Andrew Lutzke
This was taped at a fan festival in 2011.
Bruno Sammartino grew up in Europe until 1950. Sammartino and his mother had to hide in the mountains for 14 months while the Nazis terrorized their homeland.
Sammartino suffered an illness as a teenager and his weight dropped to under a hundred pounds. He started to exercise and ended up bulking up to 270 pounds within a matter of years.
Ivan grew up in Canada with 9 siblings. Koloff idolized Bruno as a youngster.
Growing up with so many kids around him toughened Koloff off quick.
Koloff fantasized ab out being a wrestler from a young age and finally went to wrestling school at 19.
He gained 40 pounds of muscle in short order once he began working out.
Bruno and Koloff faced off prior to their famous feud in the early 70’s.
Sammartino practiced a carpentry trade before his wrestling career took off.
In order to gain attention Sammartino did strong man feats of strength.
Buddy Rogers brought Bruno into his wrestling group, but wanted Sammartino to be a jabroni and Sammartino went broke.
Sammartino went home and endured being blackballed for quitting.
Promoter Frank Tunney took Sammartino to Toronto and made Bruno a star in spite of the heat Rogers group was causing.
After drawing well in Canada, Vince McMahon Sr. brought Bruno back to the states.
Bruno insisted he be given a match with Buddy Rogers so he could take the WWWF title.
Rogers was told he was keeping the title by the promoters and Sammartino double crossed him and locked him in a submission hold quickly, leading to Rogers surrendering the title.
A fan asks Sammartino about working with Macho Man in 1987. Sammartino says he doesn’t consider that portion of his career to be him actually wrestling. Vince Jr. pushed Bruno back into the ring with promises to take care of his son David.
Vince Jr is evil and always had evil plans. Sammartino was embarrassed to be almost 50 and being dragged back to the ring.
David wasn’t given any push even after Bruno made his comeback, which infuriated Bruno.
Bruno told David to get out of the business and it caused a big riff between father and son.
The locker room was full of drugs and steroids in the mid 80s and it disgusted Sammartino.
Bruno told Vince Jr. off in early 88 and quit the WWF.
Pedro Morales and Sammartino had a famous one off dream match in the mid 70s that Bruno was very proud of as he didn’t get a chance to show his scientific side very often.
The WWWF title was held by Bruno for almost 8 straight years before Koloff stunned the area fans by beating him.
Just working with Bruno could elevate your career, so beating him made Koloff an immediate megastar.
After his first feud with Bruno, Koloff went on a bit of a world tour before he was surprised to be asked back to New York to be the man to beat Bruno.
The fans were in love with Sammartino no matter how many years he spent as the top draw in the WWWF.
The audience fell into a stunned silence when Koloff’s flying knee ended Sammartino’s reign.
The ref feared a riot and sent Koloff to the locker room quickly, even without handing him the title.
Bruno was afraid that he suffered hearing loss somehow when 20 thousand fans were deathly silent upon seeing Sammartino lose.
The fans comforted Sammartino as he walked to the back.
Sammartino would run laps around the arena to warm up before his matches.
Stan Hansen was overly excited to be headlining MSG and he slammed Sammartino awkward and accidentally broke Bruno’s neck.
The visit to the hospital and the paralysis tests are described by Bruno.
Bruno ended up being in the hospital for a month.
In order to prolong his career and save his body, Sammartino decided to lose 50 pounds of mass.
The rings back then had very little give and battered everyone’s body.
The WWWF canceled a planned rematch with Sammartino, and had Koloff lose the title a few weeks later to Morales, then shipped Koloff away.
Koloff didn’t handle the road life well and became a drug and drink abuser.
The workers tended to work up to 7 days a week, which left a nightly excuse to drink beer and use narcotics.
Ivan ruptured a disk in his back while working in the AWA but he refused to have surgery and just took drugs to fight through the pain. He did lots of pain pills and pot, then once the 80’s hit he moved up to snorting coke.
The substances lead to Koloff being involved in more bar fights than he would have had he been sober. Koloff admits he worked a lot of wrestling matches in an impaired state since the drugs took a long time to leave his system.
Koloff is glad that so many guys watched over him, because he was clearly quite a mess for a lot of the time.
Some promoters liked to use the trick of taping you losing a match early in your run and then threatening to show it on TV if you tried to play hardball with the promotion.
Bruno is puzzled why people think he’s bitter. He explains he has four grandkids, he feels great physically, works out 6 days a week, and travels for leisure, thus he has nothing to be bitter about.
Sammartino rages against the WWE’s use of sex, vulgarity and raunchiness that permeates the current product.
Koloff is disappointed by what the business has become, but realizes he can just not turn the show on.
Ivan won’t let his grandkids watch the modern show.
The WWE Hall of Fame isn’t a big deal to Bruno, Koloff said he’d take the opportunity to join it, if only to have a pulpit to preach on during his introduction.
Vince challenging God to a match is touched upon and Koloff is surprised he wasn’t struck down then and there.
Bruno and Ivan describe the first time they met Andre the Giant.
Sammartino wanted to defend his title against Andre in a New York stadium, but Vince Sr. forbade it.
Koloff had to make friends with Andre fast so when they wrestled Andre wouldn’t kill him.
Ivan and Andre drew a big house in Montreal after they ran an angle where Koloff attacked Andre and left him bloody.
Billy Robinson and Verne Gagne made you work hard to get your offense in at times. Gagne slapped Koloff so hard once that he was afraid his eardrum burst.
Sammartino explains how Antonio Inoki tried to shoot on him in the early 70’s, which forced Bruno to shut him down fast. Sammartino was prepared to break his leg, but Baba calmed the situation down.
The trail of broken bodies the wrestling business has left in it’s wake is evidence enough that the business isn’t “fake”.
Football players take weeks off for injuries, wrestlers had to work or the crowd would be cheated and the paychecks wouldn’t come.
Koloff thinks Vince should be paying guys for using their likeness when showing classic footage.
They ask Ivan who he’d like to work with in the modern era, and Koloff can’t name anyone since he doesn’t watch the product.
Sammartino covers how he almost became the unified World champ in the late 60’s when the WWWF and NWA promoters wanted to make Bruno the solo champ. Things fell apart when both Sam Muschnick and Vince Sr. wanted to control the champion for 15-17 dates a month and that would make for an impossible schedule to keep up.
Bruno was only being given two days a month off as it was and he used this discussion as an opportunity to tell Sr. he needed two more days off per month.
Most of the workers during the 60’s and 70’s had true athletic backgrounds before joining wrestling.
Doing a bunch of flips doesn’t make you a wrestler in Sammartino’s eyes.
When guys didn’t keep themselves in tip top shape, the fans were cheated. This helped inspire Sammartino’s workouts.
The wrestling in the old days used to be slow paced in order to have a believable transition from move to move. The modern style is rapid paced and rarely features realistic moves.
The biggest pop Sammartino can recall is when he picked up Haystacks Calhoun.
Calhoun was upset after the match as he didn’t think Bruno would be able to lift him off his feet.
Both men cut promos on each other to bring things to a close.
Final thoughts: This was a fun trip in the way back machine to a time when people still believed in wrestling with two of the best of the their generation. I do have one major complaint though as the microphones were poorly prepped and it was a real struggle to understand a bunch of what Koloff was saying.
