Dream Blood: The legacy of Bruiser Brody.

As a lifelong wrestling fan I feel like there are a few things missing from the modern day product that has made the industry as a whole lesser.

Now, before we go any further and before I hear the usual gripes of "You know its fake don't you?" YES, I know it's fake, or to use wrestling terminology "A Work". It would be impossible for me to sit here and convince you of the reality of wrestling when revelation pieces on the business have been going on since 1935. 1938 was when newspapers in North America stopped reporting on wrestling as legitimate sporting events so lets just agree that we both know what the score is and move on.

But hard as it might be to understand, there was a time when people believed!

The primary philosophy of the industry for many years was to present a product that looked as close to a legitimate athletic competition as possible. Even if the audience believed it was fake, if the company could make the vast majority of the audience believe, even for three seconds in one match, that what they were seeing was real then they would pay to come back again.

It was in this manner that Bruiser Brody was a true master.

There have been many things written about Brody. The man, the myth, the legend and even more about his violent murder in Puerto Rico but I want to give a modern fans perspective looking back at a time I wished I had been in the same arena's he had wrestled.

Born on June 18th, 1946, the man who would become the infamous Bruiser Brody started out life as Frank Goodish. He was raised in Pennsylvania and would go on to play professional football for West Texas State before being trained by the legendary Fritz Von Erich.

Standing at 6ft 8in and weighing 300 pounds, he was a physically imposing figure to say the least. A natural athlete with all the physical tools that promoters of the day looked for. He took to the business quickly and established himself as a main event player in a short amount of time.

Wearing fur covered boots and a fur coat, he would stalk to the ring swinging a chain round his head, screaming at the top of his lungs his infamous chant "HUSS!" Possessing a head of wild black hair and a thick bushy beard, he looked like a viking warrior from ages past marching to war. With chain in hand he was the very picture of danger but the kind of danger you were drawn to.

Even now, 31 years after his death, I watch old videos of his matches on Youtube and find myself hypnotized by what I'm seeing. To someone living in today's age of wrestling, where all of its secrets are exposed and the drama playing out in the ring is regarded with a cynical eye (even by fans like me) I can't help but see Brody and long for some of that same reality to return.

It was during his time working for Fritz Von Erich in his WCCW promotion in Dallas, Texas, where Brody first began to show his talent for drawing the people in.

As was common for the time WCCW, or World Class Championship Wrestling, was centered around Fritz's sons. The Von Erich boys were clearly the stars of the promotion but Brody was the one man who could draw the people to the promotion's home arena with every bit of ease as they could. If the Von Erich's were the all American, pure hearted good guys then Bruiser Brody was the wild eyed rebel with a free spirit that people could not take their eyes away from.

It would be here that Brody would be matched against a man every bit as unique and violent as he was, a man with whom he would become synonymous: Abdullah the Butcher.

To describe the Bruiser vs Butcher matches as wrestling classics would be so far away from truth it would border on imbecilic at worst and naivete at best. Seeing these two standing across the ring from one another it would not be hard to imagine Brody at the head of a Viking army, leading his stalwart men into battle, axe in hand, against Abdullah and a horde of Moorish invaders. This was as close to Gladiatorial combat as the world was ever going to see and would never see again.

There were no rest holds, suplex's or headlock's, these were blood fueled fights. Brody and Abdullah would enter the ring and almost as soon as the bell rung would fall out of the ring as they grappled with one another, trading punches, raking each others eyes and biting one another's faces. It was not uncommon for foreign objects to come into play either. The use of weapons such as chairs, wooden planks as well as preferred weapons like Abdullah's trusty spike or Brody's chain. This would of course lead to a sometimes ungodly amount of blood being shed. Each man would cut the other's forehead open, covering their faces with blood, adding bloody horror to the nightmarish actions people were witnessing. These encounters would inevitably spill out into the crowd and the fans would move to avoid the danger of these two monsters fighting.

I feel that it's important to let my non-wrestling fan readers understand the importance of this seemingly inconsequential element of a wrestling match. In modern day wrestling, as I have said before, much of the business has been exposed. All of the tricks, terms and purposes have been laid bare for any fool with a computer to look up and include in their lexicon. The result has been one where the fans now feel like part of the show. This has lead to a lack of suspension of disbelief. Modern fans greet the prospect of wrestlers entering the crowd with joy and cheers.

As i said, it would be impossible for me to convince you of the reality of wrestling, but it would also be impossible for me to convince of the reality of Pennywise from Stephen King's IT? The audience has always known something was up, whether we wanted to admit it ourselves or not. The question was how much suspension of disbelief were we willing to put in? An analogy that has been used by long time wrestling trainer, Al Snow, was "If you saw your entire family sitting in a locked car and someone was pouring petrol on it about to light it, would you do something or just stand and watch the show?" No, you would believe they were in danger!

No such joviality or frivolity ever met Brody or Abdullah, people simply believed too much in the validity of these two men if they fought through the crowd.

When a Brody/Abdullah match inevitably spilled out to the crowd, everyone believed. As the two of them fought through the crowd, they were met with fear and terror. Hordes of amassed spectators would scatter and run for fear of injury from being caught up in the action or catching the wrathful eye of one or both men. With the exception of legendary Japanese wrestler, Minoru Suzuki, no such reaction even comes close in today's product.

After 31 years there are so many questions left unanswered and Brody's life, as short as it was, was too big to cover in one fans blog. Those reading this who are wrestling fans may be asking why I have not mentioned his extraordinary success in Japan, his notorious backstage problems with promoters, his devotion to his family or his murder. The simple answer is that, for the purposes of this piece they are not relevant.

The two questions that are relevant however are: What is the legacy of Bruiser Brody and what lessons can be learned from it?

There are many lessons that can be learned here. Perhaps Brody took things too far, perhaps he made people believe in him so much that he too believed more than was healthy. If there's one lesson that can be truly learned, from a fans perspective, its that too much information, too much exposure of an industry's inner workings can ultimately harm the enjoyment of what you are seeing. If the fans believe they're in on the action then there's nothing left to suspend, there are no more surprises and therefore your entertainment is watered down. If the business had more Brody's and fewer wrestlers trying to be liked instead of feared then maybe we could once again truly believe as they did once upon a time.

Brody's legacy, in my opinion, is one of true, unfiltered belief. When you watch those videos of him walking to the ring, of taking the fight to his opponent or standing tall and bloody in the squared circle, even the most hardy of wrestling critics must ask themselves if that man is in full control of his faculties? Seeing the Bruiser in action, even on tape, is like watching a typhoon, a force of nature in action that cannot be contained, controlled or reasoned with. It is because of this that he remains one of the few figures in wrestling that was, on some level, entirely believable. Whether you loved him or hated him, you believed that Bruiser Brody was real and even today, I would have paid to see him in action.

If I am to leave you today with any kind of summary of what I have just said then it must be in the words of Frank Goodish himself. No final word or statement could so perfectly summarize who and what he was in the ring than these words taken from an interview with The Wrestling Exchange.

"I believe in Violence. I believe it's the one thing that's understood universally"