DeWayne Bruce

Bruce debuted in World Championship Wrestling in 1989, using his real name as a preliminary wrestler, then earned some undercard notoriety as Sgt. Buddy Lee Parker, competing in a tag-team with partner Lt. James Earl Wright, as The State Patrol.[4] He later became a member of the Dungeon of Doom, under the short-lived identity of Braun The Leprechaun[1] before again being repackaged as "Military Man" Jack Boot.[5]

Boot only lasted a short time before Buddy Lee Parker returned, but this time as a Military Sergeant. This was Bruce's final wrestling persona, later simply going by Sarge. After his semiretirement, he became the head trainer at the official WCW wrestling school, the Power Plant.[1] He would occasionally pop up on WCW Saturday Night as a jobber during the end of his career, but he received praise by WCW commentators crediting him for training many of the highly popular superstars of WCW, most notably Bill Goldberg. Despite losing most of his televised matches, Bruce scored a few notable victories throughout his career (although mostly against other jobbers). Bruce had respect from his peers, and was known to lose matches against newcomers to help elevate younger talent. Towards the very end of WCW, Bruce was involved in a somewhat major match, in which he teamed with his former trainee, Bill Goldberg, to face the team of Lex Luger and Buff Bagwell (then known as Totally Buffed). This would end up being Bruce's final WCW appearance.

Bruce was also notable for being the first wrestler to lose to newcomers (to WCW) such as "Cowboy" Bob Orton, Jr (who had an almost unbeaten streak in the company around the time) and The Iron Sheik.

During 1991 and 1992, Bruce traveled to Japan to compete for All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW), while still under contract with WCW. Bruce teamed with a variety of tag-team partners in AJPW, however, much like in WCW, AJPW used Bruce as "enhancement talent" (jobber). Despite being used as a jobber, Bruce did have some notable moments in his AJPW tenure. Bruce stopped competing for AJPW in March 1992, and returned to Atlanta, to again work for WCW.