The Sixer: Steve 'Mongo' McMichael, 1957-2025
Steve “Mongo” McMichael, legendary football Hall of Famer and later former WCW star, died yesterday at the age of 67.
Mongo was truly a one of a kind sort of guy, at least in the modern age. Long before him, star football players also became star wrestlers, but it was still few and far between. And this was a guy who did his entire wrestling career after his great football career, where he had been an All-American at Texas, a Super Bowl champion with the Chicago Bears on arguably the greatest team in NFL history, a two-time first team All-Pro, and not just all that, but a genuine character.
In wrestling, he actually started out, sort of, as part of Lawrence Taylor’s “All-Pro Team” of back-watchers for WrestleMania XI, and had a famous Raw brawl with Kama in the build-up. Later in ‘95, he was hired by WCW and became the babyface color commentator on Monday Nitro, working with Eric Bischoff and Bobby Heenan, often carrying his chihuahua, Pepe, who got to wear a series of fantastic outfits, including one time having a tiny switchblade knife.
I always enjoyed Mongo’s commentary, but it used to be on a level where I thought he stunk, it was just kinda fun. In more recent years, when I started watching Nitro again from the jump, I sort of reassessed. Was he a traditionally good commentator? Not really, maybe, but also in some senses, yes. He put talent over. And he wasn’t always just pro-babyface, though he could lean that way. I think you could pick up that he learned a bit from “Bobby the Stain,” his broadcast partner, in that he was willing to give people credit who weren’t normally on his side of the tracks.
One match I remember clearly where I started re-thinking Mongo’s commentary was an early days Nitro match between Sting and Dean Malenko. Malenko was new to the company and to say that Sting made Dean look absolutely tiny would be an understatement. Sting was a big, big dude, and Malenko, while built, was of course quite small for a TV wrestler of that era. They made a whole division that he helped get off the ground.
Mongo’s commentary had a sort of earnestness to it, less “direction” than you often heard. He would, occasionally, just be totally honest. He looked at the physical matchup and thought there was no way Malenko could hang with Sting, which is fair; beyond just the visual of it, Sting was Sting, and Malenko was brand new. But Sting sold big for Dean, really made him look good without overdoing it, it was kind of a perfect performance by the established main event star, who still won convincingly but made sure Dean didn’t look like shit in the process. And as the match went on, with Malenko’s technical skill and craft helping him hang in there, McMichael openly changed his mind, admitted being wrong, and gave Malenko a lot of credit.
As a wrestler, he was never going to become some great worker, and he didn’t even become good. But one thing I firmly believe is that as a Horseman, he carried the aura properly. Ric Flair and Arn Anderson both have said as much, and those guys definitely don’t give that credit to everyone that company called a Horseman. He was an enforcer type, almost as if Anderson had been promoted fully and clearly into sort of a lieutenant role, and Mongo was the one who actually took his “spot,”1 at least what it was once upon a time.
Mongo did win the WCW United States heavyweight title, and we’ll talk about that one and five more matches from his intriguing, short pro wrestling career. I will tell you now that this isn’t going to be some overly glowing re-evaluation of McMichael’s wrestling ability. I do not think he was some secretly good wrestler that we’ve all misjudged forever. I simply think he was an interesting wrestler.
In this set:
Steve McMichael & Kevin Greene vs Ric Flair & Arn Anderson (WCW Great American Bash 1996)
Steve McMichael vs Joe Gomez (WCW Bash at the Beach 1996)
Steve McMichael vs Jeff Jarrett (WCW Clash of the Champions, 8-21-1997)
Steve McMichael vs Greg Valentine (WCW Saturday Night, 9-13-1997)
Steve McMichael vs Bill Goldberg (WCW Starrcade 1997)
Steve McMichael & Ric Flair vs The Outsiders (WCW Monday Nitro, 2-8-1999)