Ken Patera

Ken Patera is one of those rare athletes who actually did it all — and did it at a legitimately elite level before pro wrestling even entered the picture. This guy represented the U.S. in Olympic weightlifting at the 1972 Munich Games and was once considered among the strongest men on the planet, which made his WWF heel run feel genuinely menacing rather than just theatrically so. When he stepped into the WWF in the late '70s and early '80s, that amateur credibility gave his character real weight — pun intended. He's part of a fascinating old-school lineage of legit strongmen who crossed over into professional wrestling when the two worlds overlapped more naturally, and for that alone he deserves a nod from anyone who appreciates the sport's athletic roots.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Ken Patera

Name (Japanese)

ケン・パテラ

Reading

けん・ぱてら

Born

November 6, 1942 (age 83)

Origin

Portland, Oregon, United States

Height

187 cm

Occupation

weightlifter / professional wrestler / strongman / athletics competitor

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Scorpio / Horse

High school

Cleveland High School

University

Brigham Young University

• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken%20Patera
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%82%B1%E3%83%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%83%91%E3%83%86%E3%83%A9
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q711543

Tags

• Oregon
• weightlifter
• professional wrestler
• strongman

Last updated

October 18, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.