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Skip to the six minute mark on this video and you begin to hear the mind behind the fearsome face of Bruiser Brody. In this rare interview he speaks eloquently against an idea that is often romanticized. The athlete who leaves "at the top of their game."
We often glorify the competitor who walks away in their prime. Before the inevitable physical decline that comes with age. They walk away with their dignity and legacy unscathed. But as Brody talks about in the video how much do these athletes give back to their sport? To their craft? And how can the game evolve without the athlete who sticks around past their physical prime?
As we've learned in pro wrestling it cant. The young wrestler has to work with a more experienced opponent or they will never evolve. If there are no veterans in the locker room, there is no learning. there is no growing for the young wrestler.
I often saw the aging wrestler on the under card as a fan and like the interviewer felt sorry for the veteran. Sorry to see them tarnishing their legacy. Now I see that veteran in another light. A more positive light. I wish there were more in our locker rooms and rings in the independent circuit.
When I had less than twenty matches to my name and was in my mid 20's I hoped to wrestle "Tiger" Treach Phillips Jr. He was a journeyman wrestler who still worked the Indy's in the late 90's. Residing in Oklahoma you'd see his name on cards there as well as Kansas, Texas and Missouri.
I had the chance to work Treach once for Dan Adams in Kansas and that experience taught me as much as the previous twenty matches combined. Treach probably contributed more to the wrestling business his last five years than he ever did in his "prime", helping a young trevor murdoch among others.
So when I read back in 2007 or so about Sam Houston doing a few bookings again in West Texas I smiled. I was grateful. For wrestling, for his opponents, for the promotion he worked for. For the locker room he was in. When I saw the clip of him I didn't focus on his extra pounds around the middle. I saw the way he doubled up his fists when he was ready to fight. In a way you never see anymore on the Indy scene. He still looked like a ring general.
A few years ago I got to wrestle "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan for IPW. Was he the same physical specimen he was when he was playing for the Atlanta Falcons? Or tearing up the ring against all the top stars of the 80's?
Of course not. But he was adding another chapter to the end of his career. And teaching all us who got to wrestle him about the craft of professional wrestling. All of us who interacted with him in the locker room got a bit of the wisdom he picked up years ago. Knowledge he got from Fritz, Watts, Akbar, McMahon.
And one more guy. The booker of the San Antonio territory. Where Duggan said he really began to develop and learn as a wrestler. Bruiser Brody. How fitting.
