THE RENEGADE WARRIORS
1985-1997
WWC World Tag Team Champions
WWC Caribbean Tag Team Champions
Written by Adam Zimmerman
Mark and Chris (Romero) Youngblood first started teaming up in 1985; the same year their brother, Jay Youngblood, another great competitor, passed away. The brothers were known as The Renegade Warriors or, more simply, The Youngbloods.
Their first territory was World Class Championship Wrestling. In September 1986, they participated in a one-night tournament to crown the new WCWA World Tag Team Champions. They ended up losing in the semifinals to Matt Borne and Buzz Sawyer who, in turn, went on to win the belts.
After their somewhat brief stay in WCCW, The Youngbloods traveled to Puerto Rico to wrestle for the World Wrestling Council, like a lot of great tag teams of the time. The WWC is where they found their most success. They traded the WWC World Tag Team Championship back and forth with the likes of Ron and Chicky Starr, The Sheepherders and the violent, Mr. Pogo along with his partner TNT (Savio Vega). They also battled over the WWC Caribbean Tag Team Championship with The Samoans (Samu and Fatu) and The New Kansas Jayhawks (Bobby Jaggers and Dan Kroffat).
In November 1987, the brothers even traveled to Japan to participate in that year's Real World Tag League for All Japan Pro Wrestling. They returned in 1992 and consistently toured with AJPW, off and on, until their retirement in 1997.
In April 1990, the brothers finally got a chance to shine on the national stage in the United States when they signed with WCW. Here, they were used as mostly a mid-card tag team but they had decent fan support and they managed to have great matches with The Midnight Express, and The Fabulous Freebirds. They even managed to pull a couple of decent matches out of the Nasty Boys. The Renegade Warriors only stayed around WCW for about a year but they made their mark on the tag team division at the time.
After their time in WCW, the Youngbloods decided to join the upstart Global Wrestling Federation and participate in their tournament to crown the first ever GWF Tag Team Champions. They had a good showing in the tournament but ended up losing in the finals to "Hustler" Rip Rogers and Scott Anthony (Raven). In 1992, as sort of a "rebranding", the Youngbloods started to use the team name of The Tribal Nation with Mark calling himself Nocona and Chris referring to himself as Brave Sky. They feuded with "Hollywood" John Tatum and "Rugged" Ron Price and also a young JBL and his various partners. After the GWF run, The Renegade Warriors finished off their career by thrilling audiences in Japan while wrestling for All Japan Pro Wrestling over the next few years. Perhaps too often forgotten nowadays, The Renegade Warriors were a great team of second generation wrestlers.