10 Things You Didn't Know About Superstar Billy Graham
10. Before Billy Graham Was A Wrestler, Wayne Coleman Worked Crowds As A Travelling Preacher...
In the 1960s, long before he became known to fans around the world as The Ladies Pet and The Mans Regret, the man born Eldridge Wayne Coleman underwent a religious awakening... When he was a teenager, a religious family contacted Coleman, saying that they had seen his picture in a bodybuilding magazine and that they felt it was their duty to convert him to Christianity. Accordingly, Coleman dropped out of school and became an evangelist. A natural showman, evangelism came easily to the man who would ultimately name himself after a famous preacher. Like wrestling, evangelism shows often employ catchy promo skills and dynamic, intense performances and, like wrestlers, travelling preachers go from town to town, putting on shows for legions of adoring fans. As in wrestling, the audience has to believe what they are seeing and buy into it wholesale in order to really enjoy it. Substitute the name of your opponent for Satan and its easy to see where the foundations of Grahams wrestling character came from. So, in some respects, one could say that The Superstars much vaunted promo skills and stagecraft were genuinely God given, albeit in a mostly earthbound sense...
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