Before the gold chains and the mohawk, before The A-Team and Rocky III, and before he ever stepped into a wrestling ring, he was just Laurence Tureaud from Chicago. Netflix wants to tell that story next.
Untold: Mr. T, I Pity the Fool is the newest installment in Netflix’s Untold sports documentary series, premiering September 8. The series itself returns August 25 with episodes on college football legend Vince Young and viral Olympic breakdancer Raygun, closing out the run with Mr. T.
Directed by Scott Weintrob, the documentary steps past the pop-culture iconography, the chains, the vests, the catchphrases, to dig into Tureaud’s early life: growing up in Chicago, working as a celebrity bodyguard, and building the resilience that eventually turned him into one of the defining faces of 1980s entertainment.
The WrestleMania Connection
Wrestling fans know exactly where Mr. T fits into this story even if the documentary doesn’t dwell on it. He’s a two-time WWE Hall of Famer, inducted in 2014, and he headlined the very first WrestleMania in 1985, teaming with Hulk Hogan against Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff in the main event.
That match, and Mr. T’s presence on the card at all, is one of the foundational moments of the “Rock ‘n’ Wrestling Connection,” the mid-’80s push that dragged, well, brought professional wrestling into mainstream American pop culture for the first time. Without it, there’s a real argument that WWE never becomes the empire it is today.
No trailer specifics yet on how much ring time the doc gives WrestleMania I, but for a series built around “the story behind the story,” it’s hard to imagine Netflix skipping the moment that turned a Chicago bodyguard into a wrestling pop-culture landmark.
