Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
The World Wrestling Federation had several good to great tag teams on their roster back in the late 1980’s. From the Hart Foundation to The Rougeau Brothers, The Islanders and the Rockers…they were all extremely talented teams. Another tag team that doesn’t quite get a lot of talk is the team called the Killer Bees. The Killer Bees consisted of B. Brian Blair and Jumpin’ Jim Brunzell (Their names had B’s in them….get it?)
The Bees played the roles of babyfaces or good guys their entire run in the WWF. For a brief period of time in 1988, however, the duo were being considered for a heel run. Back in the 80’s, there was no big cable shows like Raw or Smackdown to get exposure. Their main shows were all syndicated to various outlets. Their shows like Superstars and Challenge mainly had stars wrestling jobbers to build the stars up as being credible.
The big stuff that happened usually occurred on pay per views or house shows. House shows were bigger back then and were used to gauge fans reactions to things. This was the case with the proposed heel turn of the Killer Bees. During the course of their WWF run, Blair and Brunzell started wearing identical masks during matches. The masks were used for the Bees to go in and out of the ring without having to make a legal tag.
The referee would get confused and allow Blair and Brunzell to go in and out of the ring whether they were the legal man or not. Sounds heelish doesn’t it? The thing was, Blair and Brunzell did this with the masks while still considered babyfaces. It was nothing more than a tease to the fans watching on television or attending live. The big heel turn didn’t happen until a common house show in 1988.
The place was the old Spectrum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It happened during the main event which pitted Hulk Hogan versus ‘The Million Dollar Man’ Ted Dibiase in a lumberjack match. The Killer Bees were two of the lumberjacks for the match. They came to ringside wearing their Killer Bee masks, so there is some debate as to whether it really was Brian Blair and Jim Brunzell. In the 80’s, it was normal for the WWF to put on two or even three shows on the same day.
There was so belief that the Killer Bees were wrestling on a different house show at the same time in a different city when the heel turn occurred in Philadelphia. Therefore, two different wrestlers were actually under the hoods portraying the Bees. In any case, the team in Philly were being pushed as the real Killer Bees. At the beginning of the main event, the Bees were playing fan favorites and being buddy buddy with Hogan.
Towards the end of the match, the masked Bees turned and started attacking Hulk every time he was thrown out of the ring. Eventually, Hogan fought back and beat up the Killer Bees before winning his lumberjack match against Dibiase. After the match, the Bees ran into the ring to attack Hogan, but Hulk successfully fought them off and even grabbed one of the Bees and unmasked him…only for that Bee to have another mask on his face.
The Killer Bees ran off backstage…while the announcers pondered if Dibiase bought off their services. That all happened in one night and unfortunately or fortunately….depending how you feel…the heel turn was never mentioned again. Since it was a house show, it never aired to the majority of fans, so the WWF made like it never happened. The Killer Bees remained good guys their entire run with the company. Why didn’t the WWF officially pull the trigger on their heel turn? Was it the lack of fan reaction in Philadelphia? Was it that Blair and or Brunzell disapproved of the heel turn? We may never really know.