Today, the wrestling world mourns the death of “Exotic” Adrian Street, a legitimately tough shooter under the veil of a flamboyant playboy.
His wife, Linda, told the BBC that Street was “the kindest, most lovely and loving man I’ve ever known.” Street was 82 years old, having died following a stroke causing a bleed on the brain; sepsis eventually killed him after he developed colitis, a form of bowel disease.
Born in 1940, Adrian Street was born in Gwent, Wales. In his own words, he grew up “in a rough, tough mining town,” which gave him “an endless supply of roughnecks to practice on.”
He would have his first professional wrestling match in 1957.
He ran away during his teenage years to London, where he sought to achieve his wrestling dream. He knew it would not be easy. The ideology of the business at the time was, as he later divulged, “you had to get tough or die.”
He quickly realised that to get attention as a smaller star in a crowded industry, he would need to stand out. Influenced by the likes of Gorgeous George and “Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers, he cultivated his famous “Exotic” character.
Wearing make-up and glitter and arriving to the ring in exquisite gowns, Street’s bombastic and pompous character drew huge heat. His tactics of kissing wrestlers and strutting around the ring made him reviled to fans in a gimmick credited as being ahead of its time.
“The Sadist in Sequins” quickly noted his own value, writing in the book The Wrestler: “Most were on £9 a night and I was on £35 or £40.”
Perhaps most famously, Street legitimately pummeled Jimmy Savile during the two’s meetings in the ring. He espoused how he ripped out clumps of the notorious sex offender’s hair and dropped him on his head, he added: “I drew it out as long as I could because I was enjoying myself.”
He was also a huge name in the British institution that was World of Sport, where he became a household name alongside icons such as Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks.
In the 1980s, he went oversees to see US success, where he feuded with some of the biggest names such as Dusty Rhodes and Barry Windham in Flordia. In Memphis, he got into a threatening altercation with a pre-WWE “Macho Man” Randy Savage.
He rejected a WWE offer, where he would be a manager to a neo-Nazi British team. He states WWE would not have wanted him as a wrestler as “if [he]’d wrestled with his so-called stars at the time, I’d have shown them up.”
Described as “one of the toughest men ever in wrestling” by Jim Ross, he wrestled up until a month before his 70th birthday, competing in well over 10,000 matches.
His story is told on the WWE Network documentary Adrian Street: Imagine What I Could Do To You.
He proposed to and later married his long-time manager and partner Miss Linda in 2005. Street was lucky enough to be able to no sell cancer in 2001 but he has sadly failed in his most recent health battle. Amongst those to pay tribute were Triple H, who called Street: “A genre-bending pioneer whose larger-than-life presence and ruthlessness between the ropes changed the wrestling world forever.”
Fellow Brit Drew McIntyre described him as “a genuine trailblazer and one of the toughest men you could wish to meet.”
William Regal, Mark Andrews, and Nick Aldis are among those to also pay tribute to the Welshman.
A true wrestling innovator who paved the way for various wrestling gimmicks from Adrian Adonis to Goldust to Rico, Street is a British wrestling icon, without whom the world is a slightly less Exotic place. In the words of his former manager Jim Cornette, “there’s nobody else like him.”
Everyone here at TWM would like to extend our condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Adrian Street. Rest in Peace.
GRIFFIN KAYE.