9 Old School Wrestling Champs That Could Make It In Today’s WWE
4. Danny Hodge
WWEs anointing of Brock Lesnar as The Man To Beat in recent months would seem to indicate a shift in popular wrestling opinion. Lesnar, an exceptionally gifted athlete, yet never anything more than a mediocre sports entertainer, obviously represents the qualities that todays WWE is looking for in a main event fixture: realism - and lots of it. In pro wrestling, they never came more real than Jim Ross all-time favourite wrestler, Danny Hodge. An undefeated amateur wrestler from high school, through University and into the NCAA (where he was three time division 1 Champ one of only two men in history to hold that distinction), Hodge eventually competed at the Olympics, placing fifth in 1952 before winning a silver medal in 1956. From there, he boxed, winning the Golden Gloves and AAU Boxing Championships; this made him the first man to be a titleholder in both boxing and wrestling. Figuring that there was more money to be made in pro wrestling than pro boxing, Hodge was trained for the squared circle by none other than Ed Strangler Lewis himself (arguably the toughest pro wrestler of all time) and debuted in 1959. A man of Hodges obvious credentials being trained by the most dangerous shooter of all time is a bit like teaching a tiger how to sharpen its own teeth it makes a scary prospect that much scarier. However, despite his talents, Hodge wasnt a heavyweight and, with more focus on weight classes in those days, he never became a World Champion. He did hold the NWA Junior Heavyweight belt for many years, though. Hodge had a cast-iron reputation in wrestling for being a dangerous shooter and genuinely tough guy. Reputedly, he could crush an apple in one hand and could even squeeze steel pliers hard enough that they snapped, without any gimmicks at all. In todays WWE, Hodge would have likely been a UFC Champion before getting involved with the company and, as a result, would be pushed to the moon in much the same way that Lesnar has been in WWE.
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