Don Heaton was born into a Mormon family April 29, 1931 Hurricane, Utah, also known as Don Leo Jonathan, was an American-Canadian professional wrestler.

He was nicknamed “The Mormon Giant”.

He was Mormon, but not a very good one, as he didn’t attend services and he drank beer and chewed tobacco. However, he identified as Mormon and had a latent belief in it.

Some leaders in the LDS church didn’t like that he was going around the country with the Mormon title, in a way representing Mormonism. Unlike the Osmonds, who the church loved for their clean-cut image, the wrestling world gave off a different message.

Some leaders wanted to put a stop to Don Leo Jonathan using the title “Mormon Giant” as his wrestling gimmick. Although it wasn’t his idea in the first place to use the name, he chafed at the cease-and-desist letter he received from the church.

So Don Leo got a job at the church’s massage parlor, giving massages to church leaders, including the prophet David O. McKay.

Luckily, David O. McKay was a wrestling fan, so Don approached him about the cease-and-desist letter. President McKay told him that some leaders were a little zealous and he should ignore the letter and continue doing what he was doing.

So he did. Then there was a big fight between an outspoken anti-Mormon wrestler and the Mormon Giant, which got a lot of attention.

Today, there are still wrestlers who use the Mormon theme as a wrestling gimmick.

If you want to know more about this story you can watch the documentary here https://www.themormongiant.com/