Dispatches from the Sporting Life (16 page)

Olson gave me a couple of wrestling magazines, tickets for the next show, and promised to arrange meetings for me with Killer Kowalski and Eddie Quinn. “Eddie’s a wonderful guy,” he said. “He’s got a wonderful sense of humour.”

In the outer office Benny and Moquin were still playing gin rummy. Moquin was losing.

“You’ll like Kowalski,” Olson said. “A lovable guy.”

Before going to the match the next night I read up on the sport in
Wrestling Revue
and
Wrestling News.
The former, a most spirited quarterly, featured biographies of top performers, action pictures, and an especially informative department called “Rumours versus Facts,” wherein I learned that 640-pound Haystack Calhoun does
not
suffer from a glandular
disorder (he’s a big boy, that’s all), and that Skull Murphy does
not
rub a special kind of animal grease over his hairless head so that opponents cannot hold him in a headlock (in Skull’s own words, “I use ordinary Johnson’s baby oil on my head. I find it helps to prevent irritation from rubbing on the dirty canvas”). However, Princess Zelina, slave girl of the hated Sheik,
does
come from a royal family in Lebanon (her old man, living in penurious exile in London, hopes to regain his throne before long). In
Wrestling News,
which is actually a section of
Boxing Illustrated,
I was taken with a defence of girl midget wrestlers by Buddy Lee. In a truculent piece titled “Don’t Sell These Girls Short,” Lee assured his readers that those “pint-sized pachyderms, Baby Cheryl, a real toughie for one so tiny, and Little Darling Dagmar, ‘the Marilyn Monroe of the Maulin’ Midgets,’ are a couple of sweet kids, happy with their work.”

Both magazines rated Killer Kowalski as number three among the world’s wrestlers. This was especially gratifying to me as the following night I was to see the Killer battle “Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers for the world championship and an $18,000 winner-take-all purse.

There were, I’d say, only about four thousand fans at the Forum for the occasion. Many of the older men still wore their working clothes. The teenagers, however, favoured black leather jackets, their names implanted with steel studs on the back. The most engaging of the preliminary performers was Tiger Tomasso, an uncouth villain who not only eye-gouged and kicked below the belt but also bit into his opponent’s shoulder when aroused.

Before the main bout, a precautionary net was
tied around the ring. This was necessary because Kowalski, a strapping six feet seven, is, all the same, a most bashful performer, given to fleeing the ring when the going gets rough. Not only that. Struck the slightest blow, he tends to whine and even plead for mercy from his opponent. Even so, the wily Pole made short work of the golden-haired Nature Boy and won the coveted championship belt. This was a popular win with all us non–Anglo Saxons.

The next afternoon, back in the modest offices of Canadian Athletic Promotions, Kowalski told me, “I indulge in lots of histrionics in the ring. I shout, I snarl, I jump up and down like a madman. Am I mad? I earn more than $50,000 a year.”

Kowalski told me that he used to work on the Ford assembly line in Windsor for $50 a week. He was paid more than that for his first wrestling match in Detroit and quickly realized that he was in the wrong business. A top performer in 1960, Kowalski wrestled three times a week, usually for a percentage of the gate, and lived with his brother and sister-in-law in a house he had recently bought in Montreal. He was thirty-three years old and expected to be able to go on wrestling until he reached his mid-forties. Meanwhile, against that retirement day, Kowalski had been investing his money in securities.

“I’ve built up a personality,” he said, “a product, and that’s what I sell. Ted Williams is no different. Why do you think he spat at the crowd that day? It’s showmanship. Everything is showmanship today. Richard Nixon has his act and I have mine.” Kowalski bent over and showed me a scar on his head. “Last week in Chicago,” he said, “after I’d won a match, my
opponent hit me over the head with a chair. You think he wanted to hurt me? He wanted to make an impression, that’s all.”

Norman Olson, who had joined us earlier, now began to stir anxiously. “You’re forgetting that wrestling takes a lot of natural ability,” he said.

“Sure,” Kowalski said.

“You’ve got to keep in shape.”

“The most dangerous thing,” Kowalski said, “are those crazy kids. They come to the matches with clothespin guns and sometimes they shoot rusty nails at us. Once one got embedded in my side.” Kowalski also pointed out that young performers, taking part in their first big match, are also a threat. “They’re so nervous,” he said, “they might do something wrong.”

I asked Kowalski if there was any animosity among wrestlers.

“No,” he said.

“Tell him about the night here when you ripped off Yukon Eric’s ear,” Olson said gleefully.

“Well,” Kowalski said, “one of my specialties is to climb up on the ropes and jump up and down on my opponent. One night Eric slipped aside, trying to avoid me, and I landed on his ear, ripping it off. He was very upset and he fled to his dressing room. Before long the dressing room was full of reporters and relatives and fans. Finally Eric looked up and asked for his ear. He’d forgotten it in the ring. The referee had picked it up, put it in his pocket, and by this time was showing it to all his friends at the other end of the Forum. When they got it back from him it was too late to sew it on again.”

A few days later Olson arranged for me to have
lunch with Eddie Quinn in the Kon-Tiki Room in the Mount Royal Hotel. Quinn was already there when I arrived, seated with one of his referees and Olson. He wore rings on both hands—one was an enormous signet and the other was diamond encrusted. A chunky man with an expressive if hardbitten face, he spoke out of the corner of his mouth, just the way promoters did in the movies. “There’s nothing left,” he said, “but death and taxes. They belt you here, they belt you there. I just go on to keep people working. The government takes all the money, you know.” He turned to the referee. “I dropped ten thousand this morning,” he said.

“You’re used to it.”

“That doesn’t mean I like it.”

“Eddie’s got a wonderful sense of humour,” Olson said.

“You’re too fat, Norman. Hey, where’s your broad?” Quinn asked the referee. Then, turning to me, he added, “We’re waiting for a French chantoosie.”

“She’s at the hairdresser’s upstairs.”

“Well, go get her. We want to eat.”

The referee hurried off. “Hey, what’s your name?” Quinn asked me. “Norman here says to call you Moe for short but not for long.”

“Norman’s too fat.”

Quinn laughed and slapped my knee. The referee returned with the girl. “Meet the Freedom Fighter,” Quinn said. “She was Miss Europe. She worked with Chevalier. She can’t sing, either.”

The referee shook with laughter.

“Say hello to Mr. Richler,” Quinn said to the girl. “Hey, waiter. Another round of the same.” The waiter
handed Quinn a menu. “How do you order this stuff?” Quinn asked, and then he made some loud, unintelligible noises that were supposed to sound like Chinese. The Chinese waiter smiled thinly. “Just bring us lots of everything,” Quinn said, and then he turned to me. “You like this food? Looks like it’s been through a sawmill. Hey, waiter, if you don’t know what to get us, just call the health board and ask them to recommend something.”

“Eddie’s a natural-born kibitzer,” Olson said.

I asked Quinn about Yvon Robert, the most popular performer ever to wrestle in Quebec. “Around here,” Quinn said, “it used to be the pope, Robert, and Maurice Richard. In that order.”

“Robert was great,” Olson said.

Quinn, who had a phenomenal memory for facts, told me the exact date, place, and take of his most successful bouts. In 1959, he drew ten thousand people to the Forum with a novel attraction, boxer versus wrestler. Former world heavyweight champion “Jersey” Joe Walcott took on Buddy Rogers, the Nature Boy. Rogers dived for the canvas immediately and seldom rose higher than a low crouch. In the first round Walcott nailed the wrestler with a hard right and seemed to have him nearly out, but in the third Rogers got Walcott’s legs and Walcott quit.

Quinn’s biggest gates came from the three Yvon Robert matches against Gorgeous George. George’s gimmicks included long curly hair that he had dyed blond and a female valet who used to spray the ring with perfume before the wrestler himself deigned to appear. Religious leaders objected to the gorgeous one’s effeminate antics and brought pressure to bear
on the Montreal police. As a consequence, George never wrestled in the Forum again.

I asked Quinn about midget wrestlers. “The crowd loves ’em,” he said.

The girl who had sung with Chevalier produced some photos of herself and handed them around. She explained that she had to take the photos to a theatrical agency round the corner and asked Quinn if he would accompany her.

“Delivering pictures is Benny’s department,” Quinn said. He seized a linen napkin, wrote a phone number on it with a ballpoint pen, and handed it to the girl. “Call Benny,” he said. “Hey, waiter”—Quinn made some more Chinese-like sounds—“the bill.” He didn’t look at the amount. Turning to me, he said, “Shall I sign it Eddie Quinn, the Men’s Room?”

I smiled.

“We must meet again and talk,” he said. “Come to my pool one day. Norman will fix it.”

“Sure thing,” Norman said.

On the way out we ran into the French chantoosie. She told Quinn she owed the bellboy a dime for the phone call. “Here, kid,” Quinn said, and he handed the boy a dollar.

“Couldn’t we walk there?” the girl asked Quinn once more.

“Walking is Benny’s department. I only walk as far as elevators.”

A couple of nights later I went to another wrestling match, this time at the small Mont St. Louis Gym. There wasn’t much of a crowd, but those who did turn up were fierce. There were several fistfights. A fan attempted to break a folding chair over Killer
Kowalski’s back. On the whole, though, this was an evening of indifferent performances. Obviously, wrestlers, like actors, need a big, responsive audience. Only Tiger Tomasso, a dedicated performer, put on a good exhibition: spitting, eye-gouging, biting.

I was lucky enough to meet the Tiger a week later.

I had asked Olson if, once the wrestlers started to travel on the summer circuit, I could drive with one of them to Trois-Rivières. Olson arranged for Ovile Asselin, a former Mr. Canada, to take me out. Asselin picked me up at four in the afternoon and we drove to a road junction, outside of town, where we were to meet another wrestler, Don Lewin. While we were waiting, two other cars, both Cadillacs, pulled up and out stepped Tiger Tomasso, Eddie Auger, Maurice Lapointe, and three other wrestlers who were on the card that night. I immediately went up to chat with the Tiger.

Tomasso told me he used to be a deskman in a hotel in Hamilton. All the wrestlers used to stay there, and he began to work out with them. Finally, he went into the game. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

I was writing an article, I explained, as two pretty girls in shorts strolled past.

“That’s the only kind of article I’m interested in,” Tomasso said.

Eventually Lewin, a surly ex-marine, arrived, and he, Asselin, and I drove off together. Lewin, a suspicious type, wouldn’t talk much in my presence. He had performed in Buffalo the previous night and had been driving all day to make the date in Trois-Rivières. He was, understandably, extremely tired. And unfriendly. On arrival, he made it clear that I
would have to find another lift back to Montreal.

There was only a thin crowd at the seedy little arena in the city, and Lewin, excusably, pulled his opponent out of the ring after five minutes of lacklustre wrestling and held him there long enough to be disqualified. Larry Moquin arranged for me to be driven home by a young French Canadian who had taken part in a tag-team match earlier in the evening. His side, the villainous one, had lost.

The wrestler had taken a bad fall, and on the drive back to Montreal he kept rubbing his back. “Tomorrow,” he said wearily, “I have to go to Hull. I’m working there.”

“Don’t you guys ever take time off?” I asked.

He explained that you had to be available when a promoter wanted you; otherwise, you were considered unreliable. “It’s a dangerous profession,” he said. “My insides are all shaken up. You take your life in your hands each time you step in the ring.” He had wrestled for a long time in Florida, where a Puerto Rican fan had once knifed him. “But that’s a good territory. They liked me there. The worst was the West.” Once, he said, he had driven 450 miles each way to make matches in two western cities. Four wrestlers, taking turns at the wheel, had managed the trip there and back within a day. “The worst things are canvas burns. They’re extremely painful and we all get them. Sometimes they last a week, other times a month.” Suppressing a yawn, he added, “I used to sell cars. I could always go back to that. I like meeting the public.”

November 1960