I am from Pittsburgh.
(upbeat music)
The home to such icons as Andy Warhol,
Dan Marino, and Mr. Rogers.
♪ It's a beautiful day in this neighborhood ♪
♪ A beautiful day for a neighbor ♪
♪ Would you be mine? ♪
♪ Could you be mine? ♪
But the biggest star to come out of
the Steel City is Bruno Sammartino.
Now, don't believe me?
Well, I'll have my friend Arnold here explain.
I realize that this is the star of all stars.
He was the best, he was the most popular, he was huge.
Bruno Sammartino was
a superstar professional wrestler.
(rock music)
And I mean superstar.
You can hear this capacity crowd
chanting Bruno, Bruno, Bruno!
He sold out Madison Square Garden
a whopping 188 times.
That's more than Billy Joel, U2, the Rolling Stones,
and Janet Jackson combined.
In 1959 he was the strongest man in the world.
And held the WWE championship belt
for 2,803 days, meanwhile Hulk Hogan
held his WCW championship belt for a minor 359.
But all of that almost didn't happen.
How unlikely is his success story?
It's impossible.
How does a 13 year old malnourished sickly child
that doesn't know the language
come to this country, and is bullied.
Now the wrestler's extraordinary life story
is being told in the acclaimed
documentary "Bruno Sammartino".
The Worldwide Wrestling Federation
champion, Bruno Sammartino.
(man yelling)
Born in 1935, Bruno grew up in Italy.
He came of age during the height of World War II,
in the small mountain town of Pizzoferrato.
So my dad's early life when he was a kid was,
it wasn't the best, you know.
They were very poor.
Then he got sick for most of his younger years.
And then the war happened and the Germans came in.
And they had to flee the town,
and they had to go on top of the mountain for 14 months.
And they lived outside.
And he was a very sickly, sickly kid.
I mean they were basically starving, starving to death.
He had rheumatic fever.
So rheumatic fever, and as I find out as the years went on,
it eventually is gonna affect your heart as you get older.
Nazis came to their village, took over,
and had one point captured them.
Lined them up to be executed.
His mother took his brother Paul, sister Mary,
and him under her arms and said, don't worry,
we'll never be hungry again, we'll never be cold again,
we'll be in Paradise with Jesus.
And just then they were saved at the last minute
by their own villagers who had followed the Germans
and killed them right there on the spot.
I only survived because of my mom's love and care.
She did everything to keep me alive.
After the war Bruno's family immigrated
to America and settled in Pittsburgh.
Steel town,
heart of America's industrial might.
They came to America in 1950.
My dad was poor his whole life until he came here.
He made it on his own.
Literally.
Yet this sickly kid wasn't met
with kindness when he arrived.
My dad was bullied.
He didn't know the language.
He moved to Oakland, in Pittsburgh.
And because he couldn't speak well and this and that
he got bullied, and he was very very skinny.
I mean he was 15 years old weighing 87 pounds, literally.
You always hear about that 87 pound weight claim,
well that was for real.
So yeah, he got beat up a lot.
And so that's when he started lifting weights
and making himself bigger.
And, like he said, all the bullies disappeared,
after a while. (laughs)
So my dad set a bench press record of 565 pounds.
And that's with no chemicals, no shirts.
None of that stuff.
And back then you had 565 pounds,
you brought it to your chest,
and you counted 1,001, 1,002, and then you lifted it.
Bruno caught the attention
of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
But the world of wresting also came calling.
Back then he had basically a choice.
You can do wresting.
(audience yelling)
Or play with the Steelers.
Well back then with the Steelers
a lineman was making $9,000 a year.
And wrestling back then was 35,000.
And it's all relative.
So 35,000 back then to start was pretty good.
So there you have it.
Wresting didn't just become something
to put food on his family's table,
it also made Bruno a global phenomenon.
He was the biggest ticket on the planet, at one point.
He wrestled on every continent on earth.
He was a megastar in Japan.
Wrestled in Australia, Canada, Europe,
Mexico, South America, extraordinary.
And people would come out to see him,
and selling out Madison Square Garden,
arguably the biggest house in the world,
188 times as the headliner.
People like Frank Sinatra wanted to hang with him.
When he came into the ring people were standing
and screaming, and screaming, and screaming.
And then the fight began,
and I mean he started throwing this guy around.
He lifted people up that were 400 pounds, overhead.
So this is how powerful he was.
Bruno was one of the globe's
hottest tickets during his heyday.
But those close to him say, he always remained humble.
Someone who was homeless would recognize Bruno.
And stop in the moment, and go, Bruno!
And he would treat that person the same
as he would treat the president of a company.
I saw that many times.
And the fans, all the fans in between.
He would stay, sign autographs, and never blow them off.
'Cause he said, these are the people that made me who I am.
In the late 1980s Bruno retired
from the sport to which he gave so much.
But his years in the ring had taken a toll.
He figures that he was body slammed over 8,000 times.
8,000 times in his career.
With that, and the beatings you take in the ring,
and people can say what they want, you take beatings.
And the rheumatic fever, it's amazing
that he even lived that long.
But he took such good care of himself.
He worked out all the time.
It was so strict and so, I mean,
he would never miss a workout.
He'd run miles, and miles, and miles.
I mean he was 265 pounds running 12 miles a day.
The WWE Hall of Fame came calling in 2013.
And his friend Arnold did the honors.
Arnold Schwarzenegger flew off a movie set
all the way from California just to do his induction speech.
In April 2018 Bruno passed away at 82.
But his legacy lives on.
He says, as an immigrant he always
felt like working harder.
And he was so appreciative of what kind of a career he had
as an immigrant coming over here to America.
I appreciate it so much as an Austrian to come over here.
I did not go through all the stuff that he went through,
and the hardship, and everything like that.
It is, I think, one of the greatest
immigration stories that anyone can think of
when you talk about Bruno Sammartino.
He would say, the strength of this country
is in its diversity, and I would agree.
Because the people that are here wanna be here,
fought to be here in many cases.
And he was also quick to point out,
I'm not the only one who dealt with this,
and recognize all the other families,
not only in Italy, but around the world,
who'd overcome struggles to be here.
So he was very cognizant of that.
And the strength of this country
is the fact that it's so diverse.
My dad is 100% the American dream.
Like he said, when he came to America
the roads were paved in gold.
It was a way for him to make a living.
And he made a better living for his family
than what he had, coming to America.
For InsideEdition.com, I'm Steven Fabian.