For many of us that grew up with wrestling in the 1980s, we remember him as “Adorable” Adrian Adonis who chased “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff for a time and feuded with Roddy Piper, creating plenty of This Day in Wrestling History moments to share.
On July 4, 1988, Adrian Adonis, his real name was Keith Franke, died with two other people in a single car accident while traveling to a show. He was thirty-three years old.
Prior to his time in the WWE, Adonis had a great career going in the AWA as he tagged with Jesse Ventura in1980 and even won the tag team championship.
That carried over to his early days in the WWE when he teamed with Dick Murdock and won the WWE Tag Team Championship in 1984. He also challenged for the Intercontinental and World Heavyweight titles.
Changing course
Up until this point, Adonis portrayed a biker type of character but nothing lasts forever, so when he went into his singles career, he adopted the name Adorable and wore pink gear and makeup.
What’s really cool was at the time the WWE started getting into having talking/interview segments that resembled daytime talk shows and they were used to create feuds and further storylines.
It’s a practice the WWE still uses to this day, but they were relatively fresh them, and Adonis had a segment called The Flower Shop.
This stage was the set of some really entertaining pieces like him putting aside his “crush” on Paul Orndorff to being the main reason Orndorff turned on Hulk Hogan.
He followed this with a feud with Roddy Piper and Piper’s unpredictable nature led him to destroy the Flower Shop set as payback, but the best was yet to come.
Nearing the end
At WrestleMania 3, Piper and Adonis faced off in a hair vs. hair match.
Piper won with a sleeper hold and with some assistance from Brutus Beefcake, Piper got away chunks of Adonis’ hair.
A pretty cool dies fact is this helped give birth to Beefcake’s Barber persona that took him to the next level.
After Piper was done and Adonis woke, he was horrified at what Piper did to him and stumbled around the ring before he was spirited out of the ring by Jimmy Hart and he left the WWE shortly afterwards to return to the AWA.
On that fateful night in 1988, the car Adonis was riding in reportedly swerved to avoid hitting a Moose and careened into a nearby lake.
Adonis later passed away in the hospital from head injuries along with the other two passengers. He was survived by his wife and two daughters.
We want to thank him and all the others that left us too soon for giving us so many happy memories and This Day in Wrestling moments.
Adonis was a cool talent that made it fun to watch.
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