Memphis pro wrestling legend “Superstar” Bill Dundee, whose career spanned more than five decades and included iconic feuds and tag-team runs with Jerry “The King” Lawler, has died. He was 82.
Dundee’s son, Jamie Dundee, announced his father’s death in a Facebook post, revealing that the wrestling star died at 3:30 a.m. Sunday. The cause of death was not disclosed.
“I love you Dad. [I’ll] catch you on the [other side],” Dundee’s son wrote in the post. “Rest in peace superstar.”
Born William Cruickshanks in 1943 in Scotland and raised in Australia, Dundee got his start as a circus trapeze artist before arriving in Memphis in 1974, according to his 2018 interview with the “Kentucky Fried Rasslin’” podcast. He noted that learning circus acrobatics and aerial stunts as a teenager gave him the physical agility in the ring to make up for his smaller stature.
In 1977, Dundee went head-to-head with Jerry Lawler at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis, toppling “The King” and taking $2,000 of Lawler’s own money. This match sparked a decades-long partnership and rivalry with Lawler, leading the duo to capture six regional and world tag-team titles together, according to ABC 24 Memphis.
Dundee also won the AWA Southern Heavyweight Championship, a major professional wrestling title during the 1970s and 1980s, nine times. Throughout the 1990s, Dundee remained a fixture in Memphis wrestling while also appearing on national television for World Championship Wrestling.
He was inducted into the Memphis Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2017. Dundee and Lawler appeared in a Facebook video earlier this year where the duo thanked their fans for “never letting Memphis wrestling die,” the post said.
In a post to X, the World Wrestling Entertainment expressed sadness at the star’s death, adding that it “extends its condolences to Dundee’s family, friends, and fans.”
Dundee is survived by his son.
The post Wrestling legend ‘Superstar’ Bill Dundee dies at 82 appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
