I have been surprisingly productive this morning, given that Federer and Murray are playing. The main thing I have noticed about them is: they are so puny! This is what a sportsman should look like:
This is Martin Ruane. He was 6'11" tall, and he sometimes wrestled at 48 stone. You might possibly know him as Giant Haystacks, which was his UK wrestling name. If you are American, you might know him by his US wrestling monicker: The Loch Ness Monster.
He was not from Loch Ness. He was born in Ireland and raised in Salford, where he worked as a bouncer before someone suggested wrestling. He called himself Luke McMasters, then Haystacks Calhoun (my personal favourite), then Giant Haystacks.
As you know, wrestling is all made up, and he was what is known as a 'heel'. He was a tag partner of fellow heel Big Daddy (later a 'blue-eye' of course), before they became antagonists in the glory days of British wrestling.
He was The Loch Ness Monster in Canada, and just Loch Ness in the USA, where he was a member of the Dungeon of Doom along with The Man With No Name, The Shark*, Meng (Colonel Robert Parker's bodyguard) and Big Van Vader. The Dungeon feuded with Hulk Hogan, the all-time greatest 'face'. As you would imagine Ruane was a devout Christian who refused to fight on Sundays.
* The Shark, also known as The Avalanche, was Canadian John Tenta, who had a brief career in Sumo in the mid-eighties, where his sumo name of Kototenzan meant 'heavenly mountain harp'.**
** Although, for obvious reasons, he was sometimes known as 'the Canadian Comet'.
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