Playoffs for the Cavaliers and Devils, baseball for myself, boxing and the ratings, road trips and of course, the road office and the inbox, which is bursting to a size that I've never seen before keep things hopping.
And with all of that to do, I had to make time for this post.
The passing of Bruno Sammartino at the age of 82 marks the end of an era for pro wrestling fans of a certain age and that age is even older than mine.
Bruno Sammartino was the name in pro wrestling locally among people of my parents' age and even a little older than me.
I'd even go farther and make this statement- Ask someone 60 or older in the Northeast and ask them to name one pro wrestler and for all the fame of Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin, and The Rock, I'd wager among that demographic that the name mentioned would be Bruno Sammartino.
Bruno Sammartino was much more than Hulk Hogan to people of that age and even though pro wrestling was as pre-determined as it is today, Bruno Sammartino's name was still said with reverence.
In Pittsburgh, Bruno Sammartino was just as big of a star as Roberto Clemente or any member of the Steelers during that time and that's not wrestling hyperbole on my part either.
I remember when I first became a fan in the fall of 1979 and talking about wrestling with people my dad's age and Bruno Sammartino's name even then held respect as even as they had a twinkle in their eye about "rasslin" not being "real" or as more commonly said "fake".
To those people, Bruno Sammartino was respected as more than a pro wrestler, he was a tough guy that was legitimately among the stronger men in the world at that time and many ranked him with the heavyweight boxing champion of the world as "the baddest man in the world".
Sammartino's two title reigns were so legendary that when his first reign ended at just short of eight years in 1971 in a loss to the "Russian Bear" Ivan Koloff, Sammartino thought Koloff's title-winning kneedrop off the top rope had busted his eardrum as the crowd went dead silent when the referee counted the third slap of the mat.
Of course, there was the match series that shined the legend more than any against Stan Hansen.
Hansen was a run-of-the-mill bad guy of the month, no different than many to be fed to Sammartino-until Hansen screwed up a bodyslam (in the storyline, it was credited to Hansen's feared forearm "The Lariat" and broke Bruno's neck legitimately.
Sammartino fought through the pain (just imagine that) and finished the match before having to take time to heal.
The mistake made Hansen a star and it made Sammartino a sports god as two months later and a neck that wasn't entirely ready for action, saw Sammartino return at Shea Stadium with a limited offense and send Hansen scurrying from the ring (Hansen later noted that was again a finish modified to avoid a riot from a Bruno match).
The man that ruled the WWWF from Baltimore and all spots north wasn't the guy that I remember though.
You see, the guy I remember wore one of those horrible canary yellow jackets shown in the photo above as "the living legend" commentating on the squash match-laden WWF (name had changed by then) television show alongside Vincent Kennedy McMahon himself.
Bruno tended to mumble and spoke more often than not in a monotone, but when he said a challenger to then-champion Bob Backlund was 'a tough competitor" you took it seriously because of who was saying that not in how it was said.Still, Bruno had the same abundantly curly hair that looked like a mushroom cap was morphing into an afro like Andre the Giant's, and when I started to be a fan, he was "just the commentator" and though he used to be the champ, I didn't look at him as a star.
Bruno still had one run in him and it came as the first big feud that I remember as a fan as his longtime protege' Larry Zbyszko turned on him with a shot from a wooden chair at a television taping in Allentown Pa. and in one of the first wrestling magazines that I ever saw proclaimed on the cover left Bruno 'drowning in a pool of blood!"
Well, I wouldn't say that it was all that much, but for television and a wrestling program that rarely showed such things, it was more than one would expect and more than I'd see on the show in the future.
The Bruno-Larry feud "popped the territory" and was selling out arenas throughout (and not the "we sold out arena's all over" line that you hear from every retired grappler either) the region.
This match headlined the first-ever sellout at Landover's Capital Centre for wrestling among many others and climaxed with Bruno's cage match victory before over 20,000 fans at Shea Stadium.
Hulk Hogan would later claim that it was his match with Andre the Giant that drew the large crowd, but that match was 4th on the card and without the Bruno-Zbyszko match, Shea Stadium wouldn't have even been considered for a venue.
Zbyszko has stated (and Bruno is reported to have agreed) that the feud could have gone longer and drawn even more money, had he won that match and I'd agree.
Zbyszko could have been pounded all match, cut badly, and have Bruno "pound him out of the cage", giving him the fluke victory, enraging the fans, and drawing more fans to see Bruno get revenge.
Reportedly, the McMahons were concerned that the crowd would riot if Bruno lost and that was a serious possibility.
Bruno returned to announcing for the next years and when McMahon expanded nationally, Bruno had small issues with both Randy Savage and Roddy Piper to draw crowds and drew well.
To show the respect that Bruno still had, he didn't lose any of those matches and even defeated Piper in a Boston cage match at a time when Piper was refusing to lose to Hulk Hogan.
Sammartino left the WWF over several issues in 1987 that included still underlying issues over being cheated of money by McMahon Sr in the past (there was a settlement a few years before that saw Bruno receive a lump sum and agree to commentate), the rampant use of drugs and steroids and some of the roads that wrestling was moving into.
Bruno was often the "go-to" person for 25 years when someone in the media wanted a comment on wrestling that wasn't associated with McMahon's company.
One night, this boiled over on the Larry King show during the company sex scandal in the '90s with McMahon in-studio and Sammartino on satellite from his Pittsburgh home with Sammartino commenting on wrestlers getting undeserved "pushes" ( higher on the cards and more prestigious matches) and commented on this possibly being due to the "booking" (the person that makes the angles and card results) of Pat Patterson, an open homosexual.
McMahon retorted with "Well, is that how YOU won the title, Bruno"? in full McMahon bravado and the look from Pittsburgh made it very clear- had that comment been made with the two of them in the studio, McMahon would have gotten a rear-kicking well before the infamous Montreal brawl with Bret Hart.
The two would reconcile down the road enough for Sammartino to join their hall of fame and work together on marketing (such as adding Bruno to their video game and action figure line), but you still never had the feeling that they were chummy as McMahon and other wayward stars that had fallings out had when they returned back to the federation.
I have to admit, as an early wrestling fan, I didn't like Bruno Sammartino.
I liked the "bad guys", Bruno never was one of those fellows, he was kind of boring as a color commentator and he never lost!
However, you can make an argument that he was among the most influential wrestlers of all time and certainly the most of his era, and even if he wasn't the in-ring wrestler that his peers Dory Funk Jr, Jack Brisco, Lou Thesz, etc were, he certainly was a far bigger star.
Bruno Sammartino seemed like a good and highly principled man in an industry that often attracts the opposite and his qualities as a person saw him rarely criticized other than the most fervent defender of the McMahon family.
Pro Wrestling has rarely seen the likes of him and likely won't again, a man for his time was Bruno Sammartino and that time and pro wrestling have changed.
He'll be missed and through his decency along with the person he was outside the ring, I wound up being a Bruno Sammartino fan.
Rest in peace, Champ.
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