Angelo Mosca - A CFL Legend, And Wrestling's King Kong - Grappling With Canada

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Alcohol going.

(00:26):
No fundings all of us want to
play.
As a matter of fact, he's almost out on his feet there,
walking around on a bit of a fly.
And the DC Life trainer Roy Cavill is coming across now.
It also appears that number nine, Joe Zuger,
risked his knee here on the sideline
because he immediately came right off,

(00:46):
and they're giving him some attention on the sideline.
The way he's shaking his head,
it looks like he's in a fair amount of pain right now.
Let's hope he can shake it off.
Gain on the play, amounted to about five and a half yards
to the midfield stripe.
Blonding is being assisted off the field.
He's still all wobbly like a bear.
Roy, he really got wobbly.

(01:24):
November 30th, 1963.
In Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
In front of 36,545 fans,
an incident occurs which changes the course
of a league's history.

(01:47):
It's an event which ignites a decades-long rivalry.
And it's an event that cements the lore of a legend.
But can one event, one moment in time,
truly be this life-altering?

(02:12):
Join us this month on Grappler with Canada
as we take a deep dive look into the life and career
of King Kong, Angela Mosca.

(02:43):
Hello everyone and welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.
To Grappling with Canada.
As with each and every month, I'm your host, The Taxman.
And I'm really, really looking forward to presenting
this month's episode to each and every one of you

(03:05):
as not only are we kicking off the start of summer,
but we're also kicking off the start of the CFL season,
which I'm really looking forward to.
I know a lot of my fellow Canadians are as well.
And I think that this episode is almost the perfect lead-in
that Grappling with Canada could possibly pick

(03:27):
to help us kick off the start of the CFL season.
More on that in a minute.
If this is your first time to Grappling with Canada,
welcome to the program.
You can go in the back catalog and check out some of our earlier episodes.
This season of Grappling with Canada has so far focused on,

(03:49):
as you can tell from the intro music, some unsolved mysteries
from Canadian professional wrestling history.
Mysteries such as what really happened with the communist conspiracy
in America with George Gordienko,
as well as the actual beginnings of Rowdy Roddy Piper,

(04:11):
episodes like that you can find in the archives of this program.
You can also find our excellent, in my opinion,
season one episodes of Grappling with Canada.
There are many other football-related episodes,
as we did cover Gene Kieniske, Archie at the Mongolian Stomper,

(04:33):
spent some time in the CFL as well, as well as Stu Hart.
So go back in the back catalog and check out those episodes,
as well as some incredible deep dives on other individuals
such as Rhonda Singh and the madman from the Sudan, Abdul the Butcher.
I just want to thank everybody for checking out last month's couple of episodes.

(04:56):
I know it was a bit shorter than we usually do.
That would be the episode on Sky Low Low.
No, that is not an inside joke, if you will, either.
But it was just an episode that I felt needed to be done,
to shed some light on one of the forgotten little people,

(05:19):
wrestlers from professional wrestling history.
I know there wasn't a ton of meat on the bone,
but I thought we uncovered some really interesting information
and I hope that everybody was able to enjoy that one.
I also want to make mention of the special episode that we released last month
with Mike Rogers with his two volumes of Excitement in the Air,

(05:43):
volumes one and two of that, that are available now,
as well as his new release, Katie, Bar the Door,
which should be coming out in the next couple of weeks.
So as I hear more information on that,
naturally I will keep everybody appraised on this program.
So I want to thank everybody for checking out those episodes.
And once again, if this is your first time to the program,

(06:05):
once again, I invite you to go and check out the previous episodes.
That's the one, not the only good thing about this program, I will say,
but one of the great things about this program is the content never grows old.
Because these shows are done with the historical lens
and thoroughly researched or as thoroughly as I possibly can in each and every episode,

(06:30):
which is probably why many of them end up in the two to four hour range.
But anyways, the information never gets old, never goes out of date,
which is tremendous if you're new to the program and want to go into the back catalog
and check out some programs, specifically ones like the Dawn Eagle episode

(06:56):
where there's so much ground to cover, so much new information
that was uncovered in the process of that program specifically.
Billiardy Rivers was another one, but just it's great stuff.
A lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of research,
and a lot of tremendous guests, which you can hear on all of those programs.

(07:21):
Tonight's episode is no different. I'm going to get into that in a little bit.
If you are listening to this program, obviously you can go and check out those back catalogs
on any podcasting platform like the one that you are currently listening to myself speak to you right now
so that it can be Good Pods, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Podcasts, Apple Podcasts.

(07:46):
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very important, and a written review, I will make sure that you get a shout out on the next available program

(08:11):
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Obviously they're not instantaneous, I kind of get notified sometimes it's weeks, sometimes it's months after the fact.
But if you leave a five star rating and written review,
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It's the least I can do for all of you for taking the time to leave a little rating and review of this program.

(08:38):
You can also find the show on YouTube, youtube.com slash c slash six sided podcast,
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We are scratching, clawing, and pulling our way to a thousand subscribers on there,
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Usually these episodes wind up on YouTube a couple of weeks after they drop on the main podcast feed.

(09:02):
So if you go on immediately and it's not on there, don't panic.
It's going up.
It just takes a little bit extra time to get these programs on YouTube.
I'll also invite you to come and check out our Instagram page,
Instagram.com slash Grappler with Canada. Usually I'm posting up some pictures related to the month's episode as long as some,

(09:28):
or as well as some fun projects that I'm kind of in the in cahoots with, if you will.
Obviously, people would have seen the classic We Save Balls T-shirt from good friends of the show Manscaped
and the Testicular Cancer Society media blitz that was happening in April, for example.

(09:52):
So once again, Facebook, or sorry, Instagram.com slash Grappler with Canada.
I'm ahead of myself in talking about our Facebook page.
You can go on Facebook, use that wonderful page function,
come on in and like the Grappler with Canada Facebook page.
You can also come in and join the Canadian Professional Wrestling History Facebook group.

(10:16):
There's been a ton of fun discussion on there on a multitude of topics.
A lot of great information, a lot of really fun historical information has been shared on there lately,
and I'm really enjoying seeing what everybody's posting up there.
Keep posting and keep the conversations going. It's been a lot of fun for myself
and the other historians to be going through all of this really neat stuff.

(10:41):
And it truly is a lot of fun.
I also want to make mention that there are several ways that you can support this program,
because like I said, it is very much historically researched in depth as much as I possibly can on each and every episode.
Unfortunately, that takes quite a bit of time and resources.

(11:03):
So if you are able to help support the program, you can look at the Linktree link
in the show notes of today's program and find various ways to donate to the podcast.
There is direct link functions for PayPal.
There's also the tip jar function on Goodpods, as well as you can go on to buymeacoffee.com slash grappling.

(11:32):
And anything that gets donated to the show obviously goes directly back into the production, the research,
everything related to the general costs associated with the show.
Plus, you will get a shout out on an upcoming episode.
Listen to me talk. We're going to kick this one off fun today, folks.

(11:56):
Also, you can find the official merchandise store grapplingwithcanada.threadlist.com.
Probably there's a sale going on right now.
There seems to always be some sort of fun sale going on on the site.
So once again, grapplingwithcanada.threadlist.com.
Also, you can check the show note Linktree link for that one as well.

(12:20):
And a friendly reminder that all of the proceeds of the classic Grappling with Canada logo t-shirt,
that's the one with the Canadian flag, which is also the album artwork that you mostly see related to this program.
All those proceeds are being donated directly to charity.

(12:41):
And at the end of the year, hopefully we have a nice check to present to the Children's Hospital here in friendly Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Now that I'm all through with the housekeeping agenda for today, let's start getting into tonight's program.

(13:02):
We are going to be covering King Kong Angelo Mosca.
Now, this is somebody who CFL fans are very familiar with, especially my age a little bit older.
Fans in Hamilton specifically would...
He is a god essentially there, which is something that I'm going to be discussing a little bit more in depth with one of my guests in this program today.

(13:33):
But it's a fascinating story because of how he grew up, the way that he grew up, the way that he found his way through professional sports,
and then into and around professional wrestling.
It's one of the more intriguing stories that I think I've covered because there are so many different trajectories

(13:56):
and so many different aspects and so many different little things that happened in his career and life that shape the things that happened later on in his life.
You almost can't have one without the other. It's a fascinating story.
And more than that, it's almost a story of how a man shapes his community and how a community shapes a man and the very special relationship between the two.

(14:25):
And that's something that we really are going to explore in today's episode.
So to get into that, I have two tremendous guests that are going to speak about two very different portions of the Angelo Mosca story.
AC from MapleLeafWrestling.com is on the program.

(14:48):
We're going to be going in depth on Angelo's time with Maple Leaf Wrestling, his time in the Toronto and surrounding territories.
Our conversation is mostly confined today to Ontario because, and as you're going to hear later in the program,

(15:10):
Angelo's relationship with Ontario, with Hamilton specifically, and with the surrounding areas is something special.
And truthfully, it's not something that I've really come across with any episode in this program to date.
So my conversation with AC is focusing mainly on the Ontario aspect of Angelo Mosca's wrestling career,

(15:41):
although we naturally do expand on to some of the other territories that he had competed in as well.
I'm also thrilled to be joined on the program today by Steve Milton.
He is a sports writer from the Hamilton Spectator.
He was also the author of the Tell Me to My Face biography of Angelo Mosca,

(16:07):
although he'll tell you that the book was really all Angelo.
It's really an eye-opening conversation.
We talk about a lot of the state of the CFL currently.
A lot of CFL fans will know that we narrowly avoided a big-time labor strike that could have delayed

(16:29):
or potentially canceled the CFL season, which in my opinion would have been an absolute travesty.
And as much as the CFL is kind of the cockroach of professional sports leagues,
not in a derogatory term, but in the fact that this league seems to survive every single pitfall

(16:51):
and downtrodding and whatever negative forces trying to pull this thing into obscurity.
Somehow, like a phoenix, it seems to continually rise from the ashes.
And I'm looking forward to a season of some great CFL football.
So we talk about what happened with the strike.

(17:16):
We talk about obviously Angelo's CFL career, what he means to Hamilton, but also what Hamilton means to him.
And we talk about a lot of interesting personal stories relating Angelo Mosca,
many of which you may not have heard before if you don't have the book.

(17:41):
By the way, there will be a link to that book in today's show notes.
So you definitely want to check that out.
To say that it was a passion project, I'm sure you'll be able to hear in Steve's voice that that is probably an understatement.

(18:03):
So definitely want to get that book, give it a check out.
It's in the show notes or the link to that book, I should say, is in the show notes of today's program.
Now, before we get into the meat of the matter, how about we kick this thing off with a little bit of classic Angelo Mosca audio?

(18:31):
So I'm going to play some classic Angelo Mosca audio.
And on the other side, let's start to get to the meat of the matter of King Kong, Angelo Mosca.
Please enjoy.

(19:14):
It's missing is the belt around my waist.
And then the people will say King Kong Mosca does not demand respect.
He commends me because he's very deserving of having that belt around his waist.
So beware.
It's like the eyes of March.
I'll be on your trail in every corner.

(19:36):
And King Kong Mosca will walk in and talk one more time.
Mosca faces backland Madison Square Garden.
The second oldest boy in a family of four boys and seven girls.
Angelo Mosca was born on February 13th, 1937 in Walton, Massachusetts to Agnes and Angelo Mosca.

(19:59):
Though his family and personal life growing up was very difficult, something that we're going to get into a little bit later on in the program with one of my guests.
Mosca ended up becoming a prodigy football star and standing at six foot five and two hundred sixty five pounds.
He was heavily sought after by colleges.

(20:20):
He ended up attending the University of Notre Dame on a scholarship, though he was kicked out for bookmaking, which is the term for making bets on sports games.
Something that he would have learned from his father.
Again, more on that a little bit later in the program.
Next up, he went to Wyoming, but he was booted out of that college for theft.

(20:42):
Now, it was said that he was stealing typewriters at the time, which again is something that we're going to discuss later on in the program.
Though his reputation of any of that didn't scare off any of the proscouts, as he was selected by the Philadelphia Eagles and the Hamilton Tiger Cats.
And ended up going to Hamilton in 1958 once he graduated from Notre Dame with a degree in business administration.

(21:11):
Now, a lot of people would be wondering why he would choose the CFL over the NFL.
Now, you have to keep in mind that at the time, players were actually making more in the CFL than they ever could in the NFL.
This was before the big national expansion of the NFL and to be quite frank, a lot of the best players and a lot of the best money was being made and played in the CFL.

(21:40):
Angela Mosca would be quoted as saying, quote, When I came here, the money was better. It was a different time.
Also, the bonus money was a lot better. The only thing I knew about Canada was that the Maple Leafs and the Canadians came to the Boston Garden to play hockey.
That's all I knew about Canada.
Mosca would go on to become a massive star in the CFL, something that we're going to get into later on in the program as well today.

(22:08):
And it's most notable that during the 60s, it would be said that Mosca was the second most recognizable man in Canada, one right behind Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
Now, another thing that we're obviously going to be touching on in this program is his wrestling career.

(22:30):
Now, it is interesting to note that Mosca's professional wrestling career actually got started in 1959.
It was Montreal wrestling promoter Eddie Quinn who had originally suggested that Mosca consider the E squared circle.
There's a quote that Mosca said from slam wrestling.net, a good friend of the show.

(22:52):
Greg Oliver is the author of this one.
Quote, he was from Boston, but he was a taxi cab driver. Mosca recalled of Quinn.
I was a high school All-American. I was in St. Louis' Sporty News and got a scholarship to Notre Dame. He knew my whole background.
So I came up to Canada in 1958 and he calls me up in 1959.

(23:14):
He says, why don't you try professional wrestling? You're making a name for yourself in football.
Now, two of the early names who helped him learn the trade were Duncan McTavish and Gino Brito.
Gino Brito would talk about the conditioning that Mosca would bring from the gridiron to the ring.
Quote, when he came out of football, he came to Montreal. We went out to Granby.

(23:38):
We were supposed to do a five or six minute match. We went about 30 minutes.
He was hard to work with. He was a big bastard, said Brito.
You came out of the ring, you were drained out completely.
He could tell the guy that had been in sports before. He knew timing and played to the crowd too.
Now, the Montreal and Toronto areas were not the only areas in Canada that Angelo Mosca was a featured performer.

(24:06):
He was also heavily featured here in Winnipeg and as well as in Stampede Wrestling.
His time in Stampede Wrestling is interesting because he has, shall we say, unique perspectives
about how he was presented there and what ended up happening there.
To speak a little bit more about that, I'm going to read an excerpt from Pain and Passion,

(24:32):
the tremendous book by a friend of the show, Heath McCoy.
Now, some of these comments may seem out of place. However, as we get into the Angelo Mosca story,
I think you'll understand his headspace and where he was coming at in terms of some of these observations

(24:54):
that he had in Stampede Wrestling. So I'm going to quote directly from the book.
Another football player's studio was Angelo Mosca of the Hamilton Tigercats.
Mosca, a Canadian football hall-of-famer, was thought to be one of the fiercest players in the CFL.
Now, Mosca would be quoted in the book as saying,
Some guys like to keep their thumb on ya, he says, referring to Dave Ruhl.

(25:17):
Mosca feels Ruhl, who was the head booker at the time, never liked him and tried to keep him out of the main event matches.
Despite his problems with Ruhl, Mosca says that he enjoyed his time in Calgary.
He made $500 a week and the notoriety that Stu Starr's had in the territory came with fringe benefits.
Quote, I went through divorce at that time and there were a lot of broads, he chuggles.

(25:42):
Mosca used to get a kick out of the Hart family, who he found strange.
Quote, they were the original Osborns, he says, comparing the Hart's to the accrued MTB family of rocker Ozzy Osborn.
Helen would say, Hello Angelo, how are you today?
Then in the next breath it would be, Where is Stu that son of a bitch?

(26:05):
He remembers seeing the Hart boys hanging around the dressing room after the matches.
If Stu gave us the Ozzy pay, I'd kick him in the ass.
They'd go, What's that for?
I'd say, Ah, I'm getting even with your dad.
The former football star recalls having struggled with Stu to get paid.
Mosca worked the main event one night with the Pavilion and it didn't feel like he got his rightful share of the gate.

(26:29):
The following week, he was again at the top of the card and he held up the show, refusing to go into the ring until Stu pointed up.
Quote, I want my money for tonight and for last week's money, growled the King Kong.
Desperate, Stu tried to write Mosca a check.
Quote, I don't want no check, I want cash.

(26:52):
Stu went to the box office to get the wrestlers money.
I took all that cash and put it in my trunks.
Then I went to the ring.
And that's something that will make a little bit more sense as you hear one of the other guests of the program today.
And one of my later on conversations.

(27:14):
Money and power and respect is something that really did seem to matter to Angelo Mosca.
Obviously from his humble beginnings, we'll say.
And again, more on that a lot later.
But it's one of those or it's some of the things I think that really shaped him into becoming the player and the person that he ended up being later on in his life and career.

(27:43):
And fortunately, towards the end, he had softened up, which is why some of the tremendous insights that Steve Milton is going to be bringing to the program are really, really eye opening and really just something that you would not expect to hear about somebody like King Kong Mosca, who was, you know, for all intents and purposes, one of the meanest people in professional wrestling.

(28:12):
And on the gridiron.
Now, I'm sure you figured out that we're going to be going a little bit wrestling heavy on the front end of the program today.
I think that the football side and the personal side is the more fascinating aspect of it.
We're going to be getting to that a little bit later on in the program.

(28:34):
However, the wrestling side is something that is extremely interesting, and that's why I'm very pleased to be joined on the program by AC from Maple Leaf Wrestling dot com.
We're going to be discussing his time, his being Angela Mosca's time in the Toronto area.

(28:56):
We're going to be talking some of his most memorable feuds, his time with the Canadian heavyweight title and much more.
But before we get into that, how about we play some more classic Angelo Mosca audio?
And then on the other side, my conversation with AC from Maple Leaf Wrestling dot com.

(29:20):
Please enjoy.
I guess now King Kong Mosca and King Kong Mosca could very well put an end to a legend in Baltimore.
Mr. Mosca, there's no doubt that indeed thus far in the World Wrestling Federation, you have pretty much done exactly as you say.
You walk, you talk, you do exactly as you please.

(29:43):
But I just wonder what will happen when you meet up with Bruno.
You know, I'm also a legend of my times, Bruno San Martino.
I'm a legend in a different sport in a different country.
But that's history.
That's what you will be.
When I pin you in Baltimore, Maryland, it's nothing but history.

(30:09):
Bruno, when I get done with you, you're going to be wandering along the Potomac,
trying to find out exactly what happened to you in the ring that night.
Because King Kong Mosca can walk and talk wherever he wants.
So Bruno, it's very advantageous to me because I've been wrestling day after day.

(30:34):
You've been wrestling on laurels.
We had football players wrestling on laurels.
They're not here today.
And when I'm done with you, you won't be there tomorrow either.
So Bruno, if you're thinking of wrestling on your laurels, get off that fat can of yours and get conditioning.
Because you're going to face a man 319 pounds who walks and talks.

(30:59):
And he is going to become a legend of two countries, not only Canada, but USA.
All right.
Really pleased to be joined on the line by a second time guest appearance, AC from Maple Leaf Wrestling.com.
AC, how are you doing?
I'm doing very well, Andy. How are you?
I'm doing pretty good.
We were talking off air a little bit about my adventures wheeling and dealing in the garage sale world today.

(31:25):
So that was a lot of fun.
But I think we're going to have a lot of fun today talking about some Angela Mosca.
I'm doing very well.
So if anybody is unfamiliar with yourself, and by the way, if you are, you can go back in the archives and listen to AC's guest appearance on the Gene Kieniske episode from season one of Grand Prix with Canada.
But if people seem to have missed that one, can you give everybody a little bit of background about yourself and as well what you're doing with Maple Leaf Wrestling.com?

(31:54):
Sure. Well, we run Maple Leaf Wrestling.com.
We're actually into our 19th year.
You know, I'm just a fan and we have some other people that contribute to the site.
When you look at the whole history of mostly Toronto and around Ontario, of course, including Mosca and some of the regulars that were here right from the early days up till the end.
And in the 1980s.

(32:18):
And naturally, you would have a lot of personal experience witnessing, you know, a lot of these cards.
First, can you talk a little bit about that?
Sure.
Like in the last years of the promotion, Mosca was the big star here.
You know, he held the Canadian title.
He would be feuding with the big heels of the day, you know.

(32:39):
So he was our main star and those last few years kind of passed through Bravo, Dewey Robertson.
By about 1980, Dewey left.
And Angelo Mosca, who had been, you know, he'd been a bad guy all those years since he had come here in the late 60s.
So they turned him into the local star.

(33:02):
And he carried the title and defended it somewhat regularly for the first couple of years.
And then the last couple of years, it kind of died off.
We can get into that a little later, but it was a big part of the scene here for the last four years of the NWA days, you know, the Toronto promotion as it was before they switched to WWF.

(33:27):
So there's an interesting point that you just brought up and I want to kind of key in on it a little bit.
And that was how he was presented to the fans.
You were saying that originally he was the heel in the territory and then turned face.
When he was a heel, was that directly a result of, you know, him being a member of the Hamilton Tiger Cats and wrestling in Toronto?

(33:50):
Or what was the dichotomy there separating or including football with the professional wrestling aspect?
Yeah, that's exactly right. He was playing football in Hamilton.
You know, he was he was known as a tough guy already on the field, kind of kind of a heel persona, you know, and he was wrestling at the same time.

(34:11):
But at that time, he was he was more of a heel as a football player as far as everybody knew him.
So, of course, when he when he turned to wrestling, especially as a bit of a rivalry, you know, Toronto Hamilton in the football world.
So naturally that that translated into the ring.
So, you know, for those first few years, he was a heel because he was a heel pretty much everywhere he wrestled.

(34:37):
Most of the time, with the exception of Toronto and a little bit in Winnipeg, but but most of that time he was always a bad guy.
You know, fit him perfectly on and off the field and in and out of the ring.
But all right. Now, did his did his turn, you know, babyface, did that occur after his playing career then?

(34:59):
Yeah, that was a lot later.
When he when he first came into Toronto, he was still playing and then he gave up the game, went into pro wrestling full time.
By the time it was like the mid-Atlantic era, you know, from the 1978 on when they created the Canadian title, he had just quit.
Like he was still a bad guy at that time.

(35:22):
Once the mid-Atlantic started coming in, you know, Flair steamboat and those guys, they switched them.
So he was not a good guy.
And I've said to Canada stage a couple of years down the road to fit him right in there as the number one guy.
Now, it's interesting almost, you know, you figure this guy, a big football star, a lot of notoriety in Canada, goes down to the States.

(35:48):
You just had mentioned his time in mid-Atlantic.
He was a big deal in the States as well.
Do you think that his background in the CFL helped his career in the in the States?
Because I understand that he had his choice between the NFL and CFL when he was getting into wrestling or sorry into football as well.

(36:10):
Yeah, yeah, I think he had a reputation even at that time.
I mean, at that time in the 70s, especially the wrestlers who had legit backgrounds, you know, I think we touched on that in the Kinningski episode.
The fans, it was a different way of looking at them because you knew they were a legit athlete.

(36:31):
You knew they were tough already.
So it definitely helped with their with their ring persona.
The thing with Mark is, I mean, you just have to look at him.
You know, he he he he he he he sweated violence kind of even as a football player.
He just looked mean and nasty and definitely just took that whole character and which was basically himself, you know, mostly and turned it into a wrestler.

(37:00):
Yeah, and it worked. It worked really well.
And he was a much better as a hero for sure than he was as a good guy.
I think, you know, now in terms of some of the most notable feuds that he would have had, can you speak a little bit about some of the biggest ones that he would have had in the Maple Leaf wrestling area?

(37:21):
Yeah, he started out with those when the Hossein the Arab, the Iron Sheep was the champion.
Yes. So that's how they started pushing him.
He won the title off to him and then most of the most of the future with the big guys like stud and slaughter, you know, because they would just go out and blow it out.
Like there wasn't a lot of wrestling moves in those bouts, obviously.

(37:44):
You know, Mosca wasn't a big wrestling kind of guy.
Mostly just stomping and but that was that was the matchups were good, at least with the bigger guys.
You know, there were some punkers in there, too.
But, you know, they matched them against Mr. Fuji, which probably wasn't a great pairing.

(38:06):
So there were some mistakes.
At one point, John said they had an angle with bringing in a mystery opponent for him.
Like during their feud, he was going to bring in a mystery opponent to face Mosca.
So there was a big we all thought, oh, could it be Andre the Giant or, you know, you think of all these big names.

(38:29):
And it turned out to be Tarzan Tyler.
So Tarzan Tyler was a big star in Deva.
This was way later and he was a bit long in the tooth.
And it was one of the big punkers of the era.
You know, because we were expecting this great thing and basically, Mosca came out and mostly destroyed them.

(38:51):
I think some of that stuff was on YouTube and just kind of killed it.
And from that on, I didn't really buy into the whole Mosca thing, you know.
Yeah, it almost taints the stigma around him a little bit, right.
Or the aura, I should say, around him, because, you know, you look at this guy

(39:14):
and there's such a build that you think you're going to get, you know, a huge match or a big opponent.
And you're kind of left, you know, holding your hat in your hands almost.
Yeah, I think it was tough to find good opponents for him because, you know, there wasn't a lot of matrest.
And so you couldn't put certain people in there.
I mean, at the same time, at that time, he was also appearing in WWF in New York as a heel and challenging back.

(39:43):
And they were having big, big violent balls, you know, but not a ton of wrestling in them either.
But that was another aspect of his title reign here.
While he was a good guy in Toronto, he was a bad guy in the WWF.
Which that's interesting too, because Toronto would have had the WWF television at the same time, right?

(40:07):
Sure. I used to watch WWF at midnight on Saturday night.
We used to get it on WUTV out of Buffalo.
And it was the show that Vince hosted with Pat Patterson.
And then that's right around the time that they had that incident where Moss got attacked, Patterson was the water pitcher.
Have you seen that?

(40:29):
Look it up. It's one of the best. It looks like he really kills them with it.
You know, like he hits them hard.
And I was showing on TV here, so we're all scratching our heads.
By that time we kind of knew what was going on.
But at the same time, it was strange because he's such a good guy here.

(40:54):
And meanwhile he's pulling this stuff on our TV somewhere else.
It's also interesting in terms of his tenure and relationship with Maple Leaf Wrestling.
Because Maple Leaf Wrestling was very much waiting in the 80s as a lot of the other territories where you go on the list, whether it's Stampede, AWA, whatever.

(41:18):
How was it perceived his star quality in Maple Leaf Wrestling at the time, even though the territory was kind of on its way out?
That's a good question. Keep in mind that towards the end he actually took the title and he split to Florida for a few months.

(41:40):
Oh, that's right too.
Yeah, he stayed there and he wrestled as a bad guy, like a big deal.
And he would team up with like stars and Leroy Brown and people that he was feuding with here.
So it needed even stranger. At that time though we didn't get Florida TV, but we would read it in the magazine.

(42:01):
But maybe a few months later, you know, it wasn't in real time, right?
Part of the reason, years later I read that he had been upset at the payoff.
And that's why he left and went to Florida to wrestle.
Okay, that leads me to my next question. I'll let you continue though.

(42:23):
Yeah, because in a sense, I don't know the inside. I wasn't there.
You'd have to speak to someone that was on the inside of the office.
But a lot of it had to do with the payouts were based on percentages.
So the guy at the top obviously is going to make good money when it's busy, but he's not going to make great money when it's not.

(42:45):
So I believe it all was the impetus for him to split. Saying that he took the title belt and he defended it down there as well.
The Canadian title defended in Florida.
Now the houses in Maple Leaf Wrestling is something that, you know, people have gone back and forth about.

(43:07):
Obviously that's a big part of Vance Nevada's book that will be coming out shortly.
In terms of the entirety, and we can go decade by decade if it's easy for you,
but in terms of the houses that were being drawn, not maybe necessarily because of Angela Mosca, but at the time that he was there,
can you speak a little bit about what the houses were like?

(43:29):
And let's go with the late 60s into the 70s and then obviously the tail end into the 80s.
Well, there was like, if I go to the territories, there was a lot of valleys and high points and low points.
Like the 50s was a boom here. So coming out of the 50s, there was a bit of a letdown in the 60s.

(43:50):
Business picked up, you know, mid-60s. They were still doing well.
A lot of the misunderstanding is, like, they may see attendance results from 1965 at Maple Leaf Gardens, you know, 5,000.
Keep in mind, though, it was weekly cards. Yes. Right?
And they weren't only appearing in Maple Leaf Gardens. They were doing a little circuit at the time with three or four other cities as regular stops.

(44:17):
So as a whole, they were doing still pretty well, but not as good as in the good times.
Of course, the Sheik era, you know, they did really well there for four or five years.
And then when the Sheik-Left track teamed up with Verngania and the AWA, the cards were better, but the attendance didn't help.

(44:40):
It didn't come back. So by the time 1978 rolled around, they made the connection with Jim Crocker Jr., Rick Flair, Ricky Steamboat, you know, Jay Youngblood.
And then the
And it started going back up again where you see 11,000, 15,000, those types of houses.

(45:03):
And did those types of houses continue into the 80s or was there a lull before the shutdown?
No, it continued. There were some good cards in there. You know, they hit 15,000, 16,000.
I'd say most of the cards are 10 or 11, but that's still a pretty good house. By that time, though, they were down to one every couple of weeks, sometimes one every three weeks.

(45:28):
So it was a little different.
Saying that, though, they did go back to the circuit that they had discontinued mostly in the 70s.
So by the time Moscow was Canadian champ, they had four or five cities to hit after the Make Police Garden show.
So they would hit two or three each time. So that's kind of a mini circuit, but it was only every couple of weeks.

(45:52):
So the houses were still good. It didn't start to die off until mid-83 in that area.
So for the last year or so, the promotion, it started to downfall.
And in terms of the houses, how the cards were during Moscow's title reign with the Canadian title, who were some of the big feuds that he had there and what kind of houses were they drawing?

(46:21):
Was it in that 10 to 15 range consistently?
Yeah, some of them. I wouldn't say Moscow was a huge draw, like on his own. A big draw here through those years was definitely the NWA title and mostly Ric Flair.
You know, Flair and Steamboat, those guys really brought the houses.

(46:43):
So even while Moscow was champ, I mean, they did well. And he was part of a couple of big cards. In 1982, they had the double world title card with Moscow face Bachwinkle for the AWA title,
and Ric Flair and Hardy Rae for the NWA title. And there was 11, 12,000, which is still pretty good, but they had to peer in Buffalo, not Bachwinkle, but Flair and the rest of the crew in the afternoon.

(47:15):
So they had 10,000 in Buffalo. They did 11,000 something here. And then the following day, they took it to Ottawa and they did 10,000 there.
So you kind of look at the whole picture, not just the gardens in those years, because there was quite a few other houses to add in.

(47:38):
Now in terms of where Moscow was working in that, in the time that he had the title, was it mostly in Toronto or was he going to Buffalo and was he going to Ottawa and the other cities? Was there cities that were left out? And was there cities that he frequented more?
No, he would appear on most of those. What they ran is like on the Sunday night, Maple Leaf Gardens card would have all the mid-Atlantic stars there, you know.

(48:09):
And then on Monday, they would go into Hamilton or on Tuesday, they'd hit Oshawa, so they'd have a little mini circuit after the garden show.
The thing was that some of the mid-Atlantic stars, like especially Flair or some of the bigger ones, they wouldn't always stay on for those circuit cards.

(48:32):
But Moscow would. Like Moscow would appear on all of them.
So he would defend the title versus the Iron Sheik here, then in Kingston, and you know, so he would move around, he would do three or four of them, and then it would be a break until the next garden show a couple weeks later.
Which is interesting too, because a lot of times you'll either hear of guys who, you know, maybe they'll make a few shots, and then you'll hear about guys that they make sure they make every shot. I wonder if going to all of these cities was important to him rather than just kind of having to do it, as some people would look at it.

(49:13):
Yeah, I think it was probably beneficial because the local guys, they were all local, you know, Angelo probably was in Hamilton at the time.
You know, those guys were living here, so to go do a few shots and get paid after the big show probably helped.
He was very busy, Moscow. He was flying back and forth to New York a lot during those first couple of years with the title, 81, 80, 81, 82.

(49:41):
So he would appear here and then be gone for four or five days and do the WWF circuit.
You know, he'd appear at the Hamburg taping, he'd appear at MSG, then he'd be in Philadelphia, you know, do all that circuit as well.
And by the time he had done a bit of a circuit there, he would come back here. So he was doing very well, I'm sure, as far as paydays all around, you know.

(50:08):
And then in terms of paydays while he was a champion, would you know what he was looking at?
I know as a percentage of the gate, and obviously we can extrapolate what the gates were, but would you have a rough idea of what he was averaging per show?
Well, I don't know about that. I do have some info from previous eras. I mean, they could make a lot of money.

(50:31):
If there was 15,000 people there, the headliners could walk away with a few thousand, five thousand, that type of money.
Just like anywhere else, if you've ever seen the booking sheets from Houston or that that circulate around, you can see the top guys sometimes, you know, seven thousand dollars per night.

(50:52):
Yes.
So they could make it, and they could make it here too if it was busy. And I'm sure when times were good, Moscow did very well, and that's why you kind of homesteaded, you know.
It's always fascinating to look at the numbers side of it because, you know, people will throw around, you know, with that wrestler's day, with the guaranteed contracts and what they're making.

(51:17):
And that's a whole other conversation, I feel, for a different time. But you look at some of the numbers that guys were making back in the day, like you were saying, you know, three, five, seven thousand.
You put that in today's money, right? You're looking at, you know, ten to fifteen thousand for one match. It's a pretty wild thing.

(51:38):
Sure. I mean, it's like a rock band, you know, playing ten thousand seats arenas, you're going to be making some big money. And, you know, Frank Coney was known as a pretty good payout guy because of that percentage type pay.
So the wrestlers knew if it was busy, they were going to do well here.

(52:01):
Okay, so now that you brought that up, that's something I want to dig into a little bit. It'll divert a little bit from our Moscow discussion, but it's something that I've continually come across in my research for this program is how Tony ran the payoffs.
It was noted that he was one of the more generous payoff people, one of the more fair ones, you know, between him, Muchnick was noted as one, and a few other ones. Can you speak a little bit about how Tony ran the territory in terms of payoffs and how he dealt with the crew that he had?

(52:39):
Well, I mean, I can only tell you from what I've read or that I don't know inside part of the Toronto territory is very closed. You know, the Tony family basically kept all the secrets.
So unless, you know, Eddie is the last one that would kind of be able to give you that. To be able to look at the ledgers would be fascinating to say the least. I can tell you that Frank definitely modeled his office after Muchnick and dealt with almost ran Toronto in a similar way to St. Louis.

(53:17):
At least that's the way I see it from the outside. So he definitely paid well at the top. I don't know about at the bottom. There was a lot of our local wrestlers left and went other places to kind of hit it big.
Because it was tough to crack that top spot here, to get into the main, the semi, especially in the 50s and 60s. So I think by the 70s and 80s, the office had changed.

(53:50):
And it probably wasn't as friendly as it used to be in the older days. Some of that may have had to do with Jack Honey being part of it too and having more of a role. You know, Frank, by the time that I was a fan, Frank was almost on the way out.
He was a granddad and Jack was doing a lot of the day to day running of the territory, as far as I know. So it definitely changed my mom's time. But saying that, they definitely got paid well right to the end as long as there was people in the seat.

(54:29):
So naturally after Maple Leaf Wrestling folds in mid 80s, Moscow was still performing, I believe, still doing shows with the WWF. Was he still coming through the territory with the WWF or had he kind of started to curtail his appearances after that point in time?

(54:51):
No, he stayed there. I remember he took over the announcing for a while and it was terrible. It didn't last long. I believe he got replaced by Jesse Ventura.
Well, there's a big power up.
Yeah, it was right around that time in mid 84, just after they switched here. They kept Moscow on as a commentator and it didn't last long. I do recall that. Moscow was still wrestling for WWF and that.

(55:27):
And then you would also appear on McKinney's Cards in and around Ontario, Wildman. It was an Indy pad, I'm sure you're familiar with it. So Moscow and it still appeared up until about 1986 on the Little Circuit.
I wonder how he was able to swing that, you know, appear on the Independent Circuit while still...

(55:54):
Yeah, I'm not sure of the timeline there, but nobody would have noticed because they were doing shows like the Little Places here with very little promotions and no TV.
So in those days you could just do it and it didn't last long. You know, of course he went on to go back to the NWA and then he created the Pro Wrestling USA. So that was in around that time too, around 1985.

(56:25):
So let's talk about how much or how familiar are you with Pro Wrestling USA?
I'm pretty familiar. I watched it. I liked it. It was old-paste though and stuff. There were some issues, but at the time I loved it because I hated WWF.
So for me it was incredible to get to see other wrestling and they would have tapes from all over different territories. So it was really cool for us as fans.

(56:54):
Yeah, it's almost like you're getting a different taste of what's out there rather than what's just beamed into your market from the WWF at that time.
Yeah, for me the WWF was very kid-oriented. It was just a whole different thing. I just didn't like it at all.
When Pro Wrestling Canada came on it was definitely cool. Plus we thought maybe the NWA was going to come back in. And it did, but not exactly what we wanted.

(57:25):
And then Mosca ended up bringing it back and promoting Hamilton and Kitchener with Mosca-manias we could talk about after. But Pro Wrestling Canada also had Milta Ruskin commentating.
He used to do superstars of wrestling with George Cannon, who was one of the best commentators ever. So he really made that show.

(57:51):
And then Angelo would just sit and comment. It was actually pretty good.
So obviously we're going to get into Mosca-mania in a second, but let's talk about him running the cards with the NWA. How did that come to be?
I don't know. He just made a deal to bring the NWA in. He had a lot of Claus and Hamilton, keep in mind.

(58:15):
He was able to make things happen and maybe other people wouldn't. So that's probably how it ended up coming to be.
He teamed up with an old teammate and then they got to Anstall Brewery to sponsor it. So it really helped.
And the first one did very well in Hamilton. And he was set up to run TV. There was planning shows all over the place. There were even rumours to be planning shows in Toronto at maybe Varsity Stadium or one of the outside places.

(58:51):
But it never came to be. One of the big problems with that was you couldn't get TV in Toronto.
Yes.
You wanted to get TV on CFDO, which is the main channel in Toronto. You couldn't. So it kind of killed him.
They did show it on the affiliates in the smaller towns. Like in Kitchener you could see it. But in Toronto you had to get it on the – like for a time you could get it, but he couldn't get his TV show on.

(59:22):
And it killed it against the WWF.
So one thing that was an excellent debut and then maybe not so much a follow-up effort was Moskamania. So I feel like we should dedicate some time and really get into how that happened.

(59:44):
Well, you know, the first one they did 12,000 fans, which was pretty good at the time. A lot of it was – in Toronto the Tunneys had exclusive rights to Maple Leaf Gardens as far as wrestling then.
And that went back to – it might have even gone back to the first day. That was in 1931 when Jack Corcoran got the first license to promote there. So nobody could promote at the gardens except WWF at that time because Jack Tunney was in charge.

(01:00:21):
So anywhere else you're going to put on a show, even Hamilton, Kitchener, London, all the small towns around Toronto, you're never going to really get a foothold without having Toronto.
And then how did it come to be that – like how did he shape the card? How did he pick where the event was going to emanate? And how did promotion work? And what was the buzz around Moskamania at the time?

(01:00:52):
Oh, it was huge at the time. And the first one, it was really big. They had a lot of publicity stories in the paper, on TV. I remember it was a huge thing. And really Hamilton, like the whole town kind of rallied around it.
So it made it a really big event, even beyond wrestling. So it was big. Keep in mind at that time WWF was doing very well in Toronto. And they were promoting Hamilton as well.

(01:01:24):
So this was a head-on kind of clash. He did very well on the first one. And then on the second one, they had a ton of no-shows. There was a lot of bad blood on the second one that he did. And that kind of killed it, the final nail in the coffin.

(01:01:50):
Let's expand a little bit further on the second one. When you're talking about no-shows, was there talent confirmed that had dropped out previous to the show? Or did it happen day of? Or what ended up happening there?
Yeah, there was a couple of issues. One of them is that he ran it on the same night as the show at MLG, a WWF card that was Roddy Piper versus Adrian Adonis in a retirement bout.

(01:02:21):
Oh goodness. And it had a savage steamboat matchup. So right away it was killed. It's going to be tough to go up against that. They had Flair versus Makita and they drew $3,000 to the Mosca show. WWF drew $17,000 to the Garden.

(01:02:46):
So there was a lot of NWA fans still here, but because it was just the old school, it couldn't compete. The WWF was like a steamroller and it was picking up families and grandparents and little kids.
It was a different type of wrestling and entertainment and it was just the wrong time. The writing was on the wall. I think that's what mostly killed it. You couldn't compete at all against the WWF.

(01:03:19):
Yeah, going head to head, that decision alone was brutal. Then you factor in the no-shows and then this is right in the time of the rock and wrestling connection.
Hulkamania is at his peak, Roddy Piper is the most hated villain in wrestling, etc. The WWF was firing all the cylinders. Even if it wasn't the same night, you're still up against it at that point in time.

(01:03:53):
Right. There was also a show where he was supposed to have the Road Warriors and one of them didn't show. I think Hawk never showed. The fans were deciding themselves. The Road Warriors were the anti-WWF kind of.
That was a huge draw for him and that just left a lot of bad blood. I've also heard over the years about the payouts from that and a lot of bad blood with the wrestlers. Maybe he had a bit of an issue to get them to come up again in the future.

(01:04:32):
Sorry, I just want to clarify. You're talking about payoffs from the first Moscow Media.
No, from the second show and the third. They also did some TV taping and in and around Toronto and they appeared in Peterborough. They had some other shows planned. It was supposed to be a real big thing at the time.
It looked good on paper but then it never panned out. That may have had something to do with it. The wrestlers just didn't want to come up with one show here or two shows here all the way from the south or whatever.

(01:05:07):
Well, especially if they're busy on the NWA loop at that time. That's been a big, big time consumer. You're looking at 87, 88, 89 and NWA was still drawing quite well. You're asking guys to almost give up guaranteed money to come up here for a maybe.

(01:05:29):
Yeah, up here they tried. The NWA came in. They came back later too around 1989, 1990. The AWA also came in in their dying days to try to run a show down on the exhibition grounds I believe. They did like a couple of hundred people.
They just couldn't draw because the WWF became the only wrestling in town in that sense.

(01:05:59):
Now in terms of Angela Mosca's wrestling career and what people thought of it, let's expand upon that a little bit. What did the fans think of his career at the time and how did they view him and his wrestling career after the fact? Further to that, did Mosca Media taint his wrestling legacy in the Ontario area?

(01:06:28):
I'll touch on that first. I don't think so. His post-wrestling career, I don't really consider it all the same. I think he's remembered broadly, but not as one of our greats in the big picture.
I say that, I mean the fans loved him at the time, but I don't know that he was one of our all-time greats because of the style that he wrestled. There was quite a few factors. Because he was just that same tough guy from football.

(01:07:04):
So I don't know about that. His legacy as a wrestler and as a football player is unequal. So you can't really paint anything about his career. I'd say in Toronto we saw his last years. So you can't really grade him on that.
I think if I would have seen him in 1971 or 72, you'd see a totally different guy.

(01:07:34):
It's almost a shame at that point where you almost catch him at the wrong time. When he's most on top is towards the end of both his career in the ring and then the dying days of Maple Leaf Wrestling. So you're almost getting the double whammy at that point in time.

(01:07:56):
Most of his persona was his personality. So he was bigger than life without even getting into the ring, standing on the ramp. He was just a bigger than life type of guy.
And he exuded that even in those years. He still exuded that he was a tough guy. He wasn't going to back down from the next guy that came in. That's why I like him. I think he came in the way they did it was good. But they held on to him too long. They should have transitioned it a little.

(01:08:37):
Now in terms of your experience watching Moscow, was there one feud or one match that really stood out to you?
Well the feud was stud for sure. They traded the title back a few times. They had some cage bouts. There was always a lot of blood. I think they liked beating on each other. They both had the same style so it worked.

(01:09:07):
They weren't going to see too many holes with those two. But those two were good matched up because they were about the same size. They could brawl and have a good bout to keep everybody going. They had some other wrestling on the cards. Some wrestling.
Yeah, not just you can't have a card full of brawls. It doesn't necessarily work.

(01:09:30):
In Toronto usually we have the opener with a good scientific type match to set the stage. So you always have a good bit of wrestling in there. So you definitely need some blood and some brawling. Why not?
Yeah, it's definitely a mix. You can almost say that for most places in Canada. The mix is really what helps the card a lot. Everybody does love a good brawl. But you need to have a little bit of extra sauce on the card that's for sure.

(01:10:04):
Yeah, I think he stayed around as long as he could because of his son. To get his son into it and wrestle with him. So that definitely had something to do with it. His son continued too on the indie circuit here after he dropped out.
I remember they tried him in the WWF as well. When they first started coming in they would use a lot of the local guys as the openers. Nick Ricardo as he said. So Mosca Jr. got some shots and then he just dropped out I guess around the same time that Mosca stopped announcing.

(01:10:45):
And they both showed up on the indie circuit.
Now was there goodwill left over from the fans for Mosca Jr. or how did that work for him when he was there?
Yeah, that's a tough one. The problem is if you're online he gets a lot of hate. He's a really nice guy in real life. He's a good athlete. He was a good athlete. They pushed him the wrong way.

(01:11:22):
And there's a bout on YouTube with Cole off. Everyone always brings that one up. He misses a drop kick or whatever. But by the time he was on the indie circuit here he had already been less than a few years. He was a lot better than he was in the earlier days in Mid-Atlantic.
Sorry, go ahead.

(01:11:56):
Yeah, they pushed Mosca Jr. too far. They made him Mid-Atlantic champion.

(01:12:20):
After a couple weeks or whatever it was, it was just too quick. We saw quite a few second generation guys here. Even in that era we had Blackjack Mulligan Jr. at that time in around 82 while Mosca was champ.
He wrestled up here a little bit before he became Barry Windham or before he became Barry Windham everywhere. He was really good. You could tell right from the start he was really good. He was going to get a lot better.

(01:13:00):
With Mosca he wasn't that good at the beginning but he could still get better and he did.
I guess as we start to wrap up, is there anything that we didn't cover in our Mosca discussion that you feel needs to be brought to light a little bit?

(01:13:23):
Not really. When we were going I wasn't a huge Mosca fan because I always preferred the wrestler type.
But saying that, some of the best bouts or the best nights were those that Mosca and Stubber were beating each other senseless. Those types of nights. Those are the ones you kind of remember.

(01:13:53):
It's almost easier to remember the big brawling wars than it is some of the technical matches in professional wrestling.
He's a good one. He definitely lost a legacy in Toronto and elsewhere. He'll always be remembered as King Kong, Mosca, mean and nasty. That guy, the football guy, the rest of the guy. He's just a big name here and probably always will be.

(01:14:25):
Before I let you go for our conversation today, what's happening with Maple Leaf Wrestling and where can people find what you have going on with that project?
We have Maple Leaf Wrestling.com. It's been there for 19 years. We cover from the early days. We have Gary Wills, Toronto Wrestling History.

(01:14:46):
We feature the photos of Roger Baker, the photographer of Maple Leaf Gardens in the 60s and 70s. We've got something there for everyone and it's free.
Visit MapleLeafWrestling.com.
Can't beat the price. Definitely free is one that everybody can afford.
There you go.
And then there's a Facebook group as well, is there not?

(01:15:09):
Well, that's my friend, Barry Hatchet, aka. He has the Facebook group that's Maple Leaf Wrestling Archive.
So that mostly focuses on the mid-Atlantic era and his collection, which is immense.
Check it out if you like that one, Keith.
Yeah. So there you go. Two sites where you can go and check out some Maple Leaf Wrestling history and the price is right on both those sites.

(01:15:37):
Let's go. Go for it.
Listen, AC, this was a tremendous conversation. I can't thank you enough and I have a feeling I'm going to have to have you back on the program very soon.
I'm enjoying that. Andy, thanks for having me.
Well, King Kong lost there. Wait a minute. You're not scheduled to be here. Wait a minute. Let me tell you one thing. Pat Patterson, you made this referee change with a stick.

(01:16:09):
But people know what they've done and they're not exactly what they want to do. But Patterson, you wouldn't interview a referee going in front of my face because I take matters into my own hands.
And I'm going to take matters into my own hands in any arena in North America.
All right, Mr. Mosca, you're talking about what a big man you are, how brave you are.

(01:16:34):
Let's take you and the fans back to what we saw. Let's take you back.
You take it because this tape is probably doctored.
All right, Pat Patterson, we're going to go back now and Pat Patterson is interviewing referee Dick Mosca.
He's not the winner.
Well, I got what he deserved. That's about right.

(01:17:13):
It's going to be a big dinner. I'm getting even with your little blue boy. The little boy blue. Well, I'm going to make him black and blue all over.
Because King Kong Mosca does exactly what he wants to do. I'm the king of the WWF. I walk, I talk, and I do exactly what I'm going to do.
Listen to these fans. Listen to them.

(01:17:34):
They're all going to bring it on. They're all up every one of you people. They're all going to get out of here now. Listen to that. They're all in his side. But I'll walk alone. I'll stand alone. I'll do exactly what I want in any arena in the USA.
In continuing our look at the career and life of Angelo Mosca, we're going to move into his CFL career.

(01:17:57):
Now, this is something that I had alluded to earlier, and there's a little bit of information on this as well that isn't as well known by maybe today's CFL fans or maybe newer fans of Angelo Mosca.
A little bit of that I'm going to get into right now.
So, as we discussed earlier on in the program, Angelo Mosca did debut for the Hamilton Tigercats during the 1958-1959 season.

(01:18:27):
He was traded to the Ottawa Roughriders on August 15th of 1960 and continued to play for the Ottawa Roughriders until 1961.
He then joined the Montreal Alouettes in 1962 for five games.
From there, he played the remainder of his career from 1962 to 1972 with the Hamilton Tigercats.

(01:18:53):
And obviously, those are the big years that everybody really talks about.
Now, I'm going to get into his or more of a deep dive into his CFL stats as we kind of discuss the whole statistical side of Angelo Mosca's career later on in this program.
Because as impressive as his wrestling career was, boy oh boy, his football career is just lights out of this world.

(01:19:24):
And I'm not saying that he was the greatest CFL player of all time.
He's certainly one of the top, I think he ended up number 37 out of the top 50 CFL players in all time when TSN had run a story on that a few years ago.
However, what he was able to accomplish in the league, some of the records that he has in the league are things that stand up to this day.

(01:19:53):
And again, that is something that we're going to get into a little bit later in tonight's program.
But to further discuss the CFL, I'm going to be bringing on my other guest for tonight, Steve Milton.
Now, Steve is a writer from the Hamilton Spectator.
Like I said, he was the one who also wrote the Angelo Mosca book.

(01:20:18):
Although he wrote it, it was obviously Angelo Mosca's words and his story.
And you're going to hear a lot about that from Steve Milton.
I don't want to diminish that part of it as all.
But kind of before we get into that, sticking with, you know, history and the legacy of the CFL.

(01:20:45):
I love the CFL.
I'm sure there are many Canadians who feel just like me.
I can't tell you how many nights I spent during my life, you know, listening to the Bombers on C.J.O.B. and Bob Irving with the call, although he is retired now.
I can't tell you how many Grey Cups I've watched throughout the years, even going back to when they used to be on CBC as well.

(01:21:09):
The history of the league and the league presentation and promotion in general is something that I wish the CFL would do a lot better of a job of.
It's almost disappointing that a league with this many stories, with this much history and with this many tales to tell just never seems to be able to put it together in terms of promoting itself and spreading the word and getting people interested.

(01:21:43):
Like for myself, I'm 36. Well, maybe by the time you hear this recording, I'll be 37.
But it's my generation, the generation that, you know, comes after me a little bit.
And then, you know, now I have two kids who are going to be growing up around the CFL.
I just wish the league would take its legacy, the legacy of its players, the legacy of the teams and the cities that these teams play in more on that a little bit later.

(01:22:15):
A little bit more serious and would devote some time, energy, resources, money, whatever into growing the history of the game, which in turn I truly believe would grow the game.
Now, I wouldn't be surprised if somebody from the CFL listened to this program.
I think a lot of people would be surprised about who and what types of individuals listen to this program.

(01:22:42):
But if I could say one thing, I would just say, don't forget about the history.
Don't forget about the things, the people, the events that make this league great.
Because the way to grow this league, to grow the fan base, is to really embrace what it is that the CFL has been over, gosh, its entire existence.

(01:23:05):
So if I could implore anything, it would be that the CFL starts taking a good hard look at how they promote the league, how they promote their players, and more importantly, how they promote their teams.
And that includes present day, but more specifically the history, the really impressive history of the league.

(01:23:33):
Alright, I'm going to jump off my soapbox and we are going to jump into my conversation right away with Steve Milton.
But before that, I'm going to play the induction audio from Angelo Mosca going into the Hamilton Sports Hall of Fame.

(01:23:54):
So I'm going to play this. It's going to get us fired up and revved up for my conversation with Steve Milton.
On the other side of this.

(01:24:30):
That was the thing that he loved to see. If we ever did that today, I think you'd wind up in jail.
Mosca garnered plenty of attention from colleges, eventually settling on the fighting Irish.
Had 60 scholarship offers and went and wind up going to the University of Notre Dame. At that time it was the school to go to.

(01:24:51):
Following Notre Dame, Mosca followed departed Philadelphia Eagles coach Jim Trimble to Hamilton. The Ticats were the defending great cup champs, but Big Ang learned quickly what it would take to make the team.
I finally figured it out that they were only going to keep 11 Americans and there was about 25 of us in camp.

(01:25:12):
So I blew offside and one of the players said to me, hey, you're offside. I said, tell my daughter that. Tell my daughter I'm offside. I was going to make that football team.
Mosca was the only American rookie to crack the lineup. But after two seasons with the Ticats, he was traded to Ottawa and eventually Montreal.

(01:25:34):
In 1962, he returned. Hamilton was a blue-collar town and Mosca was the poster boy.
I was tailor-made for this city. I knew the north end when I first got here. I knew every bootleggers in town, every crap game, every poker game.
This was a memory that reminded me of the north end of Boston. Very, very homey to me.

(01:25:58):
Teamed with John Barrow, the Ticats defensive line was a formidable force. Mosca began playing his best football.
I played very physical and very tough. The head slap was still in. The elbow, clothesline, I was the real, I took advantage of every situation that was going physically.

(01:26:19):
A lot of guys didn't like the way I played, but I was doing everything that was legal.
Ange was a CFL All-Star in 1963, but he will be forever associated with his infamous hit on BC Lions running back Willie Fleming in that year's Grey Cup.
What I did to him was, it was one of those bang-bang plays. He was coming up the sideline like this, and here I come.

(01:26:40):
I went over the top of him and cut the back of his head, and it knocked him out cold.
The Ticats won the Grey Cup, and Mosca's reputation as the meanest player grew.
48 years later, a CFL Alumni luncheon proved it was still hard for some to forget Angelo's playing style.

(01:27:03):
That viral video rekindled his international celebrity, something that began at the height of his CFL career.
Companies capitalized on his tough but endearing personality.
He was featured in countless ads, and next to Pierre Trudeau was the most recognizable person in the country.
On the gridiron, the Ticats dominated the 60s, appearing in six Grey Cups, winning three of them.

(01:27:26):
By 1972, Angelo decided it would be his final year, and he couldn't have scripted it any better.
His final CFL game would be the Grey Cup in Iverwind Stadium.
I'll never forget doing the warm-ups, and I looked down at the end of the field and over the door was,
thanks and goodbye, Ang. It kind of touched my heart a little bit. Some great memories.

(01:27:52):
The game came down to the wire. Ian Sunter kicked the game-winning field goal with no time left on the clock.
Mosca retired a champion.
I want to thank all the Canada for giving me the opportunity in this country.
I love the Hampton fans, and I sure appreciate it.
But it was a good ending to a pretty good career.
Following football, Angelo took his reputation for being the meanest football player and applied it to wrestling.

(01:28:17):
It was a natural fit.
Here is King Kong Mosca. King Kong Mosca. He is big, mean, and rough.
Angelo Mosca was a tough player, but players like Angelo Mosca are tough to come by.

(01:28:43):
My wife says to me, can they get any more dinners for you? I said no, not really.
I'm just very fortunate that these things happened.
The Hamilton Sports Hall of Fame welcomes Angelo Mosca.
I'm really happy to be joined on the line all the way from Hamilton just in time to cover the now-on CFL season.

(01:29:10):
Happy to be joined by Hamilton spectators' own Steve Milton. Steve, how are you doing?
I'm okay, Andy. How are you? Yeah, you're right to say that. Who knew?
Whether we were going to be here or not, it was a little hard covering practices.
We were just some of the writers and I and journalists were talking about that now that our hearts weren't fully into it.
Because you thought it was going to be useful to work.

(01:29:32):
Because it sure looked like Thursday that there was going to be a strike and or lockout.
And I'm glad it wasn't. I'm glad cooler heads and saner heads prevailed.
And I think that says a lot here that they managed to each give a little bit here.

(01:29:53):
And I'm not sure anybody got everything they want.
I know there were some owners that aren't overly happy about a couple of things and some players clearly aren't given what they've tweeted.
But here we are. Yeah, it was interesting, you know, as an outsider looking in and from the fan point of view, you know, we see, okay, CFL is on.
They've got the deal and then the players voted down and we're all kind of left in a state of shock.

(01:30:16):
And then, you know, we're on the edge of our seats because as you know, the Bombers and Edmonton played last night in preseason.
So we were really here in Winnipeg sitting here going, OK, you know, what's happening here?
So I'm glad that everybody figured it out.
Well, and it did take some figuring out for sure, because there's always going to be issues in this league for the number of reasons that everybody there in Manitoba certainly would know.

(01:30:41):
Just given the nature, everybody, you cannot compare this to the NHL, the NBA or a major league baseball.
And I've covered what covered a lot of strikes, slash lockouts in particular in baseball and the NHL over the years.
They're different because the union makeup is different and the league makeup is different.
Let's put aside the values that we're talking about here, you know, the billion dollars versus hundreds of those kinds of things.

(01:31:08):
But there's no players union like the Canadian Football Players Association, because by mandate of the rules, they have sort of two different designations.
There are no different designations in the other.
They don't have a separate category for European players and NHLPA, that kind of thing.

(01:31:29):
They're all the same.
This is a, it makes things a lot dicier than people understand, and we saw some of those fissures showing up a little bit during all of these talks.
And of course, given there's not many leagues where you have public ownership and private ownership, you could argue the NFL, but you could hardly say that just because Green Bay is cooperatively owned.

(01:31:50):
I mean, they make billions of dollars.
They don't have to have car washes.
Yeah.
Publicly owned places in Canada. So that really makes it a lot more complicated than even those of us that try to study it every day could understand.
One, speaking of those of us who studied every day, obviously that brings us to why you're joining me on the conversation today is your knowledge, expertise, and everything that you deal with in terms of the CFL.

(01:32:21):
And naturally a big part of our conversation today is around Angela Mosca and the CFL.
Not only that, is also your connection writing the Tell Me Tim, my Facebook with Angela Mosco as well.
Yeah, it's funny until you mentioned it because we've had to, in many ways, have a staggered sense of grief with Angelo. First one we found out that he had dementia and was going to eventually pass.

(01:32:51):
And then when he did, we were unable to really sort of mourn slash celebrate him publicly. And this is the first, he died right, he did die right before the Great Cup.
So there were, we were able to do some things there, we meaning the city.

(01:33:12):
But it hasn't been that public thing that anybody could go to. I went to his family wake, there were, you know, it was restricted to family and maybe a dozen people that knew him well in the latter parts of his life.
So there hasn't been things done publicly here, but it's a big piece missing.
Yeah, you know, you have looking, as you look at the press box here, which is very high up, down in the one corner of the field, there are two flags, only two. Actually, they're on up today so that they will be though.

(01:33:43):
And there are only two flags. And one is for Bernie Filoni, and the other is for Angela Mosca and Bernie was the best man at Angelo's wedding to Helen.
It's his widow. Yeah, so it's pretty neat. And of course, I'm looking, I look the other way and I look at the street that is that is called Bernie Filoni way in this part of like like it's a district.

(01:34:10):
This is a colloquial called stadium district, or the stadium stadium precinct. Yes. And so, so the streets have two names often, and they're saving some names for other people, eventually, but Bernie Filoni was the first one who had his name attached to as an
alternative to, to the common name of the street as well.

(01:34:31):
Now obviously, obviously the tiger cats are a massive part of Hamilton and, and you can't really talk about the Hamilton Tiger Cats, we thought we were talking about Angela Mosca but you, you have a different perspective because you've covered him in terms of the CFL
but then you have the personal connection with him as well as in the autobiography of the book.
I don't want to, I don't want to take too much credit for like I, by the time I started covering the league formally and Angela had retired but there's no such thing as retirement with Angela Mosca.

(01:35:02):
First of all, he was doing that, you know, he, he was totally involved and you know he really, I think there was a point there that he really would would have liked to have been commissioner and he, he did to the tie cats credit and then this is Scott Mitchell, who was who was the CEO of the TV.
And then he was part of it and then he wasn't and then Bob Young, when he bought the team want to make sure Angela was and he commissioned Scott Mitchell eventually to make sure that that Angela felt like he was part of it, not just by name, and he really was.

(01:35:37):
And he came to the practice a lot. The last time I think I think he came to one at the start of 2019 never got to a game 2019 by then, you know, his illness had progressed pretty seriously and he wasn't able to come down.
But he wasn't one practice I think they had to have their training camp here instead of the university where they normally do because as you as you recall.

(01:35:58):
No, no, it was no that's right it was during the practice.
When they had moved here from training camp and that was the last time. And as I said he probably won't be at any games and he was missed because it was like, it was it was like, like a king, but, but a retired king, it was just, I mean you still see Mosca sweaters.
Yes, and jerseys in the stands here. Oh, you see lots of them and he always like this thing that and why he asked that I write his book was that I was writing a piece on him.

(01:36:28):
I don't know the anniversary of his retirement or something like that or, you know, it's about him. And there was a line in it that he thought was very indicative of him and the city.
And it was something to the effect of. It's very difficult to say where Hamilton stops in Angela Mosca begins. Yes.

(01:36:49):
And, and that sort of Venn diagram the blurred lines between.
I'll ask you this, because I think I'm dominating this conversation too much but can you think of another athlete that is so. There are two or three in this country in the history in my time and I'm fairly old.

(01:37:13):
I don't know if you can really and utterly define the place that they are in this Canadian professional athletes.
John Bellover was one Maurice Richard was another for the two side types of Montreal but really was Maurice Richard. Yes, with Montreal and Angela Mosca in Hamilton and there may be one or two others.

(01:37:38):
And I think that's close to when you see those person people you think the city and when you think the city and sport, and some and beyond sports so you have to, you have to transcend sport, you can't be the best in the kind of things I'm asking about here.
You can't just be the best athlete who ever played in that city.
You have to be the one that that transcended sports in that city, and when you think of that city, you think of that person.

(01:38:05):
And the rocket, and maybe the whole nation of Quebec, if you want to call it a nation and the rocket and and Angelo and Hamilton, and he may not ever be the best player who ever played here, but he's the greatest you ever did.
And he's kind of the player who exemplifies that Hamilton spirit, like I've been to Hamilton and quite a few times and there's, there's a vibe in the city it's a it's a, it's a, you know, get your steel toe boots on and go work hard and that really, you know, if you want to put Angela

(01:38:41):
in a box in terms of the grid, I read that was him.
And, and remained hard ass. He had a, he had a softening in his latter years, it was actually quite wonderful. And, you know, that was part of his story. It's the very first part of the book once we get through his introduction and my introduction, the very first part of the book introduces, introduces shocked me when we first started to talk.

(01:39:16):
He said I'm going to shock you and I'm thinking, you know, I've written books before and everybody tells me I've got a story that you never heard.
When he told me, I'll never forget it we were sitting on these kind of vinyl stools in his lovely home isn't Helen's lovely home that sits on the on the water, west of here, close to very close to the well in the canal so on Lake Ontario by St. Catherine just right on this gorgeous and I can still see it

(01:39:44):
and he had these high chairs, wood that were vinyl covered and I told me I kind of you know how you get that kind of a bit of a shock, and your body goes a bit limp. Yes, it went limp enough I couldn't.
I slipped off the chair, right off the stool because because, you know, I wasn't really hanging on. And then that was a story that of course revealed that what he had, he'd only told his own children a few, very few years earlier, very few years earlier, and, and I don't think he ever he never told any of his teammates, some of them figured it out.

(01:40:22):
And it's quite a story and if you want we can talk about. Yeah, let's get into that a little bit and then I want I want to also circle back to a bit of our Hamilton conversation as well.
Sure. Right. So, Angelo always had hit Angelo his father Angelo's mother was his father's second wife, and his father was a racist.

(01:40:49):
And his mother was was a mixed race so she was what in those days was called a mulatto. Her mother was black, African American of slave descent.
And, and so he that the father was always ashamed of that so that means that Angelo, by definition, in those days is black was black by definition and where was he living in Boston, on the outside of Boston and what which is now kind of a gentrified place.

(01:41:24):
And I was doing the book and I found myself where I was covering the Stanley Cup in 2011 Stanley Cup when the Bruins won it.
And so I thought well I'm here, so I drove out there and it's quite gentrified but in his time, it's basically was essentially North Boston which was a really really tough area, a very very tough area.

(01:41:55):
And so he was black. Yeah, and but that it wasn't him that it was his father, and he got beaten up many times to be put in his place and and told that they were never to tell anybody because he didn't the father didn't want to be embarrassed,
and he was really, very, by the time he was a 12 years old Angelo hated and just sort of divorced themselves from both parents moved in with an aunt when he was about 13 didn't go to, he was beat up quite a bit as far they used to say if you tell anybody or if you ever fight back or anything

(01:42:28):
he would put you what they used to say on the state which meant to do an orphanage which he did with the previous children he had from a previous marriage. So always threatened to do that so there were those two things plus his father hustled.
And he was a life he ran illegal card games which agile and he admitted this in the book, I'm not telling stories out of school. He himself ran illegal card games here into his 60s, but he worked for his father in those games started working there selling sandwiches

(01:42:59):
and he would always be getting busted. When he was seven years old. So that's the life he was introduced to he was he was physically abused. He was emotionally abused alcoholic parents that didn't care or there's stories in the book where all five of them be sitting in the car with
their parents after coming home from shopping, not even coming home for shopping but the parents were stopping bars on the way home. I mean, this isn't an uncommon story, but it's an uncommon story for somebody to reach, eventually, to be able to overcome what he did.

(01:43:31):
And it's and you have to understand how good an athlete was he was in track. He was a pretty good basketball player he was an outstanding football player he he weighed 300 pounds and had a 24 inch waist, which is unbelievable.
He weighed 300 pounds because he always reported at 290 because people had this thing in their head of what 300 pounders were he could. If you look at his body when he first came here some of those early shots that the specter would take a training camp.

(01:44:01):
He was weight training taught. He did one of those things off the matchbook covers you know, where you see the 98 pound weak link, and then he gets sad kicked in his face and then and then comes back later because he's lifted weights well he that's what he did.
He came off of a match book as way ahead of his time for those kinds of things but when he was very young, all of those things contributed to who he was and he, he was taught the value of a buck and and that you had to have money and some kind of social standing

(01:44:33):
which meant being not black to to make it so he had he never told his parents kids about it so kids. Therefore, sure that heritage, and, and, and finally, when he and Helen got together and he'll tell you says this in the book that Helen changed a lot of things,
made him faces past was her that said, you have one Bob Young suggested you have to write your book because you have to tell the legacy. Yes, this will bring us back to him.

(01:45:03):
And he would he.
You have to share that legacy, and you have to get it out. She told me later that she felt he needed it as therapy, and several times during the book he cried, which of course made me cry.
So, how could you not at that point. Have you ever seen a man that size crap with a face like that.
I mean, I mean, everything about Angela was oversized that I emphasize that a lot of the introduction to the book, everything about his strengths his weaknesses, his passions, his, his piccadillo is all those things he talked about, you know, unfaithfulness to

(01:45:38):
his wife, very, you know, it was amazing and to sit there and to be privy to a man of his age and his sort of.
He had a very thick skin, and he had to, and it went very, very, very deep.
And so as he felt he, you know, he just couldn't reveal things he never thought about too many things himself and about his past and all of those things to be part of his epiphany, first of all, and then to do something about it, to change it to make amends with the children

(01:46:15):
to make amends, try to make amends with everybody around him. I mean, not everybody responded positively.
I mean, I think that's the way to do that. But most people did. It was really amazing to see, and he should be proud of himself. And of course, his wife should be very proud of herself.
What's most eye opening and certainly fascinating about what you just described is, is, you know, in terms of the wrestling side of it, and obviously that's what this program kind of focuses on the majority of the time, but you always hear about, you know, KFAB and guys got to

(01:46:47):
protect their character and they got to protect their history. And so when you oftentimes when you get into the biographical nature of wrestlers, there's still a lot they will never give up or they'll still, they'll give the same story that they've given for years and years
right, which you can demontrably prove is not correct. But to hear you describe your state when when writing the book and hearing these stories that I can hear the emotion in your voice talking about it, it's man that it hits hits a certain way.

(01:47:20):
Right. And the wrestling thing, of course, went on for a while. I mean, Angelo was a pretty big star in wrestling. You know, I mean, when they had the Angelo Mosca night here, which, you know, there was an acknowledgement, obviously, we'd written in the paper that Angelo had to mention that, you know, it was going to get better.
They had while he could still appreciate it, what they call the still Angelo night. And Ric Flair came up for it.

(01:47:45):
Yes, that's right. Yes.
And people forget that he, I think, who had that plane accident and that.
Yeah, it was it was Flair broke his back.
Right. Which put Angelo into the actual kind of replaced him for a while until he recovered. And that put Angelo into kind of the big time and wrestling. And he started he started on the Quebec Circuit and the Canadian Circuit. I think he started on the Quebec Circuit when he was with Ottawa. But the thing that really this applied directly to wrestling.

(01:48:18):
But applied everything to everything to it. It applied to his finances and I'll say what it was. And I think many of the people, if you're younger, you won't remember the incident that originally started this because it happened in 1963. But everybody remembers seeing.
And it happened right after we'd written the book. So we had to pull the book back and write an extra page on it when he and Joe Capp.

(01:48:42):
Yes.
At the 2012 Great Cup? No, 2011 Great Cup.
Yeah, it was 11 because it was bombers in B.C., I believe.
Right, right. In B.C. had the dust up and ended up swinging canes and they ended up on Dr. Phil. I was walking through a flea market with a friend.

(01:49:05):
And the phone rang on a Sunday afternoon. And this had happened on the Friday incident where they beat each other up. And of course the video that had gone viral. Yes, it was on all the TV stations and and the pick up the phone. I didn't recognize it. I don't normally answer.
I was from the States and I thought I'll just check what this is. And it was Dr. Phil. I got my number. Well, do you think that I said, well, I think Angela will be all right on there. Joe never ended up going on the show. Yeah, but it became. And I'll explain to your any of your younger listeners what that is was about.

(01:49:38):
Well, back in 1963, the B.C. Lions were a very good football team. Joe Cap was the quarterback. The running back was a guy named Willie Fleming, who at that time was acknowledged as the best running back and perhaps the best player in the league that year.
And Vancouver was fairly new to the league about 10 years, had never won a Great Cup. And it was in B.C. and it had a really good team.

(01:49:59):
And and Willie Fleming, when got hit by somebody on the sidelines, went down and Angelo kind of flew over top and caught him in the head as he went over.
There was always said that he Angela was said he was trying to get over top of him and just kind of caught him.
And I remember his exact explanation of it. But the place went crazy.
And, you know, everybody went after the game, which Hamilton did win because it wasn't just because he didn't have Willie Fleming. Hamilton had a very good team.

(01:50:30):
And the Joe Cap refused to shake his hand after the game. So this goes back to 1963. And so how many years later is that? Forty something years.
Yes, it is still bad.
These these guys had had it was an incident whenever you thought of Angela Mosca, you thought of that incident.
Well, the very next day, everybody called him the dirtiest player in football.

(01:50:54):
He embraced it because it fit in perfectly with the image of Hamilton.
Hamilton was already considered that type of team even before Angela got here.
That was a bit of their that was kind of their mythology.
They were tough people, but Angela just like it was like apt up on on whatever it was just totally apt up.
He really enhanced that image because he was always seen as somebody who was close to the line and many, many times crossed over, which he did.

(01:51:23):
And he's a friend of mine. I'm not afraid to say that. He, you know, I would say it to his face.
He crossed the line many, many times and perhaps too many times. And but that's who he was.
He was a very everything about him was outsized. And and so he embraced that as tough as man.
That led to that. That led to, of course, wrestling. Right away.

(01:51:45):
Yeah. So he was already doing a little he was already doing a little bit.
I forgot the name of the promoter that's in Montreal.
It long gone now. But if you all the big promoting names up until including Vince all the way to the 90s, he was involved with and even his son, son wrestled, as you know.
And, you know, King Kong had a number of different names.

(01:52:08):
But but that was that was how it affected his wrestling career.
It gave him that image. He was a nice guy for a while, actually.
But but once he got became a bad guy, he was a pretty damn good bad guy. He's a pretty good pretty good heel.
And and he was different things in different regions. The way wrestling was split up in those days was much more regional.

(01:52:30):
It wasn't it wasn't sort of one tier versus another tier, both of the national wrestling types of things.
It was regional and very big in the whether it was the AWA or NWA or all of those ones.
W.E. once it came along the the so that was the wrestling part of it, but also on the financial part of it.

(01:52:52):
So you embrace that image. Well, suddenly he was getting all of these ads for car companies.
I mean, it was big then it was yes, it was. It was big.
And even a trial like it there, I grew up in Toronto and it the Argos in the 50s and most of the 60s were just as big as the Leafs.

(01:53:14):
And and you couldn't say, you know, in fact, at one point, the Argos, I felt, were a little ahead of the Leafs.
They're popular in the 50s. Well, especially when they had the greatest team that ever won.
Right. That was at the late 60s. I think I want to say I was the late 60s.
Yeah. Well, if you want, you can go on about that because because because Toronto is so weird.

(01:53:35):
And I grew up there. I'm a Toronto native. And, you know, I went to all the guy I worked with all the Leafs at a hockey school.
I taught hockey when I was a kid as a teenager in the 60s. And they were all the guys that played on those all those teams.
Well, they traded Frank Mahalich in 1967 right after he'd been one of the very best players in the Stanley Cup.
They traded him and he ended up in Montreal two or three years later.

(01:53:57):
So it wasn't the same. But that's their Babe Ruth trade. You've heard of the Babe Ruth trade.
What's it called? The Curse of the Gambino, I think. Right.
Curse of the Gambino. And it's also referred to as the No No Nanette trade. Yes.
They were because the the investor, the Boston guy, wanted to invest in a play called No No Nanette.
So to get the money, he traded Babe Ruth, who had just starred in the World Series to the Yankees.

(01:54:22):
And of course, the Red Sox didn't win again for what, 86 years?
Yeah. Well, you know, it's not 86 yet. Yeah.
But they're working their way there. Nobody looks at the Mahalich thing.
And it wasn't just that he was just a flashy player. He just wasn't the type that Toronto players like more grinding type players.
They never they always thought he was lazy, but he was a fabulous player.

(01:54:43):
The year he got I think in his third year, he set the Leaf record by 40 percent.
I think the previous record had been 37 goals and he had 48, the next highest Leaf at 20, the next highest player in the end.
Right. So twice as good as anybody else.
And it just but everybody liked the other players better. The players that looked like they were working hard.

(01:55:09):
Yeah. You know, so I've always said that's the Curse of Mahalich, but he's too nice a guy.
He ended up in Montreal where there are dribbles and one a couple of cups there.
Yeah. So maybe three and Hall of Famer.
So anyways, so he Angelo having this image of tough toughness, all of these ads.

(01:55:32):
And as I said, they were national ads. They weren't just for the local car dealership.
They were for Buick or whatever.
And he and they all went on his on his on his toughness. You know, I'm the toughest man in the CFL says use this soft toilet paper.
Yeah. And the other one, the one that was really famous was I think whoever I think it was Schick Razors.

(01:55:59):
Right. And he would, you know, be about him being tough and show some, you know, you know,
him being crazy and, you know, bashing, you know, player that kind of thing, hitting hard, chasing people down.
And then then he would shave and he rubbed his face and how smooth it was like a baby.
And he says, you know, I'm the toughest guy, but I get this smooth, smooth shave.

(01:56:22):
And if you don't believe me, come and tell me to my face. I love it.
So that's where the book title came from. And when I was a kid, so I'm probably 15 when he yeah, 14 when he hit Fleming.
And of course, I'm an Argo fan growing up and hating, hating Moscow.

(01:56:43):
And but it used to be even in Toronto in that used to be a taunt in our it became part of the lexicon of kids in those days.
Tell me to my face. Tell me to my face. It was really it was part of the vocabulary for for several, several years.

(01:57:04):
So so he used that image to to to as I said earlier, he was taught had to learn by heart scrabble because parents took all his money.
Said they were saving it for school on time for him to be at school. And he said, send me some spending money.
They they'd long ago drag that money away. Yeah, I know.
So it's like, oh, boy, it was just heartbreaking listening to him.

(01:57:26):
And you you you're listening to a man in his 60s tell you this story.
But really, what you have to do is see the 18 year old boy or 17 year old boy he was when that was happening.
Right. So and that changed a lot of things around.
So he so that whole thing with the Willie Fleming thing, the wrestling thing came out of it.
The at least the image from the wrestling it it it was probably worth something to him on the football field as well.

(01:57:50):
And then he was able to get into the wrestling.
I mean, you know, somebody thinks you're a bit, you know, over the edge.
They might give you a wide, wide berth.
And then and then it helped him financially as well.
So what even I can remember as a kid, you know, listening to, you know, bomber games and Bob Irving would always this was back when Hamilton used to play

(01:58:12):
in Iverwind Stadium and he would call it never win stadium.
And he would do that because the bombers would always get crushed and then he would always bring up, you know, it's you know, the ghost of Moscow is there.
It's it's for four years and years as a kid.
So I'm 36. But so for, you know, my whole 90s, that's all I ever heard.
Never win stadium. The ghost is there.

(01:58:35):
We're going to go get creamed every every single time.
You know, Moscow, you're 36. So he finished playing 20 years before you became a fan.
That's what I'm saying. Yeah.
So that's how big a thing it was. Yeah.
So the ghost part of it is that it's absolutely true.
And, you know, he did.
I think he made the town feel particularly at that time a little better about itself because he was succeeding with this.

(01:59:00):
Yes. I wasn't here during those times,
but I spent a lot of time walking around town with him over the years.
And it was, you know, people still considered him kind of a guy.
He never ever he was a mean guy in a lot of ways.
And he had a lot of flaws, but he never turned out a fan, never turned out an autograph request that I ever saw.

(01:59:24):
And even though I know the value of Buck, if you were doing something for kids,
for kids in need, which he grew up as free.
Wow. Always come out, make an appointment, always.
And, you know, he'd, you know, unless he felt that the event was being sponsored by, you know, Ford Motor Company,

(01:59:45):
I think it's Ford, if he'd say, you know, but basically he'd show up and, you know, he'd, you know,
he he has the most memorable face ever.
I don't know if you've seen the book. Yes, I have.
Yeah, we had the person who photographed it and did the cover works for Lulu dot com, which was owned, is owned by Bob Young.

(02:00:12):
And it also works for the Thai Cats. And as soon as she took that picture, I said, we want.
So part of his face is a bit hidden in shadow because there's two parts stands.
Yes, sort of the sunny side and the dark side and also the public side and the part that he hides.
And and and, you know, I feel privileged that he chose that book to to let everybody know,

(02:00:40):
you know, and I think, you know, I think he it's hard to know what was in his mind, of course, at the end.
But I think he would have died knowing that he'd done a lot of right things in his final 50, 20 years of his life.
And and lots of good stuff, even when he was doing crazy stuff, like not crazy, the wrong word, but but but stuff that you question.

(02:01:03):
Right. He'll tell you, yeah, a ton of regrets.
You know, he did, you know, lots of illegal stocks, including card games and all those kinds of things.
And, you know, he his family, he he he'll admit he wasn't a good father for many, many years.
But boy, those kids today, I mean, you know, the loss that they felt.

(02:01:24):
And that is an accomplishment, as I mentioned near the top of the show, to turn that around at a latter part of life,
because normally people don't do that, especially people cut from that kind of cloth that that have a very, you know, their narrative.
And I think he made a really good point about particularly wrestling narratives.
You know, I mean, wrestling's full of hard, hard, hard luck stories.

(02:01:45):
And you've seen that on some of the, you know, on the revelation shows that we see.
And this was one. I mean, there's some great because it was a football book and I wasn't there for as much of the wrestling.
So I couldn't find there aren't enough of the good wrestling stories in that book.
It's more football oriented, but there are some. I mean, there's some great stuff about Andre the Giant, you know, in the book.

(02:02:10):
And, you know, talked about the man and some of the other promoters and wrestling in the south.
You know, he he he went to University of Missouri.
And remember, going back to the fact that he's black and University of Missouri recruited him, not knowing that.
And he's there and he's doing he was doing what was called passing.

(02:02:32):
Some of the other recruits were were were visibly African-American and had to be in a different place.
You know, couldn't use the water. Oh, yes. Segregation at the time. Yes.
Well, you're talking. Yeah, you're talking. You're talking when the lynchings were going on. Yes.
Still, you know, he was I think he what did he go?

(02:02:54):
That would have been a fifty six or fifty seven or something. Fifty six, probably. You know, I mean, that's so he went there.
Well, and he and he decided not to end up in Missouri City.
Guy could play there. So he ended up playing in Notre Dame and was doing really well there.
And I looked up some old newspaper clippings of the coach at Notre Dame coming to Walfman talking about how well Angelo was doing.

(02:03:15):
Well, Angelo, of course, did Angelo some stuff.
And he admitted this in the book, too. He ended up stealing some wallets and got kicked out.
And then he ended up at where Wyoming and then he ran into some bad guys there, too, and got involved in some tough stuff.
So he's, you know, but he also credits somebody that was an alumnus of Notre Dame for getting him set up in Canada.

(02:03:41):
And so he always felt this incredible gratitude to this country and this city in particular.
But the country is all as well. I mean, I've often said this and you have an awful lot of in and around.
That of people I would call Peter, that the Americans that came up here and discovered this country and decided to stay and make the country better and themselves better for being Canadians.

(02:04:07):
I've often said they were more Canadian than many of us who grew up here. And I consider Angelo one of those.
The little general was another one. You've had a bunch in Winnipeg over the years of players who just pinball Clemens is the latest great example of that.
Yes, yes, he is.
Right. Orlando Steinauer is another one of current people that way. And those are the ones just here.

(02:04:31):
I'm sure there's some out there that I'm forgetting about right now, but it's all across the country.
And Angelo was one of those and maybe the best of those because not best, but the most fervent of them because of a couple of things he battled.
I mean, he was battling the whole race thing and racial identification, but he was also, you know, he'd done some things that he needed to be forgiven for.

(02:05:00):
And we kind of forgave him, even though we continued to do some of them here. But he was so much fun to be around.
Like he was up all the...he was fun. He made things happen. And when you...he and Helen blended a very large family.
And those gatherings, you know, I actually only saw it at, unfortunately, his wake. But I heard about it all the time from both of them and from the kids.

(02:05:26):
You know, particularly his son, Angelo, Jr., as a friend and, you know, about how all the grandkids gravitated towards him.
And, you know, in the latter years here, he was in a wheelchair with a cane and he didn't seem any smaller.
You know, he lived an extremely full life and heavy on the extreme, heavy on the full.

(02:05:58):
Yes, both sides of it.
Both sides, yeah.
And so I'm glad that there's going to be a little bit more time this year to celebrate his legacy because, as you said, you know, when he passed, it was kind of...then it's the great cup.
And then it's hard to really dedicate any substantive time, you know, at that point in time.

(02:06:24):
And yeah, it's true. And, you know, we had the great cup, you know, so you did something, the odd thing there. But, you know, they toyed with it here a little bit.
Doing something in and around because there's two Hall of Fame, there's two Hall of Fame nights here this year, right?
Because they had the 20 and 21 classes couldn't go in. So, yes, 2021 are going in the night before the opener here.

(02:06:50):
And then they're going to have the regular Hall of Fame class for 2022 at the normal time later in the year.
I think it's September or something. Those kinds of things.
So they might do something on the day before or the day after where they have a lot of the players that might have played against him.
It could be, you know, because all ex Hall of Famers get to come, right?
So, or sorry, all current living Hall of Famers, they want to come to come.

(02:07:15):
So maybe something will happen with that. But I think the family also doesn't want to take away from the 13 men who are getting in.
I think it's all men, yes, that are getting in on opening night, the night before the opener and the six that are getting in or seven that are getting in in the normal induction period later in the year.

(02:07:37):
So you don't want to take away from that. But they'll find something.
They're not going to be involved. They may ask me to say a word or two, but there are other people that actually were closer.
You know, I just became identified with him because I ended up writing a lot about him in the latter periods of his life.
But other period players, people knew him better.
And there's a lot of people here that still around that watched him play and lived and died with him and John Barrow chasing people out.

(02:08:03):
You know, that was a terrifying twosome. Yes, definitely.
And you couldn't ask for two different types of people.
And that's what's quite hard on John in the book. But really, those two were identified with the team.
And they had lots of great players, Bernie and Hal Patterson and, you know, even going back to Vince Mass.
All of those guys, I mean, they had all kinds and just tough, hard-nosed guys, every one of them.

(02:08:28):
And they're all part of the community. But really, defining because it was a defensive team.
This has always been this team. This town's always been about two things, defense, defensive linemen.
But really, I always call it a linebackers town, really.
But Barrow and Moskov are more identified than probably anybody.

(02:08:51):
This latter era, we've had, you know, they've had a lot of success here in the last seven, eight years.
I haven't won the cup, but they've been there a lot. Yes.
And they've had a lot of players stay here for quite a while.
I mean, so you've got another crowd of now.
There's only one left, but I mean, the group that basically it was Banks and Speedy Banks and Simone Lawrence.

(02:09:16):
And Simone is the only one left because also Missouli was one of those guys.
Yes, that's right.
Those three guys were on this team for eight years together.
They played in three different homes. No, two different home stadiums.
They played that year on the road, which that's right, too.
Yeah. When they were waiting for Tim Hortons Field to be built, one of the most underwritten stories in the history of Canadian sport.

(02:09:41):
They played their entire season on the road and they played.
They had to they had to dress in the team headquarters.
They fashioned a locker room in the team headquarters and like TV hockey players or Adam hockey.
They don't do that. I mean, they did during the pandemic.
But they own a necessity at Carrier School.

(02:10:02):
They rented city buses and went over to McMaster to practice.
And even even here, when they first came to the stadium here, I'm sitting at the stadium now.
They they weren't a lot, you know, but they weren't sure when they were ever going to get into the stadium.
And so it and they made the great cup, which is incredible.

(02:10:26):
Planet makes you the fact that they got that they put this money into Guelph to, you know, the Argos.
It's kind of funny because they're right about this week because the Thai cats are going back to play in Guelph for the first time since that year,
because that's where the training camp of the Argos are.
Of course, the Argos, they're not going to pay money for BMO field to draw nobody for an exhibition game.

(02:10:47):
So they're playing at the university. So it's going to be a lot of memories.
I think there's only two people involved that that were on the team at the time, and that's Steinauer and who was the defensive coordinator at the time and Simone Lawrence.
So so it's going to be something. But to do that, I mean, it was incredible.
And they like it happened once in the NFL. But but the team got to practice.

(02:11:12):
And that was the Chicago Bears. And I forget when that was when they're redoing Soldier Field.
Remember that? And I think they went up and they played in.
They played in Indiana. I don't think they played in Notre Dame. I think they did.
But they only played their games there. Right. They didn't practice. Yes.
You know, they got because they used to practice at Northeastern. So they continue to practice at Northeastern.
Well, how about this one? Henry Burris was on both teams.

(02:11:36):
Oh, that's right, too.
How about that? That's unbelievable.
And Burris will tell you and he'll tell a story again because I wrote it when he got when he first got put into the hall of fame, but he never got inducted.
So we'll get inducted here this time because I think he's class 20.
And he said that team never got so that's that's a mythological year.

(02:11:58):
Should be documentaries. Yes. If that was a if that was an American team, just he would have been calling.
Oh, yes. 100 percent. Oh, yeah. They'd be on a stamp, you know, like there'd be all kinds of stuff going on.
You know, we are. You know, so but I haven't been there having to chronicle it every day with the beat writer with fabulous beat writer at the time, Drew Edwards.

(02:12:20):
And and chronicling that at the time, you realized how much went into that.
I mean, what they had to do every single thing was a hassle.
Every single minute of every single day was a hassle for a whole year. So anyway, that's the sidebar to what we're talking about.
And I mean, we we go to a whole diatribe of things that the CFL should be doing better.

(02:12:42):
And I'm going to add so I have to work here shortly.
And speaking of that, yes, I can hear businesses starting to pick up in the press box there.
Yeah, you can hear it behind me. I guess I'll just I'll just leave you with one last question if I could.
What are you looking forward to out of the tie cats this year and where do you think they fit in?

(02:13:03):
Well, they're good enough to win the East for sure. And when you get to the great cup, it's awesome.
Yes, they're good enough to win it.
Barring types of injuries, they you could they could they could feel the team tomorrow without even thinking about it.
Knowing the guys that could start and they'd have too many starters.
Yes, the guys that have started particularly they've they've they've done a pretty good job.

(02:13:24):
But we don't know what the parts who are here, what difference they'll make having that second quarterback.
Did you know was there on the Zoli their problem at the moment?
You know, I mean, they obviously might be depth quarterback matchups.
But it's not the same as I mean, they knew it. They said all last year, we're not going to see this again.

(02:13:45):
Having a one and a one. Yeah.
And people say they have that, but they don't know nobody in the league does.
That was a true one a one B. And you know, just was the way the contracts worked out.
It was a really good job on the contracts by Sean Burks, who's now on a lot as the GM.
But I'm looking for them to threaten.
We'll see how much you know, not having speedy makes a difference.

(02:14:08):
And the issue here is kicking. So we'll see they have.
Well, the issue here is kicking as well. So I feel your pain there.
It was it was and you know, it was that was the only flaw in that club last year. And then of course, they got the kicker and Hamilton didn't.
And what was the difference in the great cup? Yeah, there you go.
Everybody says it was this that you know, this that I mean, it was a drop, not a drop ball, but a ball that should have been caught that should have gone, you know, you know, I mean, that was a fabulous great cup.

(02:14:33):
I mean, if you're Oh, it was an unbelievable great cop. Yes. You know, we'll look back on that one.
And here it's hard for people here to appreciate it.
But to for them to have been part of it, I mean, to come down and the ball bounces, it should have been caught.
And in my mind, at least at that level. But there were some kicking issues there.
Yeah. And there weren't any kicking. There weren't any kicking issues.
And of course, Zach is a friend of mine either. You know, I love the guy.

(02:14:57):
And, you know, he just he finally found it took him three quarters to find for that.
We all knew everybody who watched Hamilton practicing with the flaw and that defense was going to be.
And so does Zach. But he couldn't he couldn't exploit it till the fourth quarter.
But he did. He found it and he exploited it. And good for him.
So well, as a fan of the league, I'm looking forward to seeing what Dan Evans is able to do for for a full season.

(02:15:22):
Hopefully not too much because obviously I'm still a homer here.
But yeah, you know what? I love I love everything that that Hamilton brings to the league.
I think it's one of the greatest fan bases outside of my own naturally or maybe Saskatchewan.
But just a great fan base and really a team that exemplifies the city.
And I think, you know, that kind of draws to our earlier conversation.

(02:15:44):
You know, does a player make the city? Does a city make the player? Does a team?
You know what I mean? It all kind of feeds into itself in Hamilton.
They accelerated each other. Exactly. I couldn't say it better myself.
All right. Well, this has been an absolute pleasure, Steve. Thank you so much.
I'll let you get back to work and enjoy the game tonight and enjoy the CFL season.
Thanks. Bye.

(02:16:33):
You know, it's pretty crazy to think that, you know, this guy comes from such a troubled childhood,
you know, continues that into the teens, you know, still get into trouble.
But now, you know, really big into the sports, ends up being a professional football player,
still has his hands kind of in the dark side of things.

(02:16:55):
And then where he winds up towards the later stages of his life, culminating, obviously,
with the book opportunity with Steve Milton.
So I think it's just another aspect to give a much more well-rounded look at Angelo Moscow.

(02:17:18):
So we are going to get into this audio on the other side.
We are going to hit you with a couple of statistics.
Now, normally, if you've listened to the back catalog of Grappler with Canada,
I don't normally go really into the statistics of individuals because a lot of the times it's very dry.

(02:17:43):
However, if there's any time to do it, I think that this episode is absolutely the perfect time to do it.
So now with that being said, we're going to play this classic audio.
And on the other side, a little bit of statistical history.
Please enjoy.

(02:18:05):
I agree with Joe Cap with Joe Baby.

(02:18:31):
I haven't seen you in 48 years.
We were at a table and he said it under his breath to me that you were.
We never conversed at all.
We were supposed to be on the stage together.
So I took flowers out and I offered it to him and he discussed that with me.

(02:18:54):
Well, I'm pretty well noted for not taking anything.
I was fine. He dangled right in my face and I took my cane and I whacked him.
I got a cane shot to the side of my head.
That was an intending unhitting joke.
Why should I lie about it?

(02:19:16):
Obviously, he'd defend himself.
He punched me and that's when I went down.
And when I went down, he kicked me in the butt.
I don't know what happened.
I'm very pleased that there's a record of how it looked.
Joe Cap must be holding a grudge against me.
I think it's completely idiotic.

(02:19:39):
All right, well, we invited both players to the show.
Joe Cap said he didn't want to see this guy again.
He didn't say no. He said, hell no.
Now, Angelo, the man with the cane and author of his new memoir,
I'll tell it to my face, thanks to Joe, is just holding a grudge.
So welcome Canadian Football League Hall of Famer Angelo Moskowitz.

(02:20:07):
Is this the weapon?
This is the weapon.
I wouldn't do that to you, Phil, because you might retaliate.
Yeah, I don't know.
You were pretty quick with that thing.
So tell me what happened on stage.
We were there for a reason.
For a dire straits program, we tried to raise money and funds.
I said, Joe, how are you doing?

(02:20:28):
He said, go f*** yourself.
One thing leads to another.
Joe puts a flower in my face.
But before he stuck it in your face, didn't he offer it to you?
You told him to shove it up with the sun go shine?
I told him to stick it where it doesn't, where it will grow.
Yeah, okay.
Then he stuck it in your face, right?

(02:20:49):
Yeah, I guess that's what happened.
It was on tape.
So he offers it?
I got tired of what was going on.
We weren't there for the reason of putting a flower in my face.
We were there to raise funds.
Right.
So you didn't expect him to be there?
No, I didn't.
It was the last thing I ever expected.
And what they did was they re-showed the video of the play that happened in 1963

(02:21:14):
where I hit Willie Fleming.
It had nothing to do with Joe Capp.
Yeah, well we went deep into the archives and we actually found the hit in question from 1963.
Let's take a look at this.
He goes down.
I come over the top.
And then you come over the top of him.
I haven't played as much football as you, but I've played a lot of football.
It didn't seem to me to be a flagrant situation at all.

(02:21:36):
No, it wasn't.
It just so happened that Angela Mosca made the play.
I have a pretty good reputation.
You did have a reputation for walking the edge.
Yes, I did.
And that's the way I played the game.
It's a ridiculous situation, but anyway I've had a lot of fun.
As you can see, I have a book here.
This is a book about life, and I read it by the way, and I thought it was a really good job.

(02:22:00):
I thought Steve Milton really helped with this as well.
Why did you swing the cane?
Why the cane?
Why the reaction?
I'm a reactionary type guy.
Why am I standing up here arguing with this guy, wasting my time?
Does he owe you an apology?
I don't really care.
You know, I don't have any regrets about anything.

(02:22:23):
You don't have a lot of pin-up emotion about it.
I don't have any grudge at all.
I'm glad you came and talked about it.
I'm sorry Joe didn't come and talk about it.
I am sorry too, because I think we could have done something with our Dyrus Trace program
and helped out the guys who were not as well off as we are.
I'm going to put a link to it on our website so people want to contribute their cane.
Hopefully we'll help raise a little bit more money too.

(02:22:44):
I hope so.
Thank you so much.
Pleasure.
Now in terms of the statistical side of tonight's program,
we're going to kick it off with our discussion about Angela Moska's professional wrestling career.
So from a career spanning from essentially 1960 to 1986 is what we're going to be focusing on right now.

(02:23:08):
Now a lot of people would just look at the territory he was in,
the fact that for the vast majority of that time that he was still in professional football as well.
And maybe they would think that he'd have a few hundred matches,
maybe close to 500 in and around there.

(02:23:31):
Those people would be completely wrong.
Angela Moska had over 1400 total career matches.
Not only that, he held multiple titles, including several in a in a.
Not only that, he held several titles, including many iterations of NWA championships.

(02:23:55):
He also held the Stampede North American Heavyweight Championship, the WWC,
Caribbean Heavyweight Championship, as well as the AWA British Empire Heavyweight Championship.
Now in terms of his entire.
Now in terms of his total number of title match wins or title reigns, I should say,

(02:24:22):
he had a total of 18 titles won over his entire professional wrestling career.
That also includes some tag team championships as well.
But what's more impressive than any of that, I think, is his NWA Canadian Heavyweight Championship title reign.

(02:24:45):
This was obviously a big part of my conversation with AC.
And even I didn't realize how long this reign was from 1982 until 1983.
King Kong Moska held the NWA Canadian Heavyweight Championship for 533 consecutive days.

(02:25:12):
Think about that for a second.
533 consecutive days. Now, more impressive than that is in that time frame of 1982 to 1983.
By my calculations, he wrestled 300 matches in that time frame.

(02:25:34):
Really impressive as well, considering that it's not like he was 20 years old at that time.
And it's not like he didn't just have an extended CFL career where he spent his whole life getting beat on and beating the hell out of other CFL players.
So I thought that that part of his story, statistically speaking, is pretty damn impressive, all things considered.

(02:26:02):
Now in terms of the CFL side of things, he was a CFL All-Star in 1963 and in 1970.
He was a CFL East All-Star in 1960, 1963, 65, 66, and 1970.

(02:26:23):
He was a five-time Grey Cup champion. Those years were 1960, 63, 65, 67, and the year that he retired, 72, going on on top, which is absolutely incredible.
Now what's maybe even more impressive than all of that, considering what a punishing player he was, what a punishing position he played, and what a nasty, nasty player he was in the trenches,

(02:26:57):
King Kong Mosca missed one game in his entire CFL career.
Think about that for a second. This guy who was in the trenches day in, day out, you heard about some of the trials and tribulations he went through just in terms of football training.

(02:27:20):
Never mind the fact that he was also moonlighting as a professional wrestler during most of that time as well.
He missed one game in his entire football career. Absolutely incredible.
I mean, you can't almost put into words how impressive that is when you consider everything else in his career's entirety.

(02:27:48):
Super impressive. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that on August 25th of 2015, the Tiger Cats retired Angela Mosca's number, number 68.
So just another accolade to put in the trophy case, if you will, of Angela Mosca. Also, he went into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 1987.

(02:28:19):
So, boy, oh boy. Again, I don't normally go into stats on these programs, but I really felt like a lot of that was something that needed to be brought to light and expanded upon a little bit to kind of give you guys once again, a lot more of the full story of Angela Mosca.

(02:28:43):
Now, before we head to the finish of tonight's program, I'm going to play one more audio clip.
And on the other side, we're going to talk about what's happening in the future with this program, as well as a little bit of housekeeping and some things that you guys can be looking forward to.
So please enjoy this one last audio clip. And I'm going to see you guys on the other side as we skip to the finish of tonight's program.

(02:29:33):
My daddy was scared to whip me because I might like it.
That's all I yell at Black Jack Mulligan. Everywhere I go, there's pictures of him.
But Mulligan, you saw how I handled myself in that street fight. I was no cowpoke. I wasn't branding cows when I was two years old.

(02:29:59):
I was getting hubcaps and punching people out with the brass knucks that my dad gave me.
So Mulligan, whether it's in Florida or Boston, and every time I hear the word Boston, I think of the great street fights that I used to win.
But the difference is you should have whipped that kid's body of yours a little bit better because he's a small brat like yourself.

(02:30:27):
There's a big difference as your daddy never gave you a whipping. But I'm the master of disaster, and I'm going to give that whipping to you, Black Jack Mulligan.
And if furthermore you think you come in here, you're going to clean up on people.
Well, Mulligan, you and I have been down a lot of lonely roads, and this road we're traveling together.

(02:30:49):
Just remember I'm the man in Florida who walks and talks and does exactly what he wants to do. You ask that spot and those kids bury wind them.
That kid makes me sick right to the pit of my stomach. He's nothing but a spoiled brat.
You keep giving him trucks, cars, planes. I give my kid nothing. I make him earn it.

(02:31:14):
So Mulligan, I'm going to make you earn it. I'm going to give you so many rights that you're going to be begging for less.
As we head to the finish of tonight's program, I just really want to again thank my two tremendous guests that I had on the program tonight.
AC from MapleLeafRustin.com, as well as Steve Milton from The Hamilton Spectator.

(02:31:39):
Gentlemen, it was my pleasure having you both on the program today, and it was a lot of fun.
And I really think that we have opened some eyes to some lesser known aspects of the Angela Mosca story.
So I'm really happy to have had both of you on.
And I really hope that you, the listeners at home, enjoyed the conversations that we had today.

(02:32:05):
Once again, if this is your first time to Grappling with Canada, I would ask if you are listening on Apple Podcasts or iTunes, whatever the kids call it specifically,
if you could leave a five star rating and a written review.
Of note, if you leave a five star rating and a written review, I will make sure that I read it on the next available podcast program.

(02:32:31):
As well, there are some other ways to support the program, including the direct donation function with PayPal,
as well as you can buy me a beer over at buymeacoffee.com slash grappling.
Everything that is donated towards the show goes directly back into the show.

(02:32:53):
It goes towards things like research material, possibly getting some new equipment, all kinds of things like that.
So anything that you guys donate really goes directly back into Grappling with Canada.
And obviously, I would give you guys a big shout out on the next available podcast as well.
Also, you can check out the merchandise store for this podcast.

(02:33:18):
Grappling with Canada dot threadless dot com is where you can find all of the show merchandise,
as well as I'll note, as I usually do, all sales of the classic Grappling with Canada logo t-shirt,
the one with the Canadian maple leaf flag.
All proceeds of that are being donated to charity.

(02:33:41):
So pick up some merch, check it out.
There's probably a sale going on right now.
There seems to be a sale all the time at the Grappling with Canada merchandise store.
So you want to check that out.
I also want to make mention of the sponsor of today's podcast is Manscaped.
You can go to Manscaped dot com.

(02:34:02):
20% off and free shipping can be all yours when you use the promo code G W C at checkout.
Once again, Manscaped dot com for all of your manscaping needs.
When you hit the checkout, type in code G W C for 20% off your entire order.

(02:34:23):
And everybody's favorite free shipping.
Once again, you can also find this program on YouTube.
YouTube dot com slash C slash six sided podcast is where you can find this.
Even if you listen to this on the standard podcast feeds,
I would ask that you also go and throw a subscription on our YouTube page

(02:34:46):
as we are dragging ourselves towards a thousand subscribers and every little bit helps.
So once again, you can find that link as well in today's show notes.
Now, I want to make mention of a couple of projects that are coming up.
Obviously, Canada Day is just around the corner on July 1st.
Boy, oh boy, we've got a special episode lined up for that one.

(02:35:11):
A real Canadian star.
And I'm really looking forward to that episode.
What else I'm looking forward to coming up is my follow up conversation with Vance Nevada
as we circle back to the uncontrolled chaos book that he has coming out.

(02:35:35):
So if you have not heard part one of my conversation with Vance Nevada,
I would suggest that you go back in the archives.
I believe it was in March, but you can go back and listen to my conversation.
No, it would have been April.
Anyways, you can go back and listen to my conversation with Vance Nevada

(02:35:58):
as we started laying the groundwork for his upcoming publication.
Part two is going to be one where we're going to hit him with some questions from all of you.
I've already received some tremendous questions.
I would ask that you keep sending them in to SixsidePod at gml.com.

(02:36:19):
You can also shoot them to me on Twitter at Six underscore podcast.
You can leave me a note on the Facebook page, Facebook.com.
Use that wonderful pages search bar, search for Grappler with Canada.
Make sure you like that page as well.
Or you can drop me a line on the Canadian Professional Wrestling History Facebook group.

(02:36:44):
Once again, we're trying to round up a bunch of questions that we're going to hit Vance Nevada with.
Unchained, uncut, uncensored.
He's going to have no idea what's coming.
Once again, I've already had some tremendous ones sent in to myself
that I'm going to be saving and savoring and hitting Vance Nevada with

(02:37:06):
on his next appearance on the Grappler with Canada program.
As such, you can email me anytime at SixsidePod at gml.com.
I read everything that you guys send otherwise.
So, for myself, the tax man.

(02:37:28):
For my tremendous guests that I had today.
I just really want to thank each and every one of you for tuning into today's program because
honestly, you guys could have been doing anything else in this wonderful world that we live in.
But you made a choice to tune into this program.

(02:37:49):
There are, you know, hundreds more every month that are finding this program.
We are reaching more countries every month.
And I'm absolutely honored that you, the listener, would take the time to listen to this program.
Because I'll be honest, I think it's really important what we're doing here preserving some Canadian history.

(02:38:16):
Because as I always say, if it's not preserved, we're going to lose it to the sands of time.
And that's not something that I'm keen on allowing to happen.
So thank you, the listener, for tuning into this program.
And you can do me one small favor.
You're probably on your phone right now or you're probably close to a computer,

(02:38:38):
which means you're probably close to social media and texting avenues, if you will.
Go ahead and let your friends know that you listen to Grappler with Canada.
You know, spread the word. Tell them how much fun you had with the show.
Tell them you learned something.
Help, put me over. I don't know.

(02:39:01):
Or tell them how good the guests were, more importantly on the program today.
And spread the word of the show.
It really helps me out.
And I really, truly and honestly appreciate each and every one of you for, again, checking out the program
and for letting your friends and family know about what we're doing here as well.

(02:39:23):
Because, again, like I said, I think it's extremely important and it's something that we are going to continue,
especially coming into next month.
So until then, once again, for myself, the taxman, for my tremendous guests that I had on the program tonight,
I will leave you all as I normally do.

(02:39:44):
Take care of yourselves and each other.
Good night, everyone.

(02:40:19):
Thank you.

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Angelo Mosca - A CFL Legend, And Wrestling's King Kong

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Angelo Mosca - A CFL Legend, And Wrestling's King Kong