Famous as one of the most vicious hardcore brawlers of all time, Lawrence Shreve, known to millions as Abdullah The Butcher, has terrorised the world of professional wrestling since the 1960s. Creating the persona of a horrifying Middle-Eastern torturer as a young man (when he smashed a wooden chair over an opponents head and then beat him to a pulp with the leg), Shreve would, like Bruiser Brody after him, refuse to tie himself down to one territory, selling himself as the monster that would attack the top babyface of the local promotion. This paid off well, the Butchers infamy preceding him throughout America, Europe, Japan and Africa, everyone running scared of the man they called the most violent wrestler in the world. Abdullah The Butchers matches would inevitably go bloody within minutes. He would famously gouge his opponents heads with his trademark fork, or with anything that lay close to hand. Abdullah The Butcher was also famed for eating anything that came near him. The ties of people attempting to interview him, their scripts, raw fish, an interviewers microphone - he once memorably bit the head off a live chicken in front of a live crowd, although its likely that the chicken was gimmicked, and apparently swallowed a toad to intimidate an opponent. The epitome of the silent but terrifying monster heel, with heavy scars on his forehead so deep that he can insert coins into them, Abdullah would be represented by scores of managers across his career to act as his mouthpiece. Modern wrestling audiences will remember him best through his matches in WCW with Cactus Jack, aka Mick Foley but the monster is still out there, and still wrestling to this day.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
