[6] Brunzell attended high school in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, where he participated in multiple sports including American football, scholastic wrestling, and athletics.

[6] Following his unsuccessful tryout with the Redskins, Brunzell was approached by former college football teammate Greg Gagne, who convinced him to train as a professional wrestler.

He trained with Gagne's father Verne, alongside wrestlers including Ric Flair, Ken Patera, and The Iron Sheik.

The duo won the AWA World Tag Team Championship on July 7, 1977, by defeating Blackjack Lanza and Bobby Duncum.

[4] He returned to the AWA in 1981, and on June 14, The High Flyers regained the championship by defeating The East-West Connection (Jesse Ventura and Adrian Adonis).

Their stay was also highlighted with a match against Nikolai Volkoff and The Iron Sheik as part of WrestleMania III, and a win at the inaugural Survivor Series on Thanksgiving Day 1987.

On the November 5, 1988, edition of Prime Time Wrestling, Jim Brunzell was announced as a participant in the Survivor Series, replacing Don Muraco.

He entered into an unsuccessful house show series with Rick Martel in April, while making his return to television on the May 14 edition of Prime Time Wrestling in a match against Curt Hennig.

On the July 16, 1990, edition of Prime Time Wrestling he finally gained his first televised victory since the breakup of the Killer Bees when he pinned Black Bart.

All traces of his former Killer Bees gimmick were now gone, and Brunzell would wear tie-dye trunks, adopted the "Crank It Up" theme song that had been used by The Young Stallions and was still being used by Jim Powers.

[10] Brunzell's appearances became much more limited in 1991 as he wrestled only seventeen dates, all winless efforts against upper level competition like Irwin R. Schyster, The Warlord, and The Barbarian.

Brunzell began tag-teaming consistently again for the first time in almost four years when he replaced the departed Jim Neidhart and teamed with Owen Hart.

Brunzell was victorious in two dark match tryouts for Rochester Roadblock in April and appeared in a 40-man battle royal that aired on Prime Time Wrestling in June 1992.

That month Brunzell began teaming with Jim Powers once more, losing to The Beverly Brothers and The Nasty Boys, and defeating Duane Gill and Barry Hardy.

In 1994, he appeared in the American Wrestling Federation as a guest referee in a bout for the AWF Heavyweight Championship, in which Tito Santana beat Bob Orton Jr. to win the title.