The Minneapolis Boxing and Wrestling Club did it to us every week.
Back in the 1950’s live professional wrestling was telecast from the Minneapolis Auditorium for one hour during a weekday night. TV viewers saw a few matches for 45 minutes or so, and then as 10 p.m. approached the best wrestling of the night was on our screens. Western civilization and our way of life hung in the balance when an evil character from Germany, Japan or Russia was about to choke a Verne Gagne or some other hero into unconsciousness.
As I squirmed on the couch—enraged and wishing I could come to the rescue—I experienced what thousands of other viewers did. We were suddenly watching the 10 p.m. news! Yep, the Minneapolis Boxing and Wrestling Club used the same drill on us week after week: bring the action from the auditorium to a dramatic peak but don’t show the TV audience the final outcome of the featured match.
You needed to buy a ticket and visit the auditorium to know if someone like Gagne had successfully defended our homeland—not to mention his world championship. It was shtick that sold tickets for years and kept TV viewers coming back week after week, like a compelling soap opera that had you hooked.
I could get so riled up I pretended to be one of the wrestling “good guys,” knocking pillows around my bedroom, pretending they were villains like Hans Schmidt, Kinj Shibuya or the Kalmikoff Brothers. Back in the day, pro wrestling based much of its drama on America’s enemies—Germany and Japan from World War II, and our Cold War nemesis the Soviet Union.
Heroes like Gagne, who in the 1950s made TV wrestling a success nationally on the old Dumont Network, performed with sportsmanship and dignity against sinister opponents who broke all the rules. Fans bought in, both adults and children. They argued whether pro wrestling matches were reality, or simply well scripted shows. The believers might even be educators or lawyers, and when some wrestler was thrown out of the ring onto a concrete floor and a doctor was summoned, they proclaimed an “aha moment!”
After my college years I met Gagne and pitched him on doing public relations work for his American Wrestling Association. Gagne and Wally Karbo, who had been part owner of the Minneapolis Boxing and Wrestling Club, founded and owned the AWA in the 1960s. As Gagne and I talked in his office at the old Dyckman Hotel, I let on that I was smart enough to know “pro rasslin” wasn’t for real. Gagne didn’t appreciate the allegation and proceeded to remove the dental bridge in his mouth–offering missing teeth as evidence of how real and tough the business was that made him rich.
Yesterday I went to Gagne’s funeral at Pax Christi Catholic Church in Eden Prairie. Gagne died last week at age 89, and memories of him have been rattling through my head for several days. He was a hero of mine, and not too far behind Mickey Mantle, Jerry West and Larry Bird.
How could it be otherwise for Minnesotans like me? Gagne earned and lived the American dream of success in athletics and business. He grew up without much money and lost his mother at age 14, according to Sunday’s obit in the Star Tribune. “It wasn’t easy for Verne, working many hours before school sweeping and scrubbing a local tavern and beauty shop,” his tribute said.
But Gagne made a name for himself at Robbinsdale High School as a state championship wrestler and outstanding football player. In the 1940s he became a Marine during World War II and later won NCAA wrestling titles for the Gophers. A member of the 1948 U.S. Olympic wrestling team, Gagne also played football for the Gophers where he made lifelong friendships with the likes of Bud Grant and Billy Bye.
Pro wrestling was coming of age in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, and its marriage to television was the ticket to good money for charismatic wrestlers and savvy promoters—and Gagne was both. He built a wrestling empire across multiple states and into Canada, and based it in Minneapolis.
Gagne managed details of his empire right down to training the wrestlers that worked for him. Former Gophers football player Jim Brunzell, who became part of the famous “High Flyers” tag team with Gagne’s son Greg Gagne, remembers his pro wrestling start.
“He trained me, booked me, and enabled me to learn my trade from some of the greatest wrestlers of all-time—Bobby ‘The Brain’ Heenan, Billy Robinson, Nick Bockwinkel, The Crusher, Don Muraco, Ray Stevens, Larry Hennig, ‘Superstar’ Billy Graham, Wahoo McDaniel, Pat Patterson, Buddy Wolfe, Rene Goulet—and Verne himself,” Brunzell wrote in an e-mail.
Gagne, who could be both tight with a buck and charitable, demanded a lot from his wrestlers and others. His competitiveness and will to win showed up in the financial success of his AWA organization. It also was present when Gagne, who more often than not wrote himself in as world champion, was still willing himself to wrestle and perform while approaching Social Security age.
And Gagne, who was a superb athlete, even enjoyed kicking someone’s fanny at tiddlywinks. “He was a tremendous competitor, no matter what the activity—wrestling, racquetball, or tennis,” Brunzell wrote. “He’d just as soon knock your teeth out, than lose!”
Gagne was charming, too. He could light up a room with his smile and laughter. He had engaging stories and a zest for life that made him special. He made time for people, even strangers who might show up at his door, and in business a handshake was his bond. Minneapolis and Minnesota were always home, keeping his AWA office here and raising a family on the shores of Lake Minnetonka.
“He had a way of making people feel more important than some of us really were,” Greg Gagne said at his father’s eulogy yesterday. (Verne’s family included Greg, three daughters and wife Mary who preceded him in death).
For most of Gagne’s adulthood he tore through life as if he wanted to make sure poverty would never catch up to him. He made his 1960s and 1970s All Star Wrestling TV show from the Calhoun Beach Club a forum to not only promote Saturday evening matches at Twin Cities venues, but also to sell vitamins.
Week after week on television, there was a smiling Gagne talking about the “vim, vigor and vitality” provided by Gera-Speed vitamins. It gave the champ that extra zip, and he was feeling good. Take Gera-Speed, like the champ.
And buy your tickets to the next matches at the Auditorium. Those matches were often for the “world championship” in men’s, ladies, tag team and midget wrestling. So what if other promoters around the country had their own stable of “world champions”—and never mind that Minneapolis Tribune columnist Dick Cullum jabbed at Gagne’s operation by labeling Verne the “Seven County Mosquito Control District champion.”
The 1960s and 1970s were the golden era of All Star Wrestling and the AWA. There was a stable of stars including The Crusher who after years of being a wrestling villain either went to confession at church—or had a strategy meeting with Gagne—and became a crude but loveable hero who liked to brag about his beer drinking and polka dancing. The Crush even inspired the rock and roll song “The Crusher.”
Here is a portion of those “highbrow” lyrics: “Do the hammerlock, do the hammerlock, do the hammerlock you turkey necks, everybody’s doing it…do the eye gouge, do the eye gouge…do the Crusher…everybody’s doing it.”
With characters like The Crusher and hometown hero Gagne running the show, there was no better place to be on Saturday night than in front of the TV watching All Star Wrestling from the studio inside the Calhoun Beach Club. And viewers waited to hear the ticket buying command for the umpteenth time from All Star Wrestling announcer Marty O’Neill. Wearing his signature dark glasses, O’Neill interviewed the performers for that night’s featured matches at the auditorium or St. Paul Civic Center, described the forthcoming drama, and then proclaimed with pile driving force to the TV audience: “Don’t you dare miss it, wrestling fans!”
And thousands of Minnesotans didn’t. They took off for the auditorium and watched Gagne in another miracle match. He might endure razorblade cuts, blows from a folding chair and falls from the ring onto the cement floor. But somehow he not only survived, but emerged victorious using his famous sleeper hold to send his villainous foe into dreamland.
All was right with the world—even if the fans all went home too excited to sleep.
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