[HISTORY] The WAWLI Papers No. 265
Oldfa...@aol.com
WRESTLING AS WE LIKED IT:
THE WAWLI PAPERS by J Michael Kenyon
Issue Number 265
Friday, September 11, 1998
New York City, New York USA
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IN THIS ISSUE: THE GREAT HISA'S PURORESU HALL OF FAME
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Your submissions of old clippings (please signify date and source) and
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A LETTER FROM A PRO WRESTLER'S NIECE
Dear J Michael:
I was able to get into the downtown library at Los Angeles last week when I
took the grandchildren to Disney for a week. The following is what was
located. I also found the death date for my great uncle, Joseph S.
Gardenfeld, June 27, 1973 in San francisco County, California.
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>From "LOOK MAGAZINE", Volume I, September 14, 1937, a pictorial format
magazine.
A photograph of 2 wrestlers on the mat of a ring and the foot of the referee
on the head of one.( International News Photo)
"A WRESTLING REFEREE STEPS ON A FACE"
"The foot planted here on the ear and face of Wrestler Chief Chekawi belongs
to Joe Gardenfeld, who refereed Chekawi's match with Bill Hanson in a San
Francisco ring.
Chekawi, lying beneath Hanson in a tangle of arms and legs, had crawled to
the edge of the ring beneath the ropes, and the referee felt it necessary to
step on him in order to pry the men apart and get them back into the center
of the mat.
Gardenfeld may have been unduly out of sorts, because his clothes had been
torn off him while he was refereeing a match a week before.
In modern wrestling, the show is the thing. The wrestlers grunt, groan and
make faces, throw each other out of the ring, and frequently attack the
referee to add to the customers' excitement.
This is not much like the wrestling of 25 years ago but it draws
crowds---and just a fair heavyweight grappler can now earn as much as
$10,000 a year in the U.S."
(ED. NOTE--The above article refers to the wrestler generally known as Chief
Chewacki, or Chief Chewaki, or Chief Chewchki in some of his earlier
matches, but only here as Chief Chekawi.)
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I had always been told that this was a photo of Joe Gardenfeld, imagine was
suprise when I found the photo was of his foot !!!!!!! My friend and I
almost got kicked out of the library for all the laughter we produced.
Thanx,
Ley O'Connor
CASHEL3776
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(ED. NOTE--One of the great boons to professional wrestling scholarship has
been the industrious work of Hisaharu Tanabe of New York/New Jersey. Now on
his web site (http://www.albany.net/~hit/puroresu/hallfame/hisa.html) you
may find literally hundreds of pages of wrestling pleasure, including 'The
Great Hisa's Puroresu Hall of Fame.')
THE GREAT HISA'S PURORESU HALL OF FAME
It has been hard for me to access news groups and to collect votes for the
annual Hall of Fame. I decided to start my personal version of "Hall of
Fame" just like everyone else on the net. Please remember that the inductees
for this "Hall of Fame" is nothing more than my personal choices for those
who had great achievement in puroresu, so please don't send me email, saying
"[someone's name] should be added to your Hall of Fame!!!" or something
alike.
[FIGHTERS]
Rikidozan, Masahiko Kimura, Masutatsu Ooyama, Mitsuyo Maeda/Count de Koma,
Ad Santel, Bobby Bruns, Great Togo, Harold Sakata, Ben & Mike Sharpe, Lou
Thesz, Karl Gotch, Fred Blassie, The Destroyer, Toyonobori, Michiaki
Yoshimura, Hiro Matsuda, Kintaro Ohki/Kim Il, Antonio Inoki, Giant Baba,
Kotetsu Yamamoto, Umanosuke Ueda, Billy Robinson, Fritz Von Erich, Gene
Kiniski, Dick the Bruiser, Bobo Brazil, Bruno Sammartino, Crusher Lisowski,
Johnny Valentine, Verne Gagne, Dory Funk, Jr., Terry Funk, Jack Brisco,
Harley Race, Pedro Morales, Nick Bockwinkel, Tiger Jeet Singh, Abdullah the
Butcher, Andre the Giant, Dick Murdoch, The Great Kabuki, Seiji Sakaguchi,
Strong Kobayashi, Rusher Kimura, Mil Mascaras, Pretty Atom, Johnny Powers,
Bob Backlund, Jumbo Tsuruta, Tatsumi Fujinami, Riki Choshu, Stan Hansen,
Bruiser Brody, Satoru Sayama/Tiger Mask, Mach Fumiake, Roland Bock, Gran
Hamada, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Beauty Pair, Dynamite Kid Atsushi, Ohnita,
Gen'ichiro Tenryu, Akira Maeda, Hulk Hogan, Jaguar Yokota, Devil Masami,
Chigusa Nagayo.
[Promoters]
Joe Malcewicz, Isao Yoshiwara, Hisashi Shinma, Vince McMahon Sr., Matsunaga
Brothers.
[Referees, Announcers, etc.]
Oki Shikina, Hiroshi Tazuhama, Ikki Kajiwara, Ichiro Furutachi.
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EX-UT BASKETBALLER HITS THE PRO MATS
(Associated Press, June 17, 1998)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - At 6-foot-11, Kevin Nash can still hit the hoop.
But at 310 pounds, don't expect him to jump. Not unless it's squarely onto
another wrestler's chest.
Eight years ago, the former University of Tennessee basketball player took a
stunt class and signed up as a pro wrestler. Seems that a World Championship
Wrestling costume suited Nash better than that UT uniform.
"I love what I do," said Nash. "I guess everybody finds a niche in life, and
I kind of found mine."
Nash was recruited to Tennessee from Aquinas High School in Trenton, Mich.,
by Ray Mears in the late '70s, but got to the school after Mears left. He
wound up playing for coach Don DeVoe instead -when the two weren't fighting.
A tussle with DeVoe in his junior year got Nash kicked off the team. He then
played in the Army, and as a pro in Europe. A ligament tear in his knee
ended his basketball career in 1985.
After stints as bouncers in Detroit and Atlanta, Nash decided to try his
hand at wrestling. He spent three years with WCW, quickly becoming a fan
favorite. He even played several small roles on TV and film, including a
part in "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II."
When his WCW contract expired, he switched over to the World Wrestling
Federation, and became a world champ under the name Diesel.
In 1996, Nash got tired of playing a character, and moved back to the WCW.
"Finally I thought I'd just be me," said Nash. The 38-year old has tattoos
across his massive arms, long hair and a goatee. Look for him in the ring in
black fringed pants and a New World Order tank.
"There are a lot more guys like myself that use their real name ... They're
not really characters. They're just guys. Guys fighting guys. It's more
reality-based."
Nash was sidelined by injuries for WCW's Nashville appearance last month,
but he plans to play about five more years. Then he wants to produce story
lines for the matches, and spend more time at home in Phoenix with his wife
and son, now 2. But he'll always feel like a wrestler.
"God made me almost 7 feet tall, and now I'm 300 pounds. I don't think I was
made an accountant or a bookkeeper," Nash said. "I was put on this earth for
something. I guess this is what it was."
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PHIL MUSHNICK COLUMN EXCERPT
(New York Post, June 8, 1998)
As kids grow more violent, we're presented, or confronted, with TV execs
such as Stephen Chao, the new president of programming and marketing for USA
Network. Last month, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Chao spoke
of his great affection for professional wrestling. He cited his
grandmother's love of the late Bobo Brazil. But the relatively benign pro
wrestling of the Bobo Brazil era, as opposed to the twisted, social sickness
that pro wrestling now sells to a mostly young audience, is the difference
between the Brady Bunch and the Manson Family.
Chao has two sons, ages 7 and 4. If he can invite his two boys to sit with
him and watch one of the Monday Night WWF shows that appear on USA and still
feel that he's doing right by his kids and that USA is doing right by the
kids in its audience, we'd very much like to hear from him.
(Printed below is the article to which Mr. Mushnick refers.)
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PROGRAMMER PUTS SPIN ON USA NETWORKS
(Los Angeles Times, Saturday, May 9, 1998)
By Sallie Hofmeister
When Stephen Chao was in charge of developing shows for the Fox television
stations in the early '90s, he once so enraged his boss Barry Diller that
Diller hurled a videocassette tape across the room, leaving a huge gash in
the wall.
The two executives didn't speak for months, but Chao survived the
blowup--and was even promoted months later. He even convinced Diller to sign
the wall after Chao hung a frame around the scar, turning it into a work of
art that hangs in Chao's garage today, years after he was unceremoniously
fired from Fox in 1992 for hiring a stripper to perform at a company
management retreat.
Outrageous and defiant acts are among the earmarks of the 42-year-old
Harvard MBA, who revels in shaking up the establishment and who fancies
himself too cool to conform to industry conventions, much less act like a
corporate "suit."
Outspoken and opinionated, Chao is among the few Hollywood executives brazen
enough to go toe-to-toe with the abrasive Diller. And his programming
talents--he rewired prime-time economics with innovative shows such as the
fugitive docudrama, "America's Most Wanted"--are valued by Diller.
So it came as little surprise--and was greeted mainly with approval--last
month when Diller named him president of programming and marketing for USA
Networks.
Chao and Stephen Brenner, a capable 16-year veteran of the company who was
named president of operations, step into the void left by USA Networks
founder Kay Koplovitz, who Diller swept aside after his purchase of the
network and its sister Sci-Fi Channel from Universal Studios Inc. in
February.
During the last six years, Stephen Chao Inc. has turned out a few network
specials, including one for ABC that staged silly car accidents. The company
consulted for Diller in his previous incarnation as head of QVC, creating a
spinoff channel that went up in smoke with Diller's departure.
"He wasn't as successful on his own as you'd think," said former Fox boss
Greg Nathanson, president of television for Emmis Broadcasting Corp. "He's
brilliant. He sees things differently than most and has a very analytical
mind. But he is not a salesman type and probably works better when other
people do the selling.
Chao, who started his job last week, says the rap against USA Network--for a
hodgepodge of programming that critics say blurs its identity--is unfair.
"Based on its ratings, it couldn't be doing so badly," Chao said.
He has a particular soft spot for the popular World Wrestling Federation,
which keeps USA consistently among the nation's top-rated cable channels.
"My grandmother was this Chinese lady who came to America late in life with
a heavy accent--a straight and proper woman who responded to nothing in
American culture except the WWF and Bobo Brazil [the wrestler who died this
year at age 74]. She liked the theater of it."
Chao's programming is informed by a life without boundaries. Part court
jester, part prankster, he has a childlike fascination with breaking rules
and for the morbid, lurid, raunchy and silly sides of life, which he seeks
to experience first-hand. In his wake is a collection of bizarre vignettes:
his trashing of rental cars left along the roadside when he was a reporter
at the National Enquirer and adolescent behavior like faking sleep in
Hollywood pitch meetings.
The descendant of a wealthy pre-revolutionary Chinese family, friends say
Chao chose to live in a poor area of New York after graduating from Harvard
with a degree in the classics. After being fired from Fox, he worked briefly
at a McDonald's in Redondo Beach. He drives a beat-up maroon Volvo and lives
in Venice with his wife, Irina, and their two boys, ages 4 and 7. He bought
a building for his production company in an offbeat artists' strip of
converted warehouses in Santa Monica formerly occupied by defense
contractors.
"It's nice to be curious, fascinated and easily amused," Chao said. "My
grandfather [a former Chinese economic minister to the U.S.] was endlessly
involved in what he called social investigation and spent a lot of time
trying to find out whether there was cannibalism in China. I consider myself
a social investigator with a National Enquirer curiosity, although I hope I
use some editing filters in my work."
Bright, antagonistic and "dangerously manipulative," according to one
Hollywood insider, Chao made a name for himself with raw, provocative,
tabloid-like shows such as "Cops," "America's Most Wanted" and the dating
game "Studs." Critics call him sensationalistic and say he plays to the
lowest common denominator. They doubt he'll do much to clean up USA's
reputation for exploitative fare.
"I'm not into gratuitous and sleazy stuff," countered Chao. "It always comes
from a point of view you've never seen."
Chao has a loyal core of fans who consider him an innovator and are
impressed by the mountains of money he made for Fox.
"Stephen Chao is one of the most interesting people I know," Diller said.
"He has an instinctive, contrarian program sensibility."
TV executives who worked at Fox with Diller and Chao say the two thrived on
arguing. Chao calls Diller "hilarious and lots of fun to work with" and says
he responds well to Diller's "Socratic" style.
Yet Chao is offensive to many, and his off-the-wall behavior put him on thin
ice more than once with Anna Murdoch, the wife of his mentor Rupert Murdoch,
chairman of Fox's parent, News Corp. Several years back, Chao nearly drowned
Anna's cherished purebred puppy in the pool at the Murdoch's Los Angeles
residence.
"They said it was a hunting dog with webbed feet for swimming, so I said,
'Let's see it swim' and threw the dog in," explained Chao. "It sunk like a
rock, disappearing into the slate-gray bottom of the pool like the Titanic.
No bubbles were coming out of its nose--the dog was motionless. Everyone
just froze. I jumped in I think with all my clothes on and rescued the dog.
It was surreal."
He said Rupert was amused, but others say Anna was not.
Murdoch saw star-quality in Chao. "I think the combination of Latin and the
National Enquirer intrigued him," said Chao, who worked at the supermarket
tabloid for two years between Harvard degrees. Initially, Chao undertook
such tasks for Murdoch as writing News Corp.'s annual report and crunching
numbers for his purchase of Twentieth Century Fox and the Metromedia station
group.
When Chao wanted to move into programming, Murdoch sent him to Los Angeles
to develop television sitcoms. He developed "America's Most Wanted," whose
ratings success ushered in a wave of imitators.
But Fox's programming wunderkind abruptly flamed out. Just weeks after a big
promotion to president of the Fox Television Stations, Chao was fired in
what became the most talked-about Hollywood scandal of 1992.
At a retreat in Snowmass, Colo., for Fox executives, board members and world
dignitaries, Chao spoke on a panel entitled "The Threat to Democratic
Capitalism Posed by Modern Culture." To illustrate his point about how
network standards were not keeping pace with modern-day experience, Chao
hired a local man to disrobe on stage. Those in attendance say Chao made
matters worse by taunting Anna Murdoch, seated beside her husband and
then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, in the front row, not to turn away
her eyes.
Anna demanded Chao's dismissal, and Murdoch obliged.
Chao says he decided to return to corporate life because of Diller, who
"nurtures original voices," Chao said. In contrast, he says, most programs
on the air today are overdeveloped and therefore diluted. He says he
appreciates NBC's "Homicide: Life on the Street" for its direction and look,
and Comedy Central's "South Park" for its "rare form and pure voice." He
said he'd rather his two boys watch the unfiltered version of "The Jerry
Springer Show" than the 11 p.m. news.
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