Pro wrestling legend Verne Gagne suspect in man's death

From Hogan's wiki page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulk_Hogan

 

That doesn't negate my statement; Memphis was AWA territory back then.

 

Anyone else think the dead guy (Helmut Gutmann) had a better wrestling name than Verne Gagne?

 

He certainly had a better mass-murderer name than Gagne.

 

Mr Guy,

Minor threadjack, but Stu Hart, then in his 70s, almost killed me. No room in the Harts' compound could have considered asylum from wrestling. When we met and after I told him about my studying karate and judo he talked about "shooting an angle" with me as a wrestling scribe or whatever.

My eyes are watering, my neck has just cracked, and the well-appointed dining room at Hart House is starting to spin. The clenched right fist and thick forearm of Stu Hart has just bruised and almost crushed my nose. “You felt that, did’ya?” he asks. “See, I’m just shooting it across like this …” He does it once more, further loosening my tenuous grip on consciousness. Stu Hart is showing me a little ringcraft. I have said nothing to encourgae this lesson. I have advised him that I’m late for an important appointment. He said that he’d rush through it. “I’m only showing you this ‘cause you seem like a good guy,” he says. His hand grips me near the right elbow. “See, I have you there,” he says. I can see the pictures of the Hart family that hang on the walls around the long dining table. I can see a vintage photo of Stu from his fighting days. His body was then rippled and his dark eyes were piercing. Suddenly the pictures are upside down—or rather I am. I have hit the floor with a jolt, how I don’t know. I can feel my head being pressed towards my navel. “Some people think this wrestling stuff is fake,” he says. “They have no idea what goes on inside the ring, how tough this stuff is.” Stu—who I am now sure is the world’s most dangerous seventy-seven-year-old—leans his full body weight, about 260 pounds, onto my back. I free up my head but I can’t draw enough breath to cry “Uncle.” “It’s a good thing I like you,” he says without menace. I look into the living room and see studio portraits of the Hart children from the sixties. With my head ringing, my spine cracking and the world fading to black, I can now understand that for Bret and Owen and the other sons the Hart name was sometimes a burden, one that, if you crossed Stu, could collapse a lung.

o-<

 

In that era, pro wrestling was a closed business. If you were lucky enough to get someone to train you, the first thing they did was "stretched" you to make sure you had the proper respect for the business and wouldn't casually spill the secrets. The message was, "Even though what we do is a show, we could easily tighten things up and make you scream."

Stu Hart was a sadistic son of a bitch who enjoyed hurting people.

 

Outing Alert! — FOTF is Richard Belzer.

 

Are we sure the guy is really dead?

 

ASK 'EM REF

 

Gagnes' were pretty bad, too. Ric Flair and Harley Race have gone on record to talk about the horrible conditions they wrestled in. They weren't so much bad for the type of work they did, but for the conditions they were in when training with Gagne. Gagne had his ring in his barn that was too small, the ring was barely stable enough to wrestle in and there was no heat. Sometimes they'd be wrestling in subzero temperatures and only when it got too bad would they rent out a gym in town or something, IIRC.

 

Hadn't heard Verne's name in years. He had a great feud with Nick Bockwinkel. Greg Gagne and Jim Brunzell weren't a bad tag team as the High Flyers.

 

I feel awful about this story because it's obvious Verne hasn't been mentally healthy for the last several years (heck, listen to his WWE Hall of Fame speech from a few years where he awkwardly praises Vince). I feel badly for the family of the 97-year-old, too, because this is an awful, awful thing.

As for pro wrestling stuff, Gagne's been slandered a long time by the WWE machine -- see their AWA DVD and then there's Hogan (who has ALWAYS told the truth, right? ) and the others who rip a guy after he helped them get into the business. Now, I'm sure there's always going to be some true stuff said but remember what kind of business we're talking about here. Take it with a grain of salt. It's a fantasy world much of the time and you can't trust anyone 100 percent.

Greg worked as a WWE agent and in development for a short time around the time of Verne's induction, but Stephanie McMahon is rumored to be the one who ultimately got Greg fired/got him to resign.

I grew up in Denver as an AWA fan, too, and though I wasn't the biggest fan of Verne's work or his son's, I really do empathize with the family as they deal with a mentally ill family member.