Darryl Peterson
High School: Iowa City, Utah
1-Time All-American
All-Americans
NCAA Records
SEASON SCHOOL TOURNAMENT WEIGHT PLACE
1985
Iowa State
Division I
UNL
5
Darryl Peterson of Iowa State received the Gorriaran Award.[2]
And this is Darrell Petersen of Iowa State.
On the right again, Steve Wilber of Iowa was much smaller in the play.
There's a lot of mass difference here, and that could cause some problems for a later man because of how he wrestles.
And Wilber has some real good offensive tools.
You got to remember, he's done a lot of working with guys like Advantech and Lou Banach Olympic champions.
So he knows how to wrestle men that are agile.
But when you start to wrestle somebody giving away a hundred, £125, you have to change your style a little bit, wrestling a little different o clock with do head No.
The number one ranked hawks have wrapped this one up against Iowa State, but we're getting a chance to look at Darrell Petersen in red, who is eighth ranked in the country, much improved, perhaps the most improved wrestler on this Iowa State team.
Darryl Peterson (October 3, 1961) is an American musician, actor and professional wrestler who wrestled in World Championship Wrestling as Maxx Payne and in the World Wrestling Federation as Man Mountain Rock.
Peterson became involved in wrestling in grade school when he transferred from football to amateur wrestling as result of a personality clash with the football coach. His amateur career was halted by a motorcycle accident in his junior year of high school. After playing a high school wrestler in the 1979 Buena Vista Pictures release Take Down with Lorenzo Lamas, Peterson married and had a child. He began working in the construction industry, but decided after two years to return to amateur wrestling.
Peterson earned wrestling scholarships to junior college and then to Iowa State University, competing in the National Collegiate Athletic Association. In 1985 he was an All American and placed fifth in the NCAA competition. The same year he also won the Gorriarian award for having the most amount of falls in the least amount of time at the tournament. Every match he won that year at the NCAA's, he won by fall. After graduating, he relocated to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. While working as a security guard, Peterson was introduced to professional wrestler Red Bastien by his wrestling fan boss, and decided to train with him.
Early career
Peterson worked for the World Wrestling Federation in March 1986, and put together the steel cage used in the main event of WrestleMania 2. With his training complete, Peterson debuted in June 1987 and soon after travelled to Japan to work for New Japan Pro Wrestling, where he trained in the New Japan Dojo alongside fellow gaijin Chris Benoit for five months.
In 1988 Peterson developed the character "Max Pain" (short for "Maximum Pain"), a sinister, grungy, Jimi Hendrix-loving heavy metal guitarist. His original idea was "Lucifer Payne", but he felt that this was too foreboding. Peterson used the name "Max Payne", hailing from Hell's Kitchen, New York nationally in the US as well as in Europe and Japan. The character had a neo-noir look and feel, as far the live theater of professional wrestling would allow. The name Max came from the 1980s Coca-Cola spokesman Max Headroom, and Peterson later added an extra "X" at the suggestion of a friend. As of 2006, the darker Rock and Roll theme Peterson used is now quite popular compared to the flamboyant colorful styles used by other wrestlers earlier in Peterson's career.