From Las Vegas strip club to becoming The Godfather of WWE - How a Sylvester Stallone movie changed the life of a wrestling legend
The name
Charles Wright
might not ring a bell with fans of wrestling but The Godfather sure does. He was still working at a strip club in Las Vegas when a sudden conversation and a subsequent phone call changed his life completely.
Gone was Charles Wright, and instead, fans got to see a legendary wrestler who became one of the biggest names in
WWE
during the Attitude Era. But what really went down that made a once non-believer into one of the top performers in wrestling? Let's find out.
The Godfather reveals how he became a top wrestler
Charles Wright had no prior experience as far as wrestling was concerned. For him, it was just people who did play-fighting for viewers and had no other thoughts on it. But one night, a conversation led to changing his whole perspective on the matter.
Sylvester Stallone
was filming his movie, Over the Top, in Las Vegas, and the shoot had a lot of wrestlers in it. A little chat with them, and Wright was completely blown away. In a conversation with the No-Contest Wrestling Podcast, he said:
'I was working in a strip club in Las Vegas… and they were filming a movie called Over The Top.
A lot of guys in that were wrestlers… and they come in, they're like, 'Dude, you should become a wrestler.' And I'm like, 'Man, I don't want to do that phony shit.''
Hall of Famer The Godfather, Plus Reactions to AEW's All In & WWE Evolution | No-Contest Wrestling
But when he heard one of the wrestlers present there had "made a million dollars last year," Wright was astonished. He could not believe that wrestling could pay that much. And even though he did not have any idea how wrestling worked, he decided maybe he could try his luck and see what happened.
A phone call led to the birth of
Soultaker
That one conversation led to Charles Wright making a phone call, and that one call changed the trajectory of his life. Further into his conversation, the Hall of Famer revealed:
'Literally, less than two years from that call, I'm wrestling Jerry Lawler in Memphis, Tennessee, on a Monday night on my very first match ever, not knowing anything about wrestling, because I never went to wrestling school. I beat Jerry Lawler on a Monday night."
And that one night alone was enough to make him the Soultaker. It also led to a friendship that defined the Attitude Era, as the Soultaker and
the Undertaker
became an unlikely duo in wrestling.
"I was The Soultaker in Memphis, Tennessee, man.'
He became the Soultaker, a name he had taken from one of the tattoos on the arm of the wrestlers from the bar in Las Vegas, who had convinced him to try professional wrestling. He went through many gimmicks and name changes throughout his career, but later, it was the moniker of The Godfather that became his identity. It was as The Godfather that he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2016, and is today regarded as one of the legends in wrestling.
Also Read:
WWE: Unreal is ready to pull back the curtain on the world of wrestling with its newest docuseries
Catch Rani Rampal's inspiring story on Game On, Episode 4. Watch Here!
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