Ted Arcidi Recalls WWF Rise, Five Joint Replacements

Former WWF strongman Ted Arcidi opened up about his health, his path into wrestling, and his memories of the 1980s WWF boom during a recent appearance on the Wrestling Epicenter podcast with host James Walsh.

Arcidi, famous for setting a bench press world record north of 700 pounds before joining Vince McMahon’s promotion in 1985, revealed that he underwent five major joint replacement surgeries in one stretch — both knees, both shoulders, and his right hip. Rather than spacing the procedures out, he said he tackled recovery the way he once approached a world record. “I looked at this like a World Record,” Arcidi said, adding that discipline in physical therapy made all the difference. He said doctors told him the majority of joint-replacement patients never regain full motion because they don’t stick with rehab, but he now benches in the 200s for reps and squats in the 300s without a belt at 235 pounds.

He also had blunt advice for fellow wrestling veterans dealing with lingering injuries, name-checking Ken Patera and Brutus Beefcake as guys who could benefit from surgery, and pointed to John Cena’s posture as evidence of someone avoiding needed back surgery — a decision he tied back to advice Hulk Hogan reportedly gave Beefcake after his own back problems.

On how he broke into wrestling, Arcidi credited Patera directly, saying the two-time Olympian tracked his power-lifting career and put him on McMahon’s radar as he trained toward the 700-pound bench press mark. He described McMahon as someone who deliberately built a roster of larger-than-life, muscular attractions in the WrestleMania era, name-checking his TV main event with Big John Studd at the Boston Garden as the best match of his career. He contrasted that eighties aesthetic with today’s product, which he feels leans toward high-flying, smaller performers.

Arcidi’s road to the ring started far from wrestling — he was a hockey defenseman who took up bench pressing to add size, entering a Southbridge, Massachusetts competition in 1980 almost on a whim before drawing media attention and eventually walking away from hockey for weightlifting full-time. His father, the son of a Sicilian immigrant who’d hoped his son would become a dentist, was reportedly furious when a Boston Globe report tied Arcidi to a WWF signing, even leaving an answering machine message threatening to change the locks if his son pursued wrestling. The two didn’t speak for roughly a year before his father came around once wrestling’s mainstream popularity — and his son’s TV exposure — became undeniable.

For a performer whose in-ring run is often remembered mostly for that power-lifting gimmick and the record-breaking hype reels that preceded his debut, the interview offers a rare, personal look at both the toll four decades in and around the wrestling business took on his body and the family tension that came with choosing it in the first place. It’s also a reminder of how differently WWE marketed size and strength in the 1980s compared to the current landscape — a contrast Arcidi clearly still has strong feelings about.