Timeline History of WWE - 1963 to 1969 by Brunno Sammartino

[Hard Hit Prince]

I don't know you guys have heard about the KC Commentary work with the timelines, I've tried to watch them all when I do get a chance to do it, so far I've only seen one by Beefcake and by Zbysko and I did enjoy it.

I saw this one and I couldn't pass on, specially since I really enjoy the old WWWF World with McMahon and Toots. So far I'm at half an hour and Sammartino just shows class when he talks about other people, I can totally see why this guy was the perfect babyface.

For those who care Sammartino said that him and Buddy Rogers didn't like each other, because Rogers was arrogant and worked stiff with some guys. McMahon Sr. was the one that really liked Rogers, while Toots didn't like him at all. Sammartino also said that Rogers had his own entourage of people he wanted to see get over (all very talented) which made me think of an old-school (the original please) Kliq that nobody knows. Sammartino told that the night he won the title he was one of the last guys to leave the arena and his celebration was eating chicken at his motel.

I've also learned that Vince Sr. tried to create WWWA (World Wide Wrestling Association) to try and get the western territory aswell as the Northeast but it failed in less than two months.

Cool stuff so far...

 

[Hard Hit Prince]

Second half an hour really took off, Sammartino spoke about Bobo Brazil, for those who don't know Bobo was one of the very first more influential black wrestlers. Sammartino had a lot of respect for him and loved working alongside him when they tagged in. They also touched the subject of racism and Bruno told vehemently that nobody was racist to Bobo in New York, however Bobo told him awful stories that happened to him in the South.

They talked a little bit about Madison Square Garden and Bruno's first experience in the venue. Bruno said that MSG is the greatest arena ever and wherever he went in the world (in 1966 in South America for instance) he was billed as: "Directly from Madison Square Garden..." Apparently after an MSG show Vince Sr. threw some parties at local restaurants and steakhouse.

They talked about some opponents like Killer Kowalski, Gorilla Monsoon and once again Buddy Rogers. Sammartino had a lot of respect for Kowalski and Monsoon, the first one because Kowalski was the guy that had the best cardio and that could wrestle for over an hour with no problem. He also told a story where Kowalski was being assaulted by fans and he didn't strike them back because according to Kowalski "he drove the fans to that situation, so it was his fault..."

Monsoon gained his respect for being such a big wrestler and at the same time very fast and agile and very good in the mat (amateur wrestling). He was also very tough, according to Bruno they once wrestled for 70 minutes, in a match where Sammartino broke some of Monsoon's ribs in the early beginnings of the match. He also revealed the story behind Monsoon's gaining some WWWF stock - according to him, Bruno was the one that was going to take over Toots stock of 50%, but he couldn't reach an agreement over some details with Vince and so Monsoon step forward and bought 20% of the company, while Skaaland owned 10% and some other guy I don't remember owning another 20%.

As for Rogers again, apparently the little devil returned as an agent and the first thing he did was put Sammartino in a one hour match against a guy, one day before he had an MSG special against Killer Kowalski. Sammartino was furious and called Vince Sr. saying that he did not want to ever see Rogers again or else he would leave the company. Some time after that Rogers left the WWWF to never return again.

They also spoke about Antonino Rocca try of getting some wrestling market share in New York with a show he produced called "All-Star Wrestling with Rocca" but the thing never really took of, because Rocca was looking for the stardom again and didn't know how to run a company. For those interested the show featured talent from Mid South Wrestling and the NWA, guys that New York never heard of or cared about.

Last but not least they talked about how TV Shows were handled back then. Apparently WWWF had three local shows, in New York, Washingston and Baltimore or whatever... The travel was the hardest thing to do, because the shows were live in Bruno's first run, before they were taping them three weeks in one night only and I thought it was a really fun fact - Sean then asked if it was true that it was Bruno who suggested that the main star only wrestled last on television, which Bruno said it was true. He said that he told Vince that he should not wrestle on television very often, in fact, he said that he should only wrestle some good matches like with Ivan Koloff or Kowalski once every full moon to make people interested and not sick of him - his main goal was to get people to go watch the house-shows, so much of the time Bruno appeared on tv was for interviews where he would plug the places he would be.

Really great mind so far, he really hated Buddy Rogers damn. We can also see that he has an ego, but well, every great star does.

 

[Hard Hit Prince]

Finished it finally - for the remaining hour and an half they covered a lot of Bruno's opponents, some relationship between NWA and WWWF, his trips to some venues and parts of the world and the promotion Bruno ended up buying in Pittsburgh.

So the highlights - Bruno was scheduled to win and unify the WWWF and NWA Title belts, but he only accepted it if he had all sundays to come to his family - which was not accepted by either Vince McMahon Sr. and Sam Muchnick because they would need Bruno at least 15 days each! Lou Thesz ended up losing to Gene Kiniski the NWA Hvt. Title and, Bruno killed the rumour that Lou Thesz did not receive $100.000 for the match - he also said good things about Thesz in his prime, but in the middle 60's he was already finished.

He took yet again some jabs to Rogers and he talked about his bad relationship with Antonio Inoki that once tried to shoot on Sammartino, by making him submit legitimately. Sammartino ended up roughing him up too in the match and did not submit - the two never worked again after that. (also it was in a tag match with Baba as Inoki's partner). Oh Bruno loves Japan and the respect for the wrestling there - is now a big fan of sushi.

He also said that nowadays wrestlers lost touch with true in-ring psychology even though they are all fantastic athletes. Well, they talked about some other stuff like Bruno's wrestling promotion that lasted 'til 1972 I guess. He said that he did like working with Vince Jr. on commentary and that's it. He's (Bruno) responsible for bringing in a lot of other names to the northeast area, some like Waldo Von Erich for instance.

It's also a lot of other guys they talked about, but nothing really memorable. Hope you enjoyed reading it, despite my more than likely attempts of murder at the English language.