"It would take Man Mountain to..."

[Espee]

Forever, my mom has been saying things like "It would take Man Mountain to move that cabinet, without taking everything out of it first"
and
"It takes Man Mountain to open the box these cookies come in"
and
"It took Man Mountain to open this jar"

At some point, she explained that he was a famous wrestler, and I let it go at that. Today I became a little more curious, and I found a "no sources, no references" article on Wikipedia.
Apparently a Mr. Leavitt, born 1891 in New York City, wrestled under various names before settling on "Man Mountain Dean" (Dean being his wife's name.) He retired to Georgia in 1937, long before television brought fame to wrestlers.
He went in the Army when underage... and served again during WWII, when beyond age 50. He died in 1953.

 

[LizzieMaine]

A contemporary of Bull Montana, Constantine Romanoff, and the Gold Dust Trio, when wrestling was something you'd see at the carnival or booked into the local Armory on a cold Saturday night in November.

Obscure fun fact: Pro wrestling was legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini's favorite sport.

 

[filfoster]

There was also a wrestler here in the MidWest in the late '50's, early '60's named Man Mountain Cannon, a contemporary of the formidable "Haystack Calhoun" who appeared on our local TV on Saturday afternoons on a show called 'Big Time Wrestling', which wasn't, so much. He may have been this guy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cannon_(wrestler)

My mother's father and I watched them often. The audience was also a show, zaftig Appalachian women and their kids, driinking water or who-knows-what from what looked like Clorox jugs.

 

[Tomasso]

Obscure fun fact: Pro wrestling was legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini's favorite sport.

Funny!

Bess Truman was also a big fan.

 

[Espee]

Arthur Fiedler went to fires, as a spectator sport.

 

[Dixon Cannon]

Moves cabinets in his spare time! ≈ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Mountain_Mike -dixon cannon

 

[scooter]

FilFoster, you bring back fond memories. I idolized my grandfather( mother's father) and clearly remember watching TV8 wrestling as it was called back home, with him as a little tyke. He passed when I was young, but the love of the sport stayed with me, and I became a very successful high school and collegiate wrestler. Later in life, I was a wrestling referee for many years. How proficient I was, would depend on which fan section you asked on any given night!