Brian Pillman
American professional wrestler (1962–1997)
Brian William Pillman (May 22, 1962 – October 5, 1997) was an American professional wrestler and professional football player best known for his appearances in Stampede Wrestling in the 1980s and World Championship Wrestling (WCW), Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), and World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in the 1990s.
Pillman created a legacy as "The Loose Cannon", a wrestling gimmick that would see him do a series of worked shoots that would gain him a degree of infamy for his unpredictable character. He was also known for being extremely agile in the ring, although a car accident on April 15, 1996, from which he received extensive ankle injuries, limited his in-ring ability. By the end of his career, he worked with his long-time friend and former tag-team partner Stone Cold Steve Austin in a storyline involving a firearm and with The Hart Foundation during the first instances of the developing Attitude Era. In October 1997, he died unexpectedly due to an undetected heart disease.
Early life
Brian William Pillman was born on May 22, 1962, at the Jewish Hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio, to a Welsh mother named Mary; he had three sisters named Angie, Linda, and Susan, as well as a brother Phil. His father died of a heart attack when Pillman was three months old. Pillman developed multiple throat polyps as a child beginning at age two, undergoing between 31 and 40 operations to tend to them and receiving an electrolarynx. As a result, Pillman spent a large part of his early childhood in a hospital, only going home for Christmas. His mother chose to send him to a public school so that he could spend more time with his friends, leaving him as the only Presbyterian in his Catholic family.
The public source identifies “Brian Pillman” as american professional wrestler (1962–1997). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Brian, Pillman and American.
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This entry incorporates text from “Brian Pillman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.