At times, you make some decisions in life that hit you later, in silence, in hindsight, in the quiet moment when you realize you should’ve just knocked on the door. Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake, one of Hulk Hogan’s oldest friends, is dealing with one of those blows.
Days before the wrestling icon died of a heart attack at 71, Brutus thought about visiting him at his Florida home. He didn’t go. And now, he can’t stop thinking about it.
“I was going to try to go to his house a couple of days ago,” Brutus, whose real name is Ed Leslie, told TMZ. “My wife said, ‘You just go over there.’ But I thought, ‘What if they say I can’t come in?’ That would’ve crushed me. I didn’t go. And now I wish I had.”
The regret runs deeper because of what Hogan once did for Brutus. Back in 1990, Brutus was in a devastating parasailing accident that nearly killed him. His face shattered. His life hung by a thread.
And Hogan? He dropped everything. Left California. His wife was pregnant. His young son needed him. But he flew across the country to be at his best friend’s bedside in Florida.
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“When they brought me out of a drug-induced coma, he was there,” Brutus said. “He told me, ‘Don’t even think about it, Brutus, you’re going to live.’ And I did.”
Hogan was more than a tag-team partner or a fellow Hall of Famer. He was the guy who dragged Brutus into the wrestling world when no one else saw the potential. “He recruited me out of high school,” Brutus recalled. “I owe him everything.”
Now, as the wrestling world mourns, Brutus is trying to hold onto the good, the decades of friendship, the battles in and out of the ring, the loyalty that never wavered. But that one decision, to not knock on Hogan’s door, lingers.
“If I had just tried, maybe I would’ve seen him one last time,” he said. “I love you, brother. We truly were friends to the end.”
Sometimes the final bell doesn’t sound in an arena. It rings in your heart.
