John Minton's claim to fame was playing a bad guy in professional wrestling.

But the 1967 Butler High School graduate - known as Big John Studd in the World Wrestling Federation - left a legacy filled with a whole lot of good.

"He did a pretty good bad guy," Minton's widow, Donna Minton, said. "He liked doing it. It was real acting for him because John was not that way at all.

"He was an intelligent family man who always had time for kids. He cared very deeply about kids."

Growing up in Butler, Minton didn't seem to have much chance for a professional career in athletics. He was always tall for his age - standing 6-foot-2 in junior high - and primarily played basketball.

"He was growing so fast, he had trouble keeping up with it," said Chuck Rock, a close school friend of Minton. "He was a bit awkward in junior high, but he could always rebound.

"That wound up being his prime role on the high school team - rebounding."

Once out of high school, Minton enlisted in the service, but was too big to serve in Vietnam. He was sent to Leavenworth, Kansas, to serve as a prison guard.

While there, he began working out at a feverish pace.

"He felt he had to get physically stronger to handle those guys he was guarding in prison," Rock said. "He got very serious about his workouts."

While in the gym, Minton met Mr. Kansas, the state's body-building champion. Once out of the service, Minton moved to California and met professional wrestler Killer Kowalski while working out in the gym.

"John was a nice, friendly guy," his brother, Joe Minton, said. "He was impressed with Kowalski's size and strength and started talking to him.

"Kowalski was impressed with John's size and asked him if he'd be interested in trying pro wrestling."

Minton had no direct career path at the time and gave it a try, taking a few lessons at a wrestling school in California. Kowalski was his mentor and the pair wound up as a masked tag team together known as The Executioners.They were World Wrestling Federation tag team champions for a few months after Minton tried being a single wrestler under the stage name of Chuck O'Connor.Still with a lot to learn about the pro wrestling game, Minton left the WWF for a while, then returned as Big John Studd, a 6-foot-10, 384-pound wrestler who became legendary Andre The Giant's prime rival.The two had a match known as the $10,000 Body Slam Challenge on one of the WWF's early Wrestlemania pay-per-view telecasts.Minton met his eventual wife of 19 years on an airplane between wrestling appearances."I had no idea who those guys were," Mrs. Minton said. "I thought they were a bunch of football players. When he told me he was a pro wrestler, I was shocked."In the height of his career, he was on the road 300 days a year. They kept up an incredible schedule, but he loved what he did."

Mrs. Minton said her husband did not take steroids and, in fact, campaigned heavily against them."He was into vitamins and staying fit. … He ate a dozen eggs a day and drank a lot of milk," she said. "He had his own gym in our basement. He gave anti-drug talks to kids all the time."John was such a gentle man, so wise … If he were alive today, he'd be talking to students and adults alike. He'd probably be a preacher. He was loved by everybody."Rock said Minton was an educated man "who read books between his wrestling matches.""I still have a product in my cabinet, Big John Studd's Vitamin Pills, in a bottle with his picture on it," Rock said. "He was really hoping that product would take off."Joe Minton said steroid use in pro wrestling "was a commonplace thing at the time. Nobody knew about the long-term affects.""John didn't associate with very many wrestlers on the road," his wife said. "He stayed in different hotels. Wrestling was a business to him, a job. He went to work, then he came home."Minton used his wrestling career to land roles in motion pictures. His biggest role was in "Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man."Minton had to ride a motorcycle in that film and had not ridden one before."He was practicing riding one and had a bad accident," Donna Minton said. "His stomach muscles suffered major trauma … They think that might have been where his cancer started."Minton died of lymphoma in 1995 at age 47. Along with his wife, he left behind two sons - 24-year-old John and 13-year-old Sean - and 21-year-old daughter Jannelle.

His oldest son accepted Minton's induction into the World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame in March of this year."I thought that was a great honor, remembering him like that," Mrs. Minton said of the WWE induction. "He and Pete Rose went in during the same year. That was something."Minton was inducted into the Butler Area Sports Hall of Fame in 1996.Minton's wrestling career brought joy to those who knew him, or just met him along the way."It was fun meeting all of the wrestlers. Whenever they came to the Pittsburgh area, we'd always go to watch John," Minton's brother said. "They'd play small shows in places like Greensburg, Struthers (Ohio), then have the big one in Pittsburgh."Andre The Giant is the biggest person I've seen in my life. You felt like a little kid meeting a grown-up when you shook his hand."Rock recalled asking Minton to come talk to a soccer team of 6 and 7-year-olds he used to coach."The wrestlers were in town and John happily agreed to meet my team," Rock said. "He welcomed any opportunity to talk to kids."He signed autographs for every kid there, talked to each one of them. That was years ago. I still bump into some of those kids and meeting Big John Studd is still a great memory for them."