12/25/2023 0 Comments All star wrestling 1970s![]() ![]() Gagne was a former amateur-wrestling champion who had earned a spot on the U.S. While O'Connor was considered the first AWA Champion, he never wrestled in the AWA until later in the 1960s (when he teamed with Wilbur Snyder to win the AWA World Tag Team Championship). O'Connor was stripped of the AWA title and it was awarded to Gagne on August 16, 1960. ![]() The AWA unilaterally recognized NWA World Champion Pat O'Connor as AWA World Champion and gave him 90 days to defend the AWA title against Gagne. In 1960, after unsuccessfully lobbying the NWA for a title match between Gagne and the NWA World Champion Pat O' Connor, Gagne and Karbo led certain territories out of the NWA forming the AWA. They became co-owners of the promotion from that point onward. In 1959, Dennis Stecher sold his majority stake in the Minneapolis Boxing and Wrestling Club to Karbo and Gagne. He aspired to become NWA World Champion, but for various reasons to do with politics inside the NWA, he never became champion. Verne Gagne, a former amateur wrestling champion, had become a well known and popular wrestler nationally in the 1950s as a result of his appearances on the DuMont Network. Stecher died on Octoand control of the promotion passed to Karbo and Dennis. In 1952, he sold a one third interest in the promotion to Wally Karbo and his son Dennis. He wound up playing for the Edmonton Eskimos in 1953, but twisted his knee and left the CFL team to be a full time wrestler in 1954.Anton Stecher was a founding member of the NWA in 1948 and had promoted wrestling in Minneapolis since 1933 through his Minneapolis Boxing and Wrestling Club. Photo by Handout / Vancouver Sun Edmonton Journal story from Mawhere Gene Kiniski announced he was going to quit football to focus on wrestling. Ian Lindsay/Vancouver Sun Photo by Ian Lindsay / Vancouver Sun Another handout photo of Gene Kiniski, probably 1960s. “How can someone be that quick-witted? I laughed, he always had a Gene Kiniski on January 20, 1980. If your own father will do this to you, just think what other people will do to you.’ “I turned around and catch his hand right on the ball and said ‘Dad, you’re cheatin’!’ He said ‘Son, let this be a lesson to you. I’m chalkin’ my cue and he’s playin’ and I look in the mirror and see his hand on the ball, he’s moving the ball. “He had a pool table at his house and there was a mirror there. “I remember I came home from college and I was playing pool with my dad,” his son Nick recalled after his father’s death in 2010 at 81. The king of the one-liners, Kiniski was always on. Handout photo of Gene Kiniski filed in 1960. He lived in Blaine, Wash., because it provided easy access to both the Seattle and Vancouver airports. He moved to the Lower Mainland in the early 1960s and partnered with the late Sandor Kovacs to promote All-Star Wrestling in Vancouver. “Regardless of whether you knew me or not, you’d say: ‘Look at that big ugly son of a bitch kicking the s- out of that guy.’ I could care less what they said, as long as they paid to see me.”Īfter moving back east, Beddoes introduced Kiniski on a Hamilton TV show as “Canada’s Greatest Athlete.” The nickname stuck, partly because Kiniski enthusiastically endorsed it.Īt the height of his fame in the 1960s, Kiniski was an international star, champion in both major wrestling circuits, the National and American wrestling associations. ”Say you saw me in a fight on the street,” reasoned Kiniski in a 1997 Sun interview. With his raspy voice, brush cut and fierce glare, he made a natural villain. All football players should get smart like me and take up rasslin’.” “Those lousy Eskimos paid me a stinkin’ $200 in 1949. “I’d say I paid more money in income tax than any Canadian football player made, outside of Jackie Parker,” he boasted. On July 11, 1959, he told Vancouver Sun columnist Dick Beddoes he had made $90,000 the previous year. But a couple of knee injuries convinced him to go into wrestling full time in 1954. In 1952 he started wrestling on the side to make some money.īack in Edmonton, he looked set to star for the Eskimos in the CFL. The six-foot-five, 275-pounder was a star athlete and landed a football scholarship to the University of Arizona. 23, 1928, Eugene Nicholas Kiniski was a natural rabble-rouser: his mother was a longtime Edmonton city councillor known for fighting for the underdog. Photo by Handout / Vancouver Sunīorn in Edmonton on Nov. ![]() ![]() Westcoast Homes & Design Previous IssuesĪsked why he finally quit, he cracked, “Who in the hell wants to see an old man beat up a young kid?” Undated handout photo of Gene Kiniski filed in 1959.Vancouver Sun Run: Sign up & event info. ![]()
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