EDITOR’S NOTE: Everyone has a story — some more well-known than others. Across Western North Carolina, so much history is buried below the surface. Six feet under. With this series, we introduce you to some of the people who have left marks big and small on this special place we call home.
Recognized by Guinness World Records as the heaviest twins to ever live, the McCrary brothers were famous showmen and wrestlers in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Benny Loyd (1946-2001) and Billy Leon (1946-1979) made the most of the rare condition that made them wear 84-inch belts and ride Honda minibikes for transportation.
The Uncurable Disease
Benny Loyd and Billy Leon McCrary were born identical twins on Dec. 7, 1946, in Hendersonville, N.C. Benny was a minute and a half older than Billy, weighed 30 pounds more and survived his brother by 22 years.
Their unregulated growth came from peculiar circumstances. After a bout of German measles, also known as rubella, when they were four years old, the pituitary glands in the boys began to malfunction, causing rapid and uncontrollable weight gains. Despite a diet restricted to 1,000 calories per day and regular manual labor on the family farm, the twins continued to balloon in weight. By the age of 10, the McCrary’s weighed 200 pounds each, more than triple what boys at that age typically weigh.
In high school, the twins gave their weight advantage to East Henderson High School’s football team. With two 400-pound guards, you can imagine how hard sacking the quarterback would be for opposing teams. They eventually dropped out at age 16 in the early 1960’s.
From Country Boys to Superstars
John Page, a photographer for the Daily News, snapped a photo of the twins on their motorbikes that would eventually land in Life Magazine. It was shot in 1969 while the McCrary’s were making an appearance in Greensboro.
Once the picture was printed nationwide, their rise to stardom was secured. Business offers began to flood in left and right.
“Within a few weeks, they were performing a nightclub act in one of the big casinos in Las Vegas,” according to the May 16, 1976, issue of the Greensboro News and Record. That venue was Circus Circus Hotel and Casino where they would perform for three years.
Their show, called “Mission Impossible,” according to Billy’s recollection, featured the boys playing trumpets and telling jokes while accompanied by a 400-pound back-up go-go dancer called “TeeVee Mama.”
The photo “changed us from country boys into superstars,” Billy happily explained.
Their size deceived onlookers into thinking all they did backstage was eat. In actuality, Billy told the Greensboro News and Record on May 16, 1976, “I’ll usually have two eggs and some bacon and toast and a glass of orange juice. Then in the afternoon, I’ll have a sandwich of something, and at night we eat a normal sized dinner.”
Put simply, they ate similar portions to everyone else. The only abnormally large quantity they consumed was water, with around 10 glasses per day. More than a gallon every 24 hours.
Honda was quite pleased to find out the boys exclusively rode their minibikes, so they offered the twins a sponsorship deal to cross the nation on their iconic minibikes. The McCrary’s rode 100 miles per day for 30 days from New York to Los Angeles.
Life Magazine was not the only major publication to feature the extraordinary duo.
Guinness World Records called them “two of the most iconic record holders to ever exist. Billy tipped the scales at 743 pounds and Benny weighed 723 pounds, making them the world’s heaviest twins.” First recognized in 1970, their record remains to this day.
The McCrary’s only stood at 5 foot 11 inches. Combined, they weighed nearly a ton at 1,466 pounds.
The World Champion McGuire Twins
As explained in a 4-Stroke.net article, Gory Guerrero, the father of the legendary WWE champion Eddie Guerrero, mistook the McCrary’s for wrestlers on the card at a show in El Paso, Texas. After explaining they were only fans, Guerrero offered to train the twins once they finished their tour with Honda. Benny and Billy agreed. For two months, they trained with Guerrero in Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico.
As the legend goes, for their first match, the McCrary’s were pitted against 12 other men in a battle royal which they won after 38 minutes. 7,000 people gathered to watch, more than double the venue’s capacity.
To the gathered crowds, they were said to be the weights of famous aircraft, Billy at 747 and Benny at 727. Their promoters billed them as “faces.” For those without a degree in pro-wrestling studies, faces are the good guys.
The identical twins dressed identically in clothes specially made for them in Japan using several yards of fabric per article. Only distinguishing themselves with footwear, each sported size 14 shoes, according to their Jan. 9, 1978, profile in People Magazine. Billy wore boots, citing his love of John Wayne and Gene Autry, while Benny preferred loafers.
But the weight they wore, allowing them only to stand for 10 minutes at a time before losing their breath, was involuntary. “I’d trade it all in a second if I could be 150 pounds,” Billy stated.
While at first they went by their real names, the twins soon took on ring names. To the wrestling world, they were the “McGuires.” The most popular explanation is that Japanese announcers had trouble saying “McCrary.” The more likely explanation is provided by Blue Ridge Country. “While competing in Montreal, Canada, they began using a stage name of the “McGuire” twins. McGuire is French for McCrary.” Given at one point both men were married to French Canadian women, this is considerably more plausible.
Canada and Mexico were not the only international stops the pair made. They regularly flew over the Pacific to compete in New Japan Pro Wrestling. While in the Land of the Rising Sun, the McCrary’s apparently spent half a year learning judo.
The wrestling circuit was wild in those days. “In Louisville, an opponent was shot from the stands, and he died in Billy’s arms,” wrote the Philadelphia Inquirer on Feb. 24, 1978. “During another incident in Kentucky some playful fans tossed a bag full of rattlesnakes inside the twins dressing room. Benny led the escape out the door. In his hurry he never bothered to open the door.”
Speaking to the Inquirer, Billy McCrary stated, “We’ve had rings collapse under us several times. One time we wrestled in Madison Square Garden in ‘Big Men’ competition. You had to be 400 pounds just to get in the ring. Haystacks Calhoun was there, and Andre the Giant. When it was over the ring was demolished.”
“’I felt skinny when I climbed in the ring and saw those two fellows,’” Calhoun recalled to the Hendersonville Times-News on Jan. 9, 1973, himself “a fellow who thumps the scales at a modest 620 pounds.”
While flying the world taking two first-class seats each and driving the highways in the matching reinforced Chevrolet Impalas, the McCrary’s apparently had love lives. “’We’ve always had a way with the ladies,’” Benny boasted to People Magazine on Jan. 9, 1978. “’We’ve scored. Lots of girls are curious about us.’ These days, however, they say they’re no longer interested in groupies, or ‘ring rats’ to the trade.”
While wrestling had been scripted for nearly a century by the time the McCrary’s entered the squared circle, their fights often turned real. One particularly gruesome encounter occurred in Nova Scotia, Canada. After an hour and the wrestling mat covered in blood, the referee tried to halt the match, but the McCrary’s and their German opponents kept warring. All four wound up in the hospital that day.
At the height of their stardom, the McCrary’s drew a crowd of 22,000 to watch them face the team of Man Mountain Mike at 610 pounds and the 620-pound Haystack Calhoun. The twins won decisively in a 3-minute clash.
For 14 years, the McCrary brothers were undefeated as tag team champions as they tussled around the globe, according to Billy’s obituary in the Hendersonville Times-News on July 18, 1979.
The Misremembered Death of Billy McCrary
Over the decades, an urban legend has arisen surrounding the death of Billy McCrary. As the tale goes, the brothers were meant to perform a minibike stunt at Niagra Falls for Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Billy botched the maneuver and died of his injuries 13 days later. Many sources have mistakenly reprinted this story including the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources and Guinness World Records.
While the pair had concocted an Evil-Kinevil style stunt show, there was no botched stunt at the great international falls. The truth is the twins were on their way to work that morning at the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! location in Niagra Falls, Ontario, Canada. They had a contract with the venue as performers.
Benny explained his brother’s accident to reporters of the Press-Republican from Plattsburgh, N.Y. on July 20, 1979. The journalist recounted, “He said an extended foot peg on his brother’s motorcycle snagged on a railroad track as Billy rode to work, causing him to fall.” McCrary said, “a blood clot resulting from a motorcycle accident” killed his brother 13 days after the crash.
Billy McCrary died on July 14, 1979, at age 32. His body was transported back to Hendersonville for burial.
The Brother Without His Twin
Before Billy’s death, the brothers had planned to work for two more years at Ripley’s before undergoing weight loss surgeries to shave 1,000 pounds off their combined mass. Benny did not continue with this plan, seemingly due to the risk involved with the then experimental surgery.
Benny continued to wrestle, even teaming with Andre the Giant for a short while, but it was not the same without Billy. “He tried, but he just couldn’t do it, because he said the magic was gone,” his wife told the Hendersonville Times-News on March 28, 2001. “He was really affected by that.”
Without his twin, Benny retired from the international eye. He returned to Hendersonville where he opened a pawn shop and was an auctioneer.
In 1998, Benny and his wife moved to her hometown of Walkertown, outside of Winston-Salem. There, McCrary concluded his earthly life by doing what he loved most.
McCrary took a job with the Christian Golfers Ministry at the Pine Knolls Golf Course which he saw as less of a moneymaking venture and more of a passion project. It combined his two great loves: God and golf. “He was on the board of directors of the Christian Golfers Ministry and would hand out Bible tracts and golf tees with the GOLFER logo (God Offers Love, Forgiveness and Eternal Redemption),” as written in the Hendersonville Times-News on March 28, 2001.
“After the cartilage in his knee wore out, Benny could no longer walk,” the article continued. “For a time, he still played golf, using a cart to ride from shot to shot. But when he could no longer do that, he became confined mostly to a chair or his bed.”
In March 2001, Benny was admitted to Pardee Hospital in Hendersonville for an enlarged and weakened heart.
Golfer Gone to Glory
Benny McCrary, aged 54, died of heart failure at Pardee Hospital on March 26, 2001.
“Throughout the obstacles he had to face in his life because of his size, he was kindhearted and he always cared about other people,” McCrary’s widow, Tammie, told the Hendersonville Times-News for the obituary of her late husband published on March 28, 2001.
“He made an impression on people because he could get on any level you were on – he could talk to the president or a farmer, it didn’t matter,” she said. “People loved him.”
In his obituary in the New York Times on April 3, 2001, the paper wrote, “Mr. McCrary was known for his size but was admired by those close to him for the size of his heart.”
Benny McCrary was laid next to his brother in the cemetery of Crab Creek Baptist Church. At one point, their shared headstone was said to be the largest in the world, although this title seems to have since been taken. At 13 feet wide and weighing three tons, it dwarfs the other tombstones in the churchyard. Inlaid on the granite marker are two Honda minibikes, the vehicles that were synonymous with the wrestlers.
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