Johnny Peeebles and the Great Kaiser.jpg

Wrestling promoter Johnny Peebles, manager of The Great Kaiser, promotes his star wrestler, also known as Sam Tenenbaum.

(thegreatkaiser.com)

Johnny Peebles III, a longtime wrestling manager for The Great Kaiser who helped build part of the sets for Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Stay Hungry" movie filmed in Birmingham, was a showman who entertained and touched the hearts of thousands.

Peebles died on July 27. He was 70.

"He was loyal and stuck by me for 39 years," said Sam Tenenbaum Jr., 72, a local wrestling legend who wore a mask and went by the name "The Great Kaiser" when he wrestled at Boutwell Auditorium and other venues throughout the Southeast.

Peebles and Tenenbaum met in 1975 during the filming of "Stay Hungry," which featured actors Schwarzenegger, Sally Field and Jeff Bridges.

Peebles and Tenenbaum were local weightlifters. Charles Gaines, who wrote the novel "Stay Hungry," hired Peebles to help build the weight room set for the movie, Tenenbaum recalled.

"Johnny was hired to build the setup," Tenenbaum said. "He supervised the whole thing. He did a very good job. Charles took a liking to him."

Schwarzenegger and Peebles are the ones who helped dub him "The Great Kaiser," Tenenbaum said.

They were sitting at poolside at a Birmingham hotel talking and Schwarzenegger asked what name Tenenbaum used as a professional wrestler. At the time, he went by Bob Kaiser. "'You need something better,'" Schwarzenegger told Tenenbaum, he recalled. "'You should put a mask over your head, say you're from Austria like me and call yourself the Great Kaiser.'"

Tenenbaum said he ignored and forgot about the suggestion, but Peebles persisted in pushing Schwarzenegger's idea and offered to become his manager. "He said, 'You ought to think about what Arnold said. Change your image and become The Great Kaiser.'"

Peebles began negotiating Tenenbaum's contracts and helping him publicize his schtick, which included wearing a mask and singing opera.

Peebles figures heavily in Tenenbaum's recently released autobiography, "The Unmasked Tenor: The Life and Times of a Singing Wrestler," written with T.J. Beitelman.

Peebles often got in the ring with The Great Kaiser, acting out in a protective role as his manager. "In 2001, we did a wrestling reunion card with me fighting the Masked Destroyer - the Battle of the Masks," Tenenbaum said. "The Masked Destroyer was trying to pull my mask off. Johnny picked up a steel chair and whacked him over the head."

During the 1975 filming of 'Stay Hungry' in Birmingham, Johnny Peebles helped build a weightlifting set for star Arnold Schwarzenegger.

They entertained thousands in the weekly Monday night wrestling bouts at Boutwell and on the circuit for the National Wrestling Alliance and Continental Wrestling.

"My wrestling career would have never been as significant if I hadn't had Johnny Peebles," Tenenbaum said. "He was 50 percent of my routine."

One of Peebles' ideas was to orchestrate a wrestling match between The Great Kaiser and local sports broadcasting legend Herb Winches. The bout was one of the most successful wrestling events ever at Boutwell Auditorium, Tenenbaum said.

"Johnny was the instigator," he said.

Spiritual adviser, parapsychologist

Peebles had studied religion at the University of California at Berkeley, and became especially interested in parapsychology.

"He became a psychic," Tenenbaum said. "He really took it seriously. Johnny claimed he was Jewish. He studied Kabbalah (a book of Jewish mysticism). He was a lot of religions."

Peebles did psychic readings and promoted himself as a religious philosopher, an expert in metaphysical science, a wizard, a spiritual healer, a prophet, a medium, an expert on angels, demonology, apparitions and telekinesis, as well as fluent in numerology, astrology, UFOS and dream interpretation. "He had a crystal ball," Tenenbaum said. "It worked for him."

He said Peebles was a paid consultant with clients throughout the Southeast. "They needed someone to counsel them," Tenenbaum said. "He would bless a house that people thought had evil spirits."

Wrestling promoter Johnny Peebles III managed Sam Tenenbaum, known as The Great Kaiser.

Peebles never married and never had children. He devoted himself to spiritually counseling people, Tenenbaum said.

Ghostbuster for Homewood Library

In 2001, Peebles was asked to analyze spirits that were believed to inhabit the Homewood Public Library on Oxmoor Road, a former site of the old Homewood Church of Christ where women's voices were heard at night. Peebles asked Tenenbaum to go along. "They asked Johnny to come down and bring out the ghost," he said. They heard voices, like women at a church service, Peebles reported.

Peebles said he believes libraries sometimes are haunted "because they are intellectual focal points," and added: "Homewood Library's entities are not the traditional spirits of the dead. Rather, they are living beings that exist in another dimension or a parallel universe."

Dr. Morgan Wood, a Homewood chiropractor, said Peebles really did have unexplainable spiritual gifts.

"He put effort into imaging and channeling people's energy," Wood said. "My wife wasn't feeling well one day. She said, 'I'm sick.' Johnny said, 'That's not the flu. You're pregnant. It's going to be a little girl.' He predicted her pregnancy."

Peebles then became the girl's godfather.

"I sent him people," Wood said. "He was able to calm people down and solve problems through meditation and imaging."

Peeble's dual professions of psychic and wrestling manager blended smoothly. "He was a pioneer in the field of entertainment wrestling," Wood said. "This is a character that could be in a Woody Allen movie."