Ray Lloyd

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Ray Lloyd


Statistics
Ring name(s)	Coach Buzz Stern, Glacier, "Sugar Ray" Lloyd
Billed height	6 ft 2 in (188 cm)
Billed weight	245 lb (111 kg)
Born	c. 1964 Brunswick, Georgia
Trained by	Mr. Wrestling, Fred Avery, WCW Power Plant
Debut	1991

Raymond M. ("Ray") Lloyd is an American professional wrestler. He is best known for his appearances with World Championship Wrestling in the late 1990s under the ring name Glacier.

1 Career
2 Debut
3 In wrestling
4 Championships and accomplishments
5 Filmography
6 References
7 External links

[edit] Career

Lloyd attended Valdosta State University (the same alma mater as former WCW announcer Scott Hudson), where he played college football as a center for the Valdosta Blazers, and earned a master's degree in education.

Lloyd is skilled in Karate, Hung Gar, Judo and Kenpo, and won a regional karate championship before becoming a wrestler. He began wresting in 1991 as Sugar Ray Lloyd. He wrestled in the Georgia independent circuit and Japan's UWFI promotion. He teamed with former college football teammate R.D. Swain as "The Blazers."

He arrived in WCW in 1996 as Glacier on September 11th, 1996 against The Gambler on WCW [Pro]. The Glacier character was based on Sub-Zero, from the popular fighting game Mortal Kombat. He was introduced via a series of vignettes with the words "Blood Runs Cold" beginning in February, but his actual in-ring debut did not occur until September. Glacier had very memorable ring entrances in WCW, which included blue laser lights streaming across the arena, snow falling from the ceiling and dramatic theme music; according to Lloyd in a July 2000 interview, production costs for his entrance amounted to half a million dollars, while his costume cost $35,000.

In March 1997, he began feuding with Mortis, whose gimmick was also inspired from Mortal Kombat characters. Both met in the ring for the first time at the WCW Uncensored pay-per-view. The next month, Mortis got a partner, Wrath, and started double-teaming Glacier. He was rescued by three-time karate champion Ernest Miller, who started teaming with him in the feud. After losing the feud with Wrath and Mortis (in a tag team match at Bash at the Beach 1997, although Glacier had beaten both Mortis and Wrath several times in singles matches and still had an undefeated record in one-on-one competition), Glacier eventually turned on Miller. WCW management had Glacier job to Miller and then ultimately buried Glacier. This was due to the fact that despite all the fanfare given before his much heralded debut, the Glacier character was not over.

On June 29, 1998, Glacier suffered a knee injury at the hands of Goldberg during a match on WCW Monday Nitro and was out for several months. He returned in November of that year and then proceeded to job matches to both Chris Kanyon and Wrath.

Glacier making his entrance.

He eventually got tired of the Glacier gimmick in the kayfabe storyline and "sold" his Glacier outfit to Kaz Hayashi in 1999. He became Coach Buzz Stern, and his protege was Luther Biggs, but the gimmick was short-lived. He wrestled only one match and was released by WCW at the end of the year.

In January 2001, he briefly returned for a few appearances as Glacier during Norman Smiley's matches but left WCW permanently for Dusty Rhodes' upstart Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling soon after that. WCW folded three months after his departure.

He wrestled under his real name while in TCW and won the Heavyweight Title and the Tag Team Titles. He teamed with Jorge Estrada and feuded with Scotty Anton (best known to wrestling fans as Scotty Riggs of the American Males). In 2001, he won the NWA Tag Team Titles with Jason Sugarman but only held them for 1 day. In 2002, he rejuvenated his Glacier gimmick to team with Big Ron Studd and they won the TCW Tag Team titles again.

When TCW stopped running shows in 2003, Lloyd went to wrestle in Georgia Championship Wrestling, where he can still be found at times today. He wrestles sporadically on the independent circuit, occupied a backstage position with Total Nonstop Action Wrestling and acted as a spokesman for the weight-loss supplement Morphoplex.

In 2003, Lloyd became a health and sex education teacher at Hightower Trail Middle School in the suburbs to the north of Atlanta, Georgia. He later worked as a social studies teacher at Lassiter High School in Marietta, Georgia before taking up a position as the head coach of wrestling at North Cobb High School in Kennesaw, Georgia.

In addition to teaching, Lloyd worked as a stuntman at Disney-MGM Studios in Orlando, Florida. He played the part of a German flight engineer in the Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular! show until November 2004, when a serious knee injury forced him to undergo surgery. He also began acting, appearing in his first film in 2003.

Lloyd has reprised his Glacier persona in the The Ultimate Armageddon Tour 2006 part of the Ultimate Christian Wrestling[1] circuit.

[edit] Debut

Ray Lloyd is infamous for having not one but TWO debuts in WCW as Glacier. The first was mid-September on WCW's weekly syndicated show entitled [Pro] against The Gambler. In a show where Dean Malenko took on Brad Armstrong, Chris Benoit took on Big Ron Studd and other run of the mill matches, this match was hyped as the "World-wide debut" of Glacier (not in reference to the other WCW show entitled "World-Wide")

A few weeks later Glacier debuted on WCW Nitro against Big Ray Traylor in a match that was caused during the summer when the "Blood Runs Cold" promos were airing and Traylor aired his greivances with the constant showing of the promos and yet no Glacier.

In any event Glacier had won both matches fairly quickly in similar manners. What is so interesting is that most people assume the match with Traylor was the debut, and in some senses they are right as it made sense to the storyline with Traylor.

But the real question here is why the [Pro] match against The Gambler was dubbed the "World-wide debut"? Perhaps this match wasn't meant to be seen or it was used to test the character out to the television audience. It creates a word of mouth buzz about the wrestler's abilities and then people are even more ready to see Lloyd as the Glacier character when he debuts on Nitro to a much broader audience. In the overall storyline it doesn't make sense but with this match taking place more than a week plus before the Traylor match, chronlogically this is the first appearance of Glacier.

Many fans remember both the [Pro] and Nitro match and even fewer remember that the [Pro] match was Lloyd's debut as the character, but nonetheless he is often credited with having two debuts in WCW roughly around the same time.