Sgt. Slaughter Called Out For Using Worked Military Background In Non-Kayfabe Interviews
WWE Hall of Famer Sgt. Slaughter (Robert Remus) is being called out for talking about his worked military background as if it was real in non-kayfabe interviews.
The story behind Slaughter's WWE character is that he was a drill instructor in the United States Marines. Slaughter would repeat this claim and tell related stories during non-kayfabe interviews from over the years. Slaughter was still telling these stories as recent as February 2019 as he told Sam Roberts and Jim Norton that he served two tours of duty in Vietnam. There are no other interviews where Slaughter gave details of his service, and it looks like that is because he never actually served in the military at all.
Slaughter claimed that he served 6 years in the US Marine Corps, from 1966 until 1973, but there's an issue with that claim as Slaughter started wrestling for the AWA promotion in 1972.
The Baltimore Sun reported on March 24, 1985 that the Marines wrote a letter to the former WWE Champion and asked him to stop pretending that he was a Marine. As seen in the tweet below, Captain Jay Farrar of the Public Affairs Officer of the Marines told The Sun that they had been "interested" in Slaughter for a few years since he started using Marine-related paraphernalia, but he was "very elusive." It was noted that Farrar's office received 50 complaints on Slaughter in one year from actual Marines. The Marines demanded Slaughter stop but it looks like he and his agent never responded.
"What they [the Marines making complaints] really didn't like – and we know of two such cases – is when his opponents staged attacks on people wearing dressed blue uniforms, whom we strongly believe were not marines. Then Slaughter came in and rescued those guys," Farrar said of the complaints.
The accusations against Slaughter resurfaced this week after a thread on the Wrestling Observer Newsletter message board, started by writer Karl Stern. (H/T to Wrestlingnews.co) The story made the rounds on Twitter after posts made by SoCal Uncensored, which you can see below.
It was also pointed out how WWE celebrated Veteran's Day with a gallery of Superstars who really served in the US Military.
It's no secret that wrestlers "lived their gimmicks" during Slaughter's prime, which makes sense for some of the stories Slaughter repeated over the years, but people are being rubbed the wrong way and now making the Stolen Valor accusations over the fact that Slaughter is still giving non-kayfabe interviews today, and making claims about serving when he never did.
You can see the related tweets from SoCal Uncensored (no relation to the AEW faction of the same name) and the throwback news clip below:
Surely the @WWE knows that Sgt Slaughter had no military service. To keep putting it out there that he actually served, such as in this article, https://t.co/i5LSBCMGf4 is pretty disrespectful to real veterans. WWE does a lot of good with the military, but this is stolen valor.
? SoCal UNCENSORED (@socaluncensored) January 9, 2020
At 1:42 into this clip Sgt Slaughter talks about his two tours in Vietnam. This is a non-kayfabe radio interview. This is incredibly disrespectful. https://t.co/kaOvBMRQjA
? SoCal UNCENSORED (@socaluncensored) January 9, 2020