On tomorrow's date in 1988, the wrestling world lost one of its most unique personalities. Bruiser Brody died before he was scheduled to wrestle Dan Spivey in Puerto Rico. He was stabbed to death by Jose "Invader" Gonzalez. If you believe the courts in Puerto Rico, it was in self-defense. If you don't, and most people who have intimate knowledge of the situation don't, it was murder. According to this account of the happenings by "Dirty" Dutch Mantell, the whole thing sounded real shady. So shady that Tony Atlas, who witnessed the entire thing, was in fear of his life to testify. It was rumored that other wrestlers were paid off for their silence. Most who were potential witnesses, though, did not get their subpoenas to testify until after the trial had begun, if not after the verdict was rendered.
Brody was no saint by all accounts. He was a guy whose gimmick wasn't so much a gimmick but an extension of his real life persona. He refused to do jobs and shot on people in the ring. He was a risk to fly off the handle with his short temper. He seemed to be a real asshole. However, being an asshole is not a capital offense. Rumor was that he was trying to usurp power in the WWC from Gonzalez and Carlos Colon, Sr. (father of Carlito and Primo, by the way). No one knows whether Colon was complicit in the murder, but the fact that Gonzalez got off mainly due to his and Colon's influence in the US territory makes him look really fucking guilty of conspiracy if you ask me. It seems like a lot of other people think so too, since most people refused to work in PR for years after, killing the local scene and destroying what was once a rich territory in the landscape of North American wrestling.
Be all that as it may, Bruiser Brody died for wrestling politics. Kinda puts everything that happened in the WWF/E this past decade into perspective, doesn't it? While there were a lot of fucked up things going on leading up to the stabbing, the fact remains that Brody was murdered, gangland style, in an event that would never happen today, not even in Puerto Rico, because wrestling doesn't carry that same oomph as it did even in 1988. It was a needless death, and it serves as a cautionary tale even now.
RIP Bruiser Brody - 22 years, and still not forgotten.
Photo Credit: Online Worldof Wrestling
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