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Getbig Main Boards => Gossip & Opinions => Topic started by: pumpster on August 31, 2008, 12:48:47 PM
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One of the original tough guys, many of them Canadian.
19Killer Kowalski, Wrestler, Dies at 81
Jon Chase/Associated Press
His death was announced by his wife, Theresa, who said he had been hospitalized since he had a heart attack in early August, The Associated Press reported.
At 6 feet 7 inches and about 275 pounds, Kowalski was a formidable figure who delighted in applying his Claw hold, a thumb squeeze to an opponent’s solar plexus, when he was not leaping from the top strand of the ropes and descending on his foe’s chest.
Emerging as a featured performer in the early 1950s, he became a TV celebrity along with wrestlers like Antonino Rocca, Lou Thesz, Gorgeous George, Haystack Calhoun and Nature Boy Buddy Rogers.
Kowalski wrestled on the pro circuits for some 30 years and appeared in more than 6,000 matches, by his count. But it was one particular match, in Montreal in 1954, that literally made his name.
“I was leaping off the rope, and Yukon Eric, who had a cauliflower ear, moved at the last second,” Kowalski told The Chicago Tribune in 1989. “I thought I missed, but all of a sudden something went rolling across the ring. It was his ear.”
Yukon Eric was taken to a hospital, and the promoter asked Kowalski to visit him and apologize. Reporters were listening to their conversation from a corridor.
“There was this 6-foot-5, 280-pound guy, his head wrapped like a mummy, dwarfing his bed,” Kowalski remembered. “I looked at him and grinned. He grinned back. I laughed, and he laughed back. Then I laughed harder and left.
“The next day the headlines read, ‘Kowalski Visits Yukon in the Hospital and Laughs.’ And when I climbed into the ring that night, the crowd called out, ‘You animal, you killer.’ And the name stuck.”
Back in the days when the proverbial umbrella ladies frequented the front rows, Kowalski was often on the receiving end of things outside the ring. As he told Esquire magazine in 2007: “Someone once threw a pig’s ear at me. A woman once came up to me after a match and said, ‘I’m glad you didn’t get hurt.’ Then she stabbed me in the back with a knife. After a while, I got police escorts to and from the ring.”
Killer Kowalski was born in Windsor, Ontario, a son of Polish immigrants, his given name Wladek Spulnik. He hoped to become an electrical engineer, but while he was working in a Ford plant, someone, evidently impressed by his physique, suggested that he could earn his way through college by wrestling. He made his pro debut in 1947 and put college aside.
Kowalski eventually tussled with all the famous names of wrestling, and in his later years he teamed with Big John Studd as a tag team called the Executioners.
“He was a hell of an attraction,” Thesz told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in 1998. “He had a great body back then. He was not a sophisticated wrestler, but every promoter wanted him because he made a lot of money.”
Kowalski retired in 1977 and founded Killer Kowalski’s Pro Wrestling School, now at the Chaotic Training Center in North Andover, Mass. He sold the school in 2003.
He was married for the first time at age 79. In addition to his wife, of Malden, Mass., he is survived by his brother, Stanley Spulnik, of Ottawa.
Beyond the ring, Kowalski displayed a gentle and even aesthetic side. He became a vegetarian in the mid-1950s and he delighted in photographing fellow wrestlers, his work sometimes displayed at galleries.
“I wanted to take action pictures,” he told The New York Times shortly after retiring. “But I went up to the ring, the fans screamed at me and threw garbage at me. It was detrimental to my health. So all I took were posed pictures. I sign my photographs Walter Kowalski. I used to be a villain, but now I’m a good guy. I kiss old women and pat babies. I’ve gone from Killer Kowalski to a pussycat.”
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if he didn't use steroids he would've lived to 100, right?
E
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I remember watching a documentary about jake teh snake a few years back. i think there was a thread on getbig about it. Very poignant
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He trained Triple H how to wrestle.
RIP Killer.
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He was a legend no doubt. But he was the shits. he could not wrestle. Great trainer though.
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I went to his wrestling school for a brief period of time
very sad!
RIP
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Tore off Yokon Eric's ear. One bad ass mother fucker.
Thanks for the memories, Killer!!!
The Beef
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I Also "bounced" with a Kid named Ron Reis that was friends with "Big John Studd" and was going to Kowalski's school ....so i had Perry Saturn and Ron pressuring me to go to the school!
i went for a little while (Kowalski was a bit "gruff" but OK once he got to know you)
never saw such cauliflower ed ears tho!
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God Bless, a Polish Prince passes away.
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I could see Arzilla as a wrestler... he's be one of those that got all the campy, goofy-as-hell characters and storylines. ;D
GRRRRRRRRRR!
(by the time i checked out Kowalski's school i was too old and had too many injuries/woulda been fun had i started at an earlier age!)
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I Also "bounced" with a Kid named Ron Reis that was friends with "Big John Studd" and was going to Kowalski's school ....so i had Perry Saturn and Ron pressuring me to go to the school!
i went for a little while (Kowalski was a bit "gruff" but OK once he got to know you)
never saw such cauliflower ed ears tho!
Here is me and Big John in Miami doing a talk show. The other guy is Mike Kozlowski from the Dolphins. Around 1993 or so I had lunch with Killer Kowalski and John Tolos(?)
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Big John Stud " I hear ya owe The Beef a hundred bucks . . . "
Keith " I ain't got it so I can't pay it . . . "
The Beef
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R.I.P. Killer
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KILLER TOUPEESKI.
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PIP Walter