The Great Antonio Pt. 1: Strongman, Showman, Eccentric

And now we get to learn too long with me .

That means you know what your biker neighbor's butthole tastes like . You're right , yeah that'd be .

Oh , wow , yeah , Bill Burr even talks about him , and we'll get into that a little bit later .

Antonio was born in the kingdom of Serbs , croats and Slovens , or what's known now known as Yugoslavia kingdom of the Adidas track pants and you go automobile , but you got to make . Anything starts out with the kingdom of . Sounds pretty cool .

Antonio is so massive upon birth that it took up most of the month of October , as his birthday has been listed as the fifth , the fifteenth and the 25th of October in 1925 . I'm guessing the discrepancy on this is because it was rural 1925 where he was born , probably not a lot of hospitals or birth certificates going on .

So you know , they're probably just like hey , when were you born ? Oh , october , I think there's a five in there somewhere . We know very little about his years in Europe as he didn't talk about talk much about his youth . All he'd really talked about when it came to his younger years was his amazing feats of strength that he would do .

He said that he was unusually large and strong as a child and at the age of six his parents gave him a shovel and a pickaxe and told him to get to work . And work he did , growing bigger and stronger by the day .

At the age of 12 , he says , he was strong enough that they would tie cables around his neck and you'd pull trees and stumps out by the roots that doesn't sound like that .

Yeah , apparently you need to train up , probably do it , but it is possible for people to run 24 hours straight . It's all about pacing yourself , I guess , which seems pretty obvious . Key word people , not me .

So , basically , the town that Antonio was living in was both getting invaded by allies and invaded by rebels , and this and that so probably a pretty stressful time to be alive around then . Yeah , I would imagine .

Nate Got any ideas , because I mean , this happened after the war was over , that he got put in a quote unquote concentration camp . My guess is marketing Ha oh , actually that's why it's called this displaced persons camp .

Probably I'll let you know why some people call it a concentration camp , because Camp Bagnolly was involved in Project Keele Hall Ever heard of Project Keele Hall .

Well , the allies went to the Russians and said hey , you got a bunch of our POWs , can we have them back ? And Russia said yeah , we can do that , but you know there's a lot of paperwork and time involved , so we're gonna need something in return . And the allies said , hey , what you need , we really liked those POWs back .

And Russia said hey , during this whole , you know , communist takeover thing that's been going on over the last several , you know decades or whatever , a whole lot of people fled our I mean not fled , they , quote unquote got displaced .

We would love for you to go out and grab all these quote , quote displaced Russians and send them back to us so we can quote unquote repatriate them . And the allies were like so is it like a specific list of Russians you want sent back ?

And the Russian said , nope , find any Russian you can in Europe and just send them back to us and we will handle it after that . So basically they were trying to get all the people who defected during those years so they could get them back and do bad stuff to them .

But they were like , hey , even if this person has a letter straight from Stalin saying I give you permission to leave this country , you send them right back to us . The allies said , okay , we can probably do that . And then the Russians followed up by saying , hey , here's what you do .

You start sending all these people to these various camps all around Eastern Europe and then from there you can load them on all these trains and then send them off to Russia where we will take care of them .

And the allies said , wow , fancy , you should mention that because we just , figured , learned about this whole system of rounding up people , putting them in camps and sending them off on trains . We'll get right on that .

So , yep , several quote unquote displaced people's camps for Russians popped up and they were all sent back to Russia , where they were then executed or stuck in the military or just sent off to a gulag . They say between three quarters of a million to three million Russians were rounded up and sent to Russia because of this . And to top it off .

Even the allies will admit there was a few thousand clerical errors that sent non-Russians off to the gulags too . So anyways , this joyous scene was one that great Antonio who was in the middle of in 1945 . So that seems like kind of a shitty place to be , to be honest .

Yeah , I think it's a concentration camp , why not ? Yeah , keep in mind there were some actual displaced people there , because Antonio was one of those . Why was he displaced , I don't know . Family got murdered , house burned down , who knows ?

But what happened was he hang out at the bagnoli camp for a little while , and then he found himself immigrating to Nova Scotia , over in Canada . There he found himself working at a scrap metal and wrecking yard at the Port of Halifax , where he exchanged a labor for room and board .

Basically , he worked in a giant scrap yard , and over in the corner of the scrap yard he built himself like a little ramshackle house out of nothing but like car parts and old cinder blocks and corrugated roofing and basically just lived in that little tiny homemade cabin and just moved metal all day long , thus increasing his strength .

So eventually the six foot four Antonio got stronger , bigger , faster , harder , so on and so forth . And actually , if you look at the pictures . Oh , also , if you're listening in and I leave in these parts where we're talking about pictures just go onto your favorite search engine and image search the great Antonio , and you'll get all these pictures up .

They're pretty common . The very first picture you see up at the left-hand corner , that's what he looked like when he got off the boat , as you can see , somewhat of a young spelt man . Yeah , by the way , he looked strong , but not like you know .

At this point in the years he's 6'4 and like 300 pounds is what he was saying , I believe , and he looked him into the mirror and said , hey , I'm a pretty burly guy , maybe I can make some money from this strength of mine .

So Antonio , who , as you saw just a moment ago , is clean cut , decided to take on a more marketable wild man personality and started to grow his hair out long and started to act kind of all weird and goofy and eccentric In your east .

Initially started out showing off feats of strength to nearby dock workers , taking on dares and bets and showing off what he's made of Made himself some extra money doing that too .

We are currently in the early 1950s and word of mouth has spread interest in this wild , strong man from across the sea and this led him to be able to do public displays of strength for fun and profit , thanks to those known for doing Taking steel bars with his bare hands , picking up people , lifting up cars , pulling multiple cars full of people , pulling a car

full of people with his hair that's the second picture you saw there . Apparently he had some pretty robust hair that he would like to attach stuff to and then use his head and neck to pull things , sort of like he did as a child when they cabled him to a tree and was like , hey , escape this if you can , or whatever they did .

It didn't take enough people , enough , like really people just give their money up like oh , look at that guy here , I don't know , he kissed a horse , let's give a thousand dollars .

But you're right , it's kind of goes back to us talking about perage or it's like hey phrase were neat for the time , I guess , when you guys see you know the three cars in the valley come around .

But there's also a photo of him which and he's basically has a log the size of a telephone pole that's sitting on his shoulder , while he has 13 people hanging off of this log at all at once . It's actually a pretty impressive sight .

We keep on running right from the rock . Surely there's someone else I can think of that's just as muscular , but I can't think of it right now . You know he , he is legitimately like scary looking and huge and on another side , no , just kind of branch off . That again we're going off , off off topic . Have you seen that dude's girlfriend ? Do you know who ?

First of all , do you know what I'm talking about ?

you know , it's proportionate . Because if I , suddenly , if someone hit me with a grow way and I grew up , like you know , I have like one and a half , two times where I was as big as he is , not two times , let's say like a half , you know , even as big as he is and let's say all parts of me grew , that would still be like I don't know whatever .

So there was an ad I saw it was actually in a video and I couldn't find a copy of it to send you , but there's an advertisement from showing up at a strongman competition and the ad stated that if he locked his arms at his side like kind of picture him doing like you know , the chicken dance sort of thing , just having his arms out like that If they

hooked ropes to it , 10 horses can't open his arms for 15 minutes four seconds and two Jeeps can't open his arms for 10 minutes five seconds , which I guess if you do math , that means horses are two thirds as strong as a jeep . I don't know , but also , I guess , impressive . Yeah , no actual video of that .

Sadly there is actual video of that one picture of him pulling the car with his hair . You can actually see him doing that in person .

And if you're thinking about maybe he was some sort of con man in some ways and some of these pictures were fake or whatever , well , the Guinness Book of World Records was there in 1952 to verify that he pulled a 433 metric ton train down the tracks at distance of 19.8 meters and if you'd like that and freedom units , that's 426 ton train for 65 feet .

That's pretty impressive , quite impressive , impressive , most impressive .

Apparently , you throw enough money at Guinness Book of World Records that be like okay , yeah , sure he did that , sure , sure .

In order to drum up interest for this , they ran stories claiming Antonio was just like going up to random buses in the street telling the bus driver no , you're not driving , I'm pulling this bus on its route and would just like pull the bus a few blocks down the road with people on it .

This was actually made up , of course , but you know you got to drum up interest somehow . Absolutely so Antonio was a big dude at six foot four and , at his biggest weight , up to 500 pounds as an adult . And what do big , strong dudes with personalities often become pro wrestlers ?

Woo , during the 50s he started professional wrestling as narcissist or sweet narcissist and would often wrestle at the same site . Shows that showed off his fetus strength . His natural charisma , size and strength made him a fan favorite at small wrestling shows and venues .

Yeah , basically he would do kind of like a strong man act and then be like hey , you want to watch me wrestle like three guys after this , I'll go do that . Or , you know , wrestle on commerce , kind of like back when you used to be able to do that kind of stuff .

There's also back in the day where you know you could just kind of like walk into a wrestling ring and just be like , hey , I'm going to try this now . Oh , come on , do that so much . No , oh , yeah , no . Nowadays , like security , yeah Right .

chains . Er , look at him , he's just like Ra Ra , ra , ra . I attack and then , you know , unleash wild man . He goes to town on people and I should see a picture of him with his little wild man changing . Third picture down . Fourth picture there he is .

Yeah , the only guy out there with a gun is like well , the rules didn't explicitly state you could do that , they called me the gun , because I had a gun for an arm and I also carried a gun out on the field .

Now you probably haven't heard of Ricky Dozen , but he's basically the guy who's credited with bringing pro wrestling to Japan .

He established the Japan Pro Wrestling Alliance , the first professional wrestling promotion , in 1953 and was easily the biggest star of wrestling , star of Japan during his time and one of the most famous and influential wrestlers ever in any country . He was actually huge in Japan too . He's like doing all sorts of acting and stuff .

He was like oh , ricky Dozen on the surfing movie Dude was huge . He was also the first Japanese wrestler to be booked as a good guy in the USA post-World War II . Oh nice , that's actually impressive . That is actually pretty impressive . Basically , the way he was able to get that rub is when the Americans came over and wrestled .

He showed them so much respect and put them over so well that when he came back to America with them they're like hey , we got to put this guy over . He's just a good working dude .

But anyway , but this guy I mean . When you talk about the wrestlers themselves , they of course it's a bunch of sometimes roided up strong men all together , but there's of course there's drama , but by and large they see the tribe take care of each other . Yeah , so it really does seem to be kind of a camaraderie thing .

To be honest , Ricky Dozen was also a 2017 WWE Hall of Fame inductee Neat , so in Japan , one popular feud that would happen at the time was the trope of the unstoppable foreign invader someone from a far away land who seemed unstoppable , but in the face of adversity , the hometown Japanese hero would prevail .

Can't imagine why that would be a trope that is pretty big in Japan at the time Right . Yeah the world will never know . If you think about it , it's probably not just the US either . I mean , they've been next to China for a good long while . It's a pretty big country .

Yeah Well , ricky Dozen needed him , an unstoppable foreign invader , and the great Antonio fit the bill perfectly . They got him on a plane into Japan and began hyping the hell out of him . They'd have him just do his strongman acts .

They would have him demonstrate his strength by pulling cars and even for Tokyo , transit buses through the city while huge crowds watched on . They'd have him wrestle five on one matches and have him win . They'd do the whole thing where they'd have them all shackled up and changed and have the managers bring him down .

They'd be like we can't contain this wild , crazy man Raw . Fans are stoked , everybody's eating it up . Everybody loved that way this is going . Everybody's wondering could the national hero , ricky Dozen defeat this bus pulling invader and retain the NWA International Championship belt ? The answer is yes . Ricky Dozen won the match and fans rejoiced . Yeah , spoiler alert .

Spoiler alert . Here's another spoiler . Two years later , ricky Dozen would get drunk at a nightclub , pick a fight with a Yakuza member and stab to death .

Really , during this tour in Japan , those large crowds that were showed up I mean there were huge crowds Started to give him kind of a big head and he started seeing himself as the big draw there , in fact to the point where he was basically being like hey man , people aren't here to see Ricky Dozen wrestle me , they're here to see me wrestle Ricky Dozen .

And this basically led to great Antonio starting to make more demands while he was on the tour more money , more food , more drink , upgraded rooms and just getting tensed for drinking too much and kind of being a little bit of a chode .

But Ricky Dozen and his company were fine with this because they saw that that huge potential that this was and the fact it was going over great with the crowd .

Yeah , you know what ? I think you're lesser so you can take advantage of , but at the same time , come on , come on , yeah , you're come on , just come on . I mean come on , like , let's be real , you're a strong man in Japan and let's all acknowledge , the Japanese aren't really known for like welcoming and outsiders with open arms .

Very true , I mean , from what I understand , like if you're visiting , they're totally cool with you , like they enjoy visitors , like come on visit and then go away . But if you're actually wanting to , like stay in their society , become one of them .

These punches by Ike Eakins own a mission had no effect on Antonio , as he just brushed him off like there were nothing , realizing his punches had no effect on full grown men . Ike Eakins would then change his last name to Turner . Meet up with Tina and the rest of Spousal Abuse History .

How he could eat 25 chickens or 10 steaks in one sitting . Yeah , I mean that's what .

Yeah , and I guess people were like , really , his response was something along the lines of like , hey , man , everybody has the ability to do this if they want . They just choose not to . And I mean , he's not wrong , he does have the ability to run headfirst into a tree at 60 meters . But I'm going to say , yeah , that's not a wise idea .

. Some asshole was like oh really , is that all it takes ?

Although , didn't he kill himself , I throw himself a window . I mean , I don't know if it was yeah , he killed himself .

They face like two , three , four , five at a time .

And he is also a specialist in the battle royale matches , which was just a whole lot of people in a ring going at it , and he was also did a lot of matches with stampede wrestling's most famous wrestler at the time , terrible Ted the wrestling bear yes , it's a real bear and and Antonio and terrible Ted would have a series of matches man versus beast who

would win ? And they always ended in a draw . The question of man versus beast was never truly answered in these matches . He had a muzzle on stuff and you know it's kind of those things where the bug looked . The bear looked pretty drugged for the most part and is like yeah . I was gonna say um , you can actually see some footage of it .

It's like great Antonio and the bear like getting a middle ring , kind of like a hug a little bit and like shove each other just a touch and I was curious how that happened . Yeah , yeah , I'm like hmm , yeah , but on that note , stampede wrestling had a wrestling bear for a lot of years .

That means Bret Hart might have wrestled a bear as a little kid speaking , which Bret Fart was at . Bret Fart yes , bret Fart . Bret Hart was a fan of the great Antonio and there's even a cute little story about this . When Bret Hart was a wee little canuck , him and his brother were horsing around when Bret's brother got a little too rough and hurt Brett .

The brother made a deal with the hurt and crying . Brett , don't tell on me and I'll get you a signed picture of that wrestler you really like . Brett agreed and soon was given a signed picture of the great Antonio , which Bret Hart said was his most cherished signed photo he had as a little kid .

1971 the great Antonio went to Calgary and competed in the Stampede North American Heavyweight Championship and almost won the heavyweight championship belt , but the fans actually rioted before the match could finish . Alberto wrestling coach Percival a friend yeah , that's his name , percival a friend recalls the night .

The people of Calgary had never seen such a vicious competitor and didn't like the idea of an ugly guy with long hair beating the local favorite and becoming their champion .

So the fans started freaking out , throwing trash and rushing the ring and disrupted enough that they just basically had to call off the match at the time , which that was kind of one of those things that actually did happen a fair amount back then .

Those days in the smaller venues , you know non-televised stuff , a lot of weird stuff went down on those little small wrestling halls . People like Jake the snake tells some interesting stories and rowdy , rowdy Piper really be like . It's just like you start screaming doing the crowd . Next you know you're in a fist fight in the middle of the ring with a guy .

He was also on a ton of small-time variety shows out in the neck of his , out in his neck of the woods in Canada too , and it would be on these shows that we would learn great Antonio has actually a really good singing voice and he loves to show it off by seeing on these shows . You can actually hear him on an album .

Some people , like a band , put some of his singing on an album as a bonus track . He's actually pretty good fact . He really wanted to actually tour as a singer and be on a double build with tiny Tim right and Antonio and tiny Tim would be an interesting concert to see . I need to . Tiny Tim yeah , he was a tip toe by the window .

No word on it whether or not is actually the biggest rocking chair in the world , but that's what he hyped it up as , and if you look at one of those pictures , you can actually see him in it too , sitting in that giant chair .

I mean , if I could afford a brand-new luxury car every two years , I can see that quote-unquote . Having it made or making it quote-unquote . I mean it doesn't mean you're like mega rich , but it means you're making all right money yeah , totally and you're also not making so much money that you're gonna screw yourself over doing something stupid .

But he wanted more than the Lincoln continental Nathan . In fact , around this time he approached Boeing , offered them a deal to help promote their 747 jet . He went to Boeing and said I'll pull one of those 7047s down the tarmac to hype it up for you and in exchange you give me one for my own personal jet .

To make one of those , it cost $24 million back then , or 167 million in today's money . So Boeing declined his offer

. But hey , you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take right ? That true , very true . I mean honestly . It's not like Boeing's gonna throw him in the clink for asking something stupid like that . They'll just be like no or ignore him . So yeah , I mean like do no like why would ?

We'll also talk about Antonio's dealings with Don King and Tiger Woods and we'll talk about the birds bees guy for some reason . This and more on the next episode of off-to-off topic .