The Magnificent Seven: Wrestling’s Top 7 Real Life Badasses

Wrestling is tough. Tough enough that, for as much as I love the form, I’ve never seriously considered setting foot in the ring. Ignorant cynics call wrestling fake. Yes, the outcomes are predetermined and maneuvers are executed in the interest of protecting safety rather than actually inflicting harm. Just the same, there’s only so much care you can apply in superplexing a 250-pound man off the top rope; only so soft you can deliver a realistic-looking punch, not to mention that the cardiovascular conditioning required to execute a match at even a moderate pace is well beyond that of the average human being.

This list is an exploration of wrestling’s real-life badasses—tough guys, legitimately skilled fighters, people who have proven their bad assery backstage or in shoot fight environments. All that said, I’m going to acknowledge up front the most obvious limitation of this list: I don’t’ have the first-hand knowledge to back it up. This list is rooted in what I have been able to observe from public fights and from anecdotes shared in documentaries and memoirs. While the format of ranking people is a fundamental piece of this column, I have to admit that the science is far from exact on this one, and you may enjoy this more as a “list” than as a “ranking.” All that said, in this case more than most any other, I welcome the commenters to chime in to share their stories of pro wrestling’s bad asses.

One additional note: in order to diversify the list, I opted to include only one crossover wrestling-MMA star. This decision is arbitrary, but I made it in the interest of diversifying who made the list and why—hence the exclusion of several guys who probably should have earned top spots, like Ken Shamrock and Dan Severn. Without further ado, I present wrestling’s top seven real-life badasses.

#7. Big Van Vader

The story has been repeated enough times, by enough sources that I accept it at face value: in the gimmicked, fixed world of professional wrestling, guys still legitimately feared the prospect of being paired with Vader for an in-ring encounter to the point that one jobber up and quit when he saw that he was to face Vader that night. The details of that last bit are apocryphal but the fact remains that Vader was stiff, powerful, and menacing enough that he really did make other men afraid of him. If anything, he reinforced this image of himself in an iconic bit of in-ring sadism in which he beat Mick Foley’s ear off his head (OK, so getting his head trapped between surprisingly tight ring ropes really incited the injury, but Vader’s clubbing blows finished the job). What’s more, he more than held his own in a stiff Japanese scene where stiff work was the norm, and established himself as an elite gaijin. His work in Japan included a famous incident in which he battled Stan Hansen and accidentally got his eyeball knocked loose from his head—and he kept going.

Some folks question Vader’s tough guy credentials based on Paul Orndorff allegedly whooping him in a backstage fight. Indeed, Orndorff has perpetuated this story, though, with all due respect to Mr. Wonderful, I tend to believe the account of the incident that Vader has shared in shoot interviews—that WCW’s chaotic management had double-booked him, Orndorff acted in a managerial role and tried to coral Vader, the two exchanged words and when it got physical, Vader didn’t want to fight back for fear that he’d lose his job if he hurt someone in management. Maybe Orndorff would have won the fight anyway, but it sounds to me more like a fight that didn’t really happen.

#6. Bart Gunn

Bart Gunn may have emerged as one of wrestling’s most surprising and unlikely shoot tough guys when he shocked the WWF in winning its one and only shoot fighting tournament, Brawl for All. He beat Bob Holly by judge’s decision, and went on to knock out The Godfather and Bradshaw. Perhaps most notably of all, in the second round he KOed Steve Williams—the man who the tournament was purportedly all but built for, with the intention of getting him over in a unique fashion to set him up for a main event run.

Sure, Gunn’s record was tarnished a bit when the WWF had its Brawl for All champion progress to face Butter Bean at WrestleMania the following spring, and the legit heavyweight boxer KOed him in short order. Just the same, Gunn’s accomplishment of thumping four of his locker room compadres to win the tournament is nothing to sneeze at, and the fact that he had the gumption to get in the ring with the bigger, better-trained Butter Bean on a national stage spoke to his testicular fortitude as well.

#5. Mick Foley

Vader and Bart Gunn made the cut for this list largely based on the level of offense they could deliver in real life. For Mick Foley, the inclusion has a lot more to do with the level of abuse he could take.

Foley made a career out of taking sick bumps fro, most iconically, taking two throws off the top of the Hell in a Cell cage, getting his ear ripped off in a match with Vader, and taking a brutal steel chair beating from The Rock at Royal Rumble1999. All of that is in addition to subjecting himself to the physical punishment of routinely dropping an elbow on opponents off the apron and to the arena floor.

There was a time at which Ric Flair dismissed Mick Foley as a glorified stuntman. The two seem to have patched up their differences, and I hope that Flair and those who thought like him have come to understand a different perspective. While Foley may not have been wrestling’s greatest technician or athlete, his willingness to sacrifice his well being for the entertainment of the crowd justifiably made him a hardcore icon, and proved him as one of the toughest men in wrestling history.

#4. Bruiser Brody

As a fledgling fan reading Apter mags and knock off publications, one of my most perpelexing stories I remember reading was about a match between Lex Luger and Bruiser Brody. I had limited exposure to Luger at that point—before he made it to the WWF and before I watched much of any other wrestling product, but knew him to be a blue chip prospect. This story, however, told of Brody going mad and Luger ultimately having to flee the cage in which they wrestled. From everything I can find, the details remain sketchy about the incident—about whether Brody felt the match was coming off poorly, or Luger wasn’t selling adequately, or Brody was just having a bad day. The incident is emblematic of an enigmatic career in which Brody mixed his kayfabe and real life insanity with a truly imposing physical presence to emerge as one of the most intimidating performers of his era.

Perhaps it’s little surprise that Brody’s life ended, too, in mystery and violence—stabbed to death over some manner of payment dispute or political disagreement in a locker room shower in Puerto Rico.

#3. Haku

Ask anyone from the 1980s or 1990s mainstream wrestling scene who was the toughest son of a bitch in the locker room, and a disproportionate number of responses come back to the same, somewhat unlikely name—Haku.

Haku was never a main event talent and rarely had the opportunity to show off his toughness in a meaningful way beyond no-selling offense in the early days of his Meng gimmick, or proving a stiff, dominant force against jobbers and lower card acts. But the consensus seems to be that Haku was a bad, bad man backstage—a figure who would never back down, who could successfully maul most any foe, and could take a punch with the best of them.

Perhaps the most famous, if still unconfirmed story of just how badass Haku was comes in the form of a bar fight in which a civilian dared cross him, and Haku proceeded to rip out his eye. Regardless of whether the particulars of the story are true, the fact remains that you do not want to mess with Haku.

#2. Kurt Angle

Wrestlers make a lot of bold claims, both in kayfabe and reality. One such claim that spans both universes: Kurt Angle won an Olympic Gold Medal with a broken freakin’ neck.

The broken neck bit adds a rougher edge to Angle’s accomplishments—his amateur wrestling accomplishments alone probably would have garnered him a spot on the list regardless, but it points to the kind of relentless beast that Angle was, and how he has stuck it out in the high impact world of wrestling despite a laundry list of injuries that probably would have retired most mortal men about seven or eight years ago.

Angle is a phenomenal professional wrestler—easily one of the best of all time in my book. And that level of performance is a testament to just how committed, aggressive, and athletic the man truly is. You get the impression that anyone who may dare cross Angle’s path had legitimately better be ready for less of a fist fight than a to-the-death war.

#1. Brock Lesnar

When I conceived of this list, I immediately knew who would fill the top spot—the one and only Beast Incarnate; the only man to claim not only a WWE Championship, but also a UFC world title, and an NCAA amateur wrestling crown—Brock Lesnar.

Lesnar first entered the WWE ranks in the early 2000s, backed by a unique combination of amateur credentials and monster look—indeed, if you wanted to construct a physical prototype for a WWE superstar, I don’t know that you could do any better. But Lesnar ascended to a new level of bad-assery when he went on to major success in the world of UFC. His first run with the WWF proved his athleticism and look. The UFC run proved that he had the capacity to every bit as bad as he looked, combining wrestling, with submission skills, with an irresistible ground and pound game.

The effects of diverticulitis may have slowed the beast a step, but the fact remains that if I had to fight any pro wrestler—a fight I would almost certainly lose in any case—Lesnar is the very last person I’d want to go against.

Who do you consider wrestling’s biggest real-life badasses? Terry Funk? Ron Simmons? The Undertaker? Abdullah the Butcher? Let us know in the comments section. See you in seven.

Read stories and miscellaneous criticism from Mike Chin at his website and his thoughts on a cappella music at The A Cappella Blog. Follow him on Twitter @miketchin.