April has been a pretty bad month for pro wrestling. We’ve seen death on every end of the spectrum, from the passing of the Ultimate Warrior to the death of Stone Crusher, Daniel Bryan’s biggest fan. There’s even more sad news today as Lee Marshall, best known as the updated voice of Tony The Tiger but known to the wrestling world as “that guy who traveled around calling in Nitro party updates during episodes of WCW Monday Nitro back in the 90s,” has died.
Marshall (who is almost impossible to google now thanks to Adventure Time) was a longtime radio announcer who got into the wrestling business calling matches for AWA Championship Wrestling on ESPN alongside folks like Eric Bischoff. He’s appeared all over, from WOW: Women Of Wrestling to a ring announcing job at the Los Angeles leg of WrestleMania 2. That’s pretty impressive.
The Nitro parties are the money Lee Marshall reference, though. He’d travel around the country and call in to the live show, telling stories about what was happening wherever he was and call Bobby Heenan a “weasel” a few dozen times. I always doubted the legitimacy of those Nitro parties, and now I guess I’ll never know if “Stagger” Lee ever actually went to Macon, or if he just sat at a microphone backstage and pretended he knew college kids.
RIP, Stagger Lee.
