Jimmy Del Rey Complete Biography !

David Ferrier, who was best known for his run in the 90s as Jimmy Del Rey of the Heavenly Bodies tag team, passed away on 12/6 in a Tampa auto accident at the age of 52.
The Hillsborough County Medical Examiner’s Office has listed the cause of death as pending, awaiting results of toxicology tests. Sources close to the family have said Ferrier suffered a heart attack while driving home from the Hard Rock restaurant. When asked about that cause, the medical examiner’s office said it was premature to make that conclusion and it would be probably six weeks before a cause of death would be established. But that would indicate it is something more than just the auto accident that caused the death. From those very close to Ferrier during his wrestling career, he was not a drug guy, as were so many of his era.
Ferrier, who lived in Valrico, FL, was driving on US 201 at 6:10 p.m. in Tampa, when his car went onto the grass shoudler of the road for unknown reasons, and collided with a lamp post.
The car stopped against the fence of the Florida State Fairgrounds. He was rushed to Tampa General Hospital where he died from the injuries in the accident.
Ferrier was born November 30, 1962, in Grove City, PA. He was a well respected enhancement wrestler known for taking spectacular bumps, who the heels in Florida, Georgia, Alabama and the Carolinas loved to work with as he made the rounds as a TV jobber guy in all of those territories. He started his career under the name Jim Richland, which most thought was his real name. Very quickly, because he had red hair, he was given the name Jimmy Backlund, after Bob Backlund, although they never tried to say he was related to Bob Backlund. He mostly worked in Florida, where he started his career in 1983.
He garnered some attention on a Championship Wrestling from Florida television show with a great squash match against Kevin Sullivan, that was one of the best squash matches of the time.
After Championship Wrestling from Florida folded in 1987, Mike Graham, Gordon Solie and Dusty Rhodes tried to open up a new regional territory, Florida Championship Wrestling, in 1988. Backlund got his first minor push. Graham had been AWA light heavyweight champion, a title largely forgotten by the AWA itself by that time. So Graham dropped the title to Backlund in December 1988, and Backlund retained it for the rest of the run of the promotion, although he never actually defended it in the AWA. Backlund also held the tag team title with the promotion in 1989, when he and Brett Sawyer (Brett Woyan, the younger brother of Buzz Sawyer) formed a babyface team called The Playboys, doing something of a Fabulous Ones gimmick, and feuding with The Nasty Boys.
Backlund started working for FMW in the early days of the promotion, largely because it gave FMW a “legitimate” AWA champion for whatever credibility that was worth to an upstart group at the time. Backlund dropped the title to Lee Gak Soo, a martial arts movie star from South Korea, who the promotion was pushing at the time as a Bruce Lee-type character. He later got it back after Gak Soo left pro wrestling, beating Katsuji Ueda, a retired former pro boxer who was doing a boxer gimmick. The early days of FMW was built around the style vs. style concept, before UFC, using boxers, both real and contrived (Kevin Wacholz, better known as Kevin Kelly in the AWA, used the name Kerry Wacholz as a supposed pro boxer in FMW). The original FMW concept was wild matches with Atsushi Onita, a pro wrestler coming out of retirement, defending pro wrestling against karate expert Masashi Aoyagi, who himself ended up having a long career in pro wrestling with several of the major groups.
After losing the title for good to Ricky Fuji, there was a split with several wrestlers and office people from FMW forming W*ING. Backlund went there and was the first W*ING junior heavyweight champion for ten months in 1992 and 1993.
His career break came when Stan Lane, who formed the tag team of The Heavenly Bodies with Tom Prichard in Smoky Mountain Wrestling, had a falling out with Jim Cornette over pay and got tired of the weekend travel from the Carolinas each week to the Smoky Mountain area, and retired from wrestling. The territory from the start, and for its time period of success, was built around a feud with The Bodies, managed by Cornette, against The Rock & Roll Express. While the promotion wasn’t profitable, this was during a down period for wrestling and they were likely losing less money at the time than any regular promotion in the country with the exception of the USWA, which had the advantage of being paid for
television instead of paying for television, and also wasn’t paying nearly as well. There were several months where SMW shows headlined by the Rock & Roll Express vs. The Bodies were not only outdrawing WCW in the same markets, but the average attendance SMW was drawing in small cities over the course of the month was greater than what the touring WCW was going to major markets across the country.
Cornette was looking for a replacement for Lane after he quit. Sullivan, who was working for the promotion at the time, pushed hard for Ferrier. He was given the name Gigolo Jimmy Del Rey, known for doing a gigolo dance. The story was that he was making money in Florida tending to rich older women, something of a rib because he wasn’t particularly good looking, at least compared to Lane. Del Rey was a rib on Lane, because Lane was billed during his career as being from Del Rey Beach, Florida (he was actually from South Carolina).
The new team in many ways was superior to the old team, since Del Rey was younger, hungrier, was a great bump taker and had strong fundamentals, and Prichard was always a solid worker. Lane’s lone edge is that he had more of a star aura and had the main event credibility nationally from the Midnight Express days. And it didn’t hurt that they were regularly in with one of the classic working babyface tag teams of all-time. They were consistently delivering some of the best matches in the country during that period, and over the next two years were among the best tag teams in the world, at a time when the level of tag teams was incredibly high.
SMW had a relationship with WWF, largely to work with Cornette as a manager. Cornette got his Heavenly Bodies on the August 30, 1993, SummerSlam show in Detroit, where they lost a WWF tag team title match to Rick & Scott Steiner, which was the best match on the show. Cornette then got the WWF to book the SMW tag team title change where the new Heavenly Bodies would beat The Rock & Roll Express for the November 24, 1993, Survivor Series at the Boston Garden. So that was two PPVs and The Heavenly Bodies had the best match on both shows.
WWF officials were so impressed that they wanted the Bodies as a regular team but they gave Cornette time to finish them up in his promotion.
The Bodies placed second in 1993's Tag Team of the Year award balloting, behind only Brian Pillman & Steve Austin. What is more impressive is the teams they finished ahead of, Manami Toyota & Toshiyo Yamada, one of the greatest woman tag team sin history, Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi, two of the greatest wrestlers of all-time and one of the greatest teams ever, Rick & Scott Steiner, Doug Furnas & Dan Kroffat, Toshiaki Kawada & Akira Taue, The Hell Raisers, Ted DiBiase & Stan Hansen and Terry Gordy & Steve Williams.
They had two quick switches, where the Rock & Roll Express won the titles back on February 18, 1994, in Port Huron, MI, and then lost them back the next night in Taylor, MI.
The Rock & Roll Express vs. Heavenly Bodies feud climaxed and finished on April 1, 1994, with the Bodies defending the titles in a loser leaves town match at the second Blue Glass Brawl, in Pikeville, KY. Before a sellout crowd of 1,850 fans, they tore the house down with a ****½ match that was even more heated than the famous Ric Flair vs. Vader match a few months earlier at the Starrcade in Charlotte. The match featured a series of false finishes, including a ref refusing to count the pin after Prichard hit Ricky Morton with a tennis racquet,
and ended at 23:00 when Del Rey went for a power bomb and Morton turned it into a huracanrana for the pin. The Bodies first went to All Japan Pro Wrestling, before going full-time in June to WWF.
They finished fourth in the 1994 balloting for tag team of the year, behind Love Machine & Eddy Guerrero, the greatest modern era tag team in Mexico, No. 2 were Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi, one of the greatest teams of all-time, and No. 3 were The Public Enemy, one of Paul Heyman’s greatest creations. They finished ahead of teams like the Rock & Roll Express, the Steiner Brothers, Taue & Kawada, Shawn Michaels & Diesel, The Hell Raisers, Kroffat & Furnas, Toyota & Yamada, Etsuko Mita & Mima Shimoda, El Hijo del Santo & Octagon and Keiji Muto & Hiroshi Hase.
But even though they were good workers, the WWF didn’t feel they were marketable so they were more an underneath good working heel team used to put over the younger babyface tag teams like The Smoking Gunns or former college football teammates Erik Watts & Chad Fortune, who got in with Jim Ross having strong influence since Watts was the son of Ross’ mentor Bill Watts. Cornette brought them back for one of his biggest shows ever in Knoxville for a match with The Thrillseekers, Lance Storm & Chris Jericho. The idea was this match would get The Thrillseekers over as the new fresh babyface tag team in the territory. Jericho was practicing a shooting star press in the ring before the match, which he was likely going to debut, perhaps for the finish, and ended up breaking his arm. Jericho actually worked the match hours after breaking his arm, but the injury forced him out of the ring after the match and pretty much killed the team’s momentum.
The WWF run ended in the summer of 1995 when Del Rey and Chris Chavis (Tatanka) got into trouble on the road involving a woman and were both fired.
They returned to SMW as a tag team, working with the Rock & Roll Express once again, as well as Tracy Smothers & The Dirty White Boy. But SMW was in trouble at this point, as crowds were down. They were also part of a USWA vs. SMW feud in 1995, including beating PG-13 for the USWA tag team titles on August 7, 1995. SMW folded after the 1995 Thanksgiving Thunder tour didn’t draw well and Cornette felt there was no way for the promotion to turn a profit, with the final main events being The Bodies & heel Robert Gibson, managed by Cornette, against White Boy & Smothers & Ricky Morton.
Paul Heyman brought the team into ECW, as a name tag team to put over The Public Enemy (Ted Petty & Johnny Grunge). But Prichard was quickly brought back to WWF for a new tag team, The Body Donnas, Skip (Chris Candito) & Zip (Prichard), which were really a vehicle to put over manager Sunny (Tammy Sytch). Del Rey did some singles work in ECW as a member of Raven’s Flock through January 1996.
He worked in 1996 as television enhancement talent Jimmy Graffiti for WCW, often appearing on Nitro, before suffering a serious knee injury in 1997 ended his in-ring career.
He kept an involvement in wrestling in Florida for several years after that. He trained wrestlers at Steve Keirn’s wrestling, and a lot of area wrestler noted him giving them good career advice when they started out. He was involved in re-christening The New Heavenly Bodies, a tag team of Classy Chris Nelson and Vito DeNucci, on the Florida independent scene, and at times worked as their manager.
He had run a wood flooring company in Florida and at times sold Christmas trees during the holiday season. The crazy bumps took their toll later in life as he had hip replacement surgery and had gained a lot of weight in recent years. He reunited with Cornette and Prichard this past summer at the Mid Atlantic Fan Fest.