10 Meanest Backstage Wrestling Feuds

On July 16th 1988, Frank ‘Bruiser Brody’ Goodish was in Puerto Rico for the World Wrestling Council to wrestle Dan Spivey, and was at the venue in the locker rooms preparing for the match when José Huertas González, who wrestled under a hood as Invader 1, asked him to step into the shower area to talk business.

What happened next is a matter for conjecture, as the only witnesses were Goodish and González, and only one man lived to tell the tale. There were noises of a scuffle, and then shouts. Tony Atlas, Brody’s friend, ran to his side, where it was confirmed that González had stabbed the man with such force that his lungs and liver had been pierced.

Medical attention didn’t reach Brody in time, and he died of blood loss before it was possible to treat him. When police arrived at the scene, they informed Atlas and Dutch Mantel, who was also present, that they’d been informed that a fan had gatecrashed the backstage and attacked Brody, something verifiably untrue.

When confronted by police, Invader claimed that Brody had assaulted him. Given that the massive Bruiser Brody was a foot taller than Invader and prone to legitimate loss of temper and acts of violence, his story that he was acting in self-defence was believed in a majority verdict in court (Puerto Rican jury trials don’t require a unanimous verdict), and González was cleared of all charges.

Curiously - and leading to accusations that the trial had been fixed - neither Atlas nor Mantel were asked to provide any form of witness evidence to the court.

If the conspiracy theories are true, and González did murder Goodish, then it’s possible that business was behind it: apparently Goodish had spoken to Atlas of finally ‘getting in’ a couple of days earlier.

Atlas took that to mean that Brody - who had built a reputation as a maverick free agent who drifted from promotion to promotion, from territory to territory, but who was forty-two and slowing down - had bought into a wrestling promotion as his retirement package. The implication was that the promotion he was buying into was Puerto Rico’s WWC, the company that González helped to run as the booker.

It’s likely now that no one will ever know the reason for Bruiser Brody’s death… but given the wall of silence from every local wrestler in that locker room, the false statements given to police at the scene and the oddly skewed trial that resulted, it’s pretty clear that González’ self-defence story doesn’t hold much water.

Whatever the case, the death of Bruiser Brody remains one of the most horrific examples of a backstage feud going wrong in wrestling history.