For a decade, ‘good guy’ Sammartino ruled pro wrestling

Bruno Sammartino, an Italian immigrant who was heavyweight champion of the World Wide Wrestling Federation for a record 11 years in the 1960s and ’70s, long before the federation admitted that its matches were scripted and largely choreographed entertainment shows, has died at 82.

His death was announced by World Wrestling Entertainment, a successor of the World Wide Wrestling Federation. Former wrestling announcer Christopher Cruise said Sammartino died Wednesday morning after being hospitalized for two months.

In an era when the sports world, except for some die-hard wrestling fans, knew that pro matches were staged dramatizations, with heroes and villains, story lines and beefcake actors, Sammartino was one of the most-popular performers in the business. He wrestled in Australia, Spain, Mexico, Canada and Japan and often drew gates of 20,000 at Madison Square Garden.

Unlike many heavies on the pro wrestling circuits, he was a soft-spoken, gentlemanly connoisseur of grand opera, especially Verdi. And he was relatively small: under 6 feet tall and a trim 260 or 270 pounds. He looked tiny beside giant rivals like Haystacks Calhoun, who topped 600 pounds.

Sammartino insisted he held his titles legitimately in two reigns, from May 17, 1963, to Jan. 17, 1971, and from Dec. 10, 1973, to April 30, 1977. He lost a few matches, including once when a foe threw salt in his eyes and pinned him while he groped about blindly.

He sometimes made $150,000 a year, headlining cards featuring the “bad guys” — Killer Kowalski, Hans Mortier, Waldo von Erich, Ivan Koloff, Gorilla Monsoon, Professor Toro Tanaka and George (the Animal) Steele. Feuds and insults fueled the publicity hype, and every wrestler had a gimmick — ethnicity or nationality, the personas of cowboys, lumberjacks or farmers, etc. — and sports reporters went along with the fun. Sammartino in the mid-1960s

“Chief Big Heart, no cigar-store Indian, used his ‘tomahawk chop’ to advantage,” The New York Times related in 1965.

Sammartino was a “good guy,” a heroic Italian vs. a villainous Manchurian or a giant from Berlin. He said he was motivated by pride, not fans who admired his headlock on the Sheik of Araby or goaded him to kick and stomp Crybaby Cannon.

In February 1961, Sammartino body-slammed Chick Garibaldi in a match in Queens. Garibaldi did not get up. The referee determined Garibaldi was dead, but a medical examiner later said he had suffered a heart attack. Sammartino was stricken with remorse for months.

Sammartino himself almost died, of a broken neck, when Stan Hansen, in a match in New York in 1976, dropped him on his head. He was hospitalized for weeks.

Sammartino did not dispute that the matches were fixed but bristled at suggestions that he had ever taken a fall.

“I would be a fool to tell you that there was no fixing,” he told The Washington Post in 1980. “You ask if wrestling is for real? Well, I think my own body answers that question. I have broken more bones than any of the others — my neck, my collarbone, both arms, wrists, knuckles, all of my ribs, my back. A hairline fracture of the kneecap. My jaw has been wired and rewired. It’s incredible to think people would fake that.”

Bruno Leopoldo Francesco Sammartino was born in central Italy, the youngest of seven children, four of whom did not survive childhood. After the father left for America in 1939, the remaining family fled invading German forces during World War II and hid in the mountains of Abruzzo for 14 months, subsisting on little food. After the war, they were reunited with the father in Pittsburgh.

Bruno, a sickly 90-pounder who spoke little English, was a target of bullies at Schenley High School and resolved to build his physique with weight lifting and wrestling. He weighed 225 at graduation in 1953, then competed in locally televised amateur matches and narrowly lost a spot on the 1956 Olympic weightlifting team.

Sammartino retired in 1981. In 2013, he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. He had declined induction several times, dissatisfied with what he called lurid story lines, over-thetop theatrics and drug and steroid abuse by professional wrestlers.

Sammartino and his wife, Carol, had three children.