5 Wrestlers who fought wild animals

#3 Wrestler and WWE legend Bruno Sammartino takes on an orangutan

Bruno Sammartino

Bruno Sammartino is regarded as one of the greatest wrestlers to ever step foot in the squared circle. He was dubbed as being "bigger than wrestling itself" by fellow wrestler Terry Funk.

Sammartino fought for years on end, and beat the very best. Interestingly, Sammartino wrestled an orangutan when he was yet to make a name for himself inside the squared circle. Bruno spoke about it in detail, and it's clear that he didn't have a great time wrestling the animal.

"Well yeah, that was here in Pittsburgh before I became a wrestler. I was doing amateur wrestling then but I was a construction worker. I was an apprentice carpenter making $2 an hour. You have to understand that this is going back to like 1956, or something like that. I was a real young guy, the carnival was in town and they had a wrestling monkey and they said if you could last five minutes with the monkey, they would give you $25. Well you know when you’re working for $2 an hour, $25 for five minutes sounded like a lot of money to me. So I took on the challenge and I fought that orangutan for fifteen minutes and I have to be real honest with you. I got the worst of that fight in that cage. The monkey won I think, because when I came out I was marked up a heck of a lot more than that monkey was," said Sammartino.

Bruno went on to become a respected wrestler in the industry. He won the WWE title twice (then WWWF title), with the combined reigns lasting for more than 11 years. Bruno Sammartino was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013 for his contributions to the world of pro-wrestling.