Ray Lloyd

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Ray Lloyd
Statistics
Ring name(s) Glacier
Coach Buzz Stern
"Sugar Ray" Lloyd
Billed height 6ft. 2in. (188 cm)
Billed weight 245lb. (111 kg)
Born May 1964
Brunswick, Georgia, U.S.
Resides Kissimmee, Florida, U.S.
Billed from Shorinji Temple, Fukuoka, Japan
Trained by "Mr. Wrestling" Tim Woods,
Fred Avery,
WCW Power Plant
Debut 1987

Raymond M. Lloyd (born May 1964 in Brunswick, Georgia) is an American martial artist, actor, and semi-retired professional wrestler. He is most known for his appearances with World Championship Wrestling in the late 1990s under the ring name Glacier.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Lloyd attended Valdosta State University (the same alma mater as former WCW announcer Scott Hudson), where he played college football as a center for the Valdosta Blazers, and earned a master's degree in education. A skilled martial artist, he is trained in Karate, Hung Gar, Judo and Kenpo, and won the United States Southeastern Heavyweight Karate Championship with the World Karate Association before breaking into wrestling.

[edit] Professional wrestling

He was trained by legendary Georgia grappler Fred Avery and began his wrestling career in 1987 during which he was given the ring name "Sugar Ray" Lloyd by ring veteran Tommy Rich. He cut his teeth on the Georgia independent circuit for two years, then joined WCW for their 1989 Great American Bash tour, in which his debut match was a loss to Butch Reed. He recalled in a March 2001 interview with WCW Magazine, "To be in the same ring with a man that big who could move like that was intimidating." He moved to Atlanta and took a job as an assistant high school football coach in Marietta, and participated in Southern Championship Wrestling shows on weekends. From 1990 to 1991, again as "Sugar Ray" Lloyd, he tag teamed with former college football teammate R.D. Swain as "The Blazers." In 1991, Pro Wrestling Illustrated held a contest for readers to come up with a ring name for Swain.

His second stint in WCW was when he was booked to job to The Great Muta at a house show in Atlanta. Following that match, at Muto's request, Lloyd joined Muto on a string of WCW house shows before relocating to Japan in 1993, where he competed in the UWFI as a guest of renowned shootfighter Nobuhiko Takada. Lloyd returned to the United States after UWFI folded in 1996, and during a conversation with friend Diamond Dallas Page, he mentioned that he was planning to integrate martial arts into his wrestling, which he had been unable to do during the early days of his career. At Page's request, WCW president Eric Bischoff, a martial arts practitioner himself, immediately signed Lloyd to a contract.

[edit] Blood Runs Cold

Beginning in April 1996, Lloyd's new ring persona, Glacier, was introduced via a series of vignettes during WCW programming that featured the tagline Blood Runs Cold. Due to the coinciding appearance and immediate impact of the New World Order, Glacier's debut was delayed for several months, and the lengthy wait for his arrival drew the ire of fans. His debut finally occurred in September, when he defeated The Gambler in a pre-recorded match on WCW Pro. Meanwhile, since Glacier was blatantly modeled after Mortal Kombat character Sub-Zero, his original in-ring costume was a near-duplicate of the video-game version.[1]. He was also given one of the most extravagant ring entrances in wrestling, which included blue laser lights streaming across the arena, snow falling from the ceiling and Jimmy Hart-composed theme music, in addition to a ritual of standing on the center turnbuckle and removing his armor and helmet, then performing a kata routine in the center of the ring. The outfit lasted only three additional matches before it was scrapped in mid-October 1996; Glacier returned to the ring six weeks later on Monday Nitro in new ring attire, and pinned Hardbody Harrison in less than a minute. According to Lloyd in a July 2000 interview, production costs for his entrance amounted to nearly half a million dollars, while the original costume, designed by Atlanta-based AFX Studios, cost $35,000.

It wasn't until March 1997 that he was put into his first feud, with Mortis, who was labeled as one of manager James Vandenberg's collection of "rare oddities" who shared a past history with Glacier. After Mortis lost to Glacier at the WCW Uncensored pay-per-view that month, Wrath was introduced as Mortis's then-unnamed partner, and both men double-teamed Glacier. The next month, his match with Mortis lasted less than two minutes as he was assaulted by Mortis and Wrath, and was rescued by karate champion Ernest Miller. Glacier regularly defeated Mortis and Wrath in singles competition and in tag-team matches with Miller, but after losing to Mortis and Wrath at Bash at the Beach on July 13, 1997, WCW abruptly ended the feud, and the backstory between Mortis and Glacier was never revealed. He was handed his first singles loss by Buff Bagwell a month later, and he and Miller split up and began feuding following a November pay-per-view loss to the Faces of Fear.

Despite an undefeated calendar year from September 1996 to August 1997, Glacier never caught on with fans, and he spent the first half of 1998 on a losing streak, jobbing to the likes of Steve McMichael, Kenny Kaos and Bobby Duncum, Jr. On June 29, 1998, he suffered a severe knee injury at the hands of Bill Goldberg during the main event on Monday Nitro, but kept the extent of the injury hidden until after the match. Though he left the ring on his own power, he was out until November, in which he returned and pinned Chris Adams on WCW Thunder following outside interference from Miller's manager, Sonny Onoo.

In 1999, WCW was regularly booking Glacier to job on a semi-regular basis in order to kill off the character and allow Lloyd to transition into a new one. In May of that year, following a WCW Saturday Night loss to Al Green, Glacier, tired of his gimmick, "sold" his ring outfit (including his blue contact lens) to Kaz Hayashi and Miller on Thunder. After another lengthy period off WCW programming, Lloyd filmed several promos as "Coach Buzz Stern," with his protege, longtime independent wrestler Luther Biggs; the clips aired on Thunder in August. He served as Biggs' manager for a handful of matches against lower-tier opponents on Saturday Night and Thunder until the end of the summer, when he himself wrestled his only match as Stern in a tag-team loss to the Filthy Animals before the character was shelved. Lloyd was one of many WCW wrestlers released as part of a cost-cutting measure in November 1999.

[edit] After WCW

Along with Dusty Rhodes, Lloyd founded Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling (TCW) in 2000, which held shows throughout the Southeast. He wrestled under his real name in TCW, winning the Heavyweight and Tag Team titles that year. He teamed with Jorge Estrada and feuded with Scotty Anton (best known to wrestling fans as Scotty Riggs of the American Males).

In January 2001, he revitalized the Glacier persona as a superhero parody, with Norman Smiley as his biggest fan. The storyline was that Smiley wanted Glacier to come to his aid during matches, but Glacier would regularly show up after Smiley had been defeated, and then push him out of the way to perform his kata routine in the ring. Though Lloyd never wrestled an actual match, the gimmick was a surprisingly mild success given the past history of the character. WCW would fold before the storyline could progress any farther.

He won the NWA Tag Team Titles with Jason Sugarman, but they held the belts for only one day. In 2002, he rejuvenated his Glacier gimmick to team with Big Ron Studd, and won the TCW Tag Team title belts again, in addition to a second reign as TCW Heavyweight Champion. When TCW stopped running shows in 2003, Lloyd joined up with Georgia Championship Wrestling, where he can still be found at times today. He wrestled sporadically on the independent circuit, in addition to holding a backstage position with TNA Wrestling and endorsing a weight-loss supplement, Morphoplex.

Lloyd reprised his Glacier persona in the Ultimate Armageddon Tour 2006 as part of the Ultimate Christian Wrestling promotion, and participated in the CHIKARA King of Trios tournament in Philadelphia on March 2, 2008, teaming with Los Ice Creams.

[edit] Outside of wrestling

In 2003, Lloyd became a physical education teacher at Hightower Trail Middle School in the suburbs north of Atlanta. He later worked as a teacher at Lassiter High School in Marietta before taking up a position as the head coach of wrestling at North Cobb High School in Kennesaw. In addition to teaching, Lloyd worked as a stuntman at Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando, Florida, playing the part of a German flight engineer in the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular! show until November 2004, when a serious knee injury forced him to undergo surgery. He had auditioned (unsuccessfully) for a part on the CBS program Walker, Texas Ranger back in 1997, and though he hinted at an acting career in an interview with WCW journalist Chad Damiani the next year, he finally appeared in his first film in 2003.

Ray Lloyd currently resides in Kissimmee, Florida. where he teaches at Denn John Middle School. He is semiretired from wrestling and continues to pursue his acting career; he appeared in a commercial for Busch Gardens, and he also filmed a guest appearance in the season finale of the USA Network series Burn Notice, which aired on September 20, 2007.

[edit] Finishing and signature moves

[edit] Championships and accomplishments

[edit] Karate

  • World Karate Association
  • Southeastern Super Heavyweight Full Contact Karate Champion

[edit] Professional wrestling

  • AWA World-1 South
  • 1-time AWA Southern Heavyweight Champion
  • 1-time GCW Tag Team Champion (with R.D. Swain)
  • Peach State Wrestling
  • 1-time PSW Tag Team Champion (with R.D. Swain)
  • PWI ranked him # 488 of the 500 best singles wrestlers of the PWI Years in 2003
  • Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling
  • 2-time TCW Heavyweight Champion
  • 2-time TCW Tag Team Champion (once each with Jorge Estrada and Big Ron Studd)

[edit] Filmography

  • Blood Bath (2002) (video game) - "Thorko"
  • A Conspiracy (2003) - "Lars Tannin"
  • Creatures of the Night (2006) - "Gunther"
  • Loaded Dice (2006) - "Uno"
  • Burn Notice (2007) - "Nydam"

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Professional wrestling
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