Yes Gorilla Monsoon was a beast! I believe he was a runner up in the D1 Nationals and might still have the fastest pin at that university which was 18 seconds. Yes it was all scripted but I feel a lot of boxing fans wouldn't want to admit that Monsoon would have taken Ali for real. Look up some Gary Albright highlights, he was around 300 pounds and started off in amateur wrestling. His suplexes were brutal and people have talked about seeing him in bar/street fights.
You get it. The outcomes in professional wrestling are scripted. That doesn't mean what happens in the ring is always fake. For instance, Johnny Valentine and Wahoo McDaniel ... both badasses, both Looney Tunes ... were renowned for NOT working or pulling their punches when they really got into it, they were actually landing punches and they beat the merde out of each other and the more merde they beat out of each other, the harder they punched each other. But in fairness that's still not a street fight situation, it's controlled. And again, if the wrestler wants to stand there and try to punch he's gonna get slaughtered. If the wrestler gets the boxer off his feet, it's a different story. Simple as that.
Did you know Johnny Valentine originally was training to be a boxer? Lou Thesz said Valentine was a vicious street fighter but said he never learned how to wrestle for real or submissions, Lou said if he did he would have been even more dangerous. Like for example guys like Wahoo McDaniel, Booker T, Hawk and Ron Simmons were all bad dudes but I wouldn't pick them to beat many professional Heavyweight boxers in a street fight as those guys were not really trained in anything. But compared to guys like Danny Hodge, Mad Dog Vachon, Gorilla Monsoon, Lou Thesz, Verne Gagne etc It's a completely different story as those guys were actually trained and well versed in grappling.
