Credit: F4WOnline, PWInsider
It’s been reported that David Ferrier, best known for his appearances in the early 1990s in the World Wrestling Federation as one-half of the Heavenly Bodies as “Gigolo” Jimmy Del Ray, passed away Saturday night at the age of 52. There are conflicting reports on the nature of his death.
PWInsider.com broke news of Ferrier’s death this morning, reporting that he is believed to have died from a heart attack. F4WOnline.com, however, is reporting this afternoon that he died from injuries in an automobile accident.
According to Dave Meltzer, Ferrier was driving near the Florida State Fairgrounds in Tampa at about 6:10 p.m. on Saturday night when he went over a grass shoulder “for unknown reasons” and crashed into a lamp post. He was transported to Tampa General Hospital, where he died from injuries suffered in the accident.
Ferrier began his career in 1985 for Florida Championship Wrestling, where he adopted the name Jimmy Backlund. He mostly competed as preliminary wrestler during the territorial days and later on in the independents, as well as in Japan for Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling. He joined Smoky Mountain Wrestling in 1993, where he replaced Stan Lane as one-half of the Heavenly Bodies with Tom Prichard after Lane retired from the squared circle to become a commentator for the World Wrestling Federation. The Heavenly Bodies were managed by James E. Cornette, and won the SMW Tag Team Championship on three occasions. During this time with he was branded with the “Gigolo” moniker. While Del Ray was an agile and able wrestler, he had a slightly pudgy midsection that shook, or “jiggled” when he did a taunting dance.
Alongside Cornette, the Heavenly Bodies debuted in the World Wrestling Federation in the summer of 1993, and would challenge the Steiner Brothers for the World Tag Team Championship—they were defeated. At the 1993 Survivor Series in the Boston Garden, the Heavenly Bodies faced The Rock ‘n’ Roll Express for the SMW Tag Team Championship. It was the first time where a championship recognized by another organization was defended on the show.
The Heavenly Bodies were generally used as a heel tag team for early matches on cards, where they would often put over babyface tandems. The duo was split in August 1995 after Del Ray was released from his contract. It was rumored at the time that an incident with a fan at a hotel led to his dismissal.
Del Ray soon made a few appearances for Extreme Championship Wrestling alongside Prichard and wound up in World Championship Wrestling in October 1996 under the name Jimmy Graffiti, where he competed for two months as a singles wrestler. He made a few appearances on WCW Monday Nitro and participated in the three-ring, sixty-man “World War 3” battle royal before a knee injury forced him to retire the following year.
After retiring, he worked as an instructor for Steve Keirn’s Florida professional wrestling school and would occasionally appear at area independent shows to manage a new Heavenly Bodies tag team. By the early 2000s, he had moved on from the wrestling industry and was running a hardwood flooring company in Tampa, Florida.
