I’d been wrestling under my name, Dick Beyer, for a few years when a promoter in California tells me, “We’re going to put a mask on you and you’re going to wrestle as The Destroyer.” They hand me what looks and smells like a moldy potato sack made of wool. It had tiny eye slits, no ventilation, and itched like hell. This was 1962 and a promoter could make or break your career, so I agreed to try it. I won the match and realized that a mask could help me become the dirty wrestler I knew fans wanted to see. But the ventilation!
My wife was a good seamstress—she could make her own clothes—so we went to the Woolworth in Los Angeles and bought a girdle. I still remember: It was a size 10 small-tall. She turned it into a mask with colored stitching to match my tights. I could see, I could breathe, and when I put it on I became 6 foot 6 instead of 5 foot 10. I never wrestled again without it. I spent 20 years in this mask. I wrestled Gorgeous George, I wrestled in front of millions of people in Japan, I went on Regis Philbin, and I was a three-time WWA world champion. This mask is just about everything to me.
~ Dick Beyer (The Destroyer), WWA World Heavyweight Champion; founder, Destroyer Park Golf; Akron, NY