Long before The Rock, there was The Destroyer.
Before the WWE came the NWA.
And decades before Wrestlemania, thousands flocked to Fight Night at the Aud.
To watch any of the myriad shows produced by World Wrestling Entertainment and broadcast on just about every cable channel other than the Food Network, you'd think Vince McMahon came up with the concept of wrestling as show business.
McMahon's brainchild, the extravagant pay-per-view event, took large men in gaudy costumes from the gray area between sports and comedy into the entertainment mainstream. The tradition of paying good money to see contests with prearranged results, though, stretches back more than a century. And in Western New York, wrestlers themselves held a spot in the sporting mind long before The Hulk or The Rock swung their first folding chairs.
Local author Dan Murphy chronicles the region's love affair with the spectacle of wrestling in his latest book, "Bodyslams in Buffalo: The Complete History of Pro Wrestling in Western New York."
For all its popularity over the years, wrestling rarely gets any sort of serious coverage from the print or electronic media, other than publications aimed at fans and the television broadcasts themselves. Since just about everyone, save the very young and very gullible, knows the matches are scripted, journalists run the risk of either looking foolish by playing it straight or providing free hype for an entertainment industry.
That lack of coverage, along with wrestling's steady undercurrent of somewhat shady and downright duplicitous promoters and the lack of any real governing body, makes the history of the business more anecdotal than factual. A football fan can point to Jim Brown's 12,312 rushing yards or a boxing fan to Rocky Marciano's 49-0 record as statistical evidence of their supremacy. But what was Gorgeous George's career won-lost record? How many pins did Ilio Di Paolo score?
The answers, for a true wrestling fan, are who knows? And who cares?
Murphy overcomes that factual disadvantage through extensive research of the scattered information that does exist, interviews with prominent wrestling figures of the last half-century and deft storytelling.
The book mixes background on wrestling's modern origins, including differentiating it from the legitimate version demonstrated at high schools and colleges throughout the world, with a chronicle of its local peaks and valleys and profiles of its most prominent local practitioners.
Di Paolo, the Italian immigrant who settled in Buffalo before grappling his way onto the national scene in the 1950s and '60s and eventually founding the Blasdell restaurant that bears his name, gets his own chapter. So does Dick "The Destroyer" Beyer, the Buffalo native who earned his master's degree and coached football at Syracuse before putting a girdle on his head and becoming one of wrestling's first international superstars.
Murphy, who has written for a number of local newspapers, including the Niagara Falls Reporter, also takes the reader back to some of the highlights of local history, framing much of his story around the 56-year run of Buffalo's Memorial Auditorium as Western New York's wrestling palace. As he points out, a wrestling card on Oct. 18, 1940 was the first sporting event hosted at The Aud. Legends of Wrestling, a charity show paying tribute to Di Paolo after his death, closed the Gray Barn in 1996.
In between, wrestling's cavalcade of babyfaces and heels made Buffalo a regular stop. And for good reason. On May 25, 1942, in the midst of America's mobilization for World War II, a card headlined by a match between "The Buffalo Pole," Wladslaw Talun, and "The French Angel," Maurice Tillet, drew 14,220 fans to The Aud. Today's Buffalo Sabres can't draw that kind of crowd to HSBC Arena unless Toronto's in town, filling the house with those nice Maple Leafs fans.
The book highlights several other local wrestling milestones, like the night in 1959 when Di Paolo staged an epic, but ultimately unsuccessful, bid to unmask the Masked Marvel, and the universally reviled Honky Tonk Man's 1987 "upset" of Ricky Steamboat -- the first time a major world title belt changed hands in Buffalo. Another chapter centers on promoter Pedro Martinez's early '70s series of National Wrestling Federation shows, and stars like "The Big Cat" Ernie Ladd, a former All-Pro defensive lineman with the Houston Oilers, and Eric the Red, who lived for a time in Cayuga Village and was known for driving his convertible through Buffalo during the winter with the top down and his shirt off.
Wrestlers from Western New York also get their due, including Johnny Swinger, born Joe Dorgan in Niagara Falls in 1975 and still trying to establish a permanent place in the wrestling hierarchy.
Through it all, Murphy finds a perfect voice. A lifelong fan, as well as a columnist for national wrestling publications, he manages to show his love for the show without taking it too seriously, or worse yet, turning himself into a "mark," wrestling parlance for customers who believe it's all real.
Of Abdullah the Butcher, a stalwart heel since his debut in 1970 and a regular durin the NWF's heyday, Murphy writes: "Okay, so Larry Shreeve was really born in Windsor, Ont. It didn't matter. The Butcher was one of the greatest characters wrestling has ever seen. He was a bloodthirsty maniac with cannibalistic tendencies. He was 300 (later 400) pounds of flesh-tearing fury, the greatest warrior in Sudanese history who had become so violent he was deemed completely uncontrollable and banished from the country. Fortunately, Abdullah found an outlet for his lust for carnage in the world of wrestling. Those who know him say Abdullah is one of wrestling's true nice guys. But when he got 'into character,' watch out! His eyes would widen like a rabid animal in attack mode. He would menace the fans, and use metal forks and pencils to dig into the foreheads of his opponents. Sometimes, as he punished a screaming opponent in the corner, Abdullah would chew on the ring ropes and roll his eyes back into his head in sheer ecstasy."
The 112-page, softcover volume also includes photos ranging from Ed Don George's 1935 title match against Danno O'Mahoney to the present (the 1942 publicity shot of "The French Angel" is just about worth the $9.95 price in itself).
"Bodyslams in Buffalo" is a must-read for wrestling fans, and an engrossing look at a particularly colorful slice of local culture for anyone else. The book, Murphy's third, is available at most area bookstores, including The Book Corner on Main Street.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | November 19 2002 |