Paul Cain

It’s damn true!!

A true legend

Sweat, sequins, and a coco butt that could rattle your teeth loose — that was Sweet Daddy S**i, and Canadian wrestling was never quite the same once he walked through its doors.

Born Elkin James on June 16, 1933, in the United States, S**i laced up his boots for the first time in 1955 in Artesia, New Mexico, weighing barely 180 pounds. He trained under Sandor Szabo and Ray Ortega in Los Angeles, added 50 pounds of muscle over three years, and quietly built himself into something the territory circuit would not forget. By 1961, he made a decision that defined his entire life: he moved to Toronto. Not for a short run, not chasing a single payday. He planted roots and never left.

Toronto adopted him. He adopted it right back.

S**i's run at Maple Leaf Gardens stands as one of the great sustained attractions in Canadian wrestling history. He made his debut there in 1962 and wrestled on that hallowed floor until 1980 — nearly two decades of packed houses, busloads of fans rolling in from across the province, and at his peak, $3,000 a bout. Mail arrived from fans around the world. He was a main card draw in an era when that meant something real, when the electricity inside that building could press itself into your chest before the bell even rang. His headbutt — the "coco butt" — and his neckbreaker became signatures that fans could feel from the cheap seats. He wrestled for Stampede, travelled Bearman McKigney's circuit, anchored the eastern Canadian scene through the '60s and '70s, and accumulated six major championships across multiple territories, including the NWA Canadian Heavyweight Championship out of Calgary, the NWA Texas Heavyweight Championship, and two WWC North American Heavyweight Championship reigns in Puerto Rico. The ring took him to Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and Trinidad. The road was long and the injuries were real — broken ribs, both hands fractured twice, a broken ankle, a broken leg, and half his face left partially paralyzed. He kept going.

You couldn't keep Sweet Daddy down.

But here is what makes Elkin James impossible to reduce to a championship list. While he was working the Gardens and headlining cards across the continent, he was also teaching children. On Sunday mornings, while other wrestlers slept in hotel rooms and nursed their bruises, S**i was at Sully's Toronto Youth Athletic Club, showing young kids the craft he loved. He stayed affiliated with a Toronto wrestling school from the 1980s all the way through the mid-1990s, first in partnership with Johnny Powers, passing along everything the territories had taught him. Outside the ring, he fronted a country and western band, released an album on vinyl, wrote his own theme song — "I Am So Proud of What I See" — and spent years as a karaoke DJ at The Duke on Queen Street East in Toronto, spinning records on Saturday afternoons for the neighborhood crowd. Same man. Completely different room. Completely the same heart.

His legend ran deep enough that Toronto-based musicians wrote songs about him. The Henrys put him on their album Chasing Grace, and Pork Belly Futures gave him a track of his own. In September 2011, he appeared on WWE SmackDown for Edge Appreciation Night alongside other legends, a brief moment that reminded a new generation just how far back the Canadian wrestling tradition ran. The International Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame inducted him in 2023. The Canadian Wrestling Hall of Fame had already called his name in 2016.

Elkin James died on December 31, 2024, in Toronto, from complications of dementia. He was 91 years old. He had lived in that city for more than six decades — longer than most people's entire careers — and left it richer for every year he stayed.

He wrote his own theme song, built his own legacy, and earned every word of both.

**i

Yup.. so don’t stop..