Billy Graham is a former American professional wrestler.
During his career he won major titles such as the WWWF Heavyweight Championship, the NWA World Tag Team Championship with Pat Patterson and the IWA World Heavyweight Championship. He was inducted into the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame in 1996 and the WWE Hall of Fame in 2004.
Graham's popularity was largely based on his character traits, rather than his abilities as a wrestler. Graham's muscular bodybuilder physique and colorful and flashy clothing laid the foundations for the image of other famous wrestlers such as Jesse Ventura, Hulk Hogan, Scott Steiner and Triple H, all heavily influenced by Graham's figure. Graham called his biceps pythons, as Hogan would later do as well, and often recited poems and long monologues during interviews, following the example of Muhammad Ali.
As he himself states in his autobiography Tangled Ropes, Graham and his wife Valerie were unable to have children due to Graham's career steroid abuse, which made him infertile. Graham does however have two children from a previous marriage: a son named Joey (born in 1975) and a daughter named Capella (born in 1972).
In recent years Graham has been hospitalized many times for problems related to his degenerative disease. In February 2012, he was hospitalized with pneumonia and an infection in his leg.
