Al Burke: The Pro Wrestler Adam Sandler Handpicked

Description

Before his face appeared on a t-shirt alongside Billy Idol’s, before Adam Sandler watched a DVD reel and said “I picked you,” before he invented an alien for Star Trek: Enterprise and rode motorcycles onto the set of Hell’s Kitchen, Al Burke was doing what he always did: going out in front of thousands of people and making somebody else look like a million dollars. He did it for 37 years in a professional wrestling ring, and then he walked out of that ring and into Hollywood and just kept right on going. By the time the Cauliflower Alley Club put him in the company of Judo Gene LeBell and Rowdy Roddy Piper with a Reel Award, Burke had more screen credits than both of them combined. This is the story nobody told you about a man from Minneapolis, Minnesota, who was everywhere you looked and almost nowhere in the record books.