What Really Happened To…Bruiser Brody
Exploring one of wrestling’s grisliest ever incidents, and the divisive performer at its centre.
Bruiser Brody endures as a great mythical figure in the rich and profoundly twisted fabric of professional wrestling.
One need only have looked at him - something several spectators were almost reluctant to do, scurrying terrified at the palpable chaos orchestrated throughout his crazed, arena-wide brawls - to gain an insight into the wild man within. Brody wore a massive shock of curled black hair and a beard. He pierced your soul with a thousand mile stare revealing the full white of his bulging eyes. His forehead decorated with disgusting gig marks, he looked like pro wrestling’s Charles Manson, and projected himself with a similar insanity. It was a look as appropriate as it was chilling; Brody carved his legend as a cult unto himself.
To use a modern analogy, Brody was the proto-Brock Lesnar: a genuine Beast of a man capable of both commanding a gladiatorial atmosphere his public was at once repulsed by and drawn to, and forcing promoters to bend to his erratic, money-driven whims. He was also selectively brilliant, depending on the payoff and his enthusiasm for the job. Brody at times refused to comply with the finish and often the match itself, standing there frozen in stubbornness to an extent that exposed the business as a predetermined sham.
A major draw unto himself - hence why promoters would book him in spite of his selfish reputation - Brody was nonetheless the anti-fulcrum of the towns he deigned to make. The short-term box office injection that was Brody begat a long-term ailment. He was a sort of anti-vaccination that, suitably, needled many a promoter.
Much like everybody he performed in front of, Brody, even in death, triggers the polemicists of the wrestling community into a reaction. Those who deem him overrated cite the copy and paste nature of his default brawl as a limitation, when really, anything else risked a dilution of his unique aura.
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