Killer Kowalski, Wrestler, Dies at 81
Walter
(Killer) Kowalski, one of professional wrestling’s biggest stars and
most hated villains when wrestlers offered a nightly menu of mayhem in
the early years of television, died Saturday in Everett, Mass. He was
81.
Kowalski’s death was announced by his wife, Theresa, who said he had been hospitalized since a heart attack in early August.
At
6 feet 7 inches and 275 pounds or so, Kowalski was a formidable figure
who delighted in applying his claw hold, a thumb squeeze to an
opponent’s solar plexus, when he was not leaping from the top strand of
the ropes and descending on his foe’s chest.
Emerging
as a featured performer in the early 1950s, he became a TV celebrity
with wrestlers like Antonino Rocca, Lou Thesz, Gorgeous George,
Haystacks Calhoun and Nature Boy Buddy Rogers.
Kowalski
wrestled on the pro circuits for some 30 years and appeared in more
than 6,000 matches, by his count. Early in his career, he called himself
Tarzan Kowalski. But, as he often related it, one particular match, at
Montreal in the early 1950s, literally made his name.
“I
was leaping off the rope, and Yukon Eric, who had a cauliflower ear,
moved at the last second,” Kowalski told The Chicago Tribune in 1989. “I
thought I missed, but all of a sudden, something went rolling across
the ring. It was his ear.”
Yukon
Eric was taken to a hospital, and the promoter asked Kowalski to visit
him and apologize for severing his ear. Reporters were listening to
their chat from a corridor.
“There
was this 6-foot-5, 280-pound guy, his head wrapped like a mummy,
dwarfing his bed,” Kowalski said. “I looked at him and grinned. He
grinned back. I laughed, and he laughed back. Then I laughed harder and
left.
“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.”
Kowalski
came to incur the wrath of the fans. As he told Esquire magazine in
2007: “Someone once threw a pig’s ear at me. A woman once came up to me
after a match and said, ‘I’m glad you didn’t get hurt.’ Then she stabbed
me in the back with a knife. After a while, I got police escorts to and
from the ring.”
Walter
Kowalski, his legal name, was born in Windsor, Ontario. His parents,
Anthony and Marie Spulnik, had emigrated from Poland. He hoped to become
an electrical engineer, but while he was working out at a Y.M.C.A.,
someone who was evidently impressed by his physique suggested he become a
wrestler. He made his pro debut in the late 1940s.
He
eventually tussled with all the famous names of wrestling, and in his
later years he teamed with Big John Studd as a tag team called the
Executioners.
“He
was a hell of an attraction,” Thesz told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in
1998. “He had a great body back then. He was not a sophisticated
wrestler, but every promoter wanted him because he made a lot of money.”
Kowalski
retired in 1977 and founded Killer Kowalski’s School of Professional
Wrestling in Malden, Mass. His protégés included the wrestlers Triple H
and Chyna. He sold the school in 2003, and it is now in North Andover,
Mass.
Kowalski married in 2006, his first marriage. In addition to his wife, of Malden, he was survived by a brother, Stanley Spulnik.
Beyond the ring, Kowalski displayed a gentle and even aesthetic side. He became a vegetarian
in the mid-1950s, pursued charitable work for children with special
needs and delighted in photographing fellow wrestlers. His work was
sometimes displayed at galleries.
“I
wanted to take action pictures,” he told The New York Times shortly
after retiring. “But I went up to the ring, the fans screamed at me and
threw garbage at me. It was detrimental to my health. So all I took were
posed pictures. I sign my photographs Walter Kowalski. I used to be a
villain, but now I’m a good guy. I kiss old women and pat babies. I’ve
gone from Killer Kowalski to a pussycat.”
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