WWE Daily

Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake shines up the shears and regales with tales about the origins of his fishnet tights, sleeping in vans with The Hulkster, and his miraculous recovery from the brink of death.

Take us back to the very beginning. How did your storied WWE run begin?

I started as “Baron Beefcake.” Linda McMahon actually came up with the name—the idea was sort of a male stripper type of thing. I was going to have a cane and a top hat, all that. Hulk Hogan came up with the name Brutus, and we went to Florida to see a guy he knew who made outfits for rock bands and people like Cher and Jimi Hendrix. We told him what we wanted, and he came up with some crazy outfits for me—snakeskin, neon, rhinestones. I changed my look by cutting my hair, dying it black, and dropping about 30 pounds, then flew back to Connecticut to show Vince the results. He fell out of his chair and said, “How can this not make money?”

Where did the struttin’ and cuttin’ Barber idea come from?

It evolved from an incident at WrestleMania III. Adrian Adonis fought Roddy Piper and lost, and had to get his head shaved. Instead of doing it himself, Piper called me out with the clippers…and “The Barber” was born.

Did you really think a wrestling barber would take off?

Oh, I thought it was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. I thought, “Brutus Beefcake is hot without ‘The Barber.’ Why make a change? You change things when what you’re doing is not hot.” But Hulkster told me he thought Brutus “The Barber” would be a success. I had no clue what was going to happen.

So how do you explain what did happen?

I was able to interject my personality, and my physical and mental capabilities, and make Brutus “The Barber” more popular than Brutus “The Chippendale.” It’s something we built on for years, and it’s still working, 21 years later.

What do you remember about the fateful first haircut at WrestleMania III?

His hair was so nasty and greasy that the clippers didn’t work. First, I tried a battery-operated pair of clippers. Nothing. Then, I tried an electric set. Nothing. So, finally, I had to break out the scissors and just started whacking away at his hair.