Original subtitles

Mr. USA.

Tony. I had 19 and a half inch biceps and I was 225 pounds

at age 19.

God, he was a black Arnold Schwarzenegger.

You have got it. Look at him run.

You have got it.

Yeah, I mean, he was a total package.

I know that I need to work harder. I need to train harder.

A bodybuilder turned wrestler.

Mr. USA Tony Atlas broke barriers as one of the first major black superstars in

the sport.

You got to keep it. Getting it is one thing, but keeping it loud, you got a

different thing. I remember seeing black wrestlers get tarred and feathered. A

lot of questionable racist behavior.

Tony Atlas made little black kids all over the world.

feel like, man, I can do that too.

I am going to whoop on you and get paid for it. There were very few black

wrestlers. There was a lot of times I wrestled in an area where I'm the only

black guy.

They saw money.

They didn't see color.

Hey, wait a minute.

Holy shit, look at this guy.

Get in the way! Get in the way!

Tony Adler, Mr. USA, climbing the ladder of success very, very rapidly to the

World Wrestling Federation.

Rising to heights few black wrestlers of his era had ever reached.

Tony Atlas began to unravel under the weight of fame's pressures and pitfalls.

I got trouble here, and I got trouble there, and I got trouble coming your

Sick drugs and rasp.

There was a party every night at the hotel room.

There were a lot of temptations, and there were a lot of different choices

there to make.

I never bought drugs a day of my life. It was always given to me. It was in the

dressing room, for God's sake.

There's a lot of things about Tony Atlas I wonder whether it's legend or fact.

Is it true or not?

Tony's battle with addiction cost him significant opportunities, leaving him

with no place to call home.

So here's a guy who would make hundreds of thousands of dollars, and he's living

on the street.

It's not how much you make, it's how much you save.

I was some homeless guy that smelled like something died, no place to live,

nothing. I became a suicide. I didn't want to live no more.

I wanted to die.

All right, so we're going to watch this, and you just tell us whatever you think

about it, feel about it.

Mr. USA, Tony Atlas.

And he looks fantastic.

Looks like he was chiseled from granite.

Man, he was jacked. What a well -put -together human.

His opponent, weighing 320 pounds, the incredible Hulk Hogan!

Unbelievable size of Hulk Hogan.

So, you prepped -blammed Hulk Hogan at Madison Square Garden? Yeah.

Oh, look at that!

Oh, yes, sir!

Check it out!

Check it out, bro! Check it out!

And how did the fans react?

Atlas trying to get out of it. It came unglued.

Hulk Hogan's, what, 330 pounds at a time and 6 '4"? And press him over

your head.

Logan, I can hear him now, cussing up a storm.

Damn.

Tony wanted to press the biggest guy in the company.

Because it was telling everybody in the audience, look how strong I am.

A main event guy, Madison Square Garden, to go to

living on a park bench.

Sometimes people have to go through hitting bottom before they realize how

they really had it.

I was born in Virginia.

My mother was a devoted Christian.

She only been with one man her whole life, and that was my father.

My dad never worked. My mother worked. All of her dedication went directly to

raising her kids.

One time, we were walking down the street, and this guy slapped my mother

butt. My mom turned around. She hit him with one punch and knocked him out.

Laid him out.

Right there. My mother said, I got to teach you kids how to protect yourself

because I ain't always going to be here for you. That was something she said all

the time.

Because when I was young, you had to know how to use your hands.

All through life, like when you go back to my childhood, I was in anywhere

between 50 to 100 fights, anywhere in there, easily.

So I had a reputation that if you fight me today and I don't win, you're going

to see me again tomorrow.

Most of the influence in the black neighborhood when I was a child, It was

influence. We looked up to drug dealers.

We looked up to street fighters.

We walked to school.

And there was a fist fight every other day. I didn't care who you were. I would

fight anybody.

Now, my dad, he was a gambler. He liked to hustle money.

So he took me down to Scrapper Corner and wait for the railroad men to come

And when they get drunk, he would tell them, I bet you can't whoop that boy

there. I don't fight these grown men.

And he said, if you lose this fight, boy.

You're going to get it worse when you get home.

But I grew quick. By the time I was 12, I was already over 6 feet at 12.

But I only weighed like 110 pounds.

I was like a stick.

And so one day, I was walking with this girl. I helped her carry her books. I

liked her.

Really, I liked her shoes.

She had tennis shoes on.

So I hear this voice in my head say, I'm going to push you.

All of a sudden, I fell head first. I got the dent in my head right here.

The whole world turned red because all the blood ran down into my face.

My grandmother come running out. Hold on, hold on. Come here, boy. My scar was

split completely in half.

We had no phone.

She couldn't call the ambulance. She couldn't call the police. No way of

contacting anybody.

My grandmother said, I want you to pray.

So I got down on my knees, and this is what I said. I want to be strong like

Samson, built like Hercules, and have a lot of money.

And everything that I asked for in that prayer, God gave to me.

I blew it later, but still, he gave to me.

Do you think that you suffered brain trauma from that incident?

Yeah.

Yeah. Have you been ever medically diagnosed?

No.

No. But I do know it was something wrong with me, that I was not like regular

kids. And I think it had something to do with the shoes, the reason I'm so

submissive to women in sneakers and stuff like that, because all that was

the same time.

I don't understand. What do you mean?

I buy shoes for the girls that step on them.

Well, they got me into that.

Oh, my goodness.

That one.

Fan one. Yep, that's a nice pair of shoes right there. Now, what makes it

Well, it's family looking.

They look like something that should be on a woman's feet.

I got stepped on in malls and gyms and houses, hotel, elevator.

I got it done everywhere.

A couple dozen times I was with him. I seen him just buy shoes and have him

on his face and never talk to him again.

I was as shocked as the girl was.

People knew nothing about fetishes.

Fetishes and all this stuff was underground.

So they thought, because of my wrestling, they thought it was part of

training. He'd send girls to matches and have them walk on his face. I'd give a

woman $50 just to step on me. Plus, I'd buy the shoes for them. They didn't have

to pay for the shoes.

I thought it was a little bit out of the ordinary.

You know, but then, you know, everybody has their little...

quirks, right? You know, things that make them feel good.

As Popeye would say, I am what I am. You know?

He's not the only foot guy in the world.

Well, they say, like, I suck toes, which I don't.

They say I like high heels, which I don't.

They say that I whack off, which I don't.

They try to make it into a sexual thing.

Well, for me, my shoe fetish keeps me calm.

I got more control.

of it now than I did then.

Now we're talking.

I was into what's called dominatrix.

So the dominatrix become your master. You would call a slave.

I can't use that term now because I'm black and black people get mad, but

what it was. So they dominate you.

See, I went to a person once had explained it to me that was into all

psychologist stuff and I had this rage in me.

You know, ever since I was a kid, I'd fight anybody. I'd beat up anybody. I

could lift anything. Nobody could beat me.

So I had to learn more control.

So I ended up going to the YMCA.

I've never been to a gym in my life.

I was 15 years old when I first started lifting weights.

Hey, hello, welcome. Come on in, guys.

Well, I know y 'all gentlemen noticed I got a lot of stuff spread out here on

the table because these items here.

or item for before there was a Tony Atlas.

Now, this is Muscle Development Magazine.

I never competed in bodybuilding before, but what ended up happening, I did a

350 -pound press at age 19.

That was the beginning of my bodybuilding and powerlifting.

I saw Tony the first time at the YMCA.

My name is David Crockett. I am part of the Crockett Wrestling family that

started Mid -Atlantic Championship Wrestling, World Championship Wrestling,

That's us.

In Charlotte, the only place you had to exercise or lift weights was the

YMCA.

The wrestlers, George Scott, Sandy Scott, Johnny Heideman, you name it,

were down there working out. And they said, hey, we've got this young man that

we think we can do something with. They take me to the office.

There were some mats there.

And they said, you know, put him through the paces just to see, you know, if he

knew anything, which he didn't.

But he definitely had potential.

They said, we're going to pay you.

$150 a week to trade.

We took an investment in Tony.

Other people, we did not see it worth buying stock in them.

So was there jealousy?

Oh, yes.

And it was very hard for him, very hard. But he was like a sponge.

You know, he'd learn.

Now, George Scott said, well, Tony, I guess tomorrow we have to teach you how

work.

I said, George, I don't want to work. I want to be a wrestler.

He said, no, Tony, you don't understand. I said, I don't want to work. I said, I

don't want to be a worker. I want to be a wrestler.

I learned it ain't up to me to win or lose. It's up to some promoter. It was

hard to swallow, me being, for so many years, as a weightlifter, a bodybuilder.