Oh, and don't forget Victor the Bear. As in grizzly.
From Kauai to the Big Island, and
even to the tiny Kalaupapa peninsula on Molokai, local people ate up
these spectacles and countless more as professional wrestling rode
a wave of popularity in the 1960s and '70s. Fans embraced the sport
with a passion matched only by what the grapplers brought to the
ring night after night.
Pro wrestling already enjoyed a
following in the islands when "50th State Big Time Wrestling" debuted on
television in the early 1960s and sent its appeal into overdrive.
The interview show kept viewers enthralled from week to week, ensuring
there would be little problem packing the old Civic Auditorium,
Honolulu International Center (now Blaisdell Arena) and other venues
with fans eager to see the wrestlers they loved — and loved to hate.
The man who put pro wrestling on
the airwaves was Edmund Francis, better known as "Gentleman Ed." A
renowned wrestler himself, the Chicago native who grew up during
the Depression came to Hawaii in 1961 with his wife and four sons, a
$10,000 loan and the lofty goal of taking the sport to new heights
of popularity.
Francis recounts the adventures
of his two-decade stint as Hawaii's foremost pro wrestling promoter in
his new book, "Gentleman Ed Francis Presents 50th State Big Time
Wrestling!" (Watermark Publishing, $34.95). Many of the episodes in the
memoir, written with Hawaii native Larry Fleece, seem too
fantastic to be true — but in the supersized world of pro wrestling,
nothing is beyond the realm of possibility.
***
[11/18/23] remembering Ed Francis
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