And listen to the ovation for Brutus the Barber!
[narrator] Fan favourite, Brutus the Barber Beefcake,
helped define the golden age of the WWF
with his larger than life persona.
The blades are part of me!
Brutus is known for cuttin' and struttin'.
He was very popular, very charismatic.
But backstage, Brutus had to fight for respect due to a
lifelong friendship with the industry's biggest star.
Wherever Hulk Hogan goes,
Brutus the Barber Beefcake goes.
It's the number one Hulkamaniac ever.
Hulk took him under his wing like a little brother.
They were best friends.
So why would you not want to help somebody that
helped you so much?
Everything I was getting is because I worked my ass off.
While at the top of his career,
a devastating accident leaves Brutus shattered...
This was one of the most traumatizing moments
that I have ever witnessed.
His face is totally smashed.
And I'm telling everybody, "My face is falling off."
I never thought he'd recover.
He almost died.
Hulkster says, "You're gonna live, you son of a bitch.
You're gonna get better."
...Leading to a reversal in fortunes.
He had everything and then nothing.
And a falling out with the friend who had
carried him to the top.
Hogan is a class act, and if you are loyal to Terry,
Terry is loyal to you.
But don't ever betray him.
♪
In 1984, Vince McMahon's WWF was transforming
the wrestling business into pure spectacle.
And Ed Leslie, a young wrestler from Florida,
soon became one of the era's
most memorable characters.
I love Brutus... so do a whole lot of others.
The fans like to be entertained
and let me tell you something,
this Brutus character was entertaining
the hell out of them.
♪
I'm Brutus the Barber Beefcake,
WWE Hall of Famer.
The crazier I got, the wilder the things I did,
the people loved it, 'cause it's about
connecting with the people.
His wrestling wasn't even that great.
Please. [Laughing]
Hello. I'm Nasty Boy, Brian Knobbs,
one half of 'The Nasty Boys',
and I knew Brutus Barber Beefcake back in the 80s.
In our era, it was like rock star,
like the Rolling Stones or something.
That's one of the reasons I got in the business.
[Laughing]
Beefcake was a rock star, right along with
everybody on the WWF roster.
People would recognize you no matter where you went.
I'm B. Brian Blair and many of you know me as
one half of 'The Killer Bees.'
And I had so many matches with Brutus
the Barber Beefcake that I can't count them all.
Beefcake is a muscular guy, basically...
um... with a nice butt.
Beefcake! Beefcake!
Beefcake! Everybody, Beefcake!
That's why they call me the Beefcake,
'cause I had the beefcakes.
He's holding his beefcakes.
Definitely sizeable glutemus maximus.
God gave me one hell of a body,
I'm gonna show it off. I gotta say it, brothers,
I was the best looking thing
that ever walked through their doors,
that they had on TV.
Look at you, sex pistol over there.
Shut up.
Well, that's what my wife says.
She goes, "You're the best looking wrestler.
I don't care what anybody says."
You know watching all of this stuff,
like I full on bought it, all this stuff.
Like I'm such a wrestling fan.
Like this, this is not fake.
I started watching wrestling on Sunday mornings.
One morning, out comes this guy
and I just...
My eyes spun, like, "hubba hubba".
My name is Missy.
I'm the wife of Brutus the Barber Beefcake.
It was like tunnel vision.
Like, I am in love with this friggin' guy.
Who is he?
The first time I met Missy
in 1986, Boston Gardens.
She snuck in the backstage area,
and she come running over and yelling,
"I love you! I love you!"
I was like, a little taken back at that point going,
"Oh, my God, ----, this girl's beautiful."
Huge wrestling fan, internet dating.
You know, you meet guys online and,
"Oh, what do you like?" "Oh, I like wrestling."
So I was talking to this one guy.
I'm telling him, you know, my Brutus Beefcake story,
and he says, "Oh, Beefcake lives in Winchester."
I said, "Where? What? I'm in Quincy, hello!"
So I texted him and I said, "I want you to know that
I'm a huge Brutus Beefcake fan and it, it's been
a fantasy of mine to sleep with you.
And I just wanted to know if you thought that was
possible." The phone- ring ring ring!
[Clicking] Hello? Hello?
Yeah, yeah, you know, can we meet?
It was pretty ----ing exciting.
But I wanted it just to be, like a one and done.
Like, I didn't think, you know,
anything was gonna happen from that.
[Laughing] He kept calling.
When we started dating, he'd say, "I'm your friend.
I'm, I'm your best friend." And I used to say,
"I don't want a best friend.
I just want somebody to love me."
And then fast forward, I realized...
a friend is the best thing that you can have.
If Brutus called you a friend, it's huge.
Huge.
The base of all of his goodness comes from there.
It's a friendship from his childhood in Tampa, Florida,
that leads Ed Leslie into wrestling.
While Ed will become Brutus Beefcake,
his childhood friend Terry Bollea will
transform into the wrestling icon, Hulk Hogan.
Me and Huckster, we grew up eight blocks apart.
We were all in the same circles, same high schools.
He was in a rock and roll band,
playing bass guitar. You know,
I'd see him and his buddies all at the beach.
They called it 'Mad Beach.'
I was just a young punk kid hanging around.
I'm the kid that wouldn't quit, and I always came back,
I always showed up. They couldn't get rid of me.
One day, Hogan says, "Guys, I'm gonna try to
break in the wrestling business."
That was his deal.
He was a rock and roller and wanted to be a wrestler.
So the phone rings, "Hey kid.
Wanna be a wrestler?"
So we start working out twice a day,
six days a week in our little homemade gym.
And after like 12, 14 months,
we were both monsters.
Terry gets the opportunity to train professionally
with the legendary Hiro Matsuda,
and then shares what he learns with Ed.
Terry was getting stretched in the dungeon and
it was very, very difficult.
You'd fight for your life and survive,
or you'd run out without your clothes.
Whereas beefcake was just basically tossed
straight from the street to the ring.
He was very fortunate that he had a great friend
like Hulk Hogan, who nurtured him and
did everything he could to put him in the ring
with the right talent to get him to first base.
Well, a lot of people don't know me because
I'm relatively new to the business.
I've just come into the scene, you know, recently.
Terry helps Ed break into the industry by making him
his tag team partner.
Living together out of a van in Pensacola,
the two are inseparable.
Whatever Hulk was doing, Brutus was right there,
and Brutus was always just his ride or die.
We were friends.
We were a bonded, friends to the end.
People would always say, "You must be brothers."
And we finally said, "I think it's time just to say,
'Okay, yeah, we're brothers'."
And go with it. Our gimmick was,
we were bigger and stronger and
better looking than everybody.
The Hulk and his brother, Eddie Boulder.
That's what we did, 'The Boulder Brothers' and
a bunch of different names where we were brothers.
Dizzy Hogan, the brother of Hulk Hogan.
And Terry Funk.
He named me Dizzy,
he's just like, "You're Dizzy."
Making a lot of money and everything, you know?
[Chuckles] Kinda like a...
a male valley girl, if you will.
Play with it a little bit, you know...
count it once in a while.
-Lot of fun. -Dizzy. Dizzy Hogan.
While Terry was going off to stardom
he always had Brutus right behind him.
The incredible...
After lighting up the territories,
Hulk makes the jump to the WWF and soon becomes
the face of Vince McMahon's empire.
Hogan was over in WWF
from the minute he got there.
I mean... the immortal Hulk Hogan.
I mean, he goes down in history probably having
the biggest career in wrestling, ever.
Struggling to gain traction as Dizzy Hogan,
Ed gets the opportunity of a lifetime to step into a new
gimmick conceived by Vince's wife, Linda.
Linda has this Beefcake name in her head.
Hulk, he says, "What about Brutus?
Like Brutus in Popeye?
What about Brutus Beefcake?" And I'm sitting there
thinking to myself, "Oh my God.
Here's my chance to wrestle in Madison Square Gardens,
and my name is gonna be Brutus Beefcake."
I couldn't even say it without giggling and
laughing, and...
I was gonna be Brutus Beefcake,
the Chippendale.
So I came out with spandex, I had a bow tie with
rhinestones, I dropped about 25 pounds,
dyed my hair black and cut it real short,
and walked in to Vince's office in this outfit,
and Vince nearly fell out of his chair and said,
"Oh my God, how can this not make money?"
Brutus Beefcake.
Beefcake was a very colourful guy,
but he was an average worker.
What's he gonna do? Off the rope. Oh!
When they put Brutus with Greg Valentine,
who's one of the premier technical wrestlers
ever in this business-
solid, believable, hardcore-
it just really helped Beefcake learn how to work.
Oh, look at that move by Beefcake.
Beefer, to his credit, adapted very, very well.
He was really finally understanding
the art of the business.
He was green, but he was good.
I could see the potential.
I'm Greg "The Hammer" Valentine,
WWE Hall of Famer.
I was Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake's
tag team partner.
Not only did we draw money, but we had a lot of fans
that cheered the bad guys, the heels.
And they, they loved us.
Brutus was a chick magnet.
I mean, I could get girls too,
but we're talking about Brutus.
Boston is our town, Hammer.
He talks too much sometimes.
-The Fabulous Moolah. -Look at that face.
Look at the face on her!
He gets on a whim, and I go, "Shut up, man."
[Laughing] No but, we were a
perfect combination back then.
Match made in dream team heaven.
Our matches were, were incredible.
The people went nuts over them.
That was the point where we knew like...
we made it, brother.
Tag Team Champions.
After almost 3 years of success as the Dream Team,
the decision is made to split the pair and for Brutus to
become a colourful new character.
They hand me this white cosmetology jacket,
and they give me a pair of scissors and say,
"Now you're The Barber!"
What, what, what do you mean...
I'm The Barber?
Don't you think you maybe should 'a
give me a little warning?
First thing I do is go in the dressing room and
just start breaking everything I could find.
Finally they, somebody went and got,
found Hulk, said, "You better go get,
find Beefcake, 'cause he lost it.
He's s tearing the place up."
So he comes in, "What's going on?"
And I said, "What's going on?
This is what's going on. I quit!
This is bullshit!"
What does a barber do in wrestling?
He says to me, "What if you use the sleeper hold
and put your opponents asleep?
You get the scissors and you
cut off some of their hair."
Look it, he's got a pair of scissors.
The guy thinks he's a barber now.
Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake he wants to be known as.
[Laughing]
I was struttin' all over the ring.
We're gonna talk about struttin' and cuttin' here.
And then cut.
Remember, it's not whether you win or lose,
but how you cut the hair.
You could see that Eddie had matured,
and he was taking strides that made Brutus Beefcake
into one of the premiere WWF characters.
What are you gonna do when The Barber and
Hulkamania run wild on you?
Definitely didn't hurt to be Hulk's friend,
and definitely Hulkster helped Brutus out big time.
Any time they mention Brutus Beefcake
they always mention, "Oh, well,
he's Hulk Hogan's best friend."
It can help and it can hurt you because
jealousy of the friendship.
That's all, that's all it is...
Jealousy.
I'm Missy Hyatt the First Lady of wrestling.
Or, I like to be called the Walking Riot,
and I'm really good friends with
Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake.
Whether he was Hogan's best friend,
he wouldn't have been in WWE for as long as he was.
Unless you draw money for Vince,
you're not gonna be there.
People could think whatever they want,
it didn't matter, I didn't care.
-And a Slingshot! -Oh!
I was good at what I did. I was at the top of my game.
It's all over!
We had WrestleMania in March,
beat Mr. Perfect, and then the next step
was SummerSlam, take the belt, boom,
and get to where I was supposed to be.
But then Brutus was in
a catastrophic accident.
I can picture this like it was yesterday...
It was living a nightmare.
Nobody knew whether Brutus was gonna live
or whether Brutus was gonna die.
Here we are.
Holy cow, we're in Lutz, Florida,
at the lake house,
scene of the crime where Brutus- ha-
nearly lost his life, man.
This was a heck of a party house, guys.
There was no other docks, there was not as
many houses and stuff as there is.
[Cheering]
By 1990, Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake is
one of the most popular stars of the WWF.
July 4th, and I had one day off.
[Chuckling] So, I'm gonna party
like it's the end of the world.
We're in the boat, we're gonna have a band
set up later on the outside in the back, and,
and we're gonna party all night.
Mike Hannis, who's a friend of Beefcake's,
he had a really fast ski boat and he liked to
take people parasailing around the lake.
Everybody was having a great time.
We had just been parasailing for hours.
Several people had had near catastrophes.
So, we're actually thanking our lucky stars that nobody's
hurt doing the parasailing today,
and we're done.
And then Brian Blair, The Killer Bee,
and his friends, a couple of people,
came roaring in and they wanted to parasail.
I wasn't about to go up there because it didn't
look like the safest thing in the world to me.
But a friend of mine, Tracy,
wanted to go up in the parasail.
Mike, he's like, "No, no, we're, we're done."
And they wouldn't relent. Mike finally just,
he's pissed, he told us, "Alright, alright."
But at that time, there's no wind to
fluff the parachute up.
Beefcake stood in the water above his waist.
Myself and another guy named Paul was
holding up the parasail.
Eddie's responsibility as a rope man is to communicate
with the person about to take off in the parasail,
and he also has to communicate
with the boat driver.
So I'm out in the shallows here
trying to get the people set up,
up there on the grass.
We got everybody ready to go.
Mike just said, "---- it, I'm going."
And just took off.
Eddie drops his hand
and as he does, he turns in,
and so he's right in Tracy's line of fire.
Right in her flight path.
She's coming right to the back of my head.
It's happening so fast, nobody can even yell,
"Look out! Move!"
Anything.
As she sees that she's not getting lift,
she buckles her knees up to try to clear Eddie's face.
And I turn around just in time to get her knees
right in the face. Boom.
It hits me so hard that it pulls me out of the water,
and I do a, what's called a 'gainer',
where your feet go over your head first
and then come back down.
And by the grace of God, I wasn't knocked out.
And I'm down, like,
trying to get my shit together.
Can't see a thing, can't breathe...
and nobody has any clue that
I've been mortally injured.
I ran as quick as I could, grabbed him from the water.
Everything was shattered from the nose,
the cheekbones, his whole upper jaw
was sitting on top of his bottom jaw.
I force my hand in my mouth.
I lift my palate up, saying, "My face is falling off!"
[Mumbling]
He couldn't speak. He tried to speak,
but it was only gurgles coming up from his throat.
While we were waiting for the ambulance to drive,
I just kept Eddie up and conscious.
Trying to keep him from falling asleep.
I didn't know anybody could be hurt that bad
and still, and still be alive.
They rolled me into the emergency room,
and they take my blood pressure, realized it's like,
200 over 100 or something.
Next thing you know, they're yelling,
"Code blue! Code red! Code purple!"
And finally x-ray my head and realize
that my face is gone,
and they have no idea what to do.
It's the 4th of July, and the phone rang.
So the guy on the phone said, "It's Brutus Beefcake.
He is severely injured, and they need your help
immediately." I said, "Brutus, Beefcake?
Never heard this name." And then my son yelled,
"Dad, this is Hulk Hogan's partner!"
My name is Mutaz Habal,
and I am a plastic surgeon.
By the time I arrived,
I remember I asked because he was so big,
"How can somebody smash him like this?"
I said, "Well, Doc, please just ----ing kill me,
'cause I'm done.
I can't take it another minute.
The pain is unbearable."
He was totally fractured.
Of course, the first thing we want to determine
is that he had a good airway.
Because if a person cannot breathe well,
or there is something obstructing the airway,
of course they can pass.
But I was more worried about that he may lose vision.
Working over the course of 16 hours,
Dr. Habal and his team of specialists
reconstruct Brutus' entire face.
It was like building a house.
And I really always like to build the house
from the stable area to the unstable.
A lot of his skull was stable,
so I started from the top.
They cut me from ear to ear,
across the top of my head,
peel my face down
and my scalp back,
and then using strips of titanium
he's gonna rebuild my skull.
The most important thing in the face is
where the eyes go, how far they are.
Put the eyes in position,
put the nose where he is, and put the upper teeth,
the lower teeth, and then we sew the eyelid together so
the person would not be able to see for 24 hours at least.
After the surgery, they took me to ICU to,
in a drug induced coma, basically,
for me to wait for a couple of days to see
what happened if I kept on living.
[Laughing]
I can't see, I can't speak.
Everything I had worked 20 years
for was gone,
and wasn't coming back.
Following surgery to repair Brutus Beefcake's
shattered face, he is put into
a medically induced coma.
With no guarantees for his survival,
doctors contact the one person Brutus
can depend on.
They said, "We need somebody there to talk to him.
Because if he, if he wakes up and he panics,
we need to have a familiar voice."
Both of my parents had died within two years.
I was going through a horrible divorce.
I had brothers and sisters and family, but...
I mean, I've been gone for 15, 20 years
on the road, so...
the only person that I was really close to...
was Hulk.
Concerned about his best friend,
Hulk Hogan leaves his pregnant wife in California
to be at Brutus' bedside when he wakes up.
They said, "Look, we bring him out of this
drug induced coma, we have no idea
what's gonna happen. Is he gonna freak out?"
Hulk, he says,
"Don't worry about it, Brutus.
I'm gonna take you home to California.
We're gonna get you better.
I don't care what the doctors say,
you're gonna live."
The only luck thing about for him,
is the impact was right in the middle of his face
between the eyes.
If it was on the right or on the left,
he would have lost vision in one of those eyes.
Surviving is a miracle.
To regain his vision is, is also a miracle.
Terry was there, you know, talking to him.
They're walking down the hallway and
Brutus' eyeball fell out.
Like, boop! Popped out of the socket.
And Hulk's looking at my eyeball popped out, he says,
"Oh, my God, Doc, we gotta get him back."
Eddie's recovery had to be extremely difficult
because he had to learn to speak again.
He ate liquid for so long because,
think about it, you can't chew food.
This is a gruelling, gruelling comeback.
I know he had a lot of prayer warriors out there.
He had a lot of people pulling for him.
Sherri!
Look at the way she's dressed.
Sherri Martel. Sherri Martel and I were friends.
♪
So Sherri comes to see me,
and the guys are like, "You can't react."
They were trying to prepare her- [Laughing]
"When you see him you can't react, because if you do,
you might, you might totally freak him out."
The door opens.
Sherri has like this big stuffed animal and cards
and stuff, takes one look at me and goes-
[Screaming] "Ah!" [Laughing]
Like she just saw a ----ing ghost or something,
like screams. First thing they do is like, grab her,
throw her back out of the room like, "You...
you tryin' to kill the poor guy."
And she's out in the hallway screaming and crying,
going, "Oh my God! Oh my God"!
[Laughing]
I was almost laughing, I was like,
"That was the funniest shit ever.
That was real ----in' funny shit."
It set the tempo kind of for me, you know?
It's like I can't feel sorry for myself.
Sometimes you don't get the cards you want,
but you gotta play 'em anyway.
The only thing I had hoped for was to at least be
able to recover so I could do something.
You know, and nobody expected me to
ever really come back to wrestling.
[Exhaling sharply] I remember he,
he pulled up at my house and
I looked at him and I go, "Oh my God."
I just felt so bad for him.
As soon as I was able to get back in the gym
and start working out,
my body responded instantly.
It was like magic.
I'm with Hulk, we're in California, training,
and getting better and getting better.
The doc says, "You just, you can't wrestle."
And I had no intention of wanting to get in,
into the ring and die.
With recovery costs mounting,
Hulk ensures that Brutus doesn't go broke.
Doing the movies...
you know, I was looking for a new career.
Hoping for something to come out of this.
I wouldn't look behind me for a million bucks.
I hate to say he was carrying Hogan's bag,
that's not right.
You know, first of all,
you have a lot of jealousy here.
A lot of, probably a lot of people glad he got his
head knocked off, and that's bullshit.
People look at him like, "Oh, Beefcake,
all he does is carry Hogan's bag." Or,
"He carries Hogan's drugs so if he gets caught
it, you know, it'll go on to Brutus."
He had his gimmicks
in his bag and, you know, money.
He trusted me with his money and everything else.
Ladies and gentlemen!
Eager to get back into wrestling,
Vince gives Brutus his own regular interview segment
called 'The Barbershop.'
It's Barbershop time, Brian.
This is what you've been waiting for.
[Cheering]
He doesn't look different.
You are the ones who's responsible for bringing
Brutus "The Barber" back to the WWF!
The Barbershop was fantastic.
Welcome to The Barbershop, ladies and gentlemen.
The thing you can't buy is heart!
But the Snake is still standing.
No! Oh my God!
It could 'a went on and on and on...
but The Barbershop was destroyed by Sid
for WrestleMania eight.
That's the way they do things.
At WWE, they created it, they destroy it.
Come on, Hogan! You're a coward!
With The Barbershop having run its course,
Brutus is taken off WWF television
as Hulk takes a hiatus from wrestling
due to the steroid scandal that
engulfs the business.
They were counting on me
to deliver Hulk to them too,
to be prosecuted, and Vince, too.
They thought I was gonna be their golden goose.
Didn't happen.
I said, "No, no, no, none of this shit ever happened.
I don't know what anybody's talking about."
To help save his ass and
Vince McMahon's ass too.
Returning to the WWF in 1993,
Hulk Hogan is reunited with Brutus Beefcake
as his new tag team partner.
Beefcake headed a match at WrestleMania tagging with
Hogan against Ted DiBiase and IRS Mike Rotundo.
It was another gift from Hogan.
Big kick, Irish Whip. Far side.
With the knee right to the face.
The idea was, let me see how I feel in the ring.
Do I feel like I can do this every day?
'Cause it felt good.
Brutus' comeback is short lived as
he's soon dropped by the WWF and
returns to the independent circuit.
It's not until Hulk signs a massive contract and
joined WCW that Brutus gets another opportunity
to revive his struggling career.
He came with Hulk Hogan.
He was what I refer to as the 'Hulk Hogan tax'.
Hulk didn't demand anything.
But we had an understanding.
[Laughing]
That if he wanted something bad enough,
I had to pay for it. [Laughing]
I'm Eric Bischoff, and even though I'm here to talk about
Brutus the ----ing Barber Beefcake,
I'm happy to be here.
Everybody in that locker room knew that the only reason
Ed Leslie was in that locker room
was because of Hulk Hogan.
In 1994, Ed Leslie once again follows
his friend Hulk Hogan, this time to WCW.
With the Brutus Beefcake name owned by the WWF,
Ed cycles through a number of different characters in WCW.
Butcher! The man with no name!
Zodiac!
The Booty Man coming out here.
I was able to become a character.
I was able to do it with 4 or 5 different gimmicks.
In my mind, that's an amazing feat.
It's like being a, a good actor, like Mel Gibson.
Brutus thinks he's as good as Mel Gibson as an actor?
[Laughing]
That made me laugh there.
That's a good one.
It's the Booty Man!
I mean, all them other gimmicks
didn't get over at all.
Brutus pretty much conducted himself professionally
while he was in WCW, for the most part.
I think Brutus was there for the party.
I'll be honest with you.
Yeah, he was a partier. He was a drinker.
And I've been on the back of his motorcycle
when we've had more than a couple too many,
but I trust him with my life.
The day I got fired from WCW, I called him.
He actually saved my life because
I was getting ready to jump out the window
and he talked me off the ledge.
Brutus was a saviour. Brutus was a saviour.
Why do you have to humiliate somebody and
give them all these stupid gimmicks?
Brutus was treated like shit at WCW.
After the Booty Man and the Butcher and the
Man with No Name, Eric Bischoff, basically saying,
"We can't repackage Beefcake anymore."
Oh, okay, here's what I'm gonna do.
I went home, I went to Florida.
I spent 2, 3 months
growing my hair really long,
dropping my body fat content to 5%.
45 years old and shredded to the bone.
He looked like...
a god, he looked like something
from Grecian times.
He was just sexy, sexy, sexy... sexy.
I'm shvitzing over here.
Flew to Atlanta, went to CNN Towers,
home of WCW. Hulk says,
"I gotta introduce you to my new disciple."
And oohs and ahs.
Who's this in the ring?
And then he says, "Oh, did I mention that
that's Brutus Beefcake?"
So I stuck it right up all their asses, boom!
Big hard bam right up the ass with that one.
How about that?
Despite his radical transformation,
Brutus fizzles out of WCW,
but bigger problems await.
He had a money manager that stole all the money and
went to, like, Barbados or something.
Stole a lot of Hulk's too.
You're a millionaire one day and the next day
you're selling your house.
I poured everything I had
into this home
where I planned on living my life out, and now...
had to sell it. So now my,
now ex-wife takes my daughter,
moves back to Boston where her parents live.
Brutus makes the
To provide for his family,
difficult choice to move to Boston,
taking a job as a toll collector
for the Metro Boston Transit Authority.
And it was brutal to have to live in Boston for
12 years in that cold, miserable place.
He was in a bad marriage living in an attic,
worked nights with rats running across his feet.
That was the hardest thing I've ever had to do in
my life, but I was doing it for my daughter.
This particular time, instead of Aspirin
I used to have these...
called BC Powder.
I don't know if you've evernheard of it.
You just dumped the powder in your mouth,
and you absorb it real fast. One of my BC Powder
little packets, fell out on the floor.
I did my shift, packed up, left.
Lady came in,
saw this little, tiny thing on, down on the floor,
picked it up...
when she tried to open it, the powder just went poof.
And she started screaming,
"Anthrax! Anthrax"!
And there was that big anthrax thing.
It was like, you know, it was like COVID, you know?
And they shut the train station down.
You want the truth or do you want me to lie?
It wasn't anthrax.
It was cocaine. [Chuckling]
If anybody falls on hard times,
anybody who's got a problem with drugs and addiction,
they make those kind of stupid mistakes.
Unfortunately, this one scared the hell
out of a lot of people.
It's Aspirin in a little, like, a little packet.
Yeah. Oh, 100%.
But why wasn't he arrested?
He wasn't arrested.
It was a big embarrassment.
They made him go to rehab.
Eventually, when I went back for my review,
they fired me. They let me go.
Which I was extremely happy about.
Out of a job and with his marriage ending,
Brutus is forced to reckon with the toll wrestling
has taken on his body and his life.
When you're a wrestler on the road 350 days
out of the year, your body is beat to shit.
Just to get in the ring,
nine out of ten guys
had to take something for the pain.
You take a pill, you have a little drink...
it's very habit forming.
I can't... do these pills
and I can't do this anymore 'cause it's,
it's, it's gonna take my life.
And Missy took me in and gave me a home
and a place to live.
And she was there at a time
that could've went either way.
His friends, or, "friends",
would give him pills and drag him around
to bars and say, "We got Brutus Beefcake!"
Brutus is not a loser like that,
but he had a habit.
He had a ----ed up life,
and he was numbing himself.
We have weeded out
all of the assholes.
All of that is gone.
Use the force!
I had never played with it though 'cause
I'm too afraid I'm gonna break it.
Watch... shoop!
Missy Beefcake. Okay.
I don't even know how he proposed to me.
He would always say, "I want to marry you.
You're the love of my life.
Nobody's ever done the things for me that you've done."
-Wow! -How exciting.
Go ahead, Daddy. Floor it.
Floor it, Daddy! Woo!
[Fireworks popping & crackling]
Happy 4th of July.
[Fireworks popping & crackling]
Cutie pie. Look how happy you are!
[Fireworks popping & crackling]
She's an amazing woman.
She's beautiful, she's smart, she's intelligent,
she knows what she wants.
And I love that about her.
I'm so happy that he found someone,
that just tickles me to death.
Brutus returns to the wrestling business in 2008,
this time with Missy by his side.
We did the 'Hogan and Friends' thing.
That was the first time that I met Hogan.
But Brian Knobbs was right there to tell me,
"You're not in the fold until Hogan
says you're in the fold."
I was working hard and wanting to get back to
Florida all those, you know, those years I was there,
I want to go back to Florida.
We visited with Terry,
and everything was great.
We had a good time, we went out one night.
Terry was singing my praises, telling Brutus how wonderful
I was and how he was so happy for Brutus.
And then we said goodnight, and then the next day
we went over to Terry's house,
and it was like someone flipped a switch,
and he was really cold.
And I remember thinking...
something happened, something's changed.
I don't know what set him off, what happened.
Brutus Beefcake...
him and I had a falling out.
It's got a lot to do with the lady he's married to.
Um... no comment.
Hulk is a very great guy and a very good friend,
and, you know, I can't see him, you know,
being mad at ya unless you did something.
I don't pry into people's business too much, but,
you know, Terry said, I mean, "I had to write him off."
His exact words.
"I had to write Beefer off, and he's...
too much." I think Beefcake took advantage of Terry.
And, you know, you can only have that
happen so many times.
You can forgive so much, and then you've got to move on.
No. No, not, not in the beginning.
Not until they realized that I was a take no shit,
Brutus isn't going out working for $300,
not happening.
Then I became, like, the threat.
"Oh, she's difficult."
I feel bad for Missy 'cause she's been
so misunderstood by so many people.
I have witnessed the monster,
that jealousy is so horrible,
because she's so beautiful, she's so loving,
she's so nice that people hate her guts.
It's hard to have a relationship with someone
year after year, 365,
you're partying, you're hanging...
every day the phone rang.
Two, three, four times. They, they were close.
And I know that he misses him.
They are...
not talking.
Alright, so we're doing a poster,
you gotta put a fist up and make a mean look on
your face, 'cause you take a couple of pictures.
Alright? Okay? Come on.
-Awesome! -Alright cool.
-There you go. -Hey, thanks so much.
-You're welcome. -Appreciate ya.
He is doing wonderful.
People are always happy to see him.
The fans, they come out,
they love Brutus so much and
Brutus makes everybody feel like he's known them
for so long when he's telling his story,
like he's known you forever.
Yes?
They want to shoot us together.
-Hey. -[Laughing]
He went through a horrible accident,
and today he's back 100%.
That's just a lesson to you in how strong Brutus is.
So, God bless him.
Valentine, Beefcake.
He was elevated because of the company that he kept.
But wrestling's all politics.
You gotta have talent to stay there.
And there's a lot of jealous people
in the wrestling industry. I'm happy for every dime,
every match that Brutus ever had.
Despite years of strained relations,
Hulk Hogan comes through for his friend one more time
when he inducts Brutus into the
WWE Hall of Fame in 2019.
Please welcome the immortal,
Hulk Hogan!
[Cheering]
Brutus went through some really tough times.
I was there when he had a terrible
parasailing accident, but he came back,
and he made Brutus Beefcake larger than life.
[Applauding]
-What you gonna do? -"What you gonna do?"
...when Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake
has a haircut just for you?
So please welcome Brutus "The Barber" Beefcake
to the 2019 Hall of Fame, brother!
[Cheering]
They did you really good.
That's the last time you ever saw Hulk Hogan.
That's it.
This is the last time you guys saw each other.
♪
Hulk and I were best friends and
have been friends... for years.
We could be friends again
at the snap of a finger.
How would I know that, a, the guy
in the front row heckling all the
wrestlers at The Armory in Tampa
would become my best friend?
You all know him as Hulk Hogan.
-[Applauding] -I love you, brother.
Thanks for all the good times and
the good times to come.
[Exhaling sharply] Yeah.
That's what my ambition is, to,
to hopefully be able to shake hands and,
and look him in the eye and say, you know,
"Thanks buddy, for being my friend, and...
and all that we've gone through in our lives and,
you know, I, I love ya." Boom.
But like I said before, you get dealt your cards
you gotta play 'em.
And I'm perfectly,
super duper happy
the way it turned out.
That I got my Missy,
my soulmate,
to be able to spend my, you know, my life with.