William “Refrigerator” Perry: The Chicago Bears Legend Who Was Bigger Than the Game
The Elevator, Ray Brown, and a Nickname That Stuck Forever
William Anthony Perry was born December 16, 1962, in Aiken, South Carolina – the tenth of twelve children. By age 11, he weighed 200 pounds. He wasn’t just big for a kid; he was big in a way that made people stop and look twice. He played defensive tackle on the Aiken High School football team and, despite the size jokes that followed him everywhere, was considered one of the six fastest players on the roster. He received a full scholarship to Clemson, and that’s where the name happened.
Freshman year, 1981. Perry and a teammate named Ray Brown were hauling laundry to the elevator together. The two of them barely fit. Brown looked around and said, “Man, you’re about as big as a refrigerator.” That was it. The Refrigerator. He earned it carrying dirty clothes.
At Clemson, Perry wasn’t just large – he was legitimately dominant. He made three separate All-American teams across his sophomore, junior, and senior seasons (the only Tiger ever to do that at the time), won ACC Player of the Year, and set Clemson’s all-time sack record at 25. His freshman year he was part of the 1981 national championship team that finished 12-0 and beat Nebraska in the Orange Bowl. His younger brother Michael Dean Perry later played for the Browns and broke that sack record, which is one of those details that doesn’t make the highlight reels but says a lot about the family.
Mike Ditka Picked Him. Buddy Ryan Called Him a Waste.
The Chicago Bears selected Perry 22nd overall in the 1985 NFL Draft. Coach Mike Ditka had personally wanted him. Defensive coordinator Buddy Ryan, who had one of the most openly hostile working relationships with Ditka in NFL coaching history, responded by calling Perry “a wasted draft pick” – and then refused to put him on the field.
Ryan’s position wasn’t just a dig at Perry. It was a continuation of an ongoing war with Ditka over control of the roster. Perry got caught in the crossfire. For the first half of the rookie season, Ryan sat him. Then, about midway through, Perry started getting real snaps and proved fast enough that Ryan had no good argument left. He played 16 games that year and recorded sacks that mattered in a defensive scheme – Buddy Ryan’s own 46 Defense – designed specifically around overwhelming the line of scrimmage.
The 46 Defense that year was one of the most destructive units the NFL had seen. Richard Dent was the pass rusher getting the headlines. Mike Singletary was the heartbeat at linebacker. Dan Hampton was wrecking offensive lines. Perry, at 335 pounds, was the interior force that required opponents to double-team him, which freed everyone else up. Dent won Defensive Player of the Year and Super Bowl MVP that season. Perry was one of the main reasons he had the space to do it.
Ditka Put a 335-Pound Defensive Tackle at Fullback – and America Lost Its Mind
Ditka said the idea came to him during five-yard sprint drills. He watched Perry move and thought: what happens if we put him in the backfield near the goal line? The first time it happened was a Monday night game against Green Bay, ball two yards from the end zone. Perry lined up as a fullback, took a handoff, and scored. The crowd sign that started appearing at Bears games afterward read: “Give the Ball to the Fridge.”
During his rookie season, Perry rushed for two touchdowns and caught a pass for a third. The numbers are almost secondary. The visual – a man built like a large appliance running through NFL defenders for a score – was something television had never quite shown before, and the country responded accordingly. He appeared on Late Night with David Letterman. He was on The Tonight Show. McDonald’s and Coca-Cola both came calling.
There’s one complication worth naming here. Walter Payton, who played every game of his Hall of Fame career for the Chicago Bears and never once scored a Super Bowl touchdown, watched Perry get that opportunity in Super Bowl XX instead. Payton handled it with characteristic grace publicly. Whether it bothered him privately is another matter – accounts from teammates over the years suggest it did, at least a little. Payton had 61 rushing yards in that game. Perry had one carry, one touchdown, one of the most replayed moments in Super Bowl history. At 335 pounds, he remains to this day the heaviest player ever to score a Super Bowl touchdown. His ring, sized between 23 and 25 depending on the source, is the largest Super Bowl ring ever made – the opening roughly the diameter of a Kennedy half dollar.
The Super Bowl Shuffle, a G.I. Joe Figure, and WrestleMania 2
The Super Bowl Shuffle was recorded on December 3, 1985 – the day after the Bears lost to Miami in their only defeat of the season. Wide receiver Willie Gault organized it. Dick Meyer of Red Label Records built a studio in his Winnetka basement and funded the project. The goal was charity – proceeds went to the Chicago Community Trust, ultimately raising over $300,000. Nobody involved expected it to reach No. 41 on the Billboard Hot 100, go platinum in video sales, and earn a Grammy nomination for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals. It lost to Prince and the Revolution’s “Kiss.” Every single member of that 1985 Bears team could tell you that without checking.
Studio engineer Freddie Breitberg later recalled that Perry walked in “like a kid in a candy shop” – the brightest spirit in the room, the most naturally charismatic person on the track. That reputation was consistent. Perry also recorded two other rap records in 1985, including “Together,” an anti-drug track he made with Walter Payton written by four teenagers from Evanston, Illinois. Re-released in 1999 with part of the proceeds benefiting the Walter Payton Foundation.
In 1986, Perry showed up at WrestleMania 2 in Rosemont, Illinois for a battle royal that mixed WWE wrestlers with NFL players. He eliminated two eventual Hall of Famers – Tony Atlas and, more memorably, Big John Studd – before Studd got him over the top rope. Perry’s exit wasn’t clean. He extended his hand for a sportsmanlike shake, Studd reached out, and Perry yanked him over the ropes to the floor. The crowd went wild. He was inducted into the WWE Celebrity Hall of Fame in 2006 by John Cena. That same year, Hasbro had already made a G.I. Joe action figure of Perry – number 72 on the chest, available first as a 1987 mail-order exclusive through Hasbro Direct. It was rereleased in 1988 and again in 1989.
What the Stats Actually Say About His Football Career
Ten seasons in the NFL. 138 games played. 29.5 career sacks. He spent 1985 through 1993 with the Chicago Bears and finished his career with one year in Philadelphia with the Eagles before retiring after the 1994 season.
The fullback gimmick got so much coverage that it became easy to underrate what Perry actually did on defense. He was a genuine interior disruptor in a scheme that asked him to collapse the pocket from the inside out. The 46 Defense worked partly because Dent, Singletary, and Marshall could operate against single blocks – Perry was one of the reasons teams had to account for more than one gap at a time. His 29.5 career sacks are significant for a player at his position, particularly in an era when interior linemen weren’t tracked with the same statistical obsession they are now.
He was not a Pro Bowl player. He was not a first-team All-Pro. The honest assessment is that his cultural fame ran well ahead of his statistical standing, which isn’t an insult – it’s just true. What the NFL itself concluded in 2019 was that he ranked as the 23rd greatest “character” in the league’s 100-year history. That’s probably the right framing. His value to the game wasn’t purely technical.
Guillain-Barré, Diabetes, and the Hard Years After Football
Perry retired after the 1994 season. The years that followed were genuinely difficult, and they’ve been covered honestly enough in sports media that there’s no reason to soften them here.
In June 2007, he was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome – a rare autoimmune disorder in which the immune system attacks the peripheral nervous system. In serious cases it causes muscle weakness, paralysis, and chronic fatigue. Perry was hospitalized in South Carolina in April 2009 in serious condition. He was at times confined to a wheelchair. By some accounts, the diagnosis and the physical decline it caused contributed to a return to drinking after a period of sobriety. He publicly acknowledged his alcoholism in 2011.
In January 2016, Perry – by then weighing over 425 pounds – checked himself into a hospital. He had diabetes, no feeling in his feet, and was at risk of having a leg amputated. Sports Illustrated reported that same year that he was living in a retirement home, had financial difficulties, and was still drinking. His younger brother Michael Dean Perry had become his legal guardian and conservator.
His Super Bowl ring was auctioned off more than once over the years. In 2011, a ten-year-old boy named Cliff Forrest found one of Perry’s rings listed for sale, bought it with his mother’s help, and returned it to Perry. That ring was later auctioned again. A separate Perry Super Bowl XX ring sold at SCP Auctions in April 2025 for $36,000. The largest Super Bowl ring ever made, going for $36,000 at auction – that’s a number that doesn’t need a comment attached to it.
Various estimates of Perry’s current net worth range from $10,000 to $500,000 depending on the source, which itself tells you the sources aren’t all working from the same information. What’s clear is that his finances diminished significantly from his playing days, when McDonald’s and Coca-Cola commercials and an era of peak cultural relevance made him one of the most recognizable athletes in America. NFL salaries in 1985 were a different world – a first-round pick today earns in one season what Perry likely earned across most of his career.
Why the 1985 Bears and Perry’s Place in Them Still Gets Talked About
The 1985 Bears finished 15-1. They beat the New England Patriots 46-10 in Super Bowl XX – the largest margin of victory in Super Bowl history at the time. The defense allowed just 10 points. Mike Ditka was coaching. Jim McMahon was the unconventional quarterback who wore headbands with sponsor names after the NFL told him not to. Walter Payton was the greatest runner of his generation. Richard Dent was the defensive force. Mike Singletary was the anchor.
And then there was Perry, who didn’t fit any of the usual categories. He was too big to be an ordinary player and too charming to be just a mascot. The Super Bowl Shuffle brought the NFL into the MTV era – that’s not hyperbole, it’s what actually happened. Before December 1985, NFL players didn’t make rap videos. Before October 1985, no defensive tackle had ever lined up as a goal-line fullback on national television and scored for a team that would go on to win a championship.
The NFL ranked Perry 23rd among the 100 greatest characters in league history in 2019. That list rewards personality as much as production, which suits him perfectly. He was, by every account from teammates and opponents, genuinely likable in a way that’s hard to manufacture. Breitberg said Perry walked into the recording studio like a kid in a candy shop. His Clemson teammate Ray Brown gave him the nickname. His Bears teammates called him “Biscuit” – as in one biscuit shy of 350 pounds – and meant it affectionately. Buddy Ryan eventually played him. Even Ryan came around.
As of the most recent reporting, Perry lives in Aiken, South Carolina, where he grew up. He’s largely out of the public eye. His health challenges over the past two decades have been real and ongoing. What remains unchanged is that his Super Bowl ring is still the largest ever made, that no one heavier than 335 pounds has scored a Super Bowl touchdown before or since, and that a defensive tackle from Aiken once appeared on a Grammy-nominated rap record, a G.I. Joe package, a WrestleMania card, and a Monday Night Football broadcast in the same calendar year. That’s a sentence about a real person.
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