02/01/2022
On this 1st day of black history month Emerald Coast Championship Wrestling honors a pioneer of our industry. He is the first African American man to challenge for the NWA heavyweight Championship that is of Sweet Daddy S**i.
S**i started wrestling in 1955 in Artesia, New Mexico.[3] He also did some training in Los Angeles with Sandor Szabo and Ray Ortega.[3] He says he weighed about 180 pounds when he started, but within three years weighed in at 230.[3]
He moved to Toronto in 1961 because it was a central location from which to travel across North America.[3] He still lives in Toronto today, and uses it as a base for his country & western band and his work as a karaoke DJ at The Duke on Queen Street East.[3] S**i is well known throughout Canada. He was a top draw in the 1960s and 1970s. He fought in Stampede Wrestling for years, travelled with Bearman McKigney's circuit and was a mainstay of the eastern scene.[3] S**i is best known for his headbutt or "coco butt" and his "neckbreaker" maneuver.[4] At his peak, S**i was a main card attraction at Maple Leaf Gardens and drew fans by the busloads.[4] He had made his Maple Leaf Gardens debut in 1962 and wrestled there until 1980.[5] In his peak at Maple Leaf Gardens, he earned up to $3,000 a bout and received bundles of mail from fans around the world.[4] In the 1970s, S**i wrestled two well-known radio & television hosts in Toronto: CHUM radio's Terry Steele and CITY-TV's Gene Taylor.[5] He used an airplane spin as a finisher in both matches.[5]
S**i was brought into CWA Memphis on March 25, 1985, by Tux Newman for 3 weeks. He first wrestled a handicap match and then wrestled Mike Sharpe the two following weeks. S**i made an appearance on WWE Smackdown on September 13, 2011, for Edge Appreciation Night, along with several other WWE Legends and former superstars.
S**i now hosts karaoke Saturday afternoons at The Duke bar at Queen and Leslie Streets in Toronto.[1] Along the way, he has accrued six major wrestling belts, including the Austra-Asian championship, the North American championship (three times), the Texas championship and the tag-team heavyweight crown.[4] S**i suffered many injuries throughout his career. He suffered from two broken ribs, had his hands broken twice, his ankle and leg broken, and half his face paralyzed.[4] In the 1980s, he wrestled across the Maritimes and in small Northern Ontario towns.[4] S**i wrote his own theme song entitled "I Am So Proud of What I See".[4] S**i also released an album on vinyl.
During this time, he also started to teach the craft at Sully's Toronto Youth Athletic Club on Sundays.[4] He continued to wrestle into the 1990s. He was also affiliated with a Toronto wrestling school through the 1980s and to the mid-1990s, initially in partnership with Johnny Powers.[5] Besides Canada, S**i has wrestled across the United States, and in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and Trinidad.[3] The second album by The Henrys, Chasing Grace,[6] contains a song titled 'Sweet Daddy S**i'. Toronto based Pork Belly Futures featured him in their second album with the song "Sweet Daddy"
