"Canada's Strongest Man" had a 22-year career in pro wrestling that ended in 1992 after a run with the World Wrestling Federation that lasted 14 years with a Tag Team championship run with Dominic Denucci, as well as significant singles runs portraying a French-Canadian strongman. After his retirement in 1992, Bravo moved back to his native Montreal, and short on employment options, became a smuggler of cigarettes across the Canadian border to indigenous Canadians. Engaging in this illicit activity while connected to Montreal crime boss Vic Cotroni allegedly ran him afoul of other organized crime families already in the cigarette smuggling business, and less than one year after his last WWF appearance - on March 10, 1993 - he was found dead in his Quebec home, victim to 17 bullets (seven to the head and 10 to the torso). Obviously, one makes their own conscious choice to consider a life of organized crime, but of the many other options so many other wrestlers took once no longer employed by the WWF in that era, the serviceable and veteran heel Bravo's mafia-style murder is certainly one of the more scandalous deaths in wrestling history.
Besides having been an independent professional wrestling manager for a decade, Marcus Dowling is a Washington, DC-based writer who has contributed to a plethora of online and print magazines and newspapers writing about music and popular culture over the past 15 years.
