The Great Malenko trained many wrestlers in the Tampa area.
Jimmy Valiant has a school now.
Wcw power plant
Gotch
Gotch trained both of Boris Malenko's boys, Joe and Dean; a fact of which he was quite fond of boasting.Years ago, I'd contacted Phyllis Lee who ran the office at Dean's school. I was very disappointed to learn that Dean did very little of the actual training there, as he'd just begun working as a road agent for Vince. Dean more or less lent his name to the school and collected the money, while someone else did the leg work.Killer Kowalski's school was also that way; at least when I inquired.
according to chris jericho's book hart dungeon was like that at the end. a hart took the money and some old guy with a book trained you[chris j] you never saw a hart again.
Malenko did quite a lot of the training. I trained there for 2 years 89-91 and he was there 2-3 days a week. He also ran outlaw shows against FCW and out drew them. Peolple that came and went at that time were Sean Waltman, Black Harts (including Dave Heath-Gangrel), Shamrock (Vince Torelli from theCarolina's), Mark Mero, Van Hammer, Jerry "Lightning Foot"Flynn, Bob Cook.......the list goes on. Gotch came there quite a bit. Tough old guy.
Heard a rumor he drank 6 Meisterbraus(warm) driving over the Skyway one morning.
He hated that bridge. He used to come to the school on sundays and train with the shoot fighters that went over to Japan. Masami Sumari was the main trainer. Bart Vail from Miami also came over . Gotch was almost God like to the Japaneese boys. There is a video on youtube in which Gotch explains conditioning for wrestling/shoot fighting. I rarely trained the shoot style. The business then was highly protected. If my memory is correct, Gotch trained in the mining camps in Europe as a young man. I only briefly talked to him as I trained mostly American style. He was big in person.
stu hart!
