"twisted steel and sex appeal"

[Jonathan Lighter]

And they say ESP ain't real !  This phrase, which I brought to your attention many months ago, came to mind and a Google search just now finds this article from today's Charleston (S.C.) _Post and Courier_:
  http://www.charleston.net/assets/webPages/departmental/news/Stories.aspx?section=sports&tableId=119238&pubDate=11/19/2006.

  The writer associates the phrase with the recently deceased Rocco Monroe DiGrazio, 75, who wrestled professionally under the name Sputnik Monroe, described as "two hundred and thirty-five pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal with the body men fear and women love."  According to Juan Williams in _My Soul Looks Back_ (N.Y.: Sterling/AARP, 2004), p. 37, Monroe sometimes added "rough, tough, and hard to bluff" (about 350 raw Googlits) to this list of his rasslin' virtues.

  Just when Monroe adopted these phrases for his own is not clear. He began wrestling in the '40s, but didn't fully retire until 1998.

  Rick Atkinson (_The Long Gray Line_, Houghton, 1989, p.114),  asserts that West Point cadets were using the cliche' in 1965. No documentation, but his book is based on extensive interviews. See it at Google Books.

  Sputnik liked to say, ""Win if you can, lose if you must, always cheat, and if they take you out, leave tearing down the ring." Over to you, Fred.

  JL


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