Minton was born to Helen Hayden and joined the United States Army and served as a military police officer in Vietnam.

[5][4] In mid-1972, Studd joined the World Wide Wrestling Federation under the ring name "Chuck O'Connor", facing wrestlers such as Chief Jay Strongbow and Gorilla Monsoon.

[5] In early 1981, Studd gained several unsuccessful title shots at the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, which was held by Dusty Rhodes at the time.

On May 11, 1976, The Executioners defeated Louis Cerdan and Tony Parisi to win the WWF World Tag Team Championship.

The Andre-Studd feud raged throughout 1983, and Andre got the upper hand and slammed Studd several times, once with enough force to collapse the entire ring.

Several times, the two met inside a steel cage, where André not only slammed Studd, but used a sitdown splash from the top rope onto his chest to knock him out.

This happened during a televised tag team match on WWF Championship Wrestling featuring Studd and fellow Heenan Family member Ken Patera against André the Giant and S. D. Jones.

[6][8] After WrestleMania, Studd formed an alliance with fellow Heenan Family member, 468 lb (212 kg) King Kong Bundy.

The Studd-Bundy alliance and André continued to feud for the rest of that year and into 1986, with Andre often recruiting faces such as Hulk Hogan, Tony Atlas, Junkyard Dog, and Hillbilly Jim to team with him.

Although André the Giant was also in the match, Studd set his focus on eliminating Fralic and fellow football player William "The Refrigerator" Perry, who was fresh from a Super Bowl victory with the Chicago Bears earlier that year.

The Andre-Studd feud took on a new dimension in 1986, when, in the wake of Andre's increasing health problems related to gigantism and acromegaly, his role as Fezzik in the movie The Princess Bride, and his planned tour of Japan, a storyline was developed to have André compete in a tag team called The Machines.

The "Machines" angle began when André failed to show up for a number of tag team matches against Bundy and Studd.

Studd, who long had a reputation of not selling pain to wrestlers with little or no in-ring skills, wrestled a notable match with the "World's Strongest Man" Ted Arcidi at the Boston Garden in mid-1986.

Studd then served as a special guest referee in the match between Jake "The Snake" Roberts and André at WrestleMania V in Atlantic City.

When no suitable bone marrow donor was found, and he was given around a month to live, Minton underwent an autotransplantation procedure with a 7% success rate.