A year and a half ago, Maccabi USA’s president, Jeff Bukantz, bumped into a buddy at a Maccabi golf outing in Philadelphia.

His friend had to leave the event early to attend a Phillies game, so they gave each other a hug and said goodbye. That night, his friend died of a sudden heart attack.

“That was the wake-up call,” Bukantz told eJewishPhilanthropy. “I was comfortably overweight. My blood pressure was high, I was not in great shape. I said, ‘It’s time.’”

The son of an Olympic and Maccabiah fencer, Bukantz, 67, is a second-generation member of the National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, representing the U.S. in fencing at the World University Games, Pan American Games, the World Championships and the Maccabiah Games. During his years competing, Bukantz weighed around 200 pounds. When his friend died, Bukantz was up to 247. 

He needed to get back into shape.

For seven months, he walked daily, cut carbs and cooked salmon and veggies instead of eating out “every night as a divorced single guy would do,” he said. He chiseled himself into the leanest shape of his life at 186 pounds, and then, he realized, it was time to get back in the competition… as a pro-wrestler.

For the first time in 28 years, last Sunday, Bukantz stepped into the wrestling ring as the Magen David-masked Mighty Maccabee, a persona he first donned 32 years ago at “Maccabiah Mania,” a Maccabi USA pro-wrestling fundraiser he promoted in his New Jersey backyard.

At the second Maccabiah Mania event, held in 1997 and dubbed the “Shekel Slam,” the barely trained, uber-lanky fencing superhero the Mighty Maccabee beat WWE Hall of Famer Iron Sheik for the World Maccabiah Championship, which, until this past week, Bukantz held for over 10,000 days, never once defending it, making him — he claims — the longest reigning champion in wrestling.

The two ‘90s events raised tens of thousands of dollars for Maccabi USA and became cult favorites after being repackaged and falsely (but lovingly) marketed as “Grandmasters of Wrestling,” even though the DVDs featured former superstars well past their prime.

After flooding Walmart dollar bins, the DVDs sold over 600,000 units, making the events legendary for their campiness, with canned applause raging throughout matches while the footage clearly showed the audience sitting silent. In the years since, the legend of the Mighty Macabee only grew, to the point where if Bukantz shows up to visit friends at wrestling conventions, fans line up for pictures and autographs.

Last Sunday’s event, “Maccabiah Mania 3,” was held at Livingston High School in Livingston, N.J., the same location as the second event, featuring most of the living performers from the first two Manias. In the main event, the 67-year-old one-time-wunderkind made his final wrestling appearance, defending his never-defended championship against former World Championship Wrestling superstar Crowbar, with all proceeds going to the Maccabiah Games.

Like the original events, “Maccabiah Mania 3” went off with many hitches, plus several glitches.

The YouTube livestream, which was hosted on the popular “Wrestling With Wregret” channel and garnered over 18,000 views, had audio issues aplenty, with an echo from the ring mic wavering in and out throughout the mid-afternoon event. Even though between 250 and 300 people attended the show, the main camera was focused on the one set of bleachers where barely anyone was sitting. 

While crowd cheers were not canned into matches this time, fans roared through the recorded version of the “Star-Spangled Banner.” The show went to intermission early, and one of the headline wrestlers may or may not have forgotten the Mighty Maccabee’s name during a promo, leading to an awkward moment where someone fed him a line off camera, which he acknowledged on camera, swearing he remembered Bukantz’s moniker.

Unlike the first shows, which featured mainly aging performers, “Maccabiah Mania 3’s” 10-match card  featured mostly up-and-comers, along with some of the older cast from the first shows, including Bukantz and his cousin, Mike Omansky, who first introduced Bukantz to wrestling and provided commentary on the show.

“I thought everybody would be dead by now,” said co-commentator and former Olympic weightlifter and pro-wrestling legend Ken Patera, 82, during a match featuring a mustachioed pizza-making pro wrestler. At one point, Patera referred to Maccabiah Mania 3 as “one of the biggest events of the year,” and mispronounced ex-WWE superstar Gene Snitsky’s name, replacing the “Snits” with a similar-sounding curse word.

The Maccabee’s opponent for the night, Christopher Ford, AKA Crowbar, performed on the second “Maccabiah Mania” in the opening match, which was a huge opportunity for a newcomer at the time to the business, giving him exposure and an opportunity to hone his craft.

“I had no idea that 25 years later it would have grown in such popularity and notoriety,” he told eJP. “The Mighty Maccabee is both famous and infamous.”

When Bukantz contacted Ford about whom he should wrestle, Ford insisted it be him.  

“It’s just a really cool, really special, full-circle moment,” Ford said. “This many years later, I’m in a main event versus the Mighty Maccabee.”

For the match, the Maccabee pranced to the ring wearing a fencing mask and carrying a lance, along with Israeli and American flag bearers, to the tune of “Shir Hamaccabiah” (The Song of the Maccabiah), by Israeli musician Naomi Shemer. Other Maccabi USA leaders, including Debbie Adams, the group’s vice president, and Marc Backal, its treasurer, walked to the ring with him, carrying Maccabi USA banners.

“He’s not a wrestler wrestler,” Patera said about the Mighty Maccabee before the match. “But he knows more than enough.”

The battle saw chairs, a guardrail, a pipe and a table all used as weapons, as well as interference by a nearly-7-foot giant. Bukantz won the match with his “Star of David” submission maneuver, twisting Ford’s arms into a pretzel until he forfeited. 

After a 19-minute and 37-second match, the Maccabee retired from wrestling, retaining his standing  as the longest reigning World Maccabiah Champion.

“Whatever it was, it was better than what anyone could have expected,” Bukantz said about the match.

He asked Ford if other wrestlers made fun of him for losing to him, but Ford said his peers were “jealous that they weren’t the one to wrestle [the Maccabee.]”

Bukantz escaped the match unscathed, other than a bloody tooth. He asked Ford to pinpoint when the injury occurred. “Maybe when I smooshed your face into the rail,” Ford said. “Maybe when you were on the top rope and I jumped on your head. Maybe it was [when your] head smashed into the table.”

After expenses, which added up to nearly $20,000, the event netted over $25,000, Bukantz estimates, between sponsors, ticket sales, merchandise sales and donations through the livestream.

“Nowadays, everyone does the same old fundraisers, whether it be a bake sale or a candy sale or a car wash,” Tommy Fierro, CEO of International Superstars of Pro Wrestling, who co-promoted the event, told eJP. “This is something unique, something different, something fun. It’s family friendly.”

Since the original “Maccabiah Mania” shows, wrestling has become more diverse, Brian Zane, who reviewed the “Grandmasters of Wrestling” DVDs for his YouTube Channel, adding to the cult of the Maccabee, told eJP. There are shows celebrating LGBTQIA+ and Black culture, and it makes sense that a Jewish-themed show would embrace the comedy of the art form, he said. 

“The history of comedy runs through Jewish comedians,” Zane said. “Jews are a very self-deprecating bunch, so they’re willing to dip into the comedy and not take themselves as seriously.” Bukantz gets the humor of wrestling, he said. “He is as in on the joke as anyone else.”

Zane, who provided commentary and performed at the event and aired it on his YouTube channel, was pummeled so badly by 84-year-old wrestling legend Johnny Rodz at the show that he ended up wearing a neck brace, à la Andy Kaufman. He dreams of ending up in a Walmart bargain bin. “It’s a feather in the cap of my career as a YouTuber to be involved in something like this.”

The YouTube livestream has over 100 comments, nearly every one joyful and positive, something rare for a Jewish-themed video, which will often attract at least a few antisemitic trolls. 

‘Wrestlers know who I am,” Bukantz said with glee, days after the event. “A lot of the fans around the world know who I am. It’s somewhat of a joke, but I am now part of the tapestry of the folklore of wrestling.”

His term as the Maccabi USA president ends in September. He’s been involved in the organization for nearly a half-century, and he plans to continue to help however he can.

“Maccabiah Mania 3” allowed him to “live out this little fantasy that one last time,” he said. “It was a nice going-away present from me to the organization, and a nice little going-away present from the organization to me.

He’s retired from wrestling now, but he wonders what the future will hold. Will he get calls for appearances at wrestling conventions? Will he come out of retirement a few hundred times like Hall of Famers Ric Flair and Terry Funk? Will Bukantz pass the Maccabee mantle to a younger performer?

“For the right donation,” he said.