You got to see him around Christmas, on holidays when he would take off." "The way the guy looked, he had a look, much like Brute Bernard, much like Abdullah, in a different way, but had that scary persona about him," said Gary Hart, who managed him as the Student, and thought his teaching job kept his act from wearing thin. "My first summer wrestling, I made $22,000." Bruno Sammartino scouted him in Detroit, and brought him to Pittsburgh and the A generation of fans who knew him only from his guttural grunts would be surprised to learn he did his own promo work in Pittsburgh. "I made $4,300 a year teaching when I first started," Myers recalled in a 2004 interview. Steele's shift to the ranks of professional wrestling was financially motivated. "It was an old church there, in the basement, we had the whole basement to ourselves. "There was Jim 'The Brute' Bernard, George Steele - Jim Myers then - George Cannon, myself, Tony Parisi, a couple of others," Brito recalled.
The disguise helped him hide his real identity of Jim Myers, local schoolteacher and coach, while he worked out with Gino Brito and other wrestlers. He started as the masked Student in the Detroit area around 1962. When Steele first entered pro wrestling, no one knew what he looked like. Knee problems prevented his days as a Spartan on the gridiron at Michigan State University from taking off, so he turned to teaching and coaching football and wrestling at Madison High School in Madison Heights, Michigan - and he'd eventually end up in the Michigan High School Coaches Hall of Fame and the Michigan High School Football Coaches Hall of Fame. He also excelled at baseball, basketball and track.
Myers was born Apin Detroit, Michigan, and was a good amateur wrestler and football player growing up in Madison Heights, Michigan.
What is surprising to a lot of people is to learn the true story of Jim Myers, the man who became "The Animal." Word circulated quickly earlier this week that he had been moved to hospice care and did not have much time left. The passing today of George "The Animal" Steele at age 79 did not come as a surprise.
0 kommentar(er)
