A celebration of the life and times of "Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff

Jonathan Hood reflects on the career of Mr. Wonderful, Paul Orndorff. Orndorff passed away at age 71. After seven years working around the National Wrestling Alliance, Orndorff became a star in the 1980s WWF wrestling boom, and featured with manager Bobby Heenan and champion Hulk Hogan extensively, including in the main events of the first WrestleMania and Survivor Series. With an untreated neck injury, he left the WWF for WCW in early 1988, where he won the WCW World Television Championship and the WCW World Tag Team Championship with Paul Roma (as a team called Pretty Wonderful). Arm atrophy from his nagging injury led him to retire in 2000. He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2005 and the National Wrestling Alliance Hall of Fame in 2009. After retiring from wrestling, he trained others and survived cancer in 2011. On February 3, 2005, Orndorff was announced as one of the inductees for the Class of 2005 into the WWE Hall of Fame. He was inducted on April 2 at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles by Bobby Heenan.[48] In 2009, Orndorff was elected by a committee of his peers to the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame, then located in Amsterdam, New York, now located in Wichita Falls, Texas. On April 6, 2014, Orndorff made an appearance at WrestleMania XXX, marking his first time on WWE television since the 2005 Hall of Fame. He appeared in a segment with his WrestleMania I teammate Roddy Piper and their opponents from the event, Hulk Hogan and Mr. T, as well as the referee for the match, Pat Patterson, interrupting Hogan's interview with Gene Okerlund. On August 11, 2014, Orndorff made an appearance at Hogan's birthday celebration on WWE Raw, celebrating in the ring with many other WWE legends, including Hogan himself, Ric Flair, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Okerlund, Jimmy Hart, and Piper. On May 3, 2017, aged 67, Orndorff had his final match, and first since 2000, winning a six-man tag at a Canadian Wrestling's Elite (CWE) show in Brandon, Manitoba.