BLOOD, SWEAT, AND GLASS glittered under the mirror ball dangling from the ceiling of 416 Wabash as “Hoodfoot” Maurice Atlas staggered to his feet. As he always had in the city of Indianapolis, Hoodfoot found his footing braced by a friend, his frequent travel partner, Referee Sean Patrick O’Brien. Though he may have tasted defeat in Circle 6’s Circle City debut, standing there in itself represented a victory that was uncertain only four years prior, when Mo Atlas checked in to the men’s homeless shelter the next street over.
Growing up broke, Hoodfoot recalled in an interview with , his entry into pro wrestling was a bit different from most wrestling fans in the era of the Monday Night War, when and battled for supremacy on cable television. His family didn’t have cable. But, as he and his brother flipped through the channels one fateful weekend, they landed on WWF’s . “Basically, I just saw all the jobbers and I was like, yo, that’s dope,” he laughed. “Like, I don’t know what this is, but I like it. And for like a good two, three years, I spent my time thinking that Godfather was a top guy.”
