I grew up in Detroit in the era of Dick the Bruiser and never heard this story. The Bruiser was known to tear up a few bars in Detroit in fights so he was legit. Alex Karass, who played Mongo in Blazing Saddles, was in one bar and he snuck out the back door when he heard The Bruiser was looking for him.
I don’t think anyone would want any part of Kurt Angle — a guy who won an Olympic gold medal in wrestling with an actual broken neck — in a shoot fight (at least not one without weapons). Legend is Kurt and Brock got to jawing one time and wanted to figure out who could take who down and they cleared out a ballroom where they were staying and Angle easily and almost immediately tied him up like a pretzel — big difference between an Olympic champ and an NCAA wrestling champ.
Kurt Angle is one of the few Pro Wrestlers I would pick over most Heavyweight boxers in a street fight along with Danny Hodge, Brock Lesnar, Bobby Lashley, Bad News Allen, Sylvester Terkay, Mad Dog Vachon and Billy Robinson. All those guys had strong grappling/combat backgrounds and would know to use their strengths against guys like Tyson, Liston, Ali, Foreman, Lewis, Fury etc
Dan Hodge was a two-time Olympic Silver medalist wrestler and golden gloves boxer. Kurt Angle was an Olympic gold-meddalist wreslter Bad News Brown (Allen Coage) was an Olympic bronze medal judoko Mark Mero knocked out Razor Ruddock in an amateur fight. Jack Brisco, Bob Backlund, both Steiner Brothers, and a few others I am forgetting were NCAA champion wrestlers. Gene Lebell was a national Judo Champion and considered a pioneer in mixed martial arts for defeating boxer Milo Savage in a boxer vs wrestler. There are a whole bunch more, but make no mistake, some of these guys are all show, and some of them could kill even the average athlete with ease.
Danny Hodge was a machine! No boxer was ever more qualified for MMA than him, if I needed two guys to protect me in a dangerous situation I would want Danny Hodge and Mirko Cro Cop in their primes. Sylvester Terkay was an NCAA Heavyweight Champion and Kurt Angle said he was the strongest wrestler he ever fought (Angle also faced Mark Coleman and Mark Kerr) Terkay had a couple fights in MMA and got robbed in K1 against fighter Remy Bonjasky who was one of the best K1 had to offer at the time. Bad News Brown would have definitely been an MMA fighter if around in another time. Jack Brisco was a very good amateur and his brother Jerry was no slouch too. Lou Thesz was trained in the art of Catch Wrestling by guys like Strangler Lewis and George Tragos. There was talks of him fighting Rocky Marciano once, couldn't see that going well for Marciano. Chris Taylor was a 6'5 400+ pound man that competed in both Greco Roman/Freestyle Wrestling in the 1972 Olympics where he won bronze (Very controversial too) He went unbeaten in college winning the NCAA Heavyweight Championship twice and once broke another wrestlers back during a match. These guys would walk through pretty much anyone that doesn't know how to grapple.
Two more guys that had reps for being real life badasses were Dirty Dick Slater and perhaps the scariest of them all was Meng. Go to YouTube and search both of these guys and you will see a bunch of interviews with Wrestlers talking about how scary these two were. There are stories about Meng tearing body parts off of people in bar fights.
Yes Dick Slater was pretty tough, not much of an amateur wrestler but quite the brawler that could hang. Meng was a beast, the story of him nearly gouging out Jesse Barr's eye and biting apart of a man's nose off is insane. I do believe a few guys in the business could have potentially beat him in a fight but it wouldn't be easy. Most of the Islanders in general were guys that you'd have to be a skilled fighter to beat as they were just naturally tough and go to extreme lengths to win. Guys like Meng, Barbarian, Peter Maivia, Afa, Sika, Cocoa Samoa, Yokozuna, Rikishi and even The Rock would not be push overs at all.
I loved Dick Slater. Great story about him from a bar fight scene: he and a bunch of the boys (I think consisting of Wahoo McDaniel, Tommy Rich and Andre the Giant) were out in I think Atlanta one night. Someone started hitting on I think it was Rich’s girlfriend, he told the guy to back off and the guy challenged him to a fight. Well they go outside and things go a bit sidewise and I forget why but Wahoo goes to his car and gets a gun and starts pistol-whipping the guy. Gun goes off and shoots Slater in the upper leg, through and through. Someone of course calls the cops. Everyone but Slater and Wahoo (who got rid of the gun) clear out, they stay because Slater is shot. Of course in those days, ‘protecting the business’ was the code. And Slater doesn’t want Wahoo in any legal trouble. So when the cops ask him what happens, he tells them it must have been a sniper, haha — he had been shot from a nearby rooftop lol. Anyway, Slater goes to the hospital and gets treated. Three weeks later he’s on schedule for a tour of Japan — bullet hadn’t hit any bone or major arteries so after he got out of the hospital he just wrapped it up and kept wrestling. Even the toughest tough guys in wrestling in those days wouldn’t cross Slater … they knew if it came to a fight he was a bad man.
From what I read Dick the Bruiser did get humiliated by Liston. By most accounts Dick the Bruiser ( Richard Aflis ) was mostly bark with no real wrestling in his background. There were plenty real shooters in pro wrestling but only Danny Hodge had the hands to go with it. As we saw in a few of his UFC fights mainly against Velasquez and Overeem was that Lesnar certainly couldn't deal well with strikes. He flat out ran from Velasquez when he was being punched and Overeem destroyed him with strikes. Who knows how some of the other freestyle and Olympic wrestlers would react to punches. Some of the already known wrestlers with vast experience have already been listed. A few more.The Iron Sheik was actually a body guard to the Shah of Iran and a Greco Roman Olympic wrestler. Bruiser Brody a 6 6 300 pounder who was very agile and known for a great motor apparently had the respect of all the boys in the locker room. The same could be said for Rick Steiner Harley Race and the King of wrestling badness Haku/Meng and that comes strait from the wrestlers.
I’d add the Iron Sheik as a guy who could handle himself in or out of the ring: represented Iran in the Olympics in wrestling, became a bodyguard for the Shah of Iran. He migrated to the U.S., where he became an AAU national champion and later was an assistant coach for the U.S. Olympic team. I think he’d be a handful for anyone in a no-holds-barred setting. EDIT: @robert ungurean already pointed out the Iron Sheik’s chops above but I didn’t read that before I posted so my apologies for stepping on toes.
If the Liston/Bruiser fight did happen I believe it would be a much bigger story though, only one person mentioned it in a book about Liston and we know there's so many myths about Liston. I know Verne Gagne was said to have knocked out Dick The Bruiser but Verne was an NCAA Champion and apparently nice with the hands. Bruiser Brody did best up Dick The Bruiser in a backstage fight over money but Dick was in his 50's at the time and from what I heard Brody sucker punched him. Sure we don't know how all amateur wrestlers will react once they get punched but overall I'd bet on guys like Brock Lesnar, Bobby Lashley, Danny Hodge, Kurt Angle, Verne Gagne, Mad Dog Vachon, Billy Robinson, Scott Steiner and Steve Williams taking down boxers like Liston, Foreman, Lewis, Ali, Louis, Marciano, Holmes, Tyson, Fury etc before they could land a good punch on them. Guys like Haku, Gypsy Joe, Bull Curry and Booker T were some other guys who were known for being legitimately tough but they don't have the amateur wrestling backgrounds to challenge world class stand up fighters like the other guys do I believe.
Liston would kill him,fighters are accustomed to getting hit and are taught to maximise their punching ability.Wrestlers are pumped up entertainers.
Danny Hodge, Brock Lesnar, Bobby Lashley, Ken Shamrock, Dan Severn, Mad Dog Vachon, Bad News Allen, Sylvester Terkay, Verne Gagne, Chris Taylor, Josh Barnett, Billy Robinson, Kazushi Sakuraba, Masa Saito, Jack Brisco, Gary Albright, Matt Riddle, Steve Williams, The Steiners, Shinsuke Nakamura, Jake Hager, Kazuyuki Fujita, Toru Tanaka, Bob Roop, John Tenta, Masakatsu Funaki, Kiyoshi Tamura, Karl Gotch, Brad Rheingans, Naoya Ogawa, Chad Gable etc That list features former UFC Champions, Olympians, top amateur wrestlers and Judokas so far from "Pumped up entertainers" Claim, not all wrestlers are just roided up bodybuilders which people want to believe so badly for some reason. Why are people so scared of the thought of people who take part in a scripted business can fight?
