Professional wrestling legend and WWE Hall of Famer Ron Simmons aka Farooq who is also a former WCW World Heavyweight champion recently talked about the famous WWE tag team the Acolyte Protection Agency or simply known as the APA. Simmons himself world member of APA along with Bradshaw.
Ron Simmons joined the world of professional wrestling back in 1986 after a wonderful career in American Football. He was discovered by WCW back in the time. He spent a total of eight years with WCW before leaving the promotion.
Ron Simmons Makes Comments On APA
He won the WCW World Heavyweight Championship in 1992 after he defeated Big Van Vader. Originally he was not supposed to face Vader in that night. It was Sting who was booked to challenge for the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. But due to an injury he was cut off from the Championship spot and he was replaced by Simmons.
He shocked the world when he defeated Big Van Vader to win the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. It totally came out of nowhere. He is recognised by WWE as the first ever African-American World Heavyweight Champion. In 1994, he left WCW to join ECW. In 1996 he came to WWE where he was instantly treated as a big star. He formed a stable called the Nation of Domination which was led by him. The stable is still considered as one of the greatest stables in WWE history.
In 1998 the stable was disbanded and Simmons teamed up with Bradshaw and together they were known as the APA or Acolytes Protection Agency. Together the duo won the WWE Tag Team Championship three times in total. After 2004, Simmons could never be a regular worker in professional wrestling anymore because of his health issues. But he kept on making sporadic appearances. In 2012 he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.
Ron Simmons aka Farooq who is also a former WCW World Heavyweight champion recently spoke on Stories With Brisco & Bradshaw where he talked about the famous WWE tag team the Acolyte Protection Agency or simply known as the APA. Simmons himself world member of APA along with Bradshaw. He said;
“If you’re going to move forward in this business and not owe it anything, you’ve got to move forward and try to break barriers down. Of course the people can already see different than color in you. You don’t have to come down and beat it down their throats all the time.
“They came to us and said they wanted it to be black and white and we said ‘no, we’re not going to do that.’ Because if they had started that out with John and I together, we wouldn’t have morphed into the APA and being who we were. It would’ve been along color barriers, and it would’ve been the wrong thing to do.
“That’s why we got out there and we did what we did. We didn’t have all the gimmickry, we went out there and worked very hard at what we did. And we worked well together as a tag team. We didn’t mind going out and doing jobs when we had to do it. We did what it took, and that was come out, put over the people we working, give the people a great show and work together as a tag team.
“We weren’t going to make it a race thing. Secondly, I had already had the success in this business already from tag teams and being in some singles. I had known John’s background, I’d watched his path and he had worked every hard in everything he strived to do. It was like ‘now let me be more of a professional and enhance his stock.
“Cause I’m getting older now and my time is winding down. Let him have his opportunity to do the things that I’ve already had the opportunities to do.’ That’s the way you should do it, and that’s the kind of guy that I’ve always been.”
Credit: Stories With Brisco & Bradshaw. H/T 411Mania