George 'The Animal' Steele, WWE Hall of Famer, has died at 79

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Wrestling alongside strongmen with statuesque bodies and dandies with bleached hair, the hirsute Steele was hard to miss. Bald, hunched slightly over and with that tongue sticking out (stained green thanks to a handful of breath mints), there was no wrestler in any of the territories that resembled him. And by the early-1980s, with Vince McMahon's WWE (previously known as the WWF) redefining wrestling and calling it "sports entertainment," characters like Steele, who were perfect for nationwide television audiences, were in demand. Crowds would wait in anticipation for Steele to undo the turnbuckle and send the stuffing flying out everywhere as if he was actually eating it.

Via Rolling Stone.