I'm Going to
Turn the Three of You into Pretzels
by Don Drewniak
During the mid-to-late
1950s, local professional wrestling was featured
Saturday afternoons on Boston's WBZ. The
telecasts proved to be immensely popular. A major
reason for the popularity was Edward Wladyslaw
Spulnik, better known as Killer Kowalski. At six
feet six inches, Kowalski was one of the largest
professional wrestlers from the late 40s into the
early 70s. With rare exceptions, he was cast as
the villain. His appearances (most often as the
“World Champion”) drove the ratings for
the telecasts.
Kowalski's
signature weapon was the Claw Hold, in which he
would drive his fingers into an opponent's
abdomen and thereby supposedly paralyzing the foe.
It was while
watching one of the telecasts that I learned pro
wrestling was coming to the Academy Theater in my
hometown of Fall River. The main attraction
featured “World Champion” Kowalski
against a Japanese wrestler, Mr. Moto, in a best
two-out-of-three-falls match. Tickets were to go
on sale the following Monday (a school day) at
the Academy.
I hustled from
high school on the first day the tickets went on
sale and managed to scoff up six on-stage, second-row
tickets. Other than my ticket, the remaining five
were for friends. The ring was set up on the
stage with three or four rows of folding-chair
seats on both sides.
Although I am
not certain of this, I believe the program was
held on a Friday night. The theater was packed.
While the preliminary bouts were entertaining,
like most in the theater I was looking forward to
the last two matches. The semifinal pitted all
601-pounds of Haystacks Calhoun against a long-since-forgotten
opponent. Calhoun, who was the first of wrestling's
super-heavyweights, was deceptively agile and was
adept at using a variety of traditional holds. He
adopted a country-boy persona complete with long
hair, a flowing beard and the wearing of t-shirts
and blue overalls held in place by suspenders.
When entering a ring, he complemented his attire
with a horseshoe that was held in place around
his neck by a chain.
Calhoun was a
fan favorite and delighted the crowd when he
ended the match by sitting on his opponent. That
helped fire up the crowd for the arrival of
Kowalski. After fifteen minutes passed and no
sign of Kowalski and Moto, the assembled audience
began to grumble. The collective mood turned
decidedly sour at the twenty-five minute mark.
All was forgiven (temporarily) with the
appearance of the night's star attraction shortly
before the forty-minute mark.
Following his
introduction, Moto was greeted with a heavy
amount of booing and jeering, the result no doubt
of the memories of World War II. This extended to
kids who had no direct knowledge of the War, but
whose parents and other relatives molded their
perceptions. Kowalski drew a mixture of cheers
and thunderous boos. Since he was Polish, I was
among the cheering.
Both wrestlers
went to their corners following the instructions
to await the bell for the first fall. While
Kowalski turned his back to the center of the
ring to stretch against the ropes, Moto removed a
pair of thick-soloed wooden clogs.
He proceeded
to race across the ring, hitting Kowalski over
the head with one of the clogs seconds before the
bell rang. The referee, as was to be expected,
did not see the attack. The bell rang and a
seemingly dazed Kowalski staggered around the
ring and was quickly pinned by Moto.
Kowalski was
billed as the heavyweight champion at that time (at
least in eastern Massachusetts) and, therefore,
was not supposed to lose the match, especially to
a second-tier wrestler. Such losses were reserved
for major venues and first-tier wrestlers such as
Buddy Rogers.
There were two
versions as to what happened at the start of the
second fall. The first was that Moto reached into
his bag of tricks and threw sand at Kowalski's
face. Grains of the sand lodged in Kowalski's
right eye causing temporary blindness and pain.
The second was that he was hit in the eye with a
pea or bean fired from a peashooter by some kid
in the audience.
Apparently
semi-blinded and genuinely stunned, Kowalski
zigzagged around the ring covering his eye with
his right hand. Moto looked confused as if he
were asking himself, “What the hell do I do?”
Finally, he
approached Kowalski, bumped into him and fell to
the mat. Kowalski reached down and applied the
Claw Hold with his left hand. Moto began wildly
flailing his arms and legs before turning
motionless. He was not only counted out, but
deemed by the referee to be too hurt to continue
the match.
The two raced
out of the ring to a chorus of boos from the
audience and dodged various objects being thrown
at them. In its next-day morning edition, the Herald
News reported that Kowalski and Moto were
late getting to their match because the car in
which they rode together broke down on the way to
Fall River.
Lenny, Mitch
and I attended a second wrestling show at the
Academy during the summer following our freshman
year. Without Kowalski or any other “superstar,”
the theater was a third full at best. We chose to
sit closer to the back of the theater rather than
the front. The only person in front of us for a
half-dozen rows was a woman sitting three rows
down.
The announcer
was veteran wrestler Frankie Scarpa (also known
as Manuel Cortez among other pseudonyms) who was
a frequent opponent of Kowalski. While an
accomplished wrestler, his English language
skills left much to be desired. Consequently, the
three of us began to alternately mimic and poke
fun at him. (Not loud enough for him to hear.)
This went on each time he took center stage to
announce the next opponents and deliver short
biographies about each one.
We were being
particularly obnoxious as Scarpa was introducing
the fourth-match wrestlers. The three-rows-down
woman stood up and faced us. All three of us
immediately recognized her from the wrestling
matches telecast on WBZ. She was June Byers, the
Women's World Champion. The ensuing conversation
was very brief.
“You boys
say one more word about Mr. Scarpa, I'm going to
turn the three of you into pretzels. You
understand me?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
She leaned
forward putting one foot on the top of her chair,
looking for all the world like a giant cat ready
to pounce on three mice. “Yes, what?”
“Yes, Sir...I mean Yes, Ma'am.”
“Yes, Ma'am.”
“Yes, Ma'am.”
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