Another successful partnership was with Bruiser Brody, touring All Japan several times between 19 and later reuniting in Montreal where Brooks was sold as Bruiser's straitjacket wearing insane brother Big Buster Brody. Aside from his work in the Lone Star State he spent 1977 in Calgary with Stampede Wrestling, where he held the North American Heavyweight Championship for four months, and teamed with Roddy Piper in Oregon in the late 1970s as Bad News Brooks. When that promotion was folded into the Von Erichs' World Class Championship Wrestling he established himself as a mid-card brutal heel, holding the NWA Texas Heavyweight Championship briefly in 1981, the Television Championship, the NWA Texas Tag Team Championship three times with Stan Hansen, Leroy Brown and Stan Stasiak, and the Six-Man Tag Team Championship with Mark Lewin and One Man Gang.

While that pairing never won the version of the NWA World Tag Team titles offered by its local affiliate Big Time Wrestling, Brooks did take a share of the belts four times, three wins in 1973 with Ben Justice and once the following year with Abdullah The Butcher. While there The Sheik spotted his potential and helped him develop his most successful persona, helping him up the card by employing him as a tag partner. Trained by his cousin Dick Murdoch he began his career in 1969 after a spell in the Army, moving to Detroit in the early 1970s as a base for working across the territories and into Canada. 'Killer' Tim Brooks (died June 30 aged 72), who lost a long battle with terminal cancer, was one of the great wild brawlers of the 1970s and first half of the 1980s, mostly working out of Texas. Wrestling II, Hana Kimura and Shad Gaspard, are here. October to December's tributes will follow tomorrow obituaries for those who passed on between January and June, including Howard Finkel, Rocky Johnson, Mr. As we reach the end of this most trying and fated of years, the second part of the biannual tribute to fallen wrestling heroes has had to be split in half due to the number of notable personalities who died in this second half of the year.

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