The Magnificent Muraco

As a child that grew up in a very rural environment, television and sports were a large portion of my childhood.

I often tell my children that I was a part of the last generation of the broadcast networks, PBS, and maybe a UHF channel and it is pretty true.
Cable did not come to my area until 1983 (making me just short of 15 when it arrived), so I heavily relied on those few channels for entertainment, along with scratchy AM radio signals from far away places to follow a game that would never appear on my scrawny black and white set.

As a sports fanatic (nothing has changed), I was different from my other sports fans in one regard-I was a huge fan of Pro Wrestling.

Wrestling was looked down upon before the Vince McMahon revolution in 1985 as low-brow entertainment, but I fell in love with it.
Mind you, the "territory" that I lived in was McMahon territory and as far as action in the ring along with their out of the ring storylines were slow compared to the more exciting products in the Carolinas, Georgia (which was on WTBS and I cursed every day that we did not have cable to see the only nationally available wrestling show), Louisiana, etc.

Of course, it was many years later that I realized that the territories were so different and I devoured the two weekly WWF shows on Saturdays from Washington and Baltimore to the point of moving our puny TV to my Aunts room to pick up the WBFF signal from Baltimore as only one room in the house could receive the signal.
I have never been able to figure out just why that was, but it was so.

I never had any interest in wrestling until entering a new school in Junior High and having another kid ask about trading for a hockey book of mine.

He had a magazine that looked really interesting and I knew little about wrestling.
My dad thought little of it and except for wrestlers that were known from other sports-Ken Patera, Ernie Ladd, Wahoo McDaniel, etc, I knew none of the stars.
I made the deal for a few magazines and the ball started rolling and I hooked my brother on it as well.
I often think of how my brother's life might have been different if I had traded for baseball magazines instead.

But I was different from anyone that I knew among even grappling supporters.
I rooted for the "bad guys".I was known around school as the "guy who roots for the bad guys" and my persona was just that.

You see, my parents were not around much during my youth and I have come to grips with that over time, but without a role model that was around a lot, I looked for one, and in 1981 and at 13 years old-

I found him.

His name was Don "the Magnificent" Muraco and he was my favorite from his first appearance on TV.
Muraco had come to the Northeast (Maryland was the most southern part of the WWF territory) from the Florida office and instantly showed that he was different from the usual challenges that rotated through the office by winning the Inter-Continental title from Pedro Morales in his first try.

The I-C belt was the secondary singles title and the one that "rulebreakers" would win on occasion as the World belt would rarely leave the side of the fan favorites, so Muraco winning it so quickly showed he was not one of the short term crowd.

The Magnificent One was easily the best wrestler in the company as he was able to have good matches with any opponent and did not need a certain type of style to create an excellent match.

From his stubble growth on his face to the cocky self-assured attitude to the arrogant walk, Muraco was easily the most hated wrestler around and the more he was hated-the the more I loved him.
Muraco had the gift of gab and he was easily the coolest talker that I had ever seen.


I began to adopt the Muraco persona around school and my home and it felt pretty natural.
As you could guess, it did little for my popularity at school!

One thing that I did that was Muraco inspired was my 11th-grade school picture where I insisted on wearing sunglasses (as Muraco often did) and as a result, became the talk of the school when the school yearbooks came out the following year!
I still look back on that and smile as on the rare (VERY rare) occasions when that book comes out, the way your eyes go right to that picture because it is so different.

As time moved on, I realize that I liked the bad guys because they were what I would eventually become- the guys that told it how they saw it and were not afraid to get what they wanted and if that meant not being liked-so be it.

The attitude that I picked up from Don Muraco was far from popular with my peers, but in many ways, it helped get me through childhood and adolescence with a "not going to get me down" way of thinking.

Kind of funny to think that a pro wrestler that I have never met had that much influence on a teenager, isn't it? 

Photo Credit
Muraco: Unknown