When Arn Anderson was told on his podcast that Jimmy Valiant had wrestled his retirement match at age 83, his immediate one-word reaction said it all.
“Bullsh*t.”
The Boogie Woogie Man laced up for the final time on April 25, 2026, in Lancaster, South Carolina, at an event called Boogie’s Last Dance for NAWA Championship Wrestling. Valiant said in a statement before the show that he was hanging up his boots after 62 years of pro wrestling, more than 15,000 matches, and approximately six million miles on U.S. highways. The match made Valiant a wrestler in seven separate decades, from 1964 through 2026.
Bromwell raised the topic on the April 2026 episode of Straight Talk With The Boss and asked Anderson what it was like trying to put a match together with a 1980s Jim Crockett-era Valiant. Anderson did not soften his answer.
“He didn’t take any of them. No bumps. Not budging.”
Anderson’s First Time In With Valiant
Anderson rolled back through his earliest days in Jim Crockett Promotions, when the territory was still a regional power and Valiant was already a top babyface. He admitted he did not exactly hold his own.
“When I first got to Crockett, I was just, you know, working the first match and making my way around the territory. I worked with Jimmy Valiant a few times, and I don’t think I fared too well against Jimmy. Jimmy was a star at that time with Crockett, and if I remember correctly, I did not fare too well.”
The thing that stuck with Anderson decades later was how Valiant paced his work physically. The Boogie Woogie Man was getting over on charisma, not on willingness to give bumps.
“He’s retired five times at least. For a guy to even get out of bed at 83 and being in this business, and the miles he’s put in and roads he’s traveled, he just was not a guy that took a lot of big bumps.”
The math, by Anderson’s read, is what kept Valiant going long after a lot of his contemporaries broke down. The wrestlers who took the worst bumps during the territory days are mostly the ones who left the business early or died young. Valiant’s body let him keep working into his 80s in part because of the choices he made about what he would and would not do in the ring.
“Boy From New York City” And The Boogie Woogie Dance
Bromwell shifted to a Charlotte appearance the prior summer where Valiant was honored and got up to do his entrance dance one more time.
“There’s nothing like hearing ‘Boy From New York City’, him dancing down to the ring. The whole entrance was the whole deal. And we, when we were in Charlotte last summer, he came up to talk, and they played the music, and he started doing the Boogie Woogie dance. You couldn’t beat it. It was like we were just watching him again. We were just waiting to see him shave somebody.”
Anderson agreed.
“Last year, we were all together, right? And they honored him, and he got up there and did a great job. I was so proud of him. He was clarity with everything he was saying. End gimmick, the whole thing, did a great job. I enjoyed it.”
The Manhattan Transfer’s “Boy From New York City” was Valiant’s entrance song from his 1980s NWA/Jim Crockett Promotions run as the bearded babyface who called his fans “the Street People.” The song, the dance, the full beard, the kissing fans on the way to the ring. All of it was the package that Anderson watched from across the locker room during their time in Crockett together.
A Jim Crockett Era That Will Not Come Around Again
Bromwell wrapped the Valiant segment by tying him back to the wider tapestry of Anderson’s territorial days.
“I mean, that was, that was my childhood. Him and Paul Jones.”
Valiant’s late 1980s feud with Paul Jones, including a 1984 storyline where Valiant’s beard was cut off and a Loser Leaves Town Tuxedo Street Fight at Starrcade 1984, defined a stretch of mid-Atlantic wrestling history that Anderson lived through as a young hand starting to climb the card. The Jones vs Valiant program ran from early 1984 through late 1986 and involved multiple Jones-managed wrestlers including The Barbarian, Baron von Raschke, Teijo Khan, and The Assassins.
Anderson finished the Valiant segment with the kind of clear-eyed respect that runs through most of his discussions of the older generation. Valiant did not take big bumps and did not need to. He got over on his presence, his entrance, his beard, his dance, his way of speaking to fans, and a willingness to keep showing up that has now stretched into a seventh decade.
James Harold Fanning, born August 6, 1942, in Tullahoma, Tennessee, started wrestling in 1964 as “Big Jim Vallen.” Valiant was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 1996 alongside his kayfabe brother Johnny Valiant. Boogie’s Last Dance took place on April 25, 2026, in Lancaster, South Carolina, presented by NAWA Championship Wrestling. Anderson, real name Martin Anthony Lunde, debuted in 1982 and was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2012 as a member of The Four Horsemen. Valiant runs Boogie’s Wrestling Camp in West Virginia and trained former two-time AEW World Champion “Hangman” Adam Page.
You can click below to watch the full episode.
