Glacier (Ray Lloyd) recently spoke with Wrestlezone’s Bill Pritchard about his wrestling career’s resurgence, finding a new stage as a speaker. The Glacier gimmick has been seen in a more positive light in recent years, contrasting how it was lumped in with all of the ‘Death Of WCW’ type discussions in the past. Glacier says the nWo’s emergence played a role in why the ‘Blood Runs Cold’ saga didn’t take off as planned, but noted that Mortal Kombat’s popularity at the time played into Eric Bischoff’s “buffet-style show presentation” where there was something for everybody.
While pro wrestling feeds off of what’s popular in society, he says the video game series is still popular today, and noted that Glacier might have seen more success in a different era, including hearing comparisons to what we’ve seen from Lucha Underground.
“Yeah I definitely think it was—I don’t know if you could say it was ahead of its time, but not in the best time. But yeah, I think it would’ve been great for Lucha Underground. Somebody said to me, one of my best buddies sent me an article one time that said Pentagon Jr. is what Glacier should’ve been. He said ‘I bet that makes you mad.’ I said, ‘Nah, I actually kind of agree with it.’
But here’s the deal, somebody had to be willing to be the first one to get out there and throw this against the wall and see what happens. And I was the one to be that person. And then people of this generation can come along and say, ‘Hey I remember that, and I saw what worked and maybe what didn’t work, I’m gonna take everything I think worked and make it my own, and I’m gonna push forward.’ You know? And so, that being said, what I always say too is, there can be a bunch of number ones, but there can only be one first, and I was the first.
I was the first to where a company really put a lot of money behind, and a lot of thought behind, putting a gimmick together with a wrestler. Now that’s pretty much standard. That’s what NXT does with pretty much anybody now in WWE. I was the first one to have the mega entrance. So for better or worse, whether you loved the Glacier gimmick or not, the gimmick itself paved the way for a lot of what’s pretty much standard in the business today. I mean everybody has the entrance similar to what I had back in the day. I was the first person to have it though.
So it had to start somewhere. And then the evolution of things are what they are. So no, was it the perfect timing? Obviously, not as much as it could’ve at the time, probably better, but you don’t know that going in. You have to kind of figure that out. So it’s one of those things where we look back and go, maybe the easiest thing – hindsight is 20/20. Would it have been somewhere different and worked better, maybe. Cause a lot of people have told me ‘Man maybe had it came out a year or two before, before Nitro on [WCW] Saturday Night it would’ve been great.’”
Glacier went on to note that there’s always if, ands and buts and hypotheticals you could draw from the situation, but is still proud that they were able to break a lot of ground and create a lot of ‘firsts’ in wrestling.
