Brody Steele

Sully Khan

Brody Steele

Through his lengthy career, no matter the name that he used, the 6-foot-6 Peter Smith towered over his opponents.

Kingman seemed to fit. The Patriot? Not so much. The Mighty Hercules worked too. But he’s best known as Brody Steele.

The last time anyone will see him wrestling in the ring, no matter the moniker, is Friday, December 6, at the Charlottetown Eastlink Centre in Prince Edward Island at a fundraising event for Make-A-Wish.

At 57 years of age, Smith has been wrestling longer than a lot of wrestling fans have been alive.

He made his professional debut in 1996 as The Patriot in the Canadian Wrestling Federation. His career has taken him to every corner of the globe, from East Coast Pro Wrestling to World Wrestling Association in South Korea and a multitude of places in between.

He’s held numerous titles in promotions all over the world, from being a two-time UCW Maritime Heavyweight Champion at home to being Britain’s All Star Wrestling’s Heavyweight Champion.

Beyond the titles and accolades, Smith also did well to showcase the everyday lives of wrestlers with two TV shows.

“Basically, the gist of what we [were] trying to do is, is get people to respect what we did because at that time, people always talk with WWE how hard their schedule is and all that. WWE, schedule at the time and now is a joke,” Smith told SlamWrestling.net in a recent interview.

The first show, Wrestling Reality, was exactly that. The purpose of the show was to entertain (as most television is supposed to) but also to educate fans on the realities of being a wrestler. To allow a glimpse into the daily lives of a group of people that throw themselves at each other in a squared circle.

“Anytime I met somebody at the gym or wherever, and they knew I was a wrestler, they wouldn’t ask, how was your match? It was always stuff like, Have you met Hulk Hogan? Or, what’s it like being a wrestler? Is it fun? Do you travel a lot? How much money do you make?”

The physical toll of being a pro wrestler is a topic that has been studied and written about for a long time now but it’s still not widely-discussed in wrestling. Especially when wrestlers are still looking for their big break. But even after they get that, it’s not always about having the hunger for more.

Well, in a sense, it is.

“It’s not about you’re in your prime and you want to showcase your abilities. You know, that might be it for some guys, that’s how a hobby wrestler would, but a professional wrestler wants to wrestle because you get paid by the match,” said Smith. “Now, in the top companies in the world, they’re on a guaranteed contract, so I’m sure those guys appreciate their days off. But, if I’m away from my family for three months and I’m getting paid by the match, I don’t want a day off.”

Do the math, challenged Smith. “When I was in my prime, I wrestled 500 matches a year and there’s only 365 days in a year,” he said. “When you get a week off, you really relax, but there’s times that you go 100 days in a row without a day off, and very often, wrestle twice a day, sometimes three times a day.”

The term “no days off” is true in wrestling. There’s no off-season, especially with independent promotions.

The second TV show Smith was involved with, Kardinal Sinners, was very similar to the first in many regards but focused more on the undeniable chemistry that Smith had with Kowboy Mike Hughes. The dynamic between the two had hooked a lot of viewers of Wrestling Reality.

“Well, I met Mike in 1999 he came to train with Emile Dupre because I was working for Grand Prix Wrestling, and I’d been in the in the job for a year. So he brought Mike in to train him,” Smith recalled. Dupre was thinking about using Hughes on a summer tour.

“Mike had no training. None of us did. There was no such thing as a wrestling school back then, not around here anyway,” Smith said, referring to his roots in Atlantic Canada. “I think Calgary and Pennsylvania were the two wrestling schools. So, Mike came in and was working out. [Dupre] had rented a bowling alley, and then there had the ring set up at the bowling alley. I went out and met Mike, and we just became good friends right away. That summer, we traveled together. We both left Grand Prix Wrestling after that summer and Real Action Wrestling started a couple years later. And so we had another few years of travel in the Maritimes together. And then we traveled a little bit abroad too. We’ve been to England together, Puerto Rico, Japan, Korea, India. He’s been my best friend since the day I met him.”

And now Hughes, who retired himself in November 2022, is promoting Smith’s retirement under the Kowboy’s long-running Red Rock Wrestling promotional banner.

Hughes spoke glowingly of his best friend. “The first thing people see is an incredible specimen. His physique is world class and amongst the best in the business in a class with Lesnar, Sid Vicious,” said “Kowboy” Hughes via email. “He is also a very explosive athlete. Then when you speak to him, you realize he has a great mind not only for the wrestling business but very intelligent. He has a huge persona. If he walks into a room, people automatically stop and he has their attention.”

There’s something to Steele, added Hughes. “In the ring its his aura, he commands your attention and has a firm grasp of psychology. He uses his strength and explosive quickness to shock the audience. He knows how to get the best match out of his opponent,” said the Red Rock Wrestling promoter. “He also knows how to draw real heat and do what’s best for business. The heat he drew in India versus Great Khali is some of the most legit heat seen in wrestling in 30 years. He may be the best big man that simply started the job too late at 30 years old. The last of his kind in the wrestling business.”

It wasn’t all success for Smith in the wrestling business. He had a couple of missteps, and shared one.

In 2000, he was in Puerto Rico, and had wrestled a few shows and hadn’t been paid. He went to the promoter Carlos Colon. Smith recalled the conversation:

SMITH: “I need money. I’m down here. I’ve still got to eat. I haven’t been paid yet.”

COLON: “Well, we hold back the first week’s pay, and we pay at the end.”

SMITH: “Now, this isn’t a warehouse job, man. You’re gonna have to pay me.”

Colon sent for his manager and Smith was paid the next day, but also got a lecture: “This is how we do things here. I’ll make this exception.”

The mistreatment was enough for Smith. He went to the airport and arranged for a flight home. “I told my wife, I said, ‘Fuck this. I’m not being treated like this.’ I’m in Puerto Rico. What am I going to do? Piss off the guys that just killed Bruiser Brody not long before?” And Smith had actually wrestled José González, Brody’s killer — it was ruled self-defence in court, and González was acquitted — the previous night.

Since his stay wasn’t that long in Puerto Rico, Smith doesn’t have a lot of stories about the wild crowds that the island is famed for, but he does know about being in front of a crowd.

“What I do enjoy is 500 to 1,000 in a smaller-like amphitheater,” explained Smith. “[You] can almost have personal relationships with each section. I’ve wrestled up to in front of 90,000 people, and that’s brutal. It’s even the first row, because, for security reasons, they have to keep everyone so far back. The first row is 75 feet from the ring, so you can’t really relate to anybody.”

Those massive crowds were in India, working for The Great Khali’s Continental Wrestling Entertainment.

There was good and bad to the numbers. “It was always like that, where you know that they hate you, but it’s not the same as when you get the toothless granny in the front row in a hockey rink in Canada, where you can really pick on her directly, get the other people sticking up for her.”

They’re just not as personal as a lot wrestlers like the energy to feel while in the ring.

One match in his career stood out to him; Smith recalled a 2019 match in Graz, Austria against Bambi Killer. “[W]e could have gone all night,” he said.

All the travel took a toll. “There’s the normal homesickness that everyone gets. You learn to harden up to that,” confessed Smith.

There were times you just have to laugh, at least in retrospect.

About 20 years ago, he and Hughes were in South Korea for a show at the 80,000-capacity Olympic Stadium. There were around 300 fans in attendance.

“That’s the walk of shame. You’re walking down through three sets of bleachers in the upper bowl, because we came from the top down to the ring, and we’re just walking by seas of empty [seats]. Then you get to the bottom, and there’s 300 people scattered around the bottom. I would rather it full any day than empty. You could hear a pin drop in those matches.”

The good news is about 4,000 will be in attendance this Friday at the Red Rock Wrestling show, a great happy medium for Smith. When his match ends, an admirable career will hear its final bell.

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