Bruiser Brody
one of my favs
Frank Donald Goodish - Goodish was an All-State football and basketball player at Warren High School, Michigan, and played football at West Texas A&M University (then known as West Texas State) and with the Washington Commanders in the NFL
6-8 #283
I'm a huge Brody mark.
And I arrived late to the game when it came to appreciating his skill set.
I started watching the WWWF soon after he left that territory. At that point he was on steroids (which he later admitted) and weighed about 325lbs. Between the steroids and the body building, he was one of the strongest men in the sport.
He later got off the roids and his weight came down to about 285lbs.
But I could only follow him in the mags until he showed up on Georgia Championship Wrestling for a brief visit to that territory. And what I saw was just amazing. Here was a guy, probably 6'6", in the 300lb range who could leapfrog another wrestler. And he could deliver a perfect drop-kick.
He had very little wrestling ability, but the man was incredibly agile for his size. Think of the "anti-Hulk Hogan".
If his combination of strength and agility wasn't enough to wow the average fan, then his level of aggression did. I forget how many years in a row one of the more prominent wrestling mags made Brody the "Brawler of the Year". So many of his matches ended in bloodshed.
Brody had an aura that you do not find with one single wrestler today. Some of it came from his overall ability. But a lot of it came from his "reputation". He was like Andre and Ernie Ladd in that he never stayed in a territory for too long. And he wrestled in Japan for several weeks a year. The result was that he never got stale like what you have with today's group of wrestlers in the WWE.
Just watch the beginning of his match vs. Dick Murdock in Japan in '85...
Fans don't "clear out" for wrestlers today... not like they did with Brody.
Brody did not get along with many promoters. He felt they were taking advantage of wrestlers and they probably were. But promoters bit their lip and still did what they could to get Brody to come to their territories because he was a huge draw. The guy could sell tickets. And he could work as a face or heel.
Unfortunately it was his refusal to put a guy over (Danny Spivey) that may have contributed to him being stabbed by a promoter in Puerto Rico.
Mentioning Tony Atlas earlier, it was Atlas who lifted Brody into the ambulance, because the ambulance crew couldn't do it. It proved too little, too late and Brody bled out and passed way in 1987.
