Immigrant to Italian Superman
Nobody could lift Haystacks Calhoun, who tipped the scales at 600lb – more than 270kg. Nobody, that is, until Bruno Sammartino seized Calhoun’s legs and toppled him during a bout in 1961 that brought ‘‘The Italian Superman’’ to popular attention.
The feat was all the more remarkable since, only a couple of years earlier, the future champion had arrived in the United States as an 85lb weakling who had almost died from disease and starvation.
After his death, another brawny immigrant, Arnold Schwarzenegger, tweeted that Sammartino was ‘‘the American Dream personified’’.
They first met in the 1960s, when the
Austrian was in a bodybuilding contest and
Sammartino was a judge. ‘‘I said, ‘Look at this guy, look how huge he is.’ Huge neck, the trapezius was sticking out, deltoids like cannonballs, the chest was like a fortress,’’ Schwarzenegger said in a speech for Sammartino’s induction into the World Wrestling Entertainment Hall of Fame in 2013.
He was born Bruno Leopoldo Francesco Sammartino in Abruzzo, Italy. His father, Alfonso, was a blacksmith who moved to the US for economic reasons a couple of years after his son’s birth. Bruno was the youngest of seven children; only the close care of his mother, Emilia, saw him pull through when he developed rheumatic fever.
After Italy declared war on Germany in
1943, Nazi troops occupied Abruzzo, and slaughtered civilians. The Sammartinos fled and hid in a mountain cabin for 14 months. Two of Bruno’s siblings died of malnutrition, and he survived by eating snow in the winter and dandelions in the summer.
In 1950, when he was 14 and still skeletal, they joined his father in Pittsburgh. Sammartino was initially dismayed by the grim surroundings of America’s steel capital, which was a hostile environment for immigrants. Tired of beatings from other teenagers because he could not speak English, Sammartino started weightlifting at a local gym. Within a couple of years, he weighed
250lb and could bench-press 565lb.
He became an apprentice carpenter, wrestling on the side – for US$25 he agreed to wrestle a small monkey, only to find himself in the cage with an orangutan. After a flirtation with boxing that included several painful rounds with Sonny Liston at a New York gym, his professional wrestling debut took place in 1959. He was so nervous that his blood pressure soared, almost causing the fight to be cancelled on medical grounds.
Vince McMahon Sr, the marketing mastermind behind what in 1963 became the World Wide Wrestling Federation, spied potential in Sammartino’s Incredible Hulk
‘‘I said, ‘Look at this guy, look how huge he is.’ Huge neck, the trapezius was sticking out, deltoids like cannonballs, the chest was like a fortress.’’ Arnold Schwarzenegger on Bruno Sammartino
physique, down-to-earth personality and appealing backstory. His Italian origins played well in New York, where he sold out Madison Square Garden 187 times.
Sammartino was the heavyweight champion for a record eight years, from 1963 to 1971. After nursing a back injury, he held the title again from 1973 to 1977.
Wrestlers were cast as either heroes or ‘‘heels’’, and Sammartino was on the side of righteousness. It suited him. He avoided vices, even turning down glasses of wine in restaurants in case children were watching, and he liked to listen to recordings of Italian tenors while working out. He turned down a role in The
Sopranos because it required him to swear. Still, he was not shy to voice opinions. He railed against steroid use, advocated for better working conditions, fought legal disputes and did not hide his distaste as the sport became a cartoonish, choreographed pantomime.
When the athletic credibility of wrestling was questioned, he could gesture to his cauliflower ears, oft-broken nose or his broken neck – an injury caused by an opponent dropping him on his head in 1976. ‘‘I may have earned $125,000-$150,000 annually, but I was on the road six nights a week. People think it is a glamorous life. But it is a terrible grind. And I don’t want to see any of my kids go through it,’’ he said in the 1970s.
One of his three sons, David, did become a wrestler. He sometimes teamed up with his father, but the two became estranged after David’s career stalled when Bruno retired.
David survives him along with twins Darryl, who is in law enforcement, and Dan, a barber. Sammartino is also survived by Carol, his wife of 59 years. They were introduced by one of his training partners.
Sammartino remained in demand as wrestling boomed in the 1980s. As a toddler, the pop star Bruno Mars (born Peter Gene Hernandez) was nicknamed Bruno by his father because of a supposed resemblance.
A low point came in 1961 when Chick Garibaldi died of a heart attack after Sammartino body-slammed him. ‘‘I wanted to quit for three months,’’ he said. ‘‘The autopsy showed, thank God, I did not kill the man – that the pace became too rapid and the main artery in his heart blew and killed him instantly. Would you believe a sportswriter the next day says, ‘What gimmick are they going to come up with next?’ ’’ –