Pro wrestling legend Verne Gagne suspect in man's death

The guy was declared dead only after the coroner raised his arm three times, and it fell down each time.

 

I've been reading Flair's book lately, and he made it sound pretty rough. Besides training in the unheated barn in the middle of a Minnesota winter, Gagne would have his guys do a few hundred free squats, sit ups and push ups as a warm-up. Then they'd go on long runs across Gagne's farmland before returning to the barn to actually learn the wrestling side.

 

Make him watch old AWA tapes from the 1980s ESPN era.

 

Ha, whatever hapened to Larry Nelson and Colonel DeBeers?

 

Marty O'Neil, Roger Kent, Gera-Speed, Kenny Jay, Mean Gene, the Calhoun Beach Club...

 

Sad story to read. I can't help but think that Verne, in his mental state, remembered who he once was and stretched that poor 97-year-old.

Both Verne and Stu Hart had reputations as shooters. But Hart never really had a bad reputation as a promoter. Most wrestlers who worked for him praised him.

Verne, on the other hand, was known for both cheapness and how he screamed at wrestlers behind the scenes.

 

Sirs, Madames,

Story told me by the Anvil ... I had the tape for years, dead drunk on the night of the '92 election, with JAN belching and asking me what the eff is the electoral college.

Anvil was training at the Harts' house and asked the one Miss Hart out for a date--she played hard to get. Eventually caved, but told Anvil she had to pick the place. Anvil taps, OK, you win. She picks a Chinese place. Anvil takes her there. They look at the menu, she orders one whole side of it, Andre couldn't have made his way through half of it. Dishes come, she picks at an eggroll, has a bowl of soup. Anvil is distraught. She asks the waiter to wrap the rest and asks Anvil to take her home--yup, about 8 Harts had dinner on the Anvil. Stu had his daughter shooting an angle.

o-<

 

Mean Gene still does work for the WWE on their DVDs. A friend of mine was at bar in small town Northern Minnesota one evening and called to tell me he was drinking with Mean Gene Okerlund. I guess he was a pretty cool guy.

My uncle often said that Mad Dog Vachon would come to a local bar after his wrestling days were long over. Apparently he had a wooden leg and would get schnockered up, take off his leg, and threaten to hit people with it.

 

If I were in a bar, and Mean Gene was there drinking, it'd be damn tempting to start a brawl just to hear him call the action. And you know I'd hit somebody with a chair.

 

Mean Gene was great in his AWA days, telling Bobby Heenan to back off or he'd have a lawyer all over him.

Forgot about Roger Kent, working ringside behind the mike. Other greats like Jerry Blackwell, The Crusher, Buck "Rock and Roll" Zumhofe and the immortal Jake "The Milkman" Milliman.

 

Can't forget Baron von Raschke and his famous claw hold. Some friends of mine were browsing my DVD collection the other day. One of them picked up the AWA set that WWE put out a few years back, pointed at the Baron on the cover and said, "Hey! That guy was one of my middle school teachers!"

I guess the Baron was a teacher when he wasn't terrorizing people with the claw and a fake German accent.

 

Since it's five days later, I was fully expecting the man to reemerge and bash Gagne over the head with a bedpan.