"Bruiser" Bob Sweetan: A complicated legacy

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Welcome to Grappling With Canada! Each month Andy "The Taxman" is joined by various guests to take a deep dive into the past of some of Canada's most influential, infamous and impressive Wrestling exports! Not a Canadian? Don't worry, no passport needed! The international connections of wrestling with and to Canada will surprise you!

In this months episode, The Taxman is joined by Greg Oliver as we discuss one of the most controversial individuals from Canadian Pro Wrestling history,

You can find Greg's article on Bob Sweetan here:

https://slamwrestling.net/index.php/2017/02/24/bruiser-bob-sweetan-leaves-a-complicated-legacy/

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Hi folks, Andy the Taxman here.

(00:04):
Before we get into today's program, please take a minute to rate, review and subscribe
to Grappling with Canada on any podcasting platform of your choice.
This episode contains discussions of drug abuse, sexual abuse and the sexual abuse of
children.

(00:24):
Under discretion is advised.
Bob Sweet Hand was a piece of shit.
I could share code it for all of his relatives out there in the hinterlands.
But I found him to be insufferable.

(00:49):
Not a good guy.
And you know, he had these proclivities to young, had very little character, but he was
a very good heel.
I can't give the devil his due.
He was a piece of shit as a human being.

(01:10):
Abuse referees, he abused rookie talents.
So I didn't care for him obviously, but I'm not going to disrespect his in-ring work.
He was a good heel.
He just wasn't a good person out of the ring.

(01:31):
I'm your host, Andy the Taxman, and this is Grappling with Canada.
Hello folks, and welcome to season three of Grappling with Canada.

(01:54):
Sports washing.
It's been a big topic of discussion, especially with the events surrounding the FIFA event
in Qatar.
It's been on the tip of a lot of people's tongues, especially overseas when you consider
what's happening with football clubs over there.
What happens with or what happens when dirty money infiltrates sport.

(02:20):
Sports washing, for those who are not familiar, is a term used to describe the practice of
individuals, groups, corporations, or governments using sports to improve reputations tarnished
by wrongdoing, which is in a sense a form of propaganda.
What happens when sports washing is not just limited to major corporations, major sporting

(02:45):
events.
What happens when a form of sports washing is used to obfuscate the legacy of people
in sport.
Today we will be looking into the very complicated story of bruiser Bob Sweeten.

(03:05):
Why do I talk about sports washing?
Simply put, professional wrestling has this weird dichotomy.
There are fans who will celebrate the wrestler and not talk about the person.
Case in point would be an individual like Chris Benoit, an amazing in-ring talent, but

(03:31):
we cannot overlook the fact that he murdered in cold blood his wife and his son.
There are many individuals like this, perhaps not to that extent, but who exist in the history
in the pantheon of professional wrestling, whose in-ring work is celebrated and whose

(03:57):
personal life is not discussed.
To me, in order to tell a fulsome story about an individual, you need to bring all of the
facets of that person together.
That's what we're going to do today.
Not just to discuss the career of Bruiser Bob Sweeten, but to also discuss the impact

(04:21):
that it had on individuals in his life who were sucked into his orbit and who had to
pick up the pieces and move their lives forward.
One of which you're really going to hear about today and somebody who their story alone is
reason enough for me to do this program tonight.

(04:44):
I have to be honest, I have had an extremely difficult time with this particular episode
because there is subject matter in here, specifically sexual abuse of a child, that I cannot do

(05:06):
my usual job on these programs of providing an unbiased view of a person's background
and of a person's situation.
There are few lines that I really have an issue with and to say that child abuse is

(05:31):
one of them would be an understatement.
So I'm going to do my very best today to provide the facts, leave the conjecture out of it,
leave my personal feelings about the individual in question, Bruiser Bob Sweeten, out of it

(05:52):
and provide you with a proper contextualized story of who Bob Sweeten was, what he meant
in the ring and who he was outside of the ring and I will allow you then to form hopefully
your own opinions.

(06:13):
The reality is we have a big problem in professional wrestling with unsavory characters skating
by skating through life based on what they can do in the ring.
In my opinion that is not an excuse, that is not a reason to let somebody slide.

(06:40):
So with all that being said we are going to be exploring today the life and career of
Bruiser Bob Sweeten.
In order for me to do this I have joining me on the program today, and you're going
to hear him in a little bit, a good friend of the show, Greg Oliver who has an interesting

(07:03):
article and a fascinating story regarding that article on slamwrestling.net that we
will be heavily referencing on this program today.
The reality is most of the articles that you read regarding Bob Sweeten online are essentially

(07:24):
derivatives of what Greg Oliver has written up to and including the obituary on the Wrestling
Observer News site.
Unfortunately many of these sites don't give proper credit to Greg for his incredible work
not only of investigating, researching and properly pursuing all leads in regards to

(07:49):
the article but how he presented it and how long it took him to present it.
We are going to get into that all a little bit later.
But first as I usually do we will provide some archival audio because once again I need

(08:13):
to put my personal feelings aside and present the story of Bruiser Bob Sweeten in the proper
context.
So I'm going to play you some classic Bruiser Bob Sweeten audio and on the other side let's
dig into the man, Bob Sweeten.

(08:34):
Bob, congratulations I know you dropped the man on his head and you got your belt back.
You know Steve, I told Adrian Adonis and I told all the good fans out there that I was

(08:54):
going to get him and I was going to get my belt back because as far as I was concerned
he stole it from me.
That's exactly what I did, what even made it sweeter.
I used my favorite move to put Mr. Adonis down for a 1-2-3.
Now the man is the world's champion, he's an undisputed world's heavyweight champion.
So I feel that with the win over him to get my title back puts me right in the driver's

(09:17):
seat, puts me right in that number one spot to get a shot at Adonis.
Now Adonis I listened to you a little earlier up here talking, telling the people how good
you are and how great you are.
I'm going to give the devil his due, yes you are good.
A man has to be good in order to survive in the sport of professional wrestling and a
man has to be especially good in order to be a champion.

(09:38):
And you are the undisputed world's heavyweight champion so that means that you are good because
you went through a lot of good men in that tournament.
But I feel deep down inside Adonis that there's nobody in this sport better than I and the
way I feel about it anybody can be beaten on any given night.
So now you're the world's champion, that puts you right at the top of the mountain,

(09:59):
way up there above everybody else and that means that there's a lot of good men in the
sport of professional wrestling that are after you, that have their sights set on you.
Adonis you're going to feel pressure like you've never felt pressure in your life because
every man that puts on a pair of wrestling shoes, a pair of wrestling tights is going
to be gunning for you.
And sooner or later somewhere along the line I'm going to get my hands on you, I'm going

(10:19):
to get a title shot and then we're going to find out exactly how good you are.
You've only done the first step, you've won the title.
Now the big part that's coming, the heavy part that's really going to put the pressure
on you is for you to try to keep that title.
And like I said before with all the good men in the sport of professional wrestling after
you it's going to be hard to keep that title.

(10:40):
Adonis keep looking over your shoulder, keep watching out for Mr. Piledriver because I'm
coming with all my guns loaded and I'm going to corner you Adonis.
I beat you once for a title, I can't see the reason why I can't do it again.
But the fans of Texas and all over the world behind me that gives a man a little extra
boost makes you go a little bit harder.

(11:00):
And Adonis when I step in that ring with you I can guarantee you one thing I'm going to
go as hard as possible because I'd like a mate for this belt and that belt that you
have would look very good around my waist.
Thank you very much Bob Sweetin, good luck to you.
Alright there you have the Southwest Heavyweight Champion Bob Sweetin.

(11:24):
The majority of the information provided in today's episode is coming directly from the
slamwrestling.net article, Bruiser Bob Sweetin Leaves a Complicated Legacy by Greg Oliver.
Now there's a very important reason for this.
This article by Greg Oliver includes the only interview ever submitted by a professional

(11:51):
wrestling journalist with Bruiser Bob Sweetin.
Essentially everything else that you read out there about Bruiser Bob Sweetin on any
one of these other aggregate wrestling sites is essentially a derivative of the work that
Greg Oliver has done in this specific article.

(12:13):
Of note there is one very important piece to this that continually gets overlooked and
we're going to be getting into that later on in the program tonight.
You're also going to be hearing from Greg Oliver as he further expands on certain aspects
of the Bob Sweetin story.

(12:36):
Once again if you look in the show notes of today's episode you will find a link to the
Bruiser Bob Sweetin Leaves a Complicated Legacy story.
You will also know that this article was recorded, written, completed in 2006.

(12:57):
It was not released until the death of Bruiser Bob Sweetin in 2017, almost 9 years later.
There are very important reasons for that and Greg is along for the ride to discuss
that later on in the program.
But I wanted everybody to understand where you can find this article, how long it was

(13:19):
sat on and at the end of this episode you're going to understand why those decisions were
made.
Robert Beyer was born July 4th, 1940 on a farm near Goodsoy, Saskatchewan which is about
4 hours north of Saskatoon.
He'd parlay his 5 foot 10 thick frame into a spot on the Toronto Argonauts, although

(13:43):
he was not listed on any game reports and declined to discuss it further during his
interview with Greg Oliver.
It's also unclear when he changed his last name from Beyer, but he did change it to Carson,
which will come up later on in the article as we proceed.

(14:03):
Robert Carson then headed back west where he ended up in Calgary.
A quote from the article on slamrestin.net written by Greg Oliver, quote, I just got
on the road and decided I had to see everything and started traveling.
Now Bob Carson, which would later become Bob Sweetin, had one of the more interesting starts

(14:25):
in professional wrestling.
To further expand on this aspect, let's hear from the author of this article, slamrestin.net's
own Greg Oliver.
So the craziest story for getting involved in pro wrestling, I mean Sweetin has to be
up there.

(14:46):
He was a big guy, he played football and he said he was just home at Calgary and somebody
knocked on his door.
This is a lost art for today's world where you can get whatever you want the next moment
from Amazon, but there was a pot and pan salesman coming to his door.
His name was Gerd Toppsnick and he was a wrestler, one of those part-time guys, the homesteaders

(15:09):
that filled out the stampede cards.
Bob chatted him up and said, hey, I'll be happy to buy some pots and some pans if you
hook me up to learn to be a pro wrestler.
That led to his introduction to Stu Hart and we all know the Stu Hart stories.
He was a good trainer, but it wasn't easy.

(15:30):
He really made those guys work both in the basement and whatever ring they had set up.
But I don't think anybody will ever question Bob Sweetin for his legitimacy as a wrestler.
He looked the part, he acted the part, he portrayed a tough guy.
He wasn't doing moonsaults, let's put it that way, but you knew enough to be intimidated

(15:52):
by him and I think that helped sell some tickets over the years.
Conventional wisdom would dictate that during the off-seasons of the Calgary Stampede Wrestling
territory that Canadian wrestlers would go down to the States to find a lot of their
work, but that's not necessarily the case.
Many of the Calgary Stampede era wrestlers during the Calgary off-season would actually

(16:16):
go out to the Maritimes.
The idea here being that when Calgary was in their off-season, the Maritimes were on
their on-season and vice versa.
I had Greg Oliver expand a little bit more on the relationship between the Calgary wrestling
scene and the Maritimes wrestling scene and how it related to Bob Sweetin.

(16:39):
Going from Stampede to the Maritimes was pretty common because Stampede would run all through
the winter and they'd calm down a little bit over the summer.
They'd obviously run their big Stampede show at the Calgary Stampede, things like that,
but the Maritimes was a summer tour.
The guys loved to go out there because it was easy trips.

(17:02):
They really weren't that far apart.
You got to do a little bit of fishing.
You certainly got to eat your seafood.
You really had a lot more downtime and it was like a little bit vacation going out there.
It was pretty normal for a lot of the guys from Stampede to end up out in the Maritimes.
He worked for Emile Dupré out there and then he kept going back and worked for the Cormiers

(17:23):
and Al Zink when they were promoting out there.
He was just a guy that made sense out there.
He fit that lifestyle out there on the East Coast.
They really respect those guys that were really tough.
He made a great foil for all the Cormiers especially because he was such a fireplug
kind of guy.

(17:44):
He wasn't that tall, but he was really built stocky.
Now from the article, Greg would alliterate that the road really became Sweet 10's home
as he worked promotions in Oregon, Arizona, Kansas City, Deanna, and Oklahoma, as well
as San Antonio, Texas in addition to the territories that he was working here in Canada.

(18:10):
Sweet 10 would say to himself, quote, I was a tight worker.
Everything was close.
I don't think that there was anything I ever did that didn't look real.
Maybe at the beginning when I didn't know what I was doing, but I always prided myself
on my hard work.
I always got the saying, hey, you're too small.
You're too small for this.

(18:30):
You're too small for that.
I just had to prove them wrong.
That was my motivation.
To expand a little bit more on the impact of Bob Sweet 10 in the territories, here's
Greg Oliver.
Well, I think from a perspective, when you look back on the career of Bob Sweet 10, you're
going to associate it most with Texas, especially San Antonio, because he was one of the guys

(18:56):
working for Joe Blanchard when Southwest Championship Wrestling got on the USA Network.
He had national exposure, and that is a huge difference maker right there.
Of course, we all know the USA Network eventually went with WWF, but at the time, Southwest
Championship Wrestling, those guys, your Scott Casey's, your Bob Sweet 10's, your Tully Blanchard's,

(19:21):
they were big names.
As much as he may have influenced somebody locally like a Shawn Michaels, he also had
a bit of an influence just portraying what a villain or a celebrated good guy, in the
sense that he was a bad guy that was around so long that the fans started to like him.
He was great national exposure there, and we can't really rule that out as being part

(19:45):
of his legacy.
Now during Bob Sweet 10's time in America, this seems to be when his, we'll say proclivities

(20:07):
start to manifest themselves.
To expand a little bit on this, I'm going to once again throw it to Greg Oliver, and
we're also going to hear a little bit about Grizzly Smith.
Now for those who are unfamiliar, Grizzly Smith is probably one of the most depraved
individuals to ever enter the professional wrestling world, we'll say.

(20:32):
I'm not going to litigate everything that he did in professional wrestling, nor am I
here to litigate what he did outside of the ring, including countless sexual assaults
of children, including his own children.

(20:57):
If you are looking for more information on Grizzly Smith, there is a lot of resources
out there, but this is a name that's unfortunately going to keep coming up in the context of
this conversation, and there may be a line to be drawn between Grizzly Smith and what
Bob Sweet 10 would eventually end up doing.

(21:19):
However, that is part of the story, and I wanted to illuminate on that a little bit
before we move forward.
So here once again is Greg Oliver to expand on the start of the seeming proclivities of
Bruiser Bob Sweet 10, and a little bit of an introduction to Grizzly Smith.

(21:44):
I'm not even sure proclivity is the right word.
I mean, they all, they didn't all goof around in the wives, but they all screwed around
to some degree, whether it was just being goofy, you know, having a few drinks, or obviously
the screwing around, but the proclivity and assaulting his daughter is a wholly different

(22:04):
thing.
And I think that's a lot of the reason he was ostracized from the business, that a lot
of people didn't want to stay in touch with him because, you know, that's just negative
energy.
You don't need it in your life, and it's easy to get rid of a guy like that, especially
after you're deported and sent back to Canada after his three strikes in the US.
It is a little bit interesting, I guess, that, you know, you look at somebody like Grizzly

(22:29):
Smith, who look what he got away with for decades, right?
And then in that same territory around that same time is Bob Sweet 10.
Now, I'm not saying that the two are in any way, shape or form the same type of individual,
but it's scary to think about, certainly.

(22:49):
But it's, yeah, it's creepy.
You know, do they sit around and compare notes about molesting their daughters?
I don't know.
The timelines probably don't work to say that.
But yeah, there's a lot of that creepiness that goes into pro wrestling.
And you hear it from various people over the years.
It's like I was told never to be in a room alone with Grizzly Smith.

(23:09):
Or I'm sure there were similar things said about Bob Sweet 10.
It's like, don't trust him.
In the story that I wrote, you know, Ed Wiskoski, who was Colonel De Beers, talks about him
being a locker room thief.
And again, that was another common theme.
You hear that about a few guys and it's really hard to prove.
But I mean, I've heard that about Sweet 10 and Dick Steinborn and a few different guys

(23:30):
that just weren't really trusted on the same level as some of the other guys.
And that's again, that leads into the nomadic lifestyle of the wrestlers where it's like,
I may not see this guy again for two months so I can screw him over.

(23:59):
Now to further expand on the relationship between Sweet 10 and Grizzly Smith, I'm going
to read a quote.
This comes from Jim Ross via his Slaubernacher book.
Now this quote contains some distressing material, so please be advised while listening to this
portion but we do need to add context to the Bob Sweet 10 story.

(24:25):
So again, this comes from Jim Ross's Slaubernacher.
The Maguire's appointments were Siegfried Stanky and Bob Sweet 10.
Stanky was portraying an evil German stereotype which had been a powerful role for a heel
in the early 1950s and 1960s.
In real life, this sneering quote Nazi villain was native Texan Bill Lehman, an all around

(24:50):
good guy and American football player from Texas Lutheran.
How Bill tolerated his partner I'll never know because Bob Sweet 10, as I knew well
by now, was one of the most cantankerous human beings I had ever encountered.
Since our card games, him taking liberties with me in the ring, and his resulting run

(25:12):
in with Hodge, which I will get into later in the program, Sweet 10 had gotten even more
miserable in the few years since I had last seen him.
I don't know whether I was happy or not to find out that his bullying wasn't just limited
to me, not by any stretch.
Sweet 10 also took advantage of job guys, wrestlers just passing through, or locals,

(25:34):
the guys who were least likely to say anything that he could make waves for as a top heel.
He also took liberties with the Maguire twins.
He took advantage of their lack of experience in the ring and just beat the ass out of them.
I knew by now that wrestling was a tough physical sport, but if you're going in with the intent
of hurting your opponent, you're in the wrong field.

(25:57):
I was the referee and saw firsthand how brutal the shots were.
I tried to intervene, but Sweet 10 was not exactly of mind to heed my feeble warnings.
So he took his time at making himself look like the baddest guy around.
When it came to the finish, he would tag his partner, Stanky, to get pinned with a splash
by one of the huge twins.

(26:20):
Lehman didn't mind doing the job, both because he knew he wasn't going to be back in the
same little town for a while, and because he was a professional.
Sweet 10, on the other hand, was a piece of feces.
He operated how he wanted to because he enjoyed the protection of Grizzly Smith, Leroy's right
hand man.
Grizz and Sweet 10 were friendly.
They had a few things in common, including an interest in very young females.

(26:47):
Leroy had even told me that he had to stop running Texarana as part of a deal to allegedly
get Grizz out of a charge involving a young girl there.
And since part of Grizzly's job was to make the house shows and report back to the office,
he was always in close enough contact with minors for something bad to happen.
Parents would drop their kids off at shows, and because we hit the same towns weekly,

(27:10):
it was easy for young ladies to figure out what restaurants the guys visited and what
hotels they occupied.
In that environment, someone with a perversion could easily become a predator.
I learned a lot from Leroy and Watts, but I'll never understand why they were willing
to keep Grizz on.
I understood why he had to appeal as a wrestler.
There weren't a lot of 6'10 guys around, much less ones who understood in-bring psychology,

(27:36):
and Grizz knew the business.
But there had come a point where the rewards of a good gate were outweighed by a person's
proclivities.
I wanted to ask, Leroy, you still got this man on payroll after all, why'd you keep
using him?
But I didn't.
I didn't feel like it was my place.
I still remember the first time I became acutely aware of Sweeten's part in it, and that memory

(27:58):
still makes me nauseous.
We were waiting to do some interviews at the local station after show at Fort Smith, Arkansas
one night, and one of the sponsors was there with his wife and little girl, who is maybe
12, to meet the wrestlers.
Sweeten muttered to me.
I could make her purr like a kitten.
I leaned towards Sweeten, mortified that the sponsor might overhear this discussion, and

(28:21):
said quietly, well, that might not make her husband too happy.
He said it with a smile, I'm not talking about the mother.
Sweeten liked to take advantage of every chance he got, even if it was a pair of 600 pound
wrestlers.

(28:41):
Now that would not be the only negative comment made towards Bob Sweeten, some of which we're
going to get into later on in the story, but I felt it necessary at this point in the story
to really start laying the groundwork for the entire contextualized story of Bob Sweeten

(29:02):
to become evident, because what happened at the end of the story, the groundwork is laid
in his formative years.
And there are people, unfortunately, Grizzly Smith being one of them, who fostered that
environment and allowed it to fester.
And unfortunately, for the people involved in Bob Sweeten's orbit, they were sucked into

(29:30):
it through no fault of their own.
It is interesting too, that the article or the interview that Greg Oliver had with Bob
Sweeten would kind of alternate between what happened in the ring, what happened outside
of the ring.

(29:51):
And I think that that's a fair representation, because when we're talking about somebody
with a checkered past such as Bob Sweeten, we need to keep all of these facets in proper
context.
Now one person who had some good things to say about Bob Sweeten was Cowboy Dan Croffett,

(30:11):
who would speak about Bob Sweeten during his time in Oklahoma.
Quote, he and I worked on top there.
We changed the belt back and forth.
I found him to be a great worker, said Croffett.
I had a lot of great matches with the guy.
He was a pleasure to work with, but who knows what goes on outside the ring.
Another regular opponent was Leo Burke, and he considered Sweeten's strengths and weaknesses.

(30:37):
Quote, he was a good follower.
If you could lead him, he could follow you like a dancing partner.
But I've had better heels, but he was definitely a good one.
He was kind of lazy sometimes.
That would be his worst knock.
He was easy to work with.
Now one of the most memorable tag teams that Bob Sweeten formed was one with Fred Prosser.

(30:59):
Now Fred Prosser might be an episode in itself, just how he ended up passing away, which is
kind of a crazy story as the aspects of his death are very much in question, even after
the RCMP conducted a very extensive investigation regarding it.

(31:22):
Now it is interesting to note that Bob Sweeten would form a few different tag teams throughout
the years with multiple different partners.
It is interesting that regardless of how many tag teams he was partnered with, isolation
seems to be something that he continually put himself in on the road.
To further expand upon his tag team with Prosser as well as isolation on the road, once again,

(31:51):
Greg Oliver.
There's a lot of things that happen in pro wrestling where somebody gets paired with
somebody and you don't always know why.
In the case of Fred Prosser, it was just the idea that maybe Sweeten should try it as a
tag team.
They didn't know each other at all.

(32:12):
When Bob Carson met Fred Prosser, they became a tag team.
So that was Fred Sweeten and Bob Sweeten.
They were a successful team, but they were also really similar.
They weren't big tall guys.
They could just be bruisers like guys you meet down at the bar and it would come in
and fight.

(32:33):
In Stampede, they obviously excelled as a tag team, but they also did some stuff out
east where Fred Prosser was actually from out in the Maritimes.
It's just one of those forgotten tag teams that had a number of years, good runs.
They did a little bit in the US where they went as the Cox brothers instead of the Sweetens.
I'm not exactly sure why, but we did talk about that in the article.

(32:56):
K.O.
Cox was a reference to an old time wrestler.
That's how Bob Sweeten used that for a little bit.
They had Freddie as another Cox brother.
It's interesting for a guy like Sweeten to be in so many tag teams.
Some of his partners listed here, Mike George, Terry Gibbs, etc.

(33:20):
He would go on to tell that line in the interview about being isolated constantly.
How do you square those things together?
He's in a tag team and he's supposed to be working with these guys night in and night
out, but at the same time he's constantly off doing his own thing?

(33:41):
I don't think that's completely unnatural in the wrestling business.
It's easier and cheaper to travel with other guys, to heal the room and have a few guys
in the hotels or share the cost of trans.
It also lends itself to yourself doing it on your own.
Obviously he was quite happy with that.

(34:01):
There's no rule that says you have to get along with your tag team partner outside the
ring.
You just have to be able to perform together.
From all I could tell, he was a good tag team partner when he finally got in the ring.
It is interesting that that plays into why not many people in the business kept track
of him because he didn't go out of his way to make friends in the business.

(34:29):
I think that's exactly it.
He didn't go out of the way.
That's a good way to put it.
He didn't really stay in touch.
That's on him and that's on other people.
Obviously they could have stayed in touch, but they made their choices and he made his.
We're here second guessing, talking about this years later.
Again, the technology has changed.

(34:50):
It's pretty simple for guys to text each other now or give a quick call from wherever they
are.
For the kids listening today, long distance used to matter.
You have to figure out when the best times were to call and save money.
You'd be calling after seven on a Sunday or whatever it was.
The elements of staying in touch are different today than they were then.

(35:12):
Now, it is interesting to note that regardless of Bob Sweeten outside of the ring, inside
of the ring, he actually ended up becoming quite the well regarded and well respected
wrestler in the fans eyes.
To explain a little bit about this, once again, I'm going to be joined by Greg Oliver in

(35:33):
just a minute, as well as Greg will also expand on the famous pile driver, the finishing maneuver
that Bob Sweeten really trademarked his matches with.
But before we get into that, I wanted to play a little bit of classic wrestling audio.
Now, this is from a match between Bob Sweeten and Jerry the King Lawler.

(35:57):
And I want you to pay attention to the sounds of the crowd throughout the finish of the
match.
Once again, we need to be able to properly contextualize the story of Bob Sweeten, the
wrestler, Bob Sweeten, the man, although they are the same thing.
I do need to present the wrestling side and what the fans thought of him in the ring at

(36:24):
the time that he was one of the big stars in America in terms of professional wrestling.
So once again, I'm going to play some classic wrestling audio.
And on the other side, we're going to hear once again from Greg Oliver as he expands
on just how Bob Sweeten ended up becoming a good guy in the fans eyes and then expanding

(36:52):
further upon Bob Sweeten's use of his most famous move and one that is still talked about
by fans today, the Paul Driver.
Please enjoy.
Jerry Lawler, high and here he goes and drops a knee across the chest of Bob Sweeten.

(37:13):
Lawler grabbing the hair, throws a punch that was very close to the throat.
Lawler proud of himself now.
Let's see if the king goes for the power driver.
There he goes.
Oh, and Sweeten flips him off.

(37:34):
The king, Jerry Lawler, made his first move for the power driver and Bob Sweeten just
flipped him right over his back.
Sweeten now with a punch.
Bob Sweeten going after Jerry Lawler in a big boot there puts Lawler on the mat and

(37:56):
elbow smash from Sweeten.
He's got him down for a count of two.
Oh, that was close.
Sweeten taking Lawler, lays him on the ropes, whips him across the ring, cuts him back with
that elbow and down goes Jerry Lawler.
Another elbow smash by Sweeten.
And Lawler kicks out.

(38:19):
Sweeten grabs the hair, brings the king Jerry Lawler up.
Oh, what an uppercut that was and that sent Lawler back to the mat.
Sweeten reaching in, has him up for a beautiful back suplex.
Oh, and he went right into the ropes.
The king, Jerry Lawler, is covered up by Sweeten.

(38:43):
Here's a count.
It is up.
A leg over that bottom rope.
I don't believe it was a three count as Lawler had the leg over the bottom rope.
Two count.
I thought the referee gave him three, but Lawler did have a leg over the bottom rope.
There's another back suplex.

(39:05):
Sweeten trying to keep him from rolling around.
She's got him covered up again and this time it's three.
This time I believe it was three.
Lawler has got a leg over that bottom rope.
Let's see if the referee is going to...
Oh no.

(39:27):
I don't believe he's going to award the match to Sweeten.
He isn't.
Now there's no doubt about that.
From my position here at the arena, it looked like that leg went over the bottom rope after
the three count.
Now Lawler gets a knee up there.
He's got Sweeten down.
Lawler using the rope for leverage.
He got the three count.
Jerry Lawler using the rope for leverage has got the three count on Sweeten.

(39:52):
Now Sweeten comes back at him for the foul driver.
He dropped him by his head.
Oh, this crowd is going crazy.
Listen to this crowd.
They want Sweeten to do it again.
Sweeten is up on that middle rope.
Lawler is down, suffering from the pain that has been brought to him by that foul driver

(40:19):
by Bob Sweeten and Sweeten is leaving the ring.
He lost the match, but he did get to put the foul driver on the king, Jerry Lawler.
Lawler was the winner of the match.
It looked like Sweeten had won, but the referee decided that...

(40:39):
In our book Heroes and Icons, Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame Heroes and Icons, we had to try
to figure out the idea of anti-heroes because there's guys that are villains and really
good villains, but through whatever process, they don't change their style in the ring
at all, but they become good guys.

(41:00):
The fans buy into them.
They start really supporting them.
It often has a lot to do with being in the same town for a long time or homesteading
as the term is used.
Eventually they just organically become good guys.
That certainly happened to Sweeten in a couple of places.

(41:20):
San Antonio for one.
It's just that they fit in with that style and the fans want to support them.
It just happens.
That's one of the joys of pro wrestling when it isn't over scripted, when you listen to
the fans a little bit.
Just go along for the ride.

(41:41):
It's part of the magic of it.
Sweeten rode that.
I'm not sure he was the world's greatest babyface by any means.
No doubt it was probably hard trying to figure out who he's going to go against, but it worked
in short stints in various places.
Now, from the article, you can tell by the tone of it that his tone really changes when

(42:02):
he starts talking about the piledriver and that aspect of it.
Can you maybe expand a little bit on that portion of the conversation they had with
him?
It's funny, when I look back at my memories of Bob Sweeten, it's all from the wrestling
magazines because I never saw him work.
Certainly not in person.
I know I've seen him a few times on videos or on streaming, but it was all about the

(42:24):
piledriver.
It was certainly what they put over in the magazines.
Mr. Piledriver.
That's the one time when I was talking to him that he really lit up.
He really understood the art to the piledriver.
Would brag about how he never hurt anybody and how he could do it on the concrete or
on tables or in the ring or off the rope.

(42:46):
He always managed to protect the guy.
Now, again, partly that might be his body shape.
He was a little bit bottom heavy and not a real tall guy.
He was strong, so obviously he could protect the guys in his strong legs as well.
I just love it though when those guys do perk up a little bit.
That's one of the things that stands out from my interview with him.
He got all excited talking about piledrivers.

(43:10):
We'd always sort of mused a little bit, Steve Johnson and I, that maybe there's a pro wrestling
hall of fame that moves where you talk about those moves.
I don't think the book's ever going to happen, but I remember that was one of the ones where
it clicks in your head.
It's like, oh, this would be really good talking about the piledriver.
But that's the nature of these two.
You get all kinds of things that you never actually use when you interview somebody.

(43:31):
I was looking through my notes before we talked.
The number of different people he talked about for me or about that he'd worked with, that's
important to me too.
Because a lot of these guys, it may not work into his obituary, but if he's talking to
me about Gil Hayes or Bob Brown or DB Ozzy, who he worked with a ton, they're just additions

(43:55):
there and I end up using it down the road.
Part of my job as a journalist is to just accumulate, accumulate, accumulate.
It doesn't mean you ever use this stuff.
Now I want to further expand on the relationship between Bob Sweeten and the wrestling fans.
This is once again directly from the slamwrestling.net article on Bruiser Bob Sweeten by Greg Oliver.

(44:18):
As for the fans, it's fair to say that they never knew what they were going to get from
Sweeten.
Gene Petit, who is later known as Cousin Luke in the WWF, knew Sweeten in Louisiana.
Quote, Bob was a heel, baby face, heel, baby face.
The people still loved him no matter what he did.
If they hated him because he was a heel, they'd cause riots.

(44:39):
Then he turned baby face and they liked him because he was part of that territory and
he belonged to those people, whether he was a good guy or a bad guy.
If they brought a good guy in that the people didn't know and Bob was a heel, they might
not care too much for that good guy.
He might have been a bad guy, but he was their bad guy.
A young Shawn Michaels saw the same thing when Sweeten worked in San Antonio, Texas.

(45:03):
Quote, One of our favorites was a guy named Bruiser Bob Sweeten.
He was the first wrestler to come in as a bad guy, act like a bad guy, and be turned
good by the fans, wrote Michaels in his autobiography.
Quote, He came out to bang your head by quiet riot and would finish his opponents off with
the pile driver.
That got him over like a million bucks and the fans couldn't help but cheer for him.

(45:30):
As you just heard previously, Greg had gone into great detail about the pile driver aspect
of Bob Sweeten, but I wanted you to hear about that in Bob's own words.
Once again, from the article.
Common for most of the phone interview, Sweeten comes alive talking about his skills with
a devastating move.
Quote, I've seen different guys use the pile driver.

(45:52):
I don't give a f how many guys tried.
They don't do it the same way I did it.
He said, it looked like it was dead on every time I hit it.
I didn't give an f.
You could go out there with the camera right down there on the mat, right between my legs
and you would still swore in the man got jacked.
Things I did, I tried to do them as solid as possible, as believable as possible.

(46:15):
Most of the time, even as the guys I worked with, I was stiff.
I never hurt anybody in all the years I used it.
I never hurt anybody.
I did pile drivers on the apron onto the concrete floor.
I did pile drivers four feet through a table onto the cement floor.
Guys weighing 260, 280, 300, 350.

(46:35):
I never hurt one of them.
Although the fans had a love and hate relationship with Bob, depending on what he was in the
ring, many of the wrestlers in the back were not fans of Bob Sweeten.
Jim Ross once again had a quote in this article that I'm going to read.
Quote, Bruiser Bob Sweeten, not the nicest guy I ever met in the biz.

(46:58):
I followed Sweeten back to the locker room through very angry fans while Grizz was laying
in the ring bleeding profusely.
This was in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
The rule of thumb was always leave with the villains because that's where the cops would
be.
They were right there all along and they did all they could to prevent me from getting
punched repeatedly while navigating my way through many irate, drunken alpha males who

(47:22):
wanted to kill Sweeten for what he did to their beloved hero and for me for allowing
their heinous actions to occur.
Sweeten would recall another ride in Baton Rouge, Louisiana where the fans started throwing
chairs into the ring.
From Bob Sweeten, quote, Finally I said, Okay, this is it.

(47:45):
Nobody came out of the dressing room to help my ass.
I jumped out of the ring and ran running back to the dressing room.
They locked the effing door and I couldn't get in.
I had to get up on the stage and go down another way to the effing dressing room.
Someone else who didn't look favorably on Sweeten was Ed Wiskowski.
Quote, I wasn't a fan of his.

(48:08):
From being a locker room thief to just among other things, just an asshole.
Whenever I was around him, I always locked my stuff up, made sure that I didn't have
anything that I couldn't afford to lose in the dressing room.
Another one who was not a fan was Jim Duggan.
Quote, just a mean guy and a bully.

(48:28):
And there is another Jim Ross story that I wanted to cover as well.
And you may be wondering to yourself, why are there seemingly so many Jim Ross stories?
Well, once again, there are not very many people who have gone on record to talk about
Bob Sweeten.
There's essentially Bob Sweeten in this article talking about himself, the person who you're

(48:51):
going to hear very shortly, the few wrestlers that have made some quotes about him and then
Jim Ross, who if you're a wrestling fan, you know that he was essentially the voice of
wrestling for 25, 30 years.
So when he speaks, people listen.
And he had a lot to say in regards to Bob Sweeten.

(49:15):
Now this story is of Jim Ross talking about one of his good friends and heroes, Danny
Hodge, who Danny Hodge was one of the most legitimate professional wrestlers in history,
one of the toughest men to ever step inside the squared circle.
Quote, Hodge has been bullied as a kid and he wasn't tolerant of such behavior.

(49:40):
As fate would have it, Hodge wrestled Sweeten soon after his return.
Hodge saw my black eye was filled in by other wrestlers of Sweeten's conduct regarding
rookies and people that the real life villain could intimidate and bully.
In the match with the 220 pound Hodge, Sweeten was humbled, physically gassed and punished

(50:00):
while being made to look far from invincible in his casting as the territory's top antagonist.
Ironically, the booking that night called for Hodge to lose, which he did.
Now in this point in the program, I'm sure you're wondering why I would showcase or do
an episode, I guess is a proper way to say it, on Bruiser Bob Sweeten because he obviously

(50:25):
is not the best person inside or outside of the ring.
Well, the reality is there is one important reason why I felt like the Bob Sweeten story
needed to be spotlight and it's because of the woman that you're going to hear in this

(50:45):
next series of discussions with Greg Oliver.
To me, in the article, there is one star and that is Rebecca.
Rebecca Terrain met her future husband in Kansas City where he was wrestling in 1969.
She had been raised in Iowa and left after high school.

(51:07):
Rebecca was not a wrestling fan though and had never been to the matches.
Instead, he saw her dancing at the adult club across from the KC Wrestling office and something
clicked between the two of them.
They were married in Los Angeles in 1971 and had four children together.
Candice was born in 1971, Christopher in 1974, Kathy in 1976 and Carson in 1978.

(51:35):
Now it should be noted that Sweeten does have one other child with another woman.
To me, in the article, Rebecca is the star and like I said previously, she is the one
reason why I felt like the Bruiser Bob Sweeten story needed to be told.

(51:57):
Not specifically to platform Bob Sweeten but to make people understand what this woman
went through, how she was able to raise four children and come out on the other side.
I spoke in length with Greg Oliver regarding this.
Here's what Greg had to say.

(52:26):
What was interesting about Rebecca is I went back to her at least two or three times to
get more.
And that's a little bit of fact checking.
You dig up police records or whatever because all of a sudden she's giving you leads and
you know dates or you know times or you know locations and so you can dig up some of those
police records and then you go back and talk to her a little bit about that.

(52:50):
I never talked to any of the kids which I probably could have.
One of the kids, Christopher, has since passed on I know for sure.
So it's a funny business sometimes working with wives, especially the ex-wives because
they often have an axe to grind.
In this case she had a very legitimate axe to grind.
I have no problem with it.
But you have to be careful about balance.

(53:12):
And she's going to say all the negative stuff and Bob basically just brushed it off.
Well, I went to court and got divorced.
And that's all he really wanted to talk about when you knew there was so much more.
So I was going into talking to Bob Sweeten with a lot under my belt that I already knew
that he didn't know I knew, which is a great position to be in in a case like that.

(53:34):
You don't want to go in there and start fishing with a guy who's got a criminal record.
You want to have your actual ducks in a row for a good cliche before you talk to him.
And so again with Rebecca, I'm pretty sure I went back and I talked to her again after
talking to Bob and said, you know, he said this, he said that.
And you know it's just a chance to clarify things.
It's like, well, yeah, he did finally call and we talked and you know he's talked to

(53:58):
some of the kids since those kind of things.
It humanizes these guys, right?
I mean, we see them as these great big exciting pro wrestlers that live these fabulous lives,
but really they live tough lives.
They're away from their families all the time and you know, the rigors of the road.
So I'm glad you like the Rebecca part.

(54:20):
I'm so glad she's in there and her story got told as well.
For her, it's fascinating because you don't really hear this happen too much in pro wrestling
where the family moves with the wrestler.
Usually the wrestler and the family are at home and the wrestler is off to whatever I'm
thinking about somebody like Kienyski for example.

(54:43):
It's interesting that she was so not involved in the business.
I don't mean it that way, but was involved in the moving aspect of it.
Did she go into very much detail about that?
I don't remember talking a lot about the moving.
I don't think it's as rare as you think it is for the guy to move around a lot, especially

(55:04):
when the kids are young.
That was pretty common.
Wrestlers in general would travel with their young kids and it wasn't until the kids were
you know, a serious school age.
I don't mean kindergarten.
I mean, once they're ready to start settling in and they need a home base, that's often
when they would settle down.
So I didn't get all that timeline completely straight and I'm not sure it's that important

(55:26):
where and when they lived and when.
It would be if I was doing a full biography on Bob Sweetand, but who's going to buy it?
You know, such a terrible human being.
Well, that's the other part of it.
We'll expand on that in a little bit.
Just I want to stay on the Rebecca thing for a little bit just because I find her story

(55:48):
and her part of this story just so fascinating because she seemingly comes out of nowhere.
It just kind of gets pulled into the orbit of Bob Sweetand and then unfortunately suffers
the consequences of it.
Like I'm sure that your discussions with her were pretty one sided as you would imagine
they would be.

(56:09):
But she comes off in the article as being, you know, pretty straight with everything.
Was that your impression of her as well?
It was my impression that she was a straight shooter.
You do have that little bit of, and it's unfair, but you have that little bit of bias built
in because you know that she was a stripper.
Like there's no other way to put it, an adult dancer.

(56:30):
So you're immediately thinking, oh, well, she maybe not have been well educated or tough
times or this and that, but that wasn't the case at all.
She was really intelligent, really was able to explain her positions and talk about what
happened in the family.
Yeah, she was emotional a little bit at times, but yet I think it was probably cathartic

(56:51):
to talk a little bit about some of those things that went on during her life and then, you
know, what a part Bob Carson was in her life and gave her the, all the kids, the four kids.
So yeah, she's a strong woman for sure.
And I'm glad that comes across in the article.

(57:11):
One thing that I started this program off by saying is that I have been absolutely unable
to separate my personal feelings about Bruiser Bob Sweeten from doing the program.
It's clouded me and I've tried very hard to make it not the focal point of the program

(57:39):
tonight.
And I wanted to know from Greg Oliver, what, how he was able to combat that because I had
a very difficult time of doing it.
And I can't imagine going into an interview with somebody where you know their checkered
past, you have the receipts, you have the ammunition and it's you and it's them.

(58:06):
And how do you go about that interview and then write a subsequent article when the proclivity
nature of this individual is so front and center and so obvious and so harmful.
I asked Greg to expand on what that process was like and how he was able to separate himself

(58:33):
from his work in regards to this specific situation.
I know I'm not alone in the journalism world being able to do a tough job, ask the tough
questions and not let it affect you personally.
And that just goes back to even your first days in journalism school when they send you

(58:53):
to an inquest or you cover a tough story.
You have to be able to shut it down.
I was fortunate.
I don't want to say fortunate, it maybe isn't the right word, but when I was at the Toronto
Sun, I never had to do the pickups.
I never had to go knock on a door and somebody whose kid had died and try to get a picture,
any of those kind of things.
But I knew people that did and we talked about it.

(59:15):
I knew the guys in the police desk.
I worked in the library for three years so I knew everybody at the Toronto Sun.
And that was also during the worst of the Paul Bernardo and all that stuff was all going
on at the same time, let alone every other crazy thing going on in Toronto at the time.

(59:35):
So I think you get jaded a little bit and that's an awful thing in many ways that say
that you're jaded, but that happens.
But it's also a disconnect, right?
It's like this didn't happen to me.
My job is to tell the story and it's hard.
It's also why on slamwrestling.net we've also set up over the years, we've had our

(59:59):
map matters or map memories where we can do more personal things because sometimes it
really is personal, right?
When Bob Leonard, who we mentioned earlier, died and then Willie the Wolfman died in the
same weekend, I was crushed.
Both those guys were really great friends of mine.
And so you have to write something personal and that's okay.

(01:00:21):
But I never knew Bob Sweetin personally.
I never knew Rebecca personally.
I never knew the daughter.
So all those things make it easier to have a little bit of distance and a little bit
of, I don't know, yeah, your hands out and you're saying, well, this isn't me.
These aren't people I directly know.
So I can have a little bit more distance.

(01:00:43):
I can have a little bit more unbiasedness, I guess, because that's sort of what you're
saying, right?
You get colored by this awful stuff that goes on there.
And how is that any different than, you know, you have that guy on the Philadelphia Flyers
recently that didn't want to, you know, wear the pride sweater for the Flyers.
Well, now everybody going in there is going to immediately think of that when they see

(01:01:07):
that guy and they talk to him.
And that's an unfortunate reality of how our brains work, right?
Is that, you know, you associate somebody with something and it's stuck in there for life.
And with Bob Sweetin, yeah, I mean, for all the great wrestling that he did, his legacy
is that he molested his daughter and, you know, went to jail and got deported and all
these different things.

(01:01:27):
He was not a good person.
And which is also why I held the story.
That's the other thing I think that probably helps explain some of these things.
If I had tried to write about Bob Sweetin while he was alive, it ends up being a little
bit of a celebration of his life, even if the bad stuff was in there.
But by waiting until he died, that I ran that interview that again, nobody else had.

(01:01:52):
I think it really helped clarify and keep it all less emotional, I guess, in a way.
It was a tough one to write, but it was an important story to write.
And I had so much like just I'm looking at my notes before we talked.
And man, I probably could have written another whole article.
But there's only so much Bob Sweetin the world needs.

(01:02:17):
Now Bob Sweetin's drug use is something that really comes into play later on in the story.
And I want to go or I want to read from the slam wrestling dot net article once again,
though hardly exclusive to the individual nature of professional wrestlers, drugs enter
the picture.
Sweetin was not shy talking about it.

(01:02:37):
Quote, there wasn't anything that I didn't take or do.
I enjoyed life to the fullest, said Sweetin.
It was so easily available and it was all pharmaceutical.
It was nothing made up in somebody's bathtub or cooked up in somebody's effing kitchen.
And who knows what the eff is in it.
It was all pure pharmaceutical stuff.

(01:02:57):
It didn't have that much damage to your body if you did it within reason.
Rebecca Carson knows that date all too well.
Sweetin had a good career, quote, until he fried his brains on drugs, which is actually
one of my most favorite lines from the article.
The result is bad decisions.

(01:03:18):
Sweetin disappeared from the lives of his wife and four children on October 15th, 1985
and from the world of professional wrestling.
Bill Watts was Sweetin's boss at that particular moment and Carson called him after two weeks
of not hearing from her husband.
From Rebecca, quote, I called Bill and asked where Bob was.

(01:03:38):
He said, well, we don't know, he just didn't show up for work.
We thought he went home.
Days later, she called Grizzly Smith, whom she'd known for more than a decade.
I said, Grizz, you need to help me find out what happened to Bob.
He was working for Bill.
It's your responsibility.
You just tell me what you know.
He said, well, he was dating this arena rat and that was the drug dealer.

(01:04:03):
Knowing a little bit more, she called Watts back and learned that her husband had left
his paycheck there, so at least she had some short term money to raise her family.
From Rebecca again, quote, we went all through Thanksgiving, Christmas, my birthday, no word.
I was halfway torn that someone had done him in because he had left and never missed a
day's work in his life, no matter how beat up he was.

(01:04:25):
And he's never left a dollar.
So what was I to think?
In January, 1986, Carson hired a professional investigator to find Sweetin.
The PI succeeded tracking him down to a rough part of the state near the Texas Arkansas
border.
Carson then filed for divorce and Sweetin did show up at the courthouse with his girlfriend

(01:04:47):
Stacey, where he walked by two of his children, Candice and Chris, without recognizing them.
Quote, he came in the courtroom and then he left the courtroom in a huff because he got
nothing, recalled Carson.
They left the courtroom and disappeared.
That was April 29th, 1986.
Working 12 hours a day to support her kids, Carson struggled.

(01:05:10):
Sweetin disappeared again and wouldn't be seen in Texas again until 1990, when he was
brought in on charges for sexually molesting a child.
His daughter, Candice.
Speaking carefully, Carson said that her daughter revealed the sexual assault about a year after
the divorce.

(01:05:30):
This was 15 at the time when she alleged it.
Charges were filed with the attorney general and a warrant was issued for Sweetin slash
Carson's arrest.
Eventually, Sweetin was apprehended in Pensacola, Florida and brought back to Texas in January
1990, where he faced felony charge over the sexual assault and a separate charge over

(01:05:53):
non-payment of child support.
Six months later, on July 9th, Sweetin pled guilty to the sexual assault.
Instead of further jail time, he was part of a new program that required him to stay
in touch with authorities, stay away from minors, and continue to pay the child support.
We didn't have to go to court, said Rebecca Carson.

(01:06:18):
I was actually able to find the Robert Carson file on the Texas Public Sex Offender Registry.
The SID number was 03066146.
It was a lifetime listing on the sex offender site.
One thing that is misreported is that he had sexually assaulted his daughter when she was

(01:06:47):
15, but that is not correct.
She was 15 when the charges were filed.
According to the offense sheet under statute, Texas Penal Code 22.011A-2, the victim's age
was 7 and the deposition date was July 16th, 1990.

(01:07:11):
The judgment was, as quoted in the article, 10 years probation slash community supervision.
The caveat to all of that was that Bob had to check in every time that he was moving
addresses or anything of that nature.
Greg expands on that later on in our conversation as well.

(01:07:35):
I think perhaps highlight is maybe not the right word to use, but I'm not sure what word
to use in this instance.
One of the more memorable parts of the interview is when Rebecca is talking about how he was
deported, he being sweetened.
The druggies are a stupid line.

(01:07:56):
To me, I can just, in my mind, having never met her, I can just picture her demeanor saying
a line like that and then explain the situation.
I like that line too and it obviously is something she's probably said to other people.
It's not like it's a unique line in that sense, but it certainly encapsulates it all, doesn't

(01:08:19):
it?
It's like druggies do stupid things and that's certainly what happened here.
He allowed himself to get caught because he wasn't thinking clearly.
He was thinking more about the next hit or whatever next scam was or whatever it was
that he did get caught.
Then that was third strike, he gets sent back to Canada.

(01:08:42):
I realize I keep coming back to this aspect of it.
Once again, it's because I cannot seem to separate myself from the subject material.
That aspect is, it's one thing to research an individual like Bruiserbob Sweeten, watch
the matches, go through the audio archives, learn about him.

(01:09:07):
It's one thing to do all that.
It's quite another thing to present it in a project and then send it out into the world
because a small part of me feels wrong almost to platform somebody like this.

(01:09:32):
The other part of me really understands that if we don't properly contextualize individuals
in the, well specifically in this case, the wrestling side of things, the wrestling historical
side of things, that's when a lot of this horrible information gets lost.

(01:09:58):
Then all we're left with was, Bruiserbob Sweeten, what a tremendous polydriver, what a great
heel.
You never hear the rest of it.
What happens then is Rebecca's story and the girl's story is left out.

(01:10:20):
That is reason alone for me at least to put out this project.
I wanted to ask Greg, he does the interview in 2006.
He sits on it for nine years.
Why release this program or why release this article in the first place?

(01:10:42):
Greg Oliver again.
When you contacted me for this interview to talk about Sweeten, I had to go back and revisit
a lot of things because I did the interviews in 2006 for the most part.
As I said earlier, I do accumulate stuff.
Maybe somebody else told me something afterwards and you just keep filing things away.

(01:11:05):
But Bob Sweeten didn't die until 2017.
I sat on this piece essentially for 11 years, 10 years, whatever it is, give or take.
I had no problem with that.
Nobody ever was clamoring, oh, I wish I knew more about Bob Sweeten.
I wish we knew more about this.

(01:11:26):
I never felt that need to get it out there.
Generally you want a news hook.
That's what I talk about with a lot of pieces.
It's as simple as somebody starts a new YouTube channel or a new podcast.
There's my news hook to go talk to the Honky-tonk man or whoever it is.
You get a little news hook.

(01:11:47):
The news hook for Bob Sweeten was always going to be he's dead.
That was an easy one to wait for.
I can't remember how much I had done ahead of time.
Maybe some, maybe not.
But it also wasn't breaking news.
It wasn't Tony Khan announcing that Jay Briscoe is dead at 6.50 on a Monday night and off

(01:12:09):
you go.
It was very much something different.
I had the scoop.
Nobody else had this thing.
I had no need to rush with it.
I just wanted to get the job done and do it right.
I think I did that in the end.
But you're right.
There's a bit of a strangeness to the idea that you wait so long to get something out

(01:12:30):
there that was important.
But again, it's Bob Sweeten.
Does it really make or break the world if we didn't have that piece up there within
20 minutes of him dying?
No.
It's interesting now because we're in 2023.
So we're six years removed from the article being released essentially.

(01:12:55):
You see a lot of stuff online, Facebook groups, whatever, etc.
People are talking about Sweeten, what he did in Texas, what he did in Florida, Calgary.
There's almost this willingness to overlook what he did in his past to talk about his

(01:13:23):
wrestling career.
I think that's the one thing that your article does a good job of explaining.
They're not two separate sides of the coin.
This is one person.
I think that's an aspect that we need to keep our eye on in this whole age of sports washing

(01:13:46):
certain individuals in professional wrestling.
This is not a problem that's specific to pro wrestling, but it is a problem that seems
to happen as we progress further after these people have passed away.
That's an interesting point for sure.
It happens a lot.
You can write about Kobe Bryant being such an amazing basketball player with great ease.

(01:14:10):
Nobody would ever question that.
When you come down to the rape trial and the payoff for the woman and all that kind of
stuff, you've got to have that in there.
If you don't, you're doing a disservice to the true history.
A lot of people will say, you shouldn't put that in there.
It's part of the story.
You can't ignore it.
With Sweeten, it's certainly part of his story, all this awful stuff he did.

(01:14:34):
What I will say though is that this story continues to get traffic.
I can't say that about all the different old-timer stories.
In this case, it does because when you Google search Bob Sweeten, what's going to come up?
That piece.
That happens quite often on our site.

(01:14:55):
We're fortunate that Google loves us to a degree.
You get a little bit of respect from their search algorithms.
But hopefully people will read it and want to know more about him and why we treat him
the way we did.
Why this story is important.

(01:15:16):
I think it's all in there for somebody to really take away a bigger picture.
He could have entertained us.
He could have been a really fun wrestler to watch.
But man, in the end, he was a horrible human being.
From 1990 until 2000, Sweeten lived in San Antonio.

(01:15:39):
From Rebecca, quote, he paid all the child support, all the rears and everything.
When you're a convicted child molester, you have to register the rest of your life and
you have to register every time you change address.
Well, drugies are stupid.
He stopped registering in September of 2000.
My daughter is a dispatcher with the Pflugerville Police Department, so we still have many more

(01:16:01):
police friends.
I had the feeling that he was gone.
I could always feel him.
I know that sounds stupid, but I felt he was and I proved it.
I could always feel him.
I said to my daughter, I feel he's gone.
I can feel him gone.
So I had one of my officer friends in Pflugerville check with the person that handles people
that register.

(01:16:22):
They found that he hadn't registered.
Instead of being imprisoned in Texas, he was deported back to his home in native land in
April of 2001.
Bob Sweeten would say, quote, I'm like an elephant, I'm coming home to the doctor that
he had with Stacey played hockey, which was a rarity in San Antonio so she could play

(01:16:44):
in British Columbia.
Sweeten settled in Nanaimo where his brother Leo lived.
On the phone in 2006, Sweeten didn't go into any detail about his family issues, but admitted
that he hadn't seen his oldest children in over 20 years.
As for the court time, quote, I just got a divorce.
That was all.

(01:17:06):
Sweeten did say that his body was falling apart.
He was diabetic and didn't get around much.
Word is that his condition worsened and that he was confined to Nanaimo, a nursing home
with memory issues, where he died on February 10th, 2017.
He was 76 years old.
To Sweeten, professional wrestling was a good career choice.

(01:17:29):
Quote, I never really had any regrets because I knew I could not survive in a constrictive
environment where you have to do this, you do that, and you don't do anything unless
I tell you.
No, you don't do this and no, you don't do that.
No, I got into the business because I was an independent contractor and that's the
way it was.

(01:17:50):
His legacy outside the professional wrestling business, however, is something different.
He's a waste of skin as far as I'm concerned, stated Rebecca Carson.
He fried his brain, deserted his children, abused him emotionally, physically, sexually,
mentally, whatever.
But that's what drugs do.

(01:18:12):
He's fried his brain.
He's a fried egg.
To say that the Bruiser Bob Sweeten story is complicated very clearly is quite the exception.
However, I did feel that it was a story that needed to be told and as difficult as it was

(01:18:39):
to do, I'm happy to have done it if for no other reason it gets Rebecca and the kids
story out there because once again, I feel that that is the most important thing that
can come from this story is that her story of strength and determination gets shared

(01:18:59):
because I think that while the story doesn't really have any high spots, certainly her
coming out as a winner in this whole thing is definitely one of them.
So that concludes the program today.
I'm not going to do my usual plugs.

(01:19:22):
I don't feel that it's appropriate during the course of an episode like this.
However, I will say that season three will require your support.
So you can go on the link to your link in the show notes of this episode to find ways
to support the program.
Please make sure that you like, share, subscribe and rate this program on all major podcasting

(01:19:43):
platforms.
You can email me six side pod at gmail.com.
I read everything again.
You can find me on Twitter at six underscore podcast.
You can find this program also on YouTube.
Just search for Grappler with Canada in the YouTube search bar.

(01:20:05):
I want to thank everybody for having an open mind and tackling this conversation with me.
I want to thank Greg Oliver for his tremendous work, not only on this article, but everything
that he puts forth at slamwrestling.net.
Once again, you can find a link to that article in today's episode show notes.

(01:20:31):
Once again, my name is Andy, the tax man.
This has been Grappler with Canada and until next month, please take care of yourselves
and each other.
Good night everyone.