Former professional wrestler Jacques Rougeau has taken on another fight — the fight against bullying and intimidation.
Rougeau, now 57, comes from Quebec's most promienent wrestling family. In the late 1980s, he starred in the World Wrestling Federation — today's WWE — in a tag team along with his brother Raymond. After Raymond retired in 1990, Jacques continued to wrestle for another decade before retiring, taking on several other personas, including The Mountie.
During his career, Rougeau says he encountered bullying at the hands of a couple of his WWF contemporaries — another well-known tag team called the British Bulldogs. He says in 1989, at the height of his WWF fame, the Bulldogs gave him the beating of his life — not as part of a wrestling card, but in real life, backstage.
"They were on steroids, on cocaine, on drugs, on everything from morning to night. They were bad boys," Rougeau told CJAD 800's Natasha Hall. "Their fun was to intimidate the wrestlers. Not the people, but the wrestlers in the room because they were real fighters. I'm a comedian, I'm an actor. But they were real tough guys, and when I didn't want to follow what they were doing, then they decided to laugh at me and insult me. So one day, they ended up beating me up in a dressing room before a show and they left me in a pile of blood."
He says the incident left him depressed, and left him on the point of quitting wrestling. Then, he says, he found his current calling.
15 years ago, he started a wrestling event of his own, called Le Spectacle Familiale Jacques Rougeau. He says it isn't your typical wrestling show — no kicks, no punches, no girls in bikinis, and no alcohol served. "It's like a Walt Disney, Cirque du Soleil kind of wrestling show," he says.
Meanwhile, he also started speaking in schools, talking to kids, and performing skits about how to deal with bullies — all on a volunteer basis.
"Now, I'm teaching them how to react to it, how to solve it. I don't have enough time to do all the schools that are writing me," Rougeau said.
He says after the British Bulldogs incident, he didn't say anything or speak publicly about it, because it just wasn't done in those days. Now, he tells his kids to report any instances of bullying to authorities, because keeping things a secret can only make a bad situation worse.