|
 Much thanks for reading. My name is Inside Clyde, and it's been a long time since I posted on any URL with "Lethal" in it, so I'll briefly tell you a little about me before the Bruiser Brody stuff. I pro wrestled for a number of years, mostly under the gimmick "The Lethal Litigator." I jobbed a lot. I did hardcore wrestling stuff, as well as your run-of-the-mill wrestling. I have wrestled in every state but one as well as Mexico, parts of Canada and Japan. I wrestled one match for the WWF (I am old and cannot easily adapt to WWE, but you will live I think) and have wrestled "legends" of sorts (Jake Roberts, Roddy Piper and others) and spent most of my wrestling career jobbing. About two and a half years ago my addled brain got the notion that I should open a school in Atlanta, Georgia, so I took the money I had saved from wrestling and paired that with a business loan and wala, Platinum Wrestling Academy was born. Then a week later, 9/11 happened and as most of my students were Delta employees or otherwise affiliated with the airport, I was fucked like a new guy on "Oz" by the equivalent of Shillinger with Adebesi's cock. I struggled. My girlfriend/business partner moved back to Colorado, and I was forced to move the school from the rather nice office/warehouse space it had been in to a shithole badly run weightlifting gym which closed less than a month after we got there. So I humbled myself and rented out space in a much larger wrestling school run by Sarge from the Power Plant. I was literally starving, working a full time job to keep the school afloat, living on chicken samples from the food court near an Atlanta MARTA train station. I stuck it out along with a core group of students and eventually took the whole place over, and became the one and only trainer. Now with the guy who owns most of the stuff, we have his school called WWA4, whatever that stands for. My partner keeps up the website, answers the calls and brings the students in. I run the practices, keep things organized and run the Platinum Championship Wrestling shows on Thursday nights. Does anything written above mean I am more qualified to talk about wrestling than the fine writers on this board? Shit, no. My perspective is perhaps a little different. Many have decribed me as someone who "gave up" a good life for wrestling. I don't see it that way. For me, I started really living when I turned away from the kind of life that a Master's in English and a law degree would imply that you should have, and jumped into the deep end of the pro wrestling pool. I have written for wrestling mags (remember them?) done my years in the business, and run shows. But don't believe the hype...working in "the biz" doesn't necessarily mean you know shit about it. With that said, I am going to soon start talking about Bruiser/King Kong Brody. In years past, I was known for posting frequently about just about anything. I won't promise that my posts will be numerous, nor will they be nearly as funny as the talented people that write here on Lethal. But while the "knowledge" you may or may not gain is questionable, and my opinions may not count for much in the big scheme, I hope you do get a sense of the genuine love and appreciation I have for the gayest of the gay endeavors, pro wrestling. For those of you who aren't familliar who we are talking about, first a fitting picture of the man:  Remember when Scott Steiner was coming to the WWF? Remember how excited the fans were, hoping that "Big Poppa Pump" could bring an air of unpredictablity and danger to the WWF that it was lacking? After all, since WCW folded, the WWF was becoming (and still is becoming) increasingly filled with dead wood of old talent and bad ideas that are desperate to be burned away. Big Poppa was hopefully going to spur that along. Of course, the only unpredictable thing about Steiner was how bad he was, and the only danger added was his bad in-ring work. Now Steiner is a disappointing bit player and a roided-up piece of deadwood clogging the WWF. The only thing disappointing about Bruiser Brody was that he isn't around. But the legacy he helped leave behind before being killed for not dressing correctly can tell us a lot of how wrestling has changed, how it has remained the same and what the future could hold (and some solutions to it's current woes). Frank Goodish a.k.a. Bruiser or King Kong Brody was born in 1946 in Pennsylvania, though in interviews he would say he was born in 1950, when he moved to New Mexico. He started wrestling as "Bruiser" Frank Brody in 1973. He was so unpredictable that has was actually banned from a number of promotions for, amongst other things, hitting the occasional fan with a chair. Where is Brody now to hit the people who STILL yell "WHAT?!?!" at WWF shows? In any case, Bruiser's influence can be seen with any wrestler that had a "Barbarian," "Warlord," "Hercules" (rest in peace) or any other raging, ass-kicking gimmick. Read this response Bruiser gave in an interview to the question, "Would you tell us something about the man inside the wrestler?" Before Stone Cold played the "common man" ass kicker for all it was worth, before New Jack tried to blend real life with gimmicked bad ass, before the supposed age of the "anti-hero," Brody was the real deal. He was a legit 6'8" (you know, the actual size of the 7-foot Kane) and 325 pounds. He had a football background, and was athletic.  He won (winning at least 16 individual titles both regional and international, as well as at least 9 tag titles throughout the world) and lost (he used the "King Kong" moniker at times because he lost a match to Dick The Bruiser where the "Bruiser" moniker was at stake) played face as well as heel. And he was a draw, a legit money draw that people paid specifically to see. He took a hell of a bump, too.  In part two I am going to talk about the experience of seeing Bruiser Brody live, the circumstances that lead to his death, and what Brody means to wrestling now and in the future. Saving Wrestling One Show At A Time |