Brisco

Jack Brisco vs Don Muraco, 12 June 1982 (NWA Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling)

My earliest favorite wrestler was Jack Brisco. He punished and suffered in equal parts in nearly every match. He was a great performer. I first saw him on a small made-in-Japan black-and-white TV in my bedroom in the early '70s, squinting at the TV's white noise, trying to distinguish the shadowy figures in the ring. I was drawn to his hairy chest and diaphragmatic breathing. Also, the sweat that shined his upper body. He was a hero, often a hurt hero, who would give his oppressors the punishment they deserved in later confrontations.

Pain, crippling pain, was Brisco's element. To punish Brisco for beating Roddy Piper on June 8th, Muraco and Piper sandwich Brisco between them and cripple him. Like hyenas. In the aftermath, we see a crippled Brisco flinching as others hover over him protectively. For the next month, Brisco beat Piper across the Carolinas, and Piper and Muraco turned on each other. Forty-five times in his career from the sixties to the eighties, Brisco won 13 major championships. He retired from wrestling in 1984. He died of heart failure at 68 years of age in 2010. Today is his birthday.