xposting

Trip Report – 40th Birthday Celebration – Tampa

I have been waiting weeks for this to happen, and it was finally happening. I was on the plane flying to Tampa, for what I was hoping would be a celebration to remember. My wife and I flew in late Friday night, had a light dinner at Shula’s, and then just went to bed. Saturday, I woke up and my wife told me she had wanted to take me to lunch some place that was going to a surprise. Hello Topgolf! I’ve been wanting to go there since I heard about it. Pretty cool place with targets to aim at, and a computerized scoring system to play different games. We went there from noon – 1:30, but we needed to be at the restaurant for 6pm, and I still had shopping to do.

After showering and changing, I remembered I wanted to get a belt, and get my shoes shined. I mean I have to make a good impression here. Went to the mall, the cobbler told me it was an hour wait for me to get my shoes shined. A $50 tip took care of that. Shined them right up, and I was on my way. Picked up a belt, went out to Wrangler we rented, and changed into the new Bugatchi shirt I picked up before the flight. We were now ready to roll to the restaurant!!!

We got to the Salt Rock Grill at 5:30, we had a 6pm reservation, and our table was not yet ready. At this point I am incredibly nervous. I can’t remember the last time I was this nervous, I still thought there was a 5% chance it wouldn’t happen, so I texted his wife to let her know we were at the restaurant, and she texted me back that they were on their way. I saw the black convertible pull up to valet, and out stepped a very large man…Brutus The Barber Beefcake and his wife.

When they walked into the restaurant, I introduced myself and my wife to them. I have no idea how I even walked to the table, because I just kept thinking I am about to have dinner with Brutus Beefcake. We got the table, my wife sat to my left, his wife sat across from me, and Brutus sat to my right. When we all were seated, I just said, “I can’t believe this is actually happening.” My wife thankfully is very social and hit it off with his wife immediately.

We ordered drinks, I haven’t had a drink in roughly seven years, but tonight I was having one. I ordered a Bud Light bottle, he ordered a Captain and Coke. At this point I am thinking to myself, “Brutus Beefcake is about to have a drink with me.” My wife asked him what we should call him, his real name is Ed, but he said Brutus was fine. Even his wife calls him Brutus, so it didn’t seem weird or anything.

Brutus had been to this restaurant a few times, and this would be the first time he called me brother. “Brother, you have no idea how good this food is. There isn’t a bad thing on the menu.” “Holy ****” I thought, “Brutus just called me brother!” We ordered a bunch of apps for the table, and just started talking. About a million things. WWF in the 80’s, baseball (he played little league with Wade Boggs, and is still good friends with him), football, he loves to boat.

At this point I was getting more comfortable, we ordered our entrees, ordered the filet and lobster tail, I had the bone in filet, and I started asking questions I had prepared while we waited for our food. Here is some of our dialogue shortened:

Me: What was Bobby Heenan like?
Brutus: Nicest guy, funny, kind, witty, and super smart about the business.

Me: Gorilla Monsoon?
Brutus: Nicest guy you ever wanted to meet.

Me: Who was the strongest guy you worked with?
Brutus: Andre the Giant, seven – foot -two, 600 plus pounds, and brother, could crush you if he wanted to.

Me: Most famous person in your phone right now?
Brutus: The Rock

After we ate dinner, my wife and Mrs. Beefcake split a dessert, and after the check was taken care of it was around 8:30 at this point. My wife said, “Well you guys probably have had enough of us at this point.”, but they said they were having a great time, and we hung out for another 2 hours! He has a book coming out, we talked about the book, how they were promoting it, and what would be a good goal in terms of book sales. He shared stories of what it was like living that life, and when was the moment he realized what they were doing was bigger than they ever imagined.

I didn’t cross the line by taking a million pictures, we got a few pics, and I asked him to sign a figure that I had, and he was a gracious enough to do that.

This was the greatest thing I have ever done. To be able to be 9 years old again for just a few hours, was so incredibly awesome. They couldn’t have been nicer people. In fact, after dinner, they mentioned they were going to be in the Boston area, and if they have time, would love to get together again. Now I don’t know if that will ever happen again, but even if it doesn’t, it was just so amazing to be able to enjoy this unique experience.




Cliffs; I had dinner with Brutus F-ing Beefcake!!!!!!!

You are a very brave man to come forward and admit this. Hopefully you can help other people with this story.

Someone married that guy?

For all of the horror stories I have heard about other people meeting wrestlers. I can only go by my experience which was incredibly awesome.

As long as you enjoyed it.

I don’t care what others think or say, this is a great story, and I’m glad you had a good time. Just curious though, how was this set up? Do you have mutual friends or did win a contest or auction? I’m only asking because the way you wrote this it seems like this has been set up for quite a while.

F the haters (and I doubt there will be many reading this forum anyway), this is pretty cool.

Thanks for the write up. I thought it was very strange when you wouldn't reveal the wrestler in the other thread but I guess you were just going for a dramatic reveal.

I was a huge Brutus Beefcake fan as a little kid. Why? It pretty much has to be the entrance music, which, even seeing in hindsight that Ed Leslie was kind of a hack, is pretty tremendous entrance music. I was so excited for that moment in SummerSlam '89 when Brutus got the sleeper on Macho and Jesse went crazy over what a massive upset it would be if the "weak link" of the team got the fall. I was salty that he never got to win the IC Title. I was salty that he and Hogan didn't win the tag titles at WM IX.

Then he went to WCW and started playing all of those dumb characters, and I lost all interest in him. But man, I would have loved your experience here; I was a fan too. I really enjoyed reading your story. Thanks for sharing.

This feels like it should be a pun.

Took me a second to puzzle that one out. WP.

Took me about five seconds. Nice, that's nice.

Thanks for reading guys. Hope a few of you will buy the Beefcake book, and also the Kamala book. I think you can get them both at the same website.

http://www.wohw.com/

I now want to believe that you're secretly Ed Leslie himself and have built up tens of thousands of posts over nearly seven years just to eventually shill his book.

Virgil would never stoop to saying he had dinner with someone, I know that much.

Nah. I just had a really awesome experience, and figured I'd throw some support.

Here's the thing, 80's wrestling provided me with an outlet when I was a child, so I didn't have to deal with the real world stuff that was going on around me. I'll forever be indebted to anyone from that era for that. And for somebody from that era to give me an experience that was so over the top of what I expected, the least I could do is support any endeavor they are doing to provide for themselves.

I've purchased every autobiography from that era because of that reason, and I try to support those guys every chance I get. Sorry if it came off in a negative way.

Nah, I was really just messing around, the book post just struck me funny for pretty much exactly the Virgilesque reasons that DWetzel alluded to.

Took me way too long to get iso’s joke.

I hear you on this, brother.

I’m still not 100% sure I get it

Shouldve asked him how many broads him an Hogan spitroasted together

I wonder how much it wouldve cost to get him to apply a mock sleeper hold on you, after which you pretend to doze while he trims your hair while his theme plays and he throws up chunks of your massacred hair in to the air