by Tom Shafer
December 12, 2020
Okay, so I’ll admit it; when I was young (as in my middle to late aughts – or about six to ten for those of you who don’t speak Middle English), I was completely obsessed with the drama that was old school Big Time Wrestling. Back in the before beforetimes, when there existed only four television channels, a couple of them dedicated some serious time to BTW. On Friday and Saturday nights, one station would broadcast matches from Cobo Arena in Detroit, Michigan, and on Saturday and Sunday afternoons (usually starting at noon), a combination of local and regional matches were aired, the local ones coming from Hara Arena in Trotwood, Ohio.
For these matches, I would retreat to our unfinished basement, throw cushions from a couple of couches and chairs onto the cement floor, and for a solid hour or two emulate my heroes, for me Flying Fred Curry and the South American Giant, Bobo Brazil. My dropkicks were nearly as a high – and lethal – as Curry’s, especially if he was battling his arch nemesis The Sheik, and you didn’t want to experience one of my Coco Butts, Bobo’s signature finishing move. Sometimes neighbor kids and my brother would find their way to our basement to immerse themselves in these matches, and occasionally we would meet there after school to revisit classic bouts utilizing our own signature maneuvers as complements to our heroes’. Oh, these were fun times to be a kid – especially as we were flying from furniture onto our friends trying desperately to win our matches. Yes, blood was spilled from time to time and all of us sported a few bruises after the fact – but the fun had was always well worth the bumps and cuts!
Flying Fred Curry,
compliments of Wrestling Classics
Of course, as I started playing organized sports, my love of those sports trumped all, and soon, Big Time Wrestling became a part of my past, replaced with baseball (and my new heroes Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, and Hank Aaron), basketball (Oscar Robertson and Pistol Pete Maravich), and football (Bart Starr, Greg Cook, and Leroy Kelly). I would occasionally check in on BTW, especially if I knew I would see Flying Fred or Bobo, but by the time I hit age thirteen, I shut that door completely.
In my early twenties, at the urging of a good friend, I rekindled my past affair with BTW (surprisingly some of those old faces were still in the arena, including Bobo Brazil), even attending some local matches being held at (and locally aired from) the Dayton Convention Center. But that too came to a quick end after we graduated from college and trod our separate ways.
Bobo Brazil
I didn’t give Big Time Wrestling much thought over the following years, only noting when one of the prominent wrestlers from the sport passed away. But, back in 2015, while sitting with friends at a pub in St. Andrews, Scotland, someone brought forward the topic of BTW, and for the next thirty minutes, we loudly filled the surrounding air with names of heroes and villains, much to the horror of Scottish locals. Unbeknownst to me (and actually all of us collectively), my buddies had been just as infatuated with the sport as I had been. We had similar favorites (like my two and The Battman and Mad Mark Lewin), but all of us equally hated the wrestlers Pampero Firpo, The Sheik, and The Stomper. It was so fun to trundle down amnesia lane – and even more fun to discover that my one-time love of Big Time Wrestling was shared by every one of my friends!
So, in honor of that evening – and my one-time love of BTW – I present to you here an incomplete list of all of the wrestlers that we could remember. Of course, I spent a little time later scraping my own brain for more, then consulted the Google machine when my gray matter dried up. Maybe this list will bring back a few memories for you – if that era was yours as well. Enjoy!
Flying Fred Curry
Bobo Brazil
The Sheik
Haystacks Calhoun
Tex McKenzie
Pampero Firpo
The Mighty Igor
Andre the Giant
The Stomper
The Valiant Brothers
The Wild Samoans
Big John Studd
Chief Jay Strongbow
Ivan Koloff
Gorilla Monsoon
Fred Blassie
The Masked Destroyer
Killer Kowalski
The Animal George Steele
Waldo Von Erich
The Big Cat Ernie Ladd
Victor Rivera
Lou Albano
Dick the Bruiser
George Crybaby Cannon
Wild Bull Curry
Tony “The Battman” Marino
Nature Boy Buddy Rogers
Karl von Hess
Ludwig von Krupp
Dick “The Bulldog” Brower
