Darn, Stunt, I can't connect the dots on Freeman but his name sounds familiar.
John Grimek had that impromptu liftoff with Norberg, too, and finally beat him
after a genuine challenge. I'm sure Joe Roark has all those exact details.
Norberg of course was Norweigen, I believe. I'm part Norweigen and come from
Scandia stock that had some real brutes among its ranks, including my uncle
Oscar, whom I used to attend wrestling matches with in Minneapolis. When he
was a young man in North Dakota, he attended one of those carnival wrestling
shows, where the hotdog of the mat takes on all comers. My unc, a huge, raw
bone farmer, was pushed up to the mat by his "buddies" and made mincemeat
of the thug within a minute. The promoters signed up Oscar and he toured with
the carnies for awhile, but got sick of the grind and quit. Reputation has it that
he was unfeated. He later became the sheriff of Mayville, N.D., where he retired.
In one of those matches I attended with him (to see the Crusher, who I
worked out next to a few times), some thief stole my uncle's wallet (we were
ringside). He was so cool he just smiled and shook his massive head and said,
"I just had a few bucks in there and an old bill; maybe the guy will pay it."
Oh-oh, off topic, bad. Sorry.
My uncle was certainly not build like a Steve Reeves or Reg Park--more along
the lines of Karl Norberg--but darn was he one powerful, tough (but nice) guy.