It made me sad a week ago when I learned that Walter Kowalski had died at age 81.
I never met the gentleman, you understand, but I used to yell at him a lot.
He never heard me, because I was just a little boy watching TV alone in my mom's and dad's bedroom with a glass of seltzer and a bag of pretzel rods while Walter "Killer" Kowalski did terrible things in a wrestling ring.
It's funny, because now, when on far too many days I have a hard time remembering where I put my car keys, I can readily recall those Wednesday nights about 50 years ago when my world was so much simpler.
There were the good guys, and there were the bad guys. In the real world, Americans were always the good guys and the Soviets were the bad guys. Inside the ring, there was no mistaking who was a good guy and who was a bad guy.
I always rooted for the good guys, like Antonino Rocca, Bobo Brazil and the king of them all, Bruno Sammartino.
I would holler at the TV screen whenever a bad guy would pull a good guy's hair _ clearly a dastardly infraction of the "rules" _ or even worse, take a bit of metal out of the waistband of his pants and use it in a punch against one of my heroes.
Somehow, the referee was always oblivious to the misdeeds, even as thousands of fans screamed for him to notice. At home, with my pretzels and seltzer, I screamed at the ref and the bad guys, too.
In the ring, Walter "Killer" Kowalski was a very bad guy.
I distinctly remember the fellow who used to telecast the weekly wrestling shows asking Kowalski, who was a fearsome 6-foot-7 and 275 pounds, how he had obtained his nickname.
"I broke a man's neck" was all Kowalski said before striding off.
To say that I was impressed by those five words would be an understatement. I had no reason to doubt the bald, menacing Mr. Kowalski's statement because he appeared perfectly capable of just such an endeavor.
Kowalski's favorite wrestling move was called "the claw," wherein he would squeeze his opponent's tummy until the poor fellow would give up rather than see his small intestine exposed to the populace.
As it turns out, though, "Killer" never actually killed anybody.
He did, however, cause fellow wrestler Yukon Eric to part company with his left ear during a 1954 match in Montreal.
"I had him caught in the ropes," Kowalski, years later, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. "My gimmick at the time was jumping off the top rope and down onto the other guy. The referee tried to get between us, and Yukon Eric turned his cheek a little bit.
"My shin and boot grazed his head," Kowalski said, "and his ear came off, just like you knock a fly across a table. It rolled across the ring ... glub, glub, glub. The blood squirted everywhere."
The fact that the massive Yukon Eric had cauliflower ears from all his years in the ring was certainly a mitigating factor, but that's not how legends are made.
When Kowalski visited Yukon Eric in the hospital in front of newspaper and TV reporters, he found the man seated on his bed, his head bandaged.
"I swear, the first thing I thought of was Humpty Dumpty on the wall," Kowalski said. "Yukon Eric looked at me, shook his head and smiled. I started laughing and he laughed, too."
The reporters apparently didn't see the humor in the situation. "The next day the headlines read, Kowalski Visits Yukon in the Hospital and Laughs.' And when I climbed into the ring that night, the crowd called out, You animal, you killer.' And the name stuck."
I stopped watching the Wednesday night wrestling shows after I learned that pro wrestling was just a big fake, with the outcomes of every match predetermined and carefully choreographed.
I lost a bit of my innocence. Pro wrestling lost a fan.
As it turns out, Walter "Killer" Kowalski was a very sweet man outside the ring, often doing charitable work for children with special needs.
"I used to be a villain, but now I'm a good guy," he once said. "I kiss old women and pat babies. I've gone from Killer Kowalski to a pussycat."
I've gone from an innocent little boy to a rather jaded old guy.
But thanks, "Killer," for the memories.
___
Sam Pollak is editor of The Daily Star. He can be reached at spollak@thedailystar.com or at (607) 432-1000, ext. 208.
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