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- Man Mountain Mike weighed in at 600lbs and wrestled in various territories
- Man Mountain Mike passed away due to a blood infection and clots
Who is the heaviest professional wrestler of all time? The answer depends on who is actually active at the time. At first, it was Andre the Giant, hailed as the biggest, tallest, and heaviest athlete in all of sports. After Andre, Vince McMahon awarded the title to Yokuzuna, who was close to 600 pounds, even heavier than Andre the Giant.
Big Show was next in line and held the title of the heaviest professional athlete for several years. Giants will always have a place in professional wrestling, despite limited wrestling skills because this sport is designed for larger than life athletes. Immense athletes like Andre, Yokuzuna, and Big Show will be remembered for decades, but there was another giant named Gary Fletcher, more popularly known as Man Mountain Mike.
Man Mountain Mike weighed in at 600lbs and wrestled in various territories
Born in Columbia, New Hampshire, Gary Fletcher was not a fan of wrestling growing up. He had no dreams of getting into the business, but he was discovered by a prominent wrestler at the time. Al Lovelock, who used to wrestle under the ring name Great Bolo, found Fletcher at an all-you-can-eat buffet in a California restaurant. Impressed by his size, Al took Fletcher under his wing and began training him as a professional wrestler and eventually Fletcher made his in-ring debut in 1968.
Fletcher was 6 feet 4 inches tall and his actual weight was recorded as 600 pounds. Early in his career, Fletcher’s stunt was tied to a body shot challenge. If you could body hit him, you’d win a thousand dollars. This little skit was enough to propel him into a decent spot in the promotion.
Back then, wrestling was more about size and less about skill, and in the California territory, Gary Fletcher, now known as Man Mountain Mike, ended up being a decently popular name. He wasn’t a world champion or the most sought after fighter in the area, but he was a giant and people gravitated towards him. More impressively, he was quite agile for his size and his finishing move was a massive splash, something he was able to achieve with a fair amount of height.
Under National Wrestling Alliance rules, Fletcher worked in several different territories. After California, he wrestled in Florida. After Florida, his next stop was the American Wrestling Association, a promotion in the state of Minnesota. MMM made AWA his home for a few years and then moved back to Florida, wrestling for Championship Wrestling Florida, where he was crowned the undisputed King of Battle Royals due to his immense size and the difficulty of throwing him over the top. of the top rope.
Some of the other highlights of his career include a series of matches against Antonio Inoki in Japan. Fletcher failed to score a single win over Inoki, but his star grew nonetheless. MMM was also an occasional tag team wrestler, partnering with Haystack Calhoun, who was also a great wrestler, in the 1970s and Butcher Brannigan, with whom he captured the NWA Hollywood tag titles.
Man Mountain Mike passed away due to a blood infection and clots
Man Mountain Mike has also wrestled for the WWWF in the past, the precursor to modern day WWE, but has never won a championship in the promotion. After wrestling for 13 years, Gary Fletcher had his last match in the WWF in 1982. He retired from the sport, not a championship level wrestler, but still quite a memorable character. Unfortunately, Fletcher, like many wrestlers of that era, was unable to earn enough money to support himself after he ended his wrestling career.
After retiring from professional wrestling, Fletcher opened a dry cleaner under the name Man Mountain Mike’s Dry Cleaners. He also worked as a taxi driver and later as a school bus driver. One day, Fletcher cut his leg while trying to recline the seat, and his wound developed into a staph infection.
Fletcher was diabetic and this made the blood infection worse. The infection resulted in several blood clots, and on April 30, 1988, Gary Fletcher passed away. He was only 47 years old.