12 Things You Didn't Know About WWE Giant Kane
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Kane is one of the biggest -- and scariest -- men in professional wrestling, with a morbid meandering storyline that features fire, disfigurement, death and destruction. As the demented half-brother to The Undertaker, he wears a mask... at least he did, until he didn't, then did, then didn't again.
Mask status aside, the chokeslam that he's used to finish opponents for much of his career is no joke. And neither is his impressive WWE run that includes more than his fair share of titles and feuds. It's the stuff of dreams -- and nightmares.
Here 12 things you didn't know about the pro wrestler Kane:
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1. In April of 1968, Kane was born Glen Jacobs into an Air Force family stationed in Madrid, Spain. Growing up near Nashville Tennessee, he was a big fan of professional wrestling.
2. Jacobs holds a bachelors degree in English literature from Northeast Missouri State University (now Truman State University), as well as a teaching degree. He filled in as a substitute teacher in the St. Louis area after college.
3. Jacobs is seven feet tall and weighs 323 pounds. While certainly big, even for a professional wrestler, he wouldn't make a list of the 10 biggest.
4. Jacobs began his wrestling career in 1992, first stepping into the ring as Angus King. The promotion -- Central States Wrestling Association (CSWA), operated out of Hannibal, Missouri -- was owned by his childhood friend.
5. Jacobs moved on to United Wrestling Association (USWA) soon after his debut, where he wrestled for the next few years as various characters, including Doomsday and the Christmas Creature. The Christmas Creature gimmick included him dressing up as a Christmas tree in the ring.
6. Jacobs debuted with WWE as the Black Knight, as part of 1993's Survivor Series. The annual pay-per-view event takes place in November and focuses on tag team matches. The Black Knight, teaming up with Shawn Michaels and two other masked "knights," lost his first match.
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7. His next WWE appearance came a couple years later. Jacobs, then Dr. Isaac Yankem, Jerry Lawler's private and somewhat twisted dentist, showed up on a June 1995 episode of Raw as a foil to Bret Hart. After losing multiple individual and tag team matches to Hart, Yankem was relegated to jobber status, losing matches to Jake "The Snake" Roberts, The Ultimate Warrior and The Undertaker. He also competed in untelevised "dark" matches.
8. Jacobs showed up again in WWE in 1997, this time as Kane (also known as The Big Red Machine/Monster), The Undertaker's younger half-brother, who he thought died in the fire that killed The Undertaker's parents. Kane wore a mask to hide the disfigurement he sustained in the fire. The two wrestlers have had a love/hate relationship, teaming up over the years as The Ministry of Darkness when they're not feuding.
9 .Kane has been a WWF/WWE fixture for almost two decades. His resume features numerous pro wrestling titles, including one WWF Championship, two Intercontinental Championships, two Tag Team Championships and nine World Tag Team Championships and feuds with The Undertaker, Big Daddy V, The Great Khali, John Cena, Chris Jericho and Triple H, among others.
10. In addition to numerous WWE televised events, Kane appeared in episodes of Smallville and The Weakest Link. He also showed up in the movies MacGruber and See No Evil.
11. Kane is married and has two daughters. He and his wife run an insurance agency called the Jacobs Agency in Knoxville, Tennessee.
12. Glen Jacobs is a Libertarian and has entertained the notion of running for public office. He supports Ron Paul, the former congressman from Texas who twice sought the Republican nomination for president. Jacobs occasionally blogs about politics at The Adventures of Citizen X. Jacobs is also part of the Free State Project, a movement relocate libertarians to a low-population state, so that they might exercise more political power.
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Norm Elrod likes sports and other sanctioned forms of craziness.