Some wrestlers are remembered for championship belts. Johnny Rodz is remembered for something that lasts longer: the people he trained. For more than three decades, the WWE Hall of Famer has run a wrestling school out of Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn, and a long list of names that wrestling fans know well first learned how to take a bump in his ring.
Here is the story of the man they called “The Unpredictable One” and the legendary gym where he teaches.
A New Yorker through and through
Johnny Rodz was born John Rodriguez on May 16, 1938, in New York City, and he was billed from the Bronx. He made his pro debut in 1965 and wrestled until 1997. Between the mid-1960s and the mid-1980s he was a regular in the WWWF, the company that became the WWF and later WWE.
WWE billed him at 5 feet 8 inches and 239 pounds, and his signature move was the falling headbutt. Along with “The Unpredictable One,” he was also known as the “Fire Brand From the Bronx.”
In the WWWF, Rodz was usually the man who made the stars look good. He shared the ring at Madison Square Garden with names like Bob Backlund. On August 9, 1980, at the famous Showdown at Shea card at Shea Stadium in Queens, he faced Ivan Putski. His final WWF match came on June 19, 1985, against Gama Singh. Making other wrestlers look like world-beaters is a real skill. It’s a big part of why Rodz later became such a valued teacher.
The “Arabian Wildman” and other lives
Rodz didn’t spend his whole career in New York. In California, wrestling for NWA Hollywood, he became the “Arabian Wildman” Java Ruuk and won that promotion’s 1976 battle royal. Still working as Java Ruuk, he defeated the great French-Canadian star Édouard Carpentier in Montreal in 1980 to win the Canadian International Heavyweight Championship.
In Puerto Rico he wrestled for the World Wrestling Council, where he teamed with Jose Estrada Sr. as one half of the masked tag team the Super Medicos.
Hall of Fame recognition
In 1996, Rodz was inducted into the WWF Hall of Fame. Fittingly for a New York story, he was inducted by a fellow New Yorker: Arnold “Golden Boy” Skaaland, the longtime WWWF wrestler and manager.
Other honors followed. In 1995 the Cauliflower Alley Club, the veteran wrestlers’ fraternal organization, named him an honoree. In 2025 he was announced as part of the International Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame class.
Gleason’s Gym: a boxing landmark
To understand the school, you need to understand the building it’s in. Gleason’s Gym was founded in 1937 by Peter Robert Gagliardi, a flyweight who later fought as a bantamweight. According to the gym’s own history, he took the name “Bobby Gleason” to appeal to the mostly Irish fight crowd of the time.
The first Gleason’s was at 434 Westchester Avenue in the South Bronx. Dues were $2 a month and the rent was $50 a month, and Bobby drove a cab at night to keep it running. In 1974 the gym moved to West 30th Street in Manhattan, and the gym says it was the first street-level gym in New York City. Ira Becker bought it in 1981, and he and Bruce Silverglade later moved it to Front Street in DUMBO, Brooklyn, in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge. In 2016 it moved again, to its current home at 130 Water Street. The New York Times has called it the oldest boxing gymnasium in New York.
The list of fighters who trained at Gleason’s over the years includes Jake LaMotta, Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, Riddick Bowe and Mike Tyson. Hollywood came too: Robert De Niro trained there for Raging Bull, and Hilary Swank trained there with Hector Roca for Million Dollar Baby. In August 2024, the corner of Water and Adams Streets was co-named “Gleason’s Gym Way.”
The wrestling school under the bridge
In a gym known for boxing, Johnny Rodz built a wrestling pipeline. WWE describes his school as “located under the Brooklyn Bridge,” and he has trained wrestlers there for more than 30 years.
His students include:
Tazz, the ECW icon who later became a WWE and AEW broadcaster
Tommy Dreamer, “The Innovator of Violence” and an ECW cornerstone
D-Von and Bubba Ray Dudley, two members of ECW’s Dudley Boyz
Bill DeMott, who later worked as a WWE Tough Enough trainer
Vito (LoGrasso), Matt Striker, Prince Nana, Marti Belle and Masha Slamovich
Vince Russo, who became better known as a writer and creative executive
That’s a remarkable spread. Rodz’s students helped define ECW’s hardcore era in the 1990s, and his training is still showing up on today’s rosters. Rodz also founded his own promotion, World of Unpredictable Wrestling, which gave students a place to perform in front of live crowds. His school was also profiled by The New York Times in 2000.
Why it matters
Pro wrestling is often told through its champions, but the business runs on teachers. Johnny Rodz spent decades as the trusted hand in the ring, and then decades more passing that knowledge on in one of the most famous gyms in the world. When fans watch a Dudley Boyz table spot, a Tommy Dreamer hardcore brawl or a Masha Slamovich match today, there’s a line running back to a ring in Brooklyn and a Hall of Famer from the Bronx.
Unpredictable? Maybe. Influential? Without question.