Steve McMichael – an NFL great who won the Super Bowl with Chicago Bears – has died aged 67.
The sporting legend’s career across NFL, and then professional wrestling spanned decades, during which his larger-than-life personality enticed new fans into American football. The defensive tackle won the 1985 Super Bowl with Chicago Bears during his 13-year stint with the side.
McMichael, who was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2024, died on Wednesday at a hospice in Chicago, following a journey with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a type of motor neurone disease, diagnosed in April 2021.
Known as “Ming The Merciless” and “Mongo” after the character in Blazing Saddles who knocked out a horse, McMichael will go down as not only a Chicago Bears cult hero, but a legend in the Windy City itself. Years after retiring from the sport, he and fellow 1985 Chicago Bears alumni Dan Hampton and Otis Wilson performed in a rock and roll oldies band called the Chicago 6 in the city.
The athlete’s ALS diagnosis diagnosis rocked the NFL and wrestling worlds; McMichael had ventured into the latter for nearly five years until 1999. Speaking in 2021, he told local media: “I promise you, this epitaph that I’m going to have on me now? This ain’t ever how I envisioned this was going to end.”
And, in the four years since, photos posted on social media by friends and former teammates captured McMichael’s sad decline. Once a 270-pound giant who used to blast through linebackers and drive wrestlers headfirst into the mat, the star became rail-thin, bedridden and hooked up to machines.
Weeks after Grey’s Anatomy and Euphoria star Eric Dane, of San Francisco, California, opened up about his ALS diagnosis, McMichael’s publicist confirmed the sports professional’s death.
And Ric Flair, with whom McMichael used to battle in the wrestling ring, was one of the first in the sports circuit to express his condolences today. He posted online: “The world just lost the incredible Steve ‘Mongo’ McMichael! He was my best friend through it all! An amazing athlete and human being!”
ALS, a type of motor neurone diseas, affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, causing loss of muscle control. Dad-of-one McMichael had been experiencing tingling in his arms for some time, which he figured was a neck or spine issue stemming from his playing days or his work as a wrestler.
But the NFL ace, born in Houston, Texas, deteriorated, and he became “scared to die,” according to wife Misty last year. Misty, who married the athlete in 2001, said: “He’s scared to die and he shouldn’t be because he’s the most badass man I’ve ever known inside and out. He’s a good man. He’s gonna be in heaven before any of us, so I don’t know what he’s afraid of. But I’ve told him to please hang on ’til the (induction) and then, you know, I don’t want to see him suffer anymore. He’s been suffering.”
McMichael played in the NFL for 15 years, 13 with Chicago Bears. He fought ALS with the same tenacity he showed for years on the pitch, during which the athlete became one of the most feared players on arguably the greatest defence ever assembled in the game.
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