Rod Trongard, 72, AWA Pro Wrestling Announcer
Ed Varner
6/17/2005 1:31:00 AM
Voice of AWA passes away
Rod Trongard, a long-time pro wrestling announcer in the 70s and 80s,
mostly with the AWA, passed away earlier today from liver cancer. He
was 72.
Trongard, a member of the Minnesota Broadcasting Hall of Fame, began as
a radio announcer in 1953. He announced for Verne Gagne, and in the
80s, worked for the WWF during a period when Vince McMahon attempted to
raid everyone who worked for Gagne. He did not do well in WWF, and
didn't last long there.
He had been a sportscaster in Mankato, MN for the past 23 years.
James Neibaur
> Rod Trongard, a long-time pro wrestling announcer in the 70s and 80s,
> mostly with the AWA, passed away earlier today from liver cancer. He
> was 72.
I am more familiar with Roger Kent and the late Marty O'Neill, but still
have fond memories of Rod Trongard, nevertheless.
RIP
JN
King Daevid MacKenzie
...I grew up in the era when Rodger Kent did AWA hold-by-hold commentary and
Marty O'Neill (who I don't think ever appeared in front of a TV camera
without his sunglasses -- I assume his eyes were overly sensitive to the
bright lighting) did the interviews. When O'Neill was absent for whatever
reason, they'd use Gene Okerland, who IIRC was a polka disc jockey for WMIN
Radio in Minneapolis at the time; when O'Neill retired, Okerland went
full-time. Al DeRusha was the technical producer. That was the best period
for the AWA and the best production team in all of pro wrestling. Junior
McMahon raided the lot of them circa '84 (about the same time Jesse Ventura,
Jim Brunzell and Bobby Heenan all jumped to the WWF from the AWA too) and
they spent about a year doing a wrestling hour that, IIRC, was only
distributed to stations in the Upper Midwest. Verne Gagne replaced them with
Trongard on hold-by-hold (monotonous), Ken Resnick on interviews (hideous)
and a house crew from KMSP in Minneapolis (out of their league). By the time
that McMahon cut Kent and DeRusha loose and replaced them for a nanosecond
with Trongard and Resnick, Fritz Von Erich's World Class promotion in Dallas
had replaced Gagne's as the best-produced territorial promotion in the
business. The only good replacements Gagne could find were hold-by-hold
commentator Larry Nelson and interviewer Lee Marshall, who were both well
above and beyond Verne's shell-shocked ability to put together a decent TV
show. By the time Verne called it quits in '90 or so, he was using his own
son Greg as a hold-by-hold commentator. About the only good to come from the
demise of the AWA was Eric Bischoff replacing Jim Ross at WCW and proving
himself a brilliant booker and writer (before his ideas got too far ahead of
his pacing)...
--
King Daevid MacKenzie, WLSU-FM 88.9 La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA
heard weekdays at http://whiterosesociety.org
"There is Christian and there is Elvis-from-the-waist-up Christian." JAMES
NEIBAUR
James Neibaur
> "There is Christian and there is Elvis-from-the-waist-up Christian." JAMES
> NEIBAUR
You are using a quote from me in your sig?
"How low can you go?"
--Chubby Checker
JN
King Daevid MacKenzie
...oh, pretty damned low. Maybe not as low as Mojo Nixon got with the title
of his Sirius talk show, but then again I do have taste ;-) ...
--
King Daevid MacKenzie, WLSU-FM 88.9 La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA
heard weekdays at http://whiterosesociety.org
James Neibaur
>> "How low can you go?"
>> --Chubby Checker
>
> ...oh, pretty damned low. Maybe not as low as Mojo Nixon got with the title
> of his Sirius talk show, but then again I do have taste ;-) ...
I listened to your latest broadcast online. I can pick up 88.9 FM and it is
a jazz station. Is that the one you are on or do those numbers also
broadcast jazz from a closer feed?
JN
King Daevid MacKenzie
> I listened to your latest broadcast online.
...hopefully you found it of interest ;-) ...
> I can pick up 88.9 FM and it is
> a jazz station. Is that the one you are on or do those numbers also
> broadcast jazz from a closer feed?
...the 88.9 you'd pick up in Racine would be either WYMS in Milwaukee, a
1500-watt jazz station, or possibly WMXM in Lake Forest, Illinois, a
300-watter that's the Lake Forest College station. Or, on summer nights like
this when the FM skip kicks in, there's also WBLU in Grand Rapids, Michigan,
the NPR affiliate there that also plays jazz (I picked that one up one night
when I lived in Kenosha). The station I'm on is WLSU, at the UW-La Crosse
campus. Of course, thanks to FM skip and its unpredictability, you might
have heard WLSU last night -- but the only way to figure out if it was me
was that I played only sets of Glenn Miller or Frank Sinatra between 11:00
P.M. and 4:00 A.M., and from 4 to 6 nothing but airchecks of news bulletins
from the morning of D-Day -- did you hear anything like that? ;-) ...
James Neibaur
> but the only way to figure out if it was me
> was that I played only sets of Glenn Miller or Frank Sinatra between 11:00
> P.M. and 4:00 A.M., and from 4 to 6 nothing but airchecks of news bulletins
> from the morning of D-Day -- did you hear anything like that?
Nah, nothing quite that vintage. It is WYMS
JN