This Valentine’s Day, let’s look back on a team you probably forgot even existed: Romeo and Antonio, the Heart Throbs.
Admittedly, when one thinks of forgettable tag teams, the Heart Throbs don’t exactly spring to mind…
…which proves my point, really.
Obscure as they are, once upon in a time, in a land called Ohio Valley Wrestling, a certain cranky, tennis racket-wielding wrestling traditionalist had high hopes for the pair.
If Jim Cornette didn’t think Antonio Thomas and Romeo Roselli had “it”, he wouldn’t have given them one of his favorite gimmicks.
Supposedly, this was a gimmick Cornette had been kicking around for twenty years…
…since his days managing in NWA…
…to his time running Smoky Mountain Wrestling…
…to his tenure in WWF Creative.
But it was only in 2004 that the legendary wrestling mind found the perfect team to bring the gimmick to life.
And that gimmick was…
…gay guys!
I’m over-simplifying, of course. The Heartbreakers (as they were first known) weren’t simply an over-the-top gay-coded tag team like Too Cool or Lenny & Lodi or Billy & Chuck.
Yes, they wore feather boas and entered the ring to “It’s Raining Men“.
But their gimmick was far too nuanced to adequately describe here—Oh, also their finisher was called Erectile Dysfunction—but the OVW fans ate it up, making the Heartbreakers the most popular team in the territory.
Within a year, WWE made the call up. First wrestling on Valentine’s Day in a match aired on Heat, the Heartbreakers soon joined the WWE roster full time as the Heart Throbs.
Showing up on Raw in MSG to challenge the tag team champions, you could say the Heart Throbs were a big deal. I mean, it’s a free country, right?
Not only did Romeo and Antonio lose, but Lillian Garcia could barely remember their names.
And while the Heartbreakers might have been a big deal doing a flamboyantly gay gimmick in a small territory, that wouldn’t fly on national TV.
Sunday Night Heat was one thing—by 2005, it was broadcast only internationally and online—but when it came time to debut on Raw, they had to tweak their characters.
No longer gay guys, the Heart Throbs went from prancing around in feather boas and grinding on the referee…
…to dancing around in feather boas and grinding on women.
Jonathan Coachman wouldn’t shut up about clubbing with the Heart Throbs and picking up chicks…
…but Jerry Lawler, who thought the team were “light in the loafers”, was unconvinced.
Despite being ostensibly straight, the Heart Throbs would start each match by simultaneously tearing off their breakaway pants.
However, because they usually wrestled on Heat, most of their WWE career survives only in low-res Youtube uploads.
So between that and the flesh-toned tights, it looks like they were stripping nude.
If you remember the Heart Throbs at all, it’s as punching bags for Kane and the Big Show—sometimes in handicap matches, sometimes tag, but always absolute squashes.
In fact, Kane once pinned both Heart Throbs in a Beat-The-Clock Challenge in under thirty seconds.
To counteract being absolutely ruined as a credible team, the Heart Throbs did everything they could to get over with the fans—namely, being as self-consciously dorky as possible.
They also took advantage of a little machine called the Internet, making WWE.com their playground. A few of their promos were even worth a chuckle…
…and their aggressively lame catchphrase was practically a blueprint for Zack Ryder—it’s a short jump from Whoa-Whoa-Whoa to Woo-Woo-Woo.
The Throbs even tried to spark a feud with their bow-tied SmackDown equivalents, The Dicks.
But it was the Internet that was also the Heart Throbs’ downfall, according to the dirt sheets.
Apparently the boys went overboard on an episode of WWE.com’s Byte This! Whether it was their “undressing Todd Grisham and cover[ing] him up with their feather boas”…
…or “bringing out a guy in a Banana suit that defecates smaller Banana’s [sic]” that did it, no one knows, as the episode was pulled from the site.
So how do I have a picture of a picture of a bare-chested Grisham? Or better yet, why?
Well, I can’t answer the second question, but the answer to the first is that this clip was included in a short Heart Throbs video hyping their upcoming Valentine’s Day edition of Byte This!
This was overly optimistic on the Throbs’ part, however, as both the tag team and the web show got canned just days before February 14th…
…by sheer coincidence, said WWE.
This wasn’t quite the end of the Heart Throbs, but it was pretty close.
Few people caught the Heart Throbs in TNA…
…but the re-re-christened Heartbreakers showed up at 2007’s Destination X as Christie Hemme’s mystery team. And God bless Mike Tenay and Don West for pretending to care.
The former New Age Outlaws beat the duo handily—hardly an auspicious start to their TNA career…
…and an even less auspicious end, as that was their only match in the company.
The team split up that year but re-united in 2012 for nostalgic circuit dates in Chikara and the like.
While they haven’t teamed since 2015 (and haven’t won since 2007), Romeo was inducted into the New England Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2019…
…before John Cena or Triple H.
I think we all know what those guy have gotta do now.
