Magazine Archives: Wrestling’s Biggest Fan

By Shandi Pace from issue 2 of Fightful Magazine

Al Ruddick has been a wrestling fan his entire life. The very first live event he attended – an Atlantic Grand Prix show in eastern Canada – he remembers witnessing a scuffle break out between The Cuban Assassinand a person from the crowd. The fan threw a cup of hot chocolate at the wrestler, which sent The Cuban Assassin into a fit of rage, causing him to chase the fan out of the building. To four-year-old Al, that was everything. And ever since that moment, Ruddick has been hooked on the sport.

It wasn’t until he went on a trip to Niagara Falls with his girlfriend that he took this love of wrestling to new heights. He walked into the WWE Niagara Falls store, a retail shop featuring World Wrestling Entertainmentmerchandise, with good intentions and walked out with his most prized possession, even to this day – a replica John CenaWWE Title “spinner” belt.

“I carried that thing everywhere,” Ruddick said. “I ended up carrying it around to work, and a girl at work said, ‘Did you ever hear about this site online?’” in reference to Kijiji, which is a Canadian online classified. Ruddick ventured down the rabbit hole that is buying and selling on the Internet and began picking up everything he could get his hands on.

From there, the collecting took off. Ruddick’s acquisitions over the years have included anything and everything he can find that links to wrestling: replica belts, action figures, t-shirts and other novelty items. This addiction has led him to be known to many as “Wrestling’s Biggest Mark”and has notched him what he believes is the biggest wrestling collection in all of Canada, if not in the entire world.

“If I didn’t have it, I wanted it. So, I ended up grabbing every little piece that I didn’t have.”

Having the luxury of compiling such a vast wrestling collection is only new to Ruddick. Originally from a small town in Nova Scotia, he described his experience growing up as troublesome. Ruddick’s parents didn’t have a lot of money, and together they lived in a tarp and paper shack. “Instead of me asking my parents for stuff, I’d just run around the town stealing.”

Ruddick’s childhood is just one of the reasons why his main goal is to make people smile and laugh, even if it’s at his own physical expense. He wants to have some way to try to give back as much as he can. One way he’s achieving this goal is by hosting a wrestling event for the children in his neighbourhood every Halloween. This experience consists of wrestling skits set up by Ruddick and a few of his close friends, with lights, costumes and a life-sized ring. During the last Halloween before the pandemic, they had over a hundred children stop by to see the action and potentially get a piece of Ruddick’s collection (only if they answered a wrestling question correctly, of course!).

Along with collecting, Ruddick is a frequent visitor at comic book conventions, where he cosplays as his favorite wrestlers. “I used to go to comic cons all the time, and nobody would actually dress up as wrestlers. So, I just started dressing up as them, and people started to take notice. Even the wrestlers were starting to take notice.”

Impressively, Ruddick has crafted costumes of at least 25 different wrestlers. These include The Fiend, The Ultimate Warrior, and “Macho Man” Randy Savage, two of which have their own Canadian versions he created himself. Each ensemble is more meticulous than the last, from the exact details of the clothing to finding the perfect wig to accompany it.

Ruddick’s light-up “Double J” Jeff Jarrett costume started with an idea and ended up costing $500 and over 120 hours to make. When starting this project, Ruddick had no idea how to solder wires, but he was able to make it work, which further shows the love and dedication that goes into his creations. “The work that goes into it. Most people look and go, ‘cool, look at that!’ They don’t see 30 to 100 hours sitting in there.”

On top of these extremely accurate costumes, Ruddick also decorates his yard with wrestling-related regalia. When he first moved into his current residence in Ontario, the front lawn was full of weeds. In order to improve the look of his yard, Ruddick decided to kill everything off and begin creating yet another unique project. The result has been dazzling wrestling-themed displays for Halloween, Christmas, and Canada Day.

It’s going that extra step that makes Ruddick’s dedication to his craft so impressive. Sure, people can have larger collections or even more complex costumes, but these out-of-the-box ideas are what make him so one-of-a-kind. He even dresses up his Christmas trees as wrestlers!

Ultimately, this lifestyle isn’t just a hobby for Ruddick. It’s become a creative outlet for him to focus on during tough times. Throughout the pandemic, he fixated on building a new full-sized wrestling ring to replace the old one and a WrestleManiaring cart just in time for WrestleMania 37, with plans on completing a life-sized replica Hell in a Cell cage in the future.

These over-the-top projects have done quite well in growing Ruddick’s following across his social media platforms. He enjoys the attention he receives both in-person and online, some good and some bad. Overall, Ruddick doesn’t mind the backlash since his quick wit and smart mouth can usually conquer any heckler.

His objectives have changed slightly over the last few years, switching from having an enthusiast mindset to focusing on his career. For the next stage of his wrestling journey, Ruddick plans on managing independent wrestler Jaxon Payne, with the hopes of transitioning to “Wrestling’s Biggest Manager.”

“I’ve told a lot of people what my goals are. I will not stop until I get to where I want to be… I literally want to become famous, and that is because I want my name to be remembered through history.” For Ruddick, it’s not about the money but being remembered for something other than his troubled past.

In this digital age, Ruddick believes he’s on the right track to accomplishing his goals.

“I do believe that I don’t care who you are, what you are, what you do, or where you come from, you can do anything you want to do... It does not matter what it is. If you think it’s out of your reach, then you’ll never do it. There’s nothing out of my reach.”

Shandi Pace is the project manager for Fightful Magazine. In her free time, she also enjoys writing and creating video essays about history, movies, sports and music for her personal blog.

Twitter:@shandipace