You know, usually when we go to see a show, whether
it's like a movie or a play or a sporting event,
there's this unwritten contract between us and
the performers. Quite like a boundary. Exactly.
We sit in our seats, we suspend our disbelief,
and we basically just agree to pretend that what
we're watching is real. Yeah, it's a safe illusion.
I mean, you buy a ticket, knowing the villain
on the stage isn't going to leap into the front
row and actually attack you. Yeah. The danger
is entirely contained within the frame of the
stage. or the screen. But what happens when a
performer is legitimately dangerous? Like, what
happens when they are so terrifyingly authentic
that the audience just completely forgets it's
a show? It's a scary thought. It really is. And
the story we're diving into today completely
obliterates that boundary. It really does. We're
taking a deep dive into a single, incredibly
detailed Wikipedia article covering the life
and career of Fred Thomas Corey Sr., who is much
better known to the world as Wild Bull Curry.
A legendary name. Right. So our mission today
is to uncover the fascinating origins of hardcore
professional wrestling and to explore how this
one man blurred the lines between real world
survival, theatrical villainy, and genuine danger.
So, okay, let's unpack this. Yeah, to really
understand the mechanics of how Bull Curry forced
an entire industry to rewrite its rules, we have
to look at the environment that forged him. Right,
because it didn't start in the wrestling ring.
Not at all. We have to rewind to well before
he ever stepped foot in a professional wrestling
ring. He was born in 1913 in the East End of
Hartford, Connecticut. OK. And he was of Lebanese
descent, growing up in a crowded house with five
siblings. And if you look at the timeline there,
he's hitting his teenage years just as the Great
Depression is taking a stranglehold on the country.
Man, the desperation of that era is just hard
to overstate. The article notes that at just
16 years old, he left high school. And he didn't
just go get a job like sweeping floors at a local
factory. He joined the circus. Right, which is
wild. And he did it specifically to help provide
for his four brothers and sisters. And his job
in that circus is really the skeleton key to
his entire future career. Because he wasn't,
you know, setting up tents. He was employed as
the Tough Man. Which, on its face, sounds like
an incredible job title. It really does. But
how did that actually work in practice? Like,
was he just flexing for the crowd? Oh, no, it
was a brutal physical grind. I mean, in a 1930s
traveling circus, the Tough Man attraction was
a staple. The Carnys would set up a ring, and
Curry's entire role was to stand in the center
and take on all comers from the audience. Wait,
like a legitimate... Unscripted fight? Yes. Entirely
legitimate. The circus would offer a cash prize
to any local guy who could last a certain amount
of time or, you know, knock the tough man down.
Wow. And keep in mind, this is the depression.
Five or $10 was an absolute fortune. Right. So
you had the biggest, most desperate local men
stepping up to try their luck against a 16 -year
-old kid. Exactly. And here's the statistic from
the source that absolutely blew my mind. He had
65 straight wins. 65. It's unreal. And not a
single one of those challengers made it past
a single five minute round. Like he was dismantling
grown men, tough guys fighting for meal money
in. under five minutes, night after night. Which
gives you a staggering level of real world trial
by fire experience. Seriously, it's like a comic
book origin story. But instead of falling into
a vat of chemicals, his superpowers were forged
by extreme poverty and circus brawls. Yeah, he
learned how to read an opponent's body language,
how to absorb an actual punch, and how to end
a conflict immediately. But the circus life isn't
exactly stable. Right. So in 1939, he took that
raw survival instinct and channeled it into a
formal career. He joined the Hartford Police
Department. Talk about a pivot. And he brought
that circus tough man background straight to
the streets of Hartford. Oh, absolutely. He quickly
earned a massive reputation for his physical
toughness as a cop, which kind of brings us to
the first great piece of professional wrestling
mythology in our deep dive today. The wild steer.
Yes. So the lore is that he got the nickname
Bull because a wild steer broke out of the Hartford
stockyards, ran wild through the streets, and
he literally wrestled the animal to the ground.
It's a great story. But I have to ask, how much
of this early tough guy lore was just marketing
versus actual reality? Well, the wild steer story
is almost certainly a promoter's lie. I mean,
it's an apocryphal tale devised to sell tickets.
Right. That makes sense. But. The crucial mechanism
behind why that lie worked is that it was anchored
in the absolute truth of his 65 circus wins and
his legitimate reputation on the police force.
Ah, I see. The promoters exaggerated the details,
but they didn't have to invent the aura of danger.
Right, because you look at the guy, you hear
he's a street tough cop who knocked out 65 desperate
men in a circus tent and suddenly wrestling a
runaway steer doesn't sound entirely impossible.
Exactly. The public bought it because Curry physically
looked and acted the part. But applying that
raw, uncooperative brutality into the highly
choreographed world of professional wrestling
proved to be a massive shock to the system. They
just weren't ready for him. The industry simply
didn't know what to do with him. And that transition
happens in the 1940s, right? Right. Curry leaves
the police force and starts wrestling in Detroit
under a promoter named Adam Weissmuller. And
Detroit is where Curry really begins to develop
his signature style. because standard wrestling
at the time was heavily reliant on technical
grappling, amateur wrestling holds, and a clear
cooperative rhythm between the performers. Which
is not what he was doing. Not at all. Uh. Curry's
style was the complete opposite. It was a street
fight. It was the genesis of what we now call
hardcore wrestling, relying on closed fists,
brawling outside the ring, and just a chaotic
energy that felt legitimately dangerous. It felt
real because he learned how to fight for real.
Exactly. He even faced the legendary retired
boxer Jack Dempsey in a July 1940 exhibition
match. And true to form, Curry spent years later
claiming he knocked Dempsey out. Well, according
to the historical records, Dempsey actually stopped
Curry in the second round. Right, of course.
But the fact that Curry was even in the ring
with a heavyweight boxing champion and successfully
blurred the lines of the outcome afterward shows
you how his mind worked. He was building an undeniable
mystique. And that mystique explodes when he
relocates to Texas in the early 1950s. Like he
arrives and almost overnight he becomes the territory's
absolute biggest draw. It was immediate. The
fans are just pouring into the arena specifically
to see him. And we should clarify what that means
for the era. In the 1950s, wrestling wasn't one
massive national television company. Right. It
was broken up into regional fiefdoms called territories
operating under the umbrella of the National
Wrestling Alliance or NWA. And Texas was one
of the hottest territories in the country. Whoa,
wow. To be the biggest draw meant you were the
person single handedly responsible for selling
the most tickets. People were paying their hard
earned money just to see the uncontrollable violence
Bullcurry blow into the ring. Okay, wait, I'm
stuck on this. If he's their biggest star and
making them the most money, why wouldn't the
promoters just make him the main champion? That's
a great question. Because it feels like terrible
business to isolate your most popular guy. It
comes down to protecting the credibility of the
entire product. What do you mean? Well, the promoters
and the bookers, the guys behind the scenes writing
the storylines and deciding the match outcomes,
they had a major problem. The Maine -Texas Heavyweight
Championship was supposed to represent the pinnacle
of traditional technical wrestling. Ah, I see
where this is going. Right. If you put that prestigious
belt on a chaotic brawler who throws chairs and
refuses to follow the traditional rules of a
match, you devalue the championship and you insult
the traditional wrestlers on your roster. So
here's where it gets really interesting. Because
they couldn't ignore his massive box office appeal,
the Bookers literally invented a brand new championship
just to match his style. They had to. On March
6th, 1953, he won the inaugural NWA Texas Brass
Knuckles Championship in a tournament final over
a wrestler named Danny McShane. The Texas Brass
Knuckles Championship. I mean, the mechanism
of that title is right in the name. Yeah, it
is. It signaled to the audience that the normal
rules were suspended. closed fists were allowed,
brawling was expected. It makes me think of a
video game developer having to create a custom,
ultra -violent difficulty level just to contain
one overpowered boss character. That's a perfect
analogy. And what's fascinating here is that
Curry completely predated the famous hardcore
legends we usually think of when we hear about
weapon -filled wrestling matches. Oh, really?
Yeah, guys like the Sheik, Abdul the Butcher,
Bruiser Brody, they all came years later. Curry
was doing this in the 1950s. He forced an entire
industry to adapt to his limitations rather than
conforming to theirs. And he absolutely owned
that championship. From 1953 until 1967, he held
the Texas Brass Knuckles Championship an astounding
20 times. 20 times. He was defeating massive
names in the industry. Pritz von Erich, Tony
Bourne, Waldo von Erich, Killer Carl Cox, Brute
Bernhardt. I mean, he did briefly hold the Texas
version of the NWA World Tag Team Championship
with Lucas Pertano in 53. And he even won the
main NWA Texas heavyweight championship, but
he only held that traditional belt for three
weeks. His true domain was always the brass knuckles
title. because that title gave him permission
to be exactly what he was. And that terrifying
persona was heavily amplified by his physical
appearance. We have to talk about the look because
the source describes it so vividly. It really
does. He had these massive bushy eyebrows and
he would make these maniacal facial expressions.
But it was his eyes. Yeah the eyes. The article
specifically notes his insane eyes that could
terrify a crowd just by scanning the front row.
And it wasn't just theatrical posturing. There's
a documented incident where he stared down a
girl at ringside and he frightened her so deeply
that she literally had to be carried away from
the ring in terror. Oh my god, and it wasn't
just the fans who were terrified either. Other
professional wrestlers actively hated working
with him. Which, in the mechanics of professional
wrestling, tells you everything. The entire art
form relies on cooperation. When one wrestler
performs a move, the other has to sell it. They
have to react physically to show the audience
that the move caused pain. It requires absolute
trust. But Curry routinely broke that fundamental
rule. He seldom showed the effects of his opponent's
offense. It's like an improv comedy scene where
one actor... completely refuses to accept the
premise. Exactly. If you pretend to hit a guy
with your most devastating maneuver and he just
glares at you without blinking, the entire illusion
shatters. Yep. It makes you look weak and it
makes him look like an unstoppable monster. Which
is exactly why he became one of the most disliked
heels, the industry term for the villains. in
the history of the business. I can imagine. He
was so hated, so viscerally despised, that the
anger of the crowd frequently spilled over the
barricades. And this is where the story shifts
from a fascinating look at early sports entertainment
into something genuinely alarming. The audience
riots. Yes, we aren't talking about people throwing
popcorn and booing loudly, we are talking about
terrifying, uncontained chaos. The list of altercations
detailed in the source is staggering. Let's run
through the specific incidents, because there
are Go for it. In 1955, during a match against
Ray McIntyre, a riot broke out in the arena that
was so severe, over 140 fans had to be sent to
the hospital. It's hard to even picture. Wait,
140 people from a crowd watching a staged fight.
Were they fighting each other or were they trying
to kill him? That is the terrifying reality of
mob mentality in a confined space. Wow. When
an audience of thousands completely buys into
the illusion that a villain is legitimately maiming
their local hero, the civic outrage just takes
over. Right. You have people throwing wooden
folding chairs, fans rushing the ring to attack
the wrestler, the police stepping in with billy
clubs to protect the performer, and then the
inevitable stampede of people trying to escape
the violence. Yeah, it's like a war zone. 140
people hospitalized means total structural breakdown
of the event. And it didn't stop there. In 1956,
a fan was so furious over Curry's brutal treatment
of a local star named George Becker that the
fan physically jumped Curry. Bad idea. Yeah,
Curry responded by breaking the fan's jaw with
a single punch. And then in 1958, he was wrestling
Pepper Gomez in Galveston, Texas. A fan actually
struck Curry with an iron pipe. An iron pipe?
Yeah. And Curry didn't wait for arena security
to handle it. He chased the fan out of the ring
all the way up into the balcony and beat him
up right there in the stands. It's absolute chaos.
And then in 1968, in Worcester, Massachusetts,
wrestling Emile Dupree, a fan jumped into the
ring and onto Curry's back. Right. Curry punched
the fan so hard he was reportedly unconscious
for two days. Two days. And in another unknown
year in Texas, a fan literally dumped a bucket
of yellow paint over his head. Which is just
bizarre. At what point does being a successful
villain become a liability? I mean, putting 140
people in the hospital sounds like a catastrophic
disaster, not a successful night of entertainment.
Well, this raises an important question about
the psychology of the wrestling heel. The primary
goal of the villain is to generate what the industry
calls heat. To make the audience so angry, they
buy tickets hoping to see you finally get beaten
up by the hero. Right. That's the whole business
model. Exactly. But there is a razor -thin line.
If you are too effective at your job, you tap
into a primal space where the audience completely
forgets it's a show. They lose their minds. They
no longer see a performer playing a bad guy.
They see a genuine threat to their community
that needs to be destroyed. And Curry lived his
entire career on the wrong side of that razor
-thin line. He didn't just cross the line. He
obliterated it. He really did. But as terrifying
as his professional life was, there is a stark,
almost unbelievable contrast waiting for us when
we look at his personal life and legacy. Oh,
it changes your entire perspective on the man
behind the bushy eyebrows. Right. So what does
this all mean? Let's look at his family. Bull
Curry had a son, Fred Thomas Corey, Jr., and
his son decided to follow his father into the
family business. wrestling under the name Flying
Fred Curry. A great wrestling name. Now logic
dictates that the son of the originator of hardcore
wrestling would be a brawling bloodthirsty monster,
right? You would think so. But the reality is
the exact opposite. Really? Yeah. Flying Fred
was a clean cut, high flying face. The industry
term for good guy. He was a technical, athletic
fan favorite who played strictly by the rules.
He was the polar opposite of everything his father
represented in the ring. Yet despite this massive
clash in styles, they teamed up regularly. They
did. And they were incredibly successful together.
Between 1964 and 1966, the father son duo won
the NWA International Tag Team Championship.
Amazing. They also beat Nikolai and Boris Volkov
to win the Ohio version of the NWA World Tag
Team Championship. And what's truly remarkable
here is the interpersonal dynamic. Well. In an
industry famous for massive egos, backstage politics,
and intense jealousy, Fred's eventual attempt
to step out of his father's shadow and forge
his own path never caused any tension between
them. That's actually really sweet. It is. Bull
was incredibly supportive of his clean cut son.
Which brings us to the end of his career. Bull
finally retired from the ring in 1979. Yeah.
and the man famous for inciting mass public riots,
breaking jaws, and terrorizing thousands of people.
He takes a job as a corrections officer. The
irony is just staggering. On a prison guard.
But if we connect this to the bigger picture...
It reveals something deeply profound about human
nature and performance. What do you mean? The
teenager who dropped out of high school at 16
to fight grown men in a circus tent so his brothers
and sisters wouldn't starve. That is the exact
same man who happily shared the spotlight with
his polar opposite son. Right. And he's the exact
same man who calmly walked the halls of a prison
-keeping order. It tells us that Bull Curry viewed
the chaos entirely as a profession. It was just
a job. He understood exactly what the audience
needed him to be in order to feed his family,
and he delivered it with a chilling level of
commitment. You really did. He passed away from
liver disease on Mama 8th, 1985, at the age of
71. And the legacy continues to this day with
his grandson, Fred Curry Jr., also taking up
the wrestling mantle. He utilized his real -world
survival skills to accidentally invent a massively
influential, violently chaotic genre of entertainment.
He really changed the game. He took the desperation
of his youth and weaponized it into a character
so authentic it caused literal riots. It's a
masterclass in how authenticity can erase the
line between fiction and reality. Which leaves
us with a fascinating final thought to chew on.
We look back at those audiences in the 1950s
rioting over a staged wrestling match, sending
140 people to the hospital, and it's easy to
think they were just incredibly gullible. Right,
like they just didn't know better. Exactly. But
look at our modern parasocial relationships.
Look at how we treat celebrities, influencers,
and reality TV stars today on the internet. Oh,
absolutely. When someone plays the villain online,
the death threats and the mob mentality are immediate.
Have we really gotten any better at separating
the character from the actual human being? Or
did we just move the riots from the arena floor
to the comment sections? That's a great point.
Something to think about the next time you find
yourself getting furious at a screen.