the last book I ever read (David Shoemaker's The Squared Circle, excerpt seven)

from The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling by David Shoemaker:

Frank Goodish was a college football player at Iowa State and later at West Texas State, the latter of which churned out wrestlers in those days the way that gamma rays produced comic book superheroes: Tully Blanchard, Ted DiBiase, Manny Fernandez, Dory and Terry Funk, Stan Hansen, Dusty Rhodes, Tito Santana, and Barry Windham were all alums. (Maurice Cheeks and Georgia O’Keeffe went there, too, for the record.) Goodish had a cup of coffee with the Redskins and a brief tour in the CFL before he was discovered by Texas wrestling mogul (and fellow Texas college footballer) Fritz Von Erich. He had successful runs through a few of the regional territories until Vince McMahon Sr. brought him in and renamed him “Bruiser” Frank Brody. “Frank” soon went by the wayside. Bruiser Brody was a legend from the moment he came into existence. He was huge; he sported a feral black mane; he fought viciously. In the ring he seemed near lunatic, but in interviews he was shockingly coherent, his growl often bordering on eloquent. Which made him all the more frightening—like, wow, this guy has made a logical and empirically sound decision to dismember somebody.