Brutus Beefcake spoke to Sports Illustrated about his early life before wrestling in light of his upcoming induction into the WWE Hall of Fame.
I always thought I’d be a baseball player. I used to watch wrestling at the armory in Tampa as a kid, and I always enjoyed it, but never in my wildest imagination did I think I could do it. As a kid, I idolized Pete Rose and Mickey Mantle, and I actually played ball with Wade Boggs. Now we’re all Hall of Famers.
Breaking into the business alongside Hulk Hogan in the late ’70s, Beefcake admitted that he “never went to a wrestling school.” He traveled between Florida and Alabama wrestling territories in the early days. “…guys like Ox Baker, Bob Armstrong, and Professor Toru Tanaka. They took us under their wing and helped make us into what we became.”
On the origins of his most famous gimmick, Brutus Beefcake remembers that Hulk Hogan initially planted the seed.
At first, I thought, ‘The Barber?’ I had no idea what to do. It was difficult, but I had help. Hogan was the guy who said I should put guys to sleep with the sleeper and then cut their hair. I thought, if that worked, it was going to be very exciting. And it worked big time.
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