Sports
Bert Ruby
1910–1968 · professional wrestler, trainer, promoter
Hungarian-Jewish wrestler from Transylvania who became a fixture of Detroit professional wrestling as a barefoot grappler, trainer and the right-hand man of promoter Harry Light.
- Born
Érmihályfalva, Austria-Hungary (now Valea lui Mihai, Romania)- Died
Michigan
aged 57- Birth name
- Rubinstein Bertalan
- Also known as
- The Man With the Educated Toes
- Detroit years
- 1930s–1968
- Field
- Sports
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Born Bertalan Rubinstein, one of twelve children in a small Transylvanian town, Ruby grew up in Hungary after World War I and emigrated during the Depression, first to Toronto on a farm-work permit. Spotted at a small-town wrestling card, he moved to Detroit to wrestle professionally and stayed for the rest of his life. Wrestling barefoot earned him the nickname 'The Man With the Educated Toes', and he held the Michigan junior heavyweight title of the Wolverine Wrestling promotion in 1950 and 1951. Behind the scenes he helped run the Harry Light office, which dominated Detroit wrestling from the 1940s to the 1960s, and he trained and booked future stars such as George Steele, Killer Kowalski, Abdullah the Butcher and The Sheik. In 1948 he took in a nephew who had survived the Holocaust.
Highlights
- Wrestled professionally from 1933 to 1955
- Two-time Michigan junior heavyweight champion (1950, 1951)
- Right-hand man of Detroit promoter Harry Light
- Inducted into the Michigan Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2006