Who do you think I’m referring to? It could be anybody, there are a lot of powerful guys who had their best days and now are returning to the place that gave them that glory but I’m referring to quite possibly the most popular Professional Wrestler of the 60’s and early 70’s and that’s Bruno Sammartino. He defied an era when pro wrestling still had colorful characters but also had a more mat based style to some of the guys who fought in the ring.
His style
of wrestling was some mat-based with a plenty of power moves and a brawler type
style as well. Even though his wrestling isn’t as popular as his strength, he
still can go the distance with some of the biggest names in the business at the
time. His strength was the stuff of legends. One of his first tastes of glory
was picking up 640 lb. Haystacks Calhoun in 1961 if I recall and it was a big
deal at the time and still is a feat that no one did to him after. Bruno’s
lifting power was just incredible, he was one of the first men to Bench Press
over 560 lbs. At 5’10 and over 260 lb. he was a force not to be messed with.
Back in the
60’s where the most popular stars had an ethnic background Bruno was at the top
of the ladder because of his Italian background and his love with the fans
especially at what might be called the house that Bruno
Built Madison
Square Garden
in New York .
No one guy before or since has headlined the World’s Most Famous Arena more
times than anyone 211 headlines with 187 sell-outs. Color TV was very low and
only less than a handful of shows had color the most popular being Batman so
whenever you saw Pro Wrestling it was 99% in Black & White. You had guys
like Nature Boy Buddy Rogers, Fritz Von Erich, Pat O’Connor, Lou Thesz, Walter
‘Killer” Kowalski, a young Harley Race and even Karl Gotch but nobody made the
money like Bruno did.
His
training was legendary, picking up heavy weights, hundreds of squats and
push-ups and had endurance like some of the other greats who can go do hour
long marathons in the ring. Many guys couldn't keep up with him and he even
wrote a short book on how to build the body from basic strength training and
muscle building and he did this (hopefully I’m right) all without drugs,
steroids or PEDs when it was the boom of its time. He was a man of hard work
and will to become the very best and wrestled the very best.
He had the
longest reign of any champion in history going on nearly 8 years as the champ
when he beat Buddy Rogers in 1963 till he lost to Ivan Koloff in 1971. He won
it back in 1972 I think and lost again to Superstar Billy Graham in 1977.
Nobody ever since held the world title for that long and that tells yeah how
important the man was to the business at that time. He fiddled around a while
longer before retiring and became a commentator for WWE.
He ended up
leaving the business for good because of what Vince McMahon was bringing to the
business and Bruno would have none of it. He was bitter about the business for
the longest time about its direction and what was changing with the business
until recently a man who has a hold on the company in certain areas especially
in Talent Development is Paul Levesque aka Triple H got to talking with Bruno
and told him what was going on really. Because of this encounter, Bruno started
learning to love some of the business again and finally broke down after
turning down so many offers to be in their Hall Of Fame has finally come to an
end. The Living Legend will be at Madison
Square Garden
I've been
watching wrestling ever since I was 11 years old and learned so much about the
wrestlers that I wanted to learn more about the history and how it came to be
and how we as fans can improve it. I like more of the mat style wrestling than
the colorful antics of the wrestlers. My first glimpse of Bruno was in a Video
Game, Legends Of Wrestling 2 where they did interviews with big names like Hulk
Hogan, Jerry Lawler, Jimmy Hart, Jimmy Snuka, The Road Warriors, Eddie Guerrero
and Paul Orndorff to name a few and I was fascinated with how they portrayed
Bruno. The powerful man that he was and how he talked about his matches with
Killer Kowalski was just great. It made me love the old-timers ever since then
and I kept learning more about real style wrestling and pro wrestling.
