I missed most of Sid Eudy’s earlier wrestling career as “Sid Justice,” and became acquainted with him when he re-joined the World Wrestling Federation in 1995, initially as the replacement bodyguard for Shawn Michaels in the build-up to Wrestlemania XI. Initially, he was just known as “Sid,” although eventually he began to showcase an unstable mental state, and became known as “Sycho Sid” (presumable misspelled for trademark purposes), coincidentally about a year after I started going by “Psycho Andy.”
Something about this imposing, six-foot-nine, 300-plus pound behemoth caught my imagination. Nothing in Sid’s aresneal of attacks was very flashy — He mostly stuck to basic punches, kicks, clotheslines, and bodyslams. But, here’s the thing: Sid was so big, that he didn’t NEED to do anything more fancy than the basics. I totaly believed that he wasn’t as agile as Shawn Michaels, wasn’t as technically sound as Bret Hart, and wasn’t as fast as the 1-2-3 Kid. But he WAS seemingly infinitely stronger than any of those guys, that it would take someone like an Undertaker or a Diesel to actually be able to be on Sid’s level of power.
Besides, when you nickname yourself “The Master and the Ruler of the World,” you’d better be able to back up that claim. And Sid was definitely able to do so, by winning the WWF Championship from Shawn Michaels at Survivor Series 1996, and later the WCW Championship in 2000 by defeating Kevin Nash.
Regardless, in the mid-2000s, when Jakks Pacific was releasing their “Ruthless Aggression” line of WWE action figures, I bought a Jon Heidenreich, swapped out his gloved hands and red boots for bare hands and tall, black boots from other figures (I legit don’t remember who they belonged to now). I sculpted some curly locks on, and sanded down all of Heidenreich’s tattoos, and had myself a Sid in red trunks. It would have been easier to find a similar figure without the tattoos in black trunks, but I wanted to add some color, and Heidenreich’s red trunks were perfect for Sid. While his face wasn’t an EXACT match for Sid’s, it was close enough.
Of course, Jakks ended up releasing an actual Sycho Sid figure like two years later, something I didn’t think they would ever do. I appreciated that they had made one of the guys that had captured my imagination as a child, but they had made his head WAY too big. Besides that, they put him in the black trunks that I had intentionally avoided.
Here’s a bunch of pictures I took of my Sid custom beating up other WWE figures:
The name “Sycho Sid” is trademarked and owned by World Wrestling Entertainment, but Sid Eudy is the master and the ruler of himself.