It hit me - I am an alcoholic and a drug addict! I finally accepted this.' Fourteen years after his first stint in rehab he was ready to go back and banish his demons once and for all.
Spivey had been working for his family owned company during his time of addiction whilst he was able to. Following getting clean and successfully going through rehab, Spivey took on a greater role within the company named, Spivey Utility Construction Company, Inc., it is based in Odessa and he is now the Vice President of Operations.
Dan Spivey says he does a lot of boating and also jet skiing, he still works out in the gym a lot and loves the current WWF product, that now falls under the WWE banner. In an interview from 2010 he Spivey said he doesn't keep in touch with any of the boys from his days in the business, except Randy Savage at the time, and he would like to organize a reunion, "Wrestling was my passion, after 14 years, I still miss it." Is how he finished the interview.
Since that interview in 2010 Spivey has also started up his own company called Sober Choice. The company is devoted to helping addicts who want to get sober and Spivey takes a very hands-on approach in the running and recovery process of those who seek help through his company.
What a lot of young fans don't realize is that every time Bray Wyatt comes down to the ring in many ways he is paying homage to Dan Spivey from his time as Waylon Mercy. The Wyatt character was inspired by the same movie that the Mercy character was. The only difference is the Wyatt character has been greatly modernized from the mid-90's, but the similarities are still very plain to see.
Dan Spivey may not have won many championship belts and he may not have ever had a really serious long-term gimmick in North America, but every character he portrayed, every persona he adopted, Dan Spivey made it his own and made each one memorable in it's own way. When you make a list of stars who never reached their potential for whatever reason, Dan Spivey has to be somewhere on that list.
Born the eldest of five children, his father working for a phone company and his mom drove the local school bus. He has stated that times were hard growing up and there was not a lot to go around in the family of seven. He dreamed of being a rich and famous professional baseball star, but whilst in high school he found that he naturally excelled at American football and went down that road after being named as an All County and All State athlete.
He claims to have been contacted by two hundred colleges that all wanted to recruit him. Spivey signed with the University of Georgia, while there he unfortunately suffered a knee injury that Dan could never really recover from and prevented him from being signed by the New York Jets.
At the end of Spivey's senior year in University he became involved with a group of bookmakers that eventually led to his first arrest and a sentence of six months probation for being a commercial gambler. Spivey quickly got out of the bookmaking game but he has said that it was too late and he was firmly set in his first vice and continued to be an obsessive gambler.
Spivey has been very open about his past before his days in wrestling and has come clean that he used to be a drug trafficker; focusing mainly on marijuana and cocaine. He remembers being a poor drug dealer as he broke the number one rule that is don't dip into your own supply. Knowing he had to do something to seriously change the course of his life Spivey decided to move to California. For around a year Dan stayed in California and managed to hold down a normal every day job, not knowing where to score any drugs it made him easy to stay clean.
After the year had passed Spivey moved back to Florida. He was thirty-two and still desired to find a way to become rich and famous. With this determination set in his mind he looked into professional wrestling and through a coincidental encounter with the 'American Dream' Dusty Rhodes that he found his in.
Dusty Rhodes needed a guy for a new tag-team he had in mind, he already had Scott Hall and was preparing him for the tag-team and Dan Spivey was chosen to be the second member. After being trained the pair debuted as Starship Eagle and Starship Coyote, the American Starship. Dusty barely used them in Championship Wrestling from Florida, but he took the nearly formed tag-team along with him to the Carolinas.
The first recorded match I can find took place on October 21, 1984, at the 'Old' Charlotte Coliseum, Charlotte, North Carolina, where American Starship defeated Gary Royal & Jeff Sword for Jim Crockett Promotions. Dusty had planned on having the duo be as big as Hulk Hogan and based their gimmick around him, even including the t-shirt ripping routine. It was not to be though and their stay in JCP was fairly short.
Due to the part-time schedule they were working in the Carolinas they had additional duties such as maintenance work around the Crockett owned baseball parks. The pair moved on to the NWA Central States territory in 1985 and the last recorded match I could find for them was on June 5, 1985 at the Convention Hall in Hutchinson Kansas, they did battle with a very young Shawn Michaels and his partner Art Crews, the winner is not recorded. Later that night there was a battle royal featuring Art Crews, Bob Brown, Dave Peterson, The Great Pogo, Gary Royal, Marty Jannetty, Rufus R. Jones, Shawn Michaels, Super Destroyer, and American Starship, again the winner is not mentioned.
By June 15 of the same year Spivey was back in JCP still working as Starship Eagle, but this time with various partners and also in singles efforts against the likes of the Koloff's, Ivan and Nikita and also Krusher Khrushchev.
With Barry Windham leaving the World Wrestling Federation's U.S. Express tag-team in October 1985, Spivey was lucky enough to receive a call from the WWF to replace Windham and join Mike Rotundo as the new U.S. Express. Spivey has stated that "Mike and I traveled the road and during our trips we talked about matches and how to do certain things, he was a big help." It was during this run that Spivey felt he developing as a talent.
Rotundo and Spivey feuded with the Dream Team and Spivey competed in the Wrestlemania II Wrestlers and Football players Battle Royal. The tag-team had been on a brief hiatus during this period, it did not take long for them to reunite and ignite notable feuds with the likes of the Moondogs, the Hart Foundation, and the Islanders who would be their last feud before Mike Rotundo left the WWF rendering the team defunct.
A repackaging was in order for Dan at this point and he became the 'Golden Boy' Dan Spivey. He was knocked out of the 1986 King of the Ring tournament by Nikolai Volkoff in the first round. He had a few sporadic thrown together tag-team opportunities and a very stop-start singles career, including being knocked out again in the first round of the King of the Ring tournament in 1987, this time by Rick Martel though, a man who had helped train him with Barry Windham on behalf of Dusty Rhodes.
Dan Spivey tells a story that took place during this time in the WWF; 'There was a guy here named Adrian Adonis and he was beating up the younger guys, hurting them and cussing them. Everybody was scared of him, I think that Adrian thought that I was a young kid that hadn't been anywhere, so he tried to do the same thing to me and I beat him up pretty bad. After that, I didn't have a problem with anyone.' This is when Spivey first received his locker room reputation as a legitimate tough guy.
With his career in the WWF going nowhere fast Dan Spivey parted ways with them in March of 1988, the last match I can find in the WWF took place on March 16, at the D.L. Logon Coliseum, Wichita Falls, Texas, he defeated Lanny Poffo early in the night before again winding up his stay in a territory by taking part in a Battle Royal featuring Bad News Brown, Demolition Ax, Danny Davis, Hillbilly Jim, Jacques Rougeau, Sika, Demolition Smash, Sam Houston, Raymond Rougeau, the Junkyard Dog, King Harley Race, the Ultimate Warrior, Lany Poffo, and the winner, Jim Duggan.
Next up to add to his growing list of territories Dan visited All Japan Pro-Wrestling. Spivey recalled of his time in Japan, "There are no managers. There are no women. There are no animals. You just come in there and beat the Hell out of each other" He thanks Terry Funk for opening the doors of AJPW up to him, and squaring him off with such legendary names as Dr. Death Steve Williams, Terry Gordy, and Stan Hansen. Spivey says, "Those matches probably took five years off my career."
Spivey returned to Japan many times over the next nearly ten years, but in June of 1989 he decided to make JCP/World Championship Wrestling his home. He wrestled in Park Gymnasium, Chiba, Japan on June 8 with Terry Gordy to defeat Akira Taue and the Great Kabuki and then appeared in Harrisonburg, Virginia for WCW defeating Ricky Santana on June 16.
Dan Spivey joined with his old partner Mike Rotundo and become a member of the Varsity Club as a replacement for Rick Steiner. The first port of call was a series of matches with Rotundo against old friend Scott Hall and Brian Pillman. That was another short lived gimmick for Spivey only having a real feud with Rick Steiner and the Road Warriors, it was a feud for the group though, rather than being focused on specifically on Spivey.
In late 1989 after the Varsity Club dissolved, Dan Spivey under the guidance of Teddy Long , he teamed up with Sid Vicious to form a physically awe-inspiring tag-team known as the Skyscrapers. They teamed together for a few months until Sid suffered a punctured lung due to a broken rib and had to bow out.
All was not lost as Dan Spivey found himself teaming with another physically impressive wrestler who was going by the name of Mark Callous. Mark Callous went on to be the Undertaker in the WWF. The pair teamed together from November to February until Spivey left WCW and went back to AJPW for an 18 day tournament through-out March and April, where he partnered with Stan Hansen for most of the tour, adding David Sammartino to the dup for one of the dates.
Following a short tour for AJPW in May and another in July, Spivey returned back to WCW in September 1990 as a full time competitor. There was a short lived reunion of the original Skyscrapers but Sid was involved in other storylines and it prevented anything being long-term.
From around mid-1989 to 1992, Spivey had also been competing in his home state of Florida and he recalls a story with his partner at the time Sid Vicious from Florida, "We were in a place having drinks and Sid, who is 6-foot-8, got in an argument with Mike Graham, who is about 5-foot-2, so Sid leaves the bar and comes back in with a squeegee to beat him up with. Sid's 300lb's and he's using a squeegee to fight Mike Graham!!"
His run back in WCW in 1990 hadn't been successful, so Spivey frequently embarked on tours of Japan in between his work in Florida and also with Herb Abram's, Universal Wrestling Federation. That was his life for the next five years, never really reaching what many saw as his full potential in the North of America, he will however be remembered for his time in Japan fondly, mainly for his tag-team with Stan Hansen.
In 1995 fans saw a new side to Spivey as he turned up in the WWF with a new name, a new look, and a new attitude toward life. He had dyed his blonde hair black, slicked it back and had added a hawaiian shirt, white pants, and white vest to his wardrobe. Spivey recalls, 'That persona was inspired by the Robert De Niro movie Cape Fear, I had the idea of bringing the southern way of being polite and nice, yet also very devious. It was easy for me to do.'
He also recalls a match against Doink the Clown, "I had a Raw match against Doink the Clown and the people were yelling, 'Kill the clown!' He's supposed to be the good guy, but everyone's cheering for Waylon Mercy."
Not even a year into his run as this unique and refreshing character in an otherwise cartoon filled era of superstars, Spivey was feeling the strains of his time in Japan and being on the road, he was over 40 years old and he felt his body just could not do it anymore. Spivey found it the most difficult decision of his life, but he had to hang up the boots and he remembers how hard it was given how much potential he and the WWF felt that particular character had.
Following his retirement from wrestling Spivey attended a rehab facility for his drug problems, mainly pain killers, however, he was set in his ways and convinced he could do it his own way. He speaks of briefly abstaining from pain killers until he just started replacing them with other drugs and finally learning how to administer intravenous injections. He says, "I took anything to get high."
Spivey talks about his horrible experiences going through withdrawal and nearly dying from his mistakes with drugs. He speaks of having to spent time in a mental hospital it was during this time that he remembers, 'It hit me - I am an alcoholic and a drug addict! I finally accepted this.' Fourteen years after his first stint in rehab he was ready to go back and banish his demons once and for all.
Spivey had been working for his family owned company during his time of addiction whilst he was able to. Following getting clean and successfully going through rehab, Spivey took on a greater role within the company named, Spivey Utility Construction Company, Inc., it is based in Odessa and he is now the Vice President of Operations.
Dan Spivey says he does a lot of boating and also jet skiing, he still works out in the gym a lot and loves the current WWF product, that now falls under the WWE banner. In an interview from 2010 he Spivey said he doesn't keep in touch with any of the boys from his days in the business, except Randy Savage at the time, and he would like to organize a reunion, "Wrestling was my passion, after 14 years, I still miss it." Is how he finished the interview.
Since that interview in 2010 Spivey has also started up his own company called Sober Choice. The company is devoted to helping addicts who want to get sober and Spivey takes a very hands-on approach in the running and recovery process of those who seek help through his company.
What a lot of young fans don't realize is that every time Bray Wyatt comes down to the ring in many ways he is paying homage to Dan Spivey from his time as Waylon Mercy. The Wyatt character was inspired by the same movie that the Mercy character was. The only difference is the Wyatt character has been greatly modernized from the mid-90's, but the similarities are still very plain to see.
Dan Spivey may not have won many championship belts and he may not have ever had a really serious long-term gimmick in North America, but every character he portrayed, every persona he adopted, Dan Spivey made it his own and made each one memorable in it's own way. When you make a list of stars who never reached their potential for whatever reason, Dan Spivey has to be somewhere on that list.
Unique content strictly for the Professional Wrestling Historical Society.
Biography of Dan Spivey.
Author: Jimmy Wheeler.
Published: July 2014.
Biography: #125.
Editor: Jimmy Wheeler.
Updated: May 1, 2019.
Unique content strictly for the Professional Wrestling Historical Society.
Biography of Dan Spivey.
Author: Jimmy Wheeler.
Published: July 2014.
Biography: #125.
Editor: Jimmy Wheeler.
Updated: May 1, 2019.