Chris And John Tolos - The Canadian Wrecking Crew - Grappling With Canada

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
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(00:05):
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Wallach's in bad shape.
Shit.
Oh, now I see what he used that bandage for.

(00:51):
Look at Wallach grabbing Teddy Thomas.
He's got Teddy down.
Wallach trying to get away.
That bandage rubbed against his eyes.
He's in bad shape.
Look out.
Here's the alley up by Chris.
He's got Wallach down.
Teddy goes for it.
One, two, three.
It's all over.
And the first ball goes to Chris Thomas of the Thomas Brothers.
October 16, 1953, in Oakland, California, America.

(01:24):
Two brothers would tag for the first time in what would end up becoming a three decades
long path of destruction across large swaths of North America.

(01:52):
John and Chris Tolos would end up completely changing the way that we perceive and the
way that we feel about professional wrestling today.
But just what did John and Tolos end up meaning to professional wrestling?

(02:13):
And in how many ways have they changed the way that professional wrestling is perceived
today?
Join us this month on Grappling with Canada as we take a look at the Canadian Wrecking
Crew.
John and Chris, the Tolos Brothers.

(02:45):
Hello everyone and welcome back.
Welcome back.
Welcome back.
Welcome back.
To Grappling with Canada and kakusei to all the Croatians listening at home in Croatia
and abroad.
More on why I'm saying that a little bit later.
As with each and every program, I'm your host, as usual, The Taxman.

(03:08):
I'm really looking forward to today's episode.
I think it's going to be one of our more interesting looks at two of who may be the
most undersung people in the modern sense of professional wrestling.
John and Chris, the Tolos Brothers.
Today is going to be a jam packed information filled episode as you guys have come to love

(03:33):
and expect with this program.
And I think that between the research that's gathered and the two important guests that
I have on today's program that we are really going to open some eyes about just who the
Tolos Brothers were, how important they are to professional wrestling history and the

(03:55):
direct straight line that you can take from them directly into the future and present
of professional wrestling.
But before we get into all of that, if this is your first time to Grappling with Canada,
welcome to the program.
You can go back into the archives.

(04:15):
We have some tremendous deep dive episodes on some of the, again, unsung people in Canadian
professional wrestling history.
People like George Gordienko, like Rhonda Singh, the Monster Ripper, like Billy Two
Rivers or Chief Don Eagle.
And especially like last month, although he's not an unsung hero, he's very much still

(04:39):
in the hearts and minds of many professional wrestling fans, but somebody who doesn't get
his new due per se in today's day and age and that would be the Whipper, Billy Watson.
Also I want to thank everybody who checked out the pre-episode to that portion where

(05:02):
we did the special look at the Nanjo Singh, we'll say issue and situation.
Once again, go back in the archives if you haven't listened to those.
Don't hit this one on pause, mind you.
But once you've done this one, feel free to go back in the archives.
Like I said, there's some incredible deep dive episodes with some really fantastic guests.

(05:25):
As I always say, guests are what make the program and today's no exception.
We're going to get into all of that a little bit later.
But we should probably start with where you can find this program, a little bit of housekeeping
if you will.
You can find Grappler with Canada on all major podcasting platforms, whether that's Apple
podcasts, Amazon podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google podcasts, wherever you buy, sell, trade,

(05:52):
barter or steal your favorite podcasts, you will find Grappler with Canada.
When you find that podcast, please remember to leave a five star rating and a written
review and especially on Apple podcasts.
If you leave a five star rating and a written review, it'll get read aloud on the next available
program.

(06:13):
Speaking of which, I have a brand new tremendous five star written review that I'm going to
be reading later on in today's program.
You can also find us on YouTube, youtube.com slash c slash six sided podcast.
As usual, this podcast feed is the best, fastest and easiest way to get this program.

(06:36):
However, I would also ask you to throw a subscription on our YouTube page as we are dragging ourselves
to the thousand subscriber mark.
These programs do wind up on there, although I am backlogged, we're also in summer here.
We get like three days of summer in Canada.
So I've been enjoying it quite a bit lately.

(06:59):
And so that's kind of pushed the YouTube portion of it back.
But eventually I'll get all caught up.
So go ahead and throw a subscription on our YouTube page.
You can also connect with us on Facebook.
We have an incredible Facebook group, the Canadian professional wrestling history Facebook
group.

(07:20):
There's been so much incredible information, so many personal stories that have been shared
on there and some fascinating projects that have been discussed on there recently that
I've really been interested in and I'm really enjoying seeing all of the interaction on
that.
So come on in and join the Canadian professional wrestling history Facebook group.

(07:44):
Also use the Facebook pages section, find grappling with Canada and go ahead and like
the Facebook page.
You can also find us on Instagram, Instagram.com slash grappling with Canada is where you can
find some interesting tidbits related to the show.
And lately I've been starting to post up some more fun stuff on there.

(08:05):
So definitely want to find me on Instagram and shoot me a follow and enjoy what I am
putting up on there as well.
Couple of other things that I want to talk about before we get into the program today
is we are currently soliciting still donations for the podcast.

(08:28):
Unfortunately, there is quite the monetary undertaken in regards to this podcast.
So no amount is too small and no amount is too big.
So feel free to donate to the program.
If you do get a big shout out on the next available program.
There is easy ways to do that, including direct PayPal link.

(08:49):
There is the tip function on good pods as well as by me a coffee.com slash grappling.
You can find all of these in the link tree link in the show notes of today's episode.
Once again, anything that gets donated goes directly to the podcast.
It's to go anywhere else, right to the podcast to help with the research, the procurement

(09:12):
of items, et cetera, et cetera.
So any help that you guys can provide there would be much appreciated.
Another way to help the program is grappling with Canada dot threadless dot com.
That's the official t-shirt store for grappling with Canada.
And a side note as usual, all of the classic grappling with Canada logo t-shirts, that's

(09:37):
the one that's the cover art for this episode with the Canadian maple leaf flag.
All proceeds of that are being donated to the Children's Hospital here in friendly
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program as well.

(09:58):
I'm really excited to be sharing some special news regarding something that came up in regards
to our subject matter last month, more specifically with the special episode that preceded it.
And it's something that I'm really excited about and I put a lot of time and effort into

(10:24):
and I'm going to talk about that way later on in the program.
Now you'll know that I gave a little shout out to Croatia at the start of today's episode.
That is because this podcast is the number two rated history podcast in Croatia.
So thank you everybody in Croatia for checking out this program.

(10:49):
It truly means a lot.
It's absolutely mind boggling when I get these readouts or however you want to say it, monthly
about where grappling with Canada is charting in various places in the world.
It's crazy.
And to think that a guy from Winnipeg, Manitoba can put some time and effort and get some

(11:14):
people interested in Canadian professional wrestling history and have that translate
across the globe, mind blowing.
So thank you everybody for checking out the program and thank you everybody who's been
spreading the word about this program.
This program exists because of you, the listener, and this program gains more listeners because

(11:37):
of simply put, you, the listener.
So if you can go your way to suggest this program to a family member or a friend, it
would truly mean the world to me.
And yeah, it's shocking almost every month to see the growth in this program and where

(12:01):
it's reaching and who is reaching.
It's incredible and hats off to each and every one of you, the listeners, because without
you this would not be possible.
All right.
Today's episode on John and Chris, the Toulouse brothers.
Now like I said, this thing is going to be jam packed with a ton of information and I'm

(12:25):
going to do this one a little bit differently than I would normally do an episode.
Well, I guess there's two reasons for that.
One because each episode of Grappler of Canada that I've done so far is focused on one person.
This includes the two part episode on Rowdy Roddy Piper earlier on in this season.
Each episode so far is focused on one person at a time.

(12:49):
Today we have two, the brothers, John and Chris Toulouse.
Now the reason I want to do that is because yes, I can fully appreciate that John Toulouse
and you're going to hear about it in this program.
John Toulouse was far and away the bigger star than Chris Toulouse was, although there

(13:09):
are mitigating circumstances as to why that is.
And I think that you're going to have a whole new appreciation for Chris Toulouse at the
end of this program.
So what I'm going to do today is I'm going to cover the life of Chris Toulouse.

(13:30):
I'm going to go a little bit more in depth into his life as well than I am just me personally
speaking to you guys because my two guests are going to give you a little bit of Chris
and a lot of John.
So I'm going to fill in the blanks a little bit and give you a lot of Chris and a little
bit of John if that makes any sense.
I think you'll know what I'm talking about as we get into the episode today.

(13:52):
And like I said, Chris's story to me is fascinating and it's heartwarming.
And I think at the end of this program, you're going to agree with me.
Now I said at the top of the program that I have two excellent guests today.
I think you guys are going to really agree with me on this one.
Making his third appearance on the program, we have the first dentist of professional

(14:16):
wrestling, Dr. Mike Lado is back in the program.
We go deep in the weeds about the Toulouse brothers impact specifically on California,
but more broadly in terms of professional wrestling history.
There are some things that you guys think you know that some of your favorite stars

(14:40):
quote unquote brought to the business.
You're going to get your minds blown.
We uncover some incredible information and we are really going to set the table for a
lot of the in depth discussion that we dive into deeper in this episode with my next guest.

(15:03):
Evan Ginsburg is joining the program today.
And now if you're not familiar with him, Evan is a published author and he was an associate
producer on the Oscar nominated movie.
One of my favorites of all time to be quite honest, The Wrestler.
What a tremendous movie.
Obviously starring Mickey Rourke.
He was also a big part of 350 days.

(15:25):
That was documentary with Bret Hart, Billy Graham and various others.
He has an immense TV, film and radio career.
And he is also the senior editor and writer for Pro Wrestling Stories.
That's a teaser for later on in the program.
And also the podcast Wrestling and everything Coast to Coast.

(15:49):
So I'm thrilled to be on words to have these two gentlemen from opposite sides of America
talking about two incredible Canadian professional wrestling professional wrestling legends.
You can tell I'm fired up.
I'm ready to go.
I'm excited.
I hope you guys are too.

(16:09):
And I think that the best way to kick this thing off as we usually do is to throw up
a little Tolos Brothers audio.
So please enjoy this.
And on the other side, let's meet and learn about Chris Tolos.
Please enjoy.
Well, I figured sooner or later I'd get a shot.

(16:44):
Wallach hits the dust.
Chris working on him.
Got him in bad shape.
They're afraid Teddy Thomas moves him away and John comes over after him.
Chris has got him, but he's under the ring rope.
Teddy's out on the apron.

(17:05):
Oh, this is too much.
Look at Teddy.
Got a choke hold on Chris and he can't break him away.
Finally broke him away, Chris and Chet Wallach battling away.
And Chris goes out of the ropes.

(17:27):
He's got Wallach out.
He pulls him out.
Look at him smashing away outside the ring.
These two behemoths.
Finally Wallach goes down.
The two Tolos Brothers roughing him up.
Chris gets him on the ropes.
Look at this action.
These two Tolos Brothers.

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He ran into a kick.
He's in bad shape.
He's down.
John jumps in.
John pummeled him.
The tag made for Chris.
Chris comes in.
The eye gouges.
Again and again.
Oh, look at poor Wallach.
The tag made.
Here's the tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.

(18:10):
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
Here's John coming in again.
Wallach kicks him.
Jumps on him.
Here's Chris going up to the alley.
Oh, it's all over I believe.
John falls on him.
John has him.
Teddy Thomas comes in.
The count.
One, two, three.
It's all over.
The Tolos Brothers have won it.
But the action isn't over.

(18:31):
Nander going after John.
But the fall has been completed.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.
The tag made.

(18:52):
He's leaving and the Argentinian team has been completed.
Nander goes in to help Chet Wallach out.
The Tolos Brothers have won it.
Here's Manny Whites.
Of the second and deciding fall, six minutes and ten seconds, the winner is the Tolos Brothers.
Chris Tolos was born December 5, 1929, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
He was the oldest of three children born to Greek parents, Nicholas and eventually Anatole.

(19:16):
His two siblings would be obviously one of them being John Toulos and his sister Mary
Toulos.
Throughout his formative years, Chris was always known as quite the athlete.
He played football, he played hockey, lacrosse and he was a track all-star and eventually
ended up learning how to wrestle both amateur and then professionally.

(19:40):
He ended up getting into professional wrestling via Wee Willie Davis and ended up making his
debut in Buffalo around 1951.
Unsurprisingly to most people listening to this program, Chris debuted as a heel and
would end up wrestling as a heel for the majority of his career.
With some notable exceptions which we will get to later on in the program today.

(20:03):
Now it's often been noted and eventually you're going to hear that or this fact of which noted
in this program as well this evening that Chris's career was very truncated.
Now this is for a couple of reasons.
One is that he really was kind of a more introverted individual generally speaking and he stayed

(20:27):
around Hamilton for the majority of his life and career.
The other reason for that is that he ended up actually taking care of his mother who
lived to the age of 101 which is quite the accomplishment.
It really says something about the character of somebody who they would essentially put

(20:47):
their life on hold, sacrifice a career which by all accounts Chris was excellent at professional
wrestling to essentially take care of his loved mother.
I think that speaks volumes to just who Chris Tolos was but it doesn't end there as he also
ended up taking care of his sister who was disabled.

(21:11):
You're going to hear about that later on in my conversation with Dr. Mike Leno.
But for all intents and purposes and for the purpose of this story today and talking about
Chris I felt it was really necessary to make sure that I really sensuated those aspects

(21:32):
of his life.
He did marry in 1971 it was a short marriage but he did end up having a son named Nicholas
as well.
Now it is interesting that again everybody talks about how much bigger of a star John
was than Chris but John would have never got into the business without Chris.

(21:54):
Chris is the one who ended up getting John into professional wrestling something I'm
going to get to a little bit later.
Now one very interesting fact and I haven't been able to find a copy of this so if anybody
has a copy of this or has a copy of even the cover of this because I've never even seen
what it looks like please shoot me a message on twitter at 6signpot.com or email me at

(22:19):
6signpot.gmail.com or throw it up in the Canadian Professional Wrestling History Facebook group
I would love to see it.
But in 1973 I believe was the year Chris Tolos came out with a cookbook apparently he was
a magnificent cook and in true Tolos Brothers fashion would promow it every chance he got

(22:41):
from 1973 to 1974 which apparently I could just I could see it in my mind's eye right.
His big hulking wrestler pushing his cookbook on wrestling television kind of sounds familiar
like something that happened in the late 90s doesn't it folks.
Again threads of the past that transcend today we're going to have more of them as we go

(23:07):
along in the program today.
Chris would end up having an in ring career spanning from 1951 to 1983 and ended up having
roughly 1100 total matches.
Now these include singles and tag matches something I'm going to get to a little bit
later in the program when we talk about the Canadian Wrecking Crew aspect of his professional

(23:31):
wrestling career.
But for all the talk of how Chris's wrestling career was a lot shorter and a lot less involved
we'll say than John's career still having you know almost 1100 matches in a somewhat
modified working environment we'll say is pretty impressive when you consider everything

(23:55):
else that he was dealing with in his life and the people that he was caring for in his
life as well.
Now John Toulouse was born September 18th 1930 as well in Hamilton Ontario to the same
set of parents as Chris as you would so imagine.

(24:16):
Now I mentioned earlier that Chris ended up getting John into professional wrestling but
that's not to say that John as well wasn't quite a distinguished athlete as well before
he got into professional wrestling.
And sports such as lacrosse, football and hockey were some of his favorites growing
up.

(24:37):
Now later in the program with my discussions with Dr. Michael Eno and Evan Ginsburg we're
really going to get into a lot of the feuds and memorable moments of the Canadian Wrecking
Crew but also more specifically John Toulouse as you can tell he had a much longer and much
more winding wrestling career.

(24:58):
But I always find it interesting to discover what wrestlers of the time period thought
about the two wrestlers so I'm going to include some quotes from some very prominent names,
some names that we've actually covered on previous programs of Grappler with Canada.
And I always find it interesting to really get a snapshot of who these people are by

(25:24):
the people working with them.
So let's get into a couple of these.
Now this quote comes from Jim Friedman from his 1988 book of Drawing Heat.
Quote, They worked as a tag team as they really were, brothers, and inseparable.
Neither would stop at anything to defend the other.
This solidarity, a fanatical loyalty that called organized crime to mind because their

(25:48):
secret weapon, a mindless brotherhood.
They flogged it weakly on TV appearances with a steady drone of mutual admiration and threats
addressing unison to their adversaries.
Brother John would say to Chris, Right brother Chris?
And would pass the mic for Chris to say, Right brother John?

(26:08):
Right?
Right.
Another quote would come from Canadian legend Gene Kineski.
Quote, The Tolless boys were always in great shape, always kept themselves in great shape.
Rough, tough, rugged type of individuals.
Chris was kind of reserved while John was very outgoing.

(26:29):
They done the job real, real good.
In other words, when they got in the ring, they got the job done real well.
They came by it naturally.
They were both great athletes, kept themselves in great shape and that's the key to any sport.
Journalist Bill Afterwood remarked about the Tolless brothers.
Quote, When I was a little kid, they were the Tolless brothers, the golden Greeks in

(26:54):
New York.
I first saw them in Sunnyside Garden in New York probably around 1960.
I just remember them holding up their arms and Chris Tolless going, Me and John are the
greatest!
That's what I remember.
Now a couple of interesting quotes because if you've ever seen the Tolless brothers

(27:16):
interviews, there's a certain animalistic magnetism that comes from their interviews
that would very much lead your mind to think about the Tolless brothers in a certain light.
But these couple of quotes I found very interesting and really speak about the character of Chris
that we just talked about previously, but about the brothers that you're going to hear

(27:39):
about a little bit more in the program today.
Quote, John and Chris were really shy according to Hamilton's sailor Bob Clark.
At the time he would say, I know that Chris is around all the time, but Chris is the shy
one.
Well, so is John.
They don't like the limelight anymore.
They are very quiet.

(28:00):
They don't want any publicity, no nothing.
They don't even come out to any of the engagements at all.
And another Hamilton friend, Hurricane Smith, would say, quote, they're such gentlemen,
two of the nicest men that you will ever meet.
And these are a couple of things that are going to come up later on in our program tonight
as we get deeper into the lives and careers of the Tolless brothers.

(28:26):
Now we'll get into a couple of quotes concerning John more specifically, but you'll also see
Chris Poppip in these as well as they really were inseparable at certain points of their
career as we had just previously mentioned.
This quote comes from Art Williams, who was a referee from the Los Angeles promotion,
where you will hear very much about that later on in the program.

(28:50):
Quote, Tolless was one hell of a talker.
That's what got him over.
He was a better talker than he was a worker, much to his credit.
That's not a knock.
That's what got him over.
Publicist Jeff Walton would agree with that statement.
Tolless without a flaw was one of the best talkers ever.
And one of his frequent opponents, Mondo Guerrero, would really put into context what made John

(29:16):
Tolless the best.
Quote, John Tolless was a master at his craft.
He actually was what is now known as the old school, where you could carry the people to
a heated end.
John had that.
He had that character of that.
His mouth.
The way that he talked.
One of the first guys that would carry an interview that would make you sick, making

(29:38):
fun of people to capture what really ticked the guy off.
He was a master at that.
He could do it quick.
He had that sense of capture in what was good about the guy, his opponent, and know how
to use that against him in the interview.
He's got a personality that when you see him looking around at people, saying something
to the people, the people want to kill him.

(30:01):
He's just got that arrogance to be a good bad boy.
Wrestler Don Curtis would remark of the Tolless brothers in ring personas and style.
Quote, they had a rough stomping style.
They were pretty much equal in the ring and really had good timing and thought very much
alike.
Now there are many firsts in professional wrestling that can be attributed to the Tolless

(30:24):
brothers and many to John Tolless himself.
One of which I actually have the audio of that you're going to hear a little bit towards
the end of this segment of the program tonight, so stay tuned for that.
Tolless was known for all kinds of outlandish in-ring incidents.

(30:47):
He's from all accounts that I can find, he's the first person to break a guitar over somebody's
head in a ring.
He's the first person who would bring out two by fours to the ring.
He was the first person who really started to use chairs and baseball bats and some hidden
weapons and he was also the first wrestler to pioneer and bring a bowl constrictor with

(31:11):
him to the ring.
Something that you're going to hear a little bit later on in the program as well.
Now again, all things that you could draw a direct line from the past to you know when
I was growing up in wrestling in the 80s, early 90s.
You know you think about guys like Hacksaw Jim Duggan, you think about guys like Jake

(31:31):
the Snake Roberts, you think about what was happening in ECW in the early 90s.
Well again, a lot of that you can tie into the Tolless brothers and again, one very important
aspect that again I have the audio of that I'm going to play in a few minutes time before
we jump into our Mike Lano interview.

(31:55):
Now with the career lasting from the early 50s all the way till 1992, John Tolless ended
up having a career match total of just over 1500 total matches.
Now I know that many people are probably wondering well you know the Tolless brothers were such
noted tag team specialists, I mean hell they were known as the Canadian Wrecking Crew after

(32:22):
all.
So how many matches did they really have as that tag team?
Here's the astounding number to me.
Now keep in mind Chris had roughly 1100 matches, John had just over 1500 matches.
So from 1953 to 1970 the Canadian Wrecking Crew tagged for 534 matches according to everything

(32:51):
that I've been able to research.
Just an absolutely astounding number.
Essentially half the amount of time that Chris spent in the ring was in the Canadian Wrecking
Crew tag team and a third of all of John Tolless matches were teaming with his brother Chris.
If that doesn't say something for longevity and tag team prowess, boy oh boy I'm not sure

(33:17):
what else would.
And again these are two guys who absolutely pioneered a whole lot of things that we see
in today's professional wrestling that truthfully nobody had ever seen before.
Nobody ever really heard the promos like right brother Chris, that's right brother John.

(33:38):
Talking in third person is something we're going to talk about later on in my conversation
with Dr. Mike Leno.
This arrogance, this way of drawing people in, this way of captivating the audience and
making the audience so hot that they wanted to physically jump in the ring and murder
these two individuals.

(33:59):
Something that we're really missing today in professional wrestling.
I'm clearly not advocating violence against wrestlers.
Probably a bad idea for most of the fan base that's out there.
Enough said on that part.
However we are really missing that in today's environment.
The absolute intoxication that the fans have with the individual in the ring.

(34:22):
That absolute loss of sense of self.
When somebody can suck you into what they're presenting in the ring, man there's nothing
like it.
I think that's one of the most beautiful things about professional wrestling.
It's something that we've really lost over the last couple of years and hopefully something
that we end up getting back.

(34:45):
Time will tell I suppose.
So I had promised some audio of one of the first, and I believe it is, the first instances
of an act like this being perpetrated in a professional wrestling match in history.

(35:06):
On the other side of this audio is going to be my conversation with Dr. Mike Leno.
Now in this conversation we're really going to get deep into the weeds about some of the
big feuds that the Tolos brothers had.
We're going to talk big time about the John Tolos, Freddie Blassie feud.
One of the greatest feuds quite honestly in professional wrestling history.

(35:31):
We're going to talk about Mike Leno running the fan club actually of the Tolos brothers
and a lot of other interesting anecdotes and side notes and a lot of information that even
if you think you know everything about the Tolos brothers, I think you're going to get
proven wrong in this conversation.

(35:52):
So on the other side of this audio, my conversation with Dr. Mike Leno.
This audio from everything that I can gather is the first time that a table spot was used
in a professional wrestling match and it happened with the Tolos brothers.
So check out this incredible audio and on the other side, my conversation with wrestling's

(36:17):
first dentist, Dr. Mike Leno.
Teddy Thomas working on Chris Tolos.
Nandor is almost gone.
He's being choked into submission.
Nandor reaching for the rope.

(36:39):
Now John has him.
He's whacking him away just above me.
Look at the job that John and Chris are doing on Nandor.
Yes, sir.
The action supreme and this is but a sample.
Look out.
Oh, he threw him right into my lap.
Easy, easy, easy.

(37:01):
Get him off.
Look out.
The Tolos brothers.
Oh, I got a shot in the mouth.
Nandor.
Oh, I think they broke the table.
The table is all gone.
My microphone is broken.
The standby mic.
We need help.
Oh, man.

(37:23):
Look at the action.
Fantastic action.
Nandor has John.
They ran him together.
Look at the Tolos brothers.
They're out of the ring.
The crowd whacking at them across the way.

(37:45):
All right. Well, now that we've been chatting quite a bit off air, but Dr. Mike Leno, back for a third appearance on Grappler with the Candidates.
My pleasure to have you back to talk some Tolos brothers today.
Well, it gives me nothing but great pleasure to talk about two of the greatest legends.
As you know, I'm a territory guy.
I think I was unusual in terms of the magazine writer photographers from the late 60s on.

(38:09):
That was my bucket list.
I wanted to hit all of the territories because they were so unique, each one different, whether it was the announcers like a Boyd Pierce or Hank Renner, Walt Harris in San Francisco.
Or Vince Jr. starting at, I think, 71, 72 for Triton.
The fans, the refs, the timekeepers, the atmosphere, the TV, everything was so different and incredible.

(38:32):
Sort of like today's wrestling, if you were to go one night to Impact, the next to AW, to WWE, MLW, etc.
You would find it.
But this was, you know, some states like Texas had three, four territories in one state.
And they were all different, whether it was Fritz, Paul Bosch, the Funks in Amarillo or Blanchard in San Antonio.

(38:57):
All different, completely different territories.
Sometimes they did share some undercard guys, sometimes, you know, share some main event guys.
But they'd have their, by and large, their own crew.
It was amazing.
And that's why I love talking about the Tolos brothers.
If I don't get this in, his, John's son at John's funeral, I was one of the few from wrestling that went there,

(39:20):
besides Mando Guerrero and Jeff Walt and Rock Riddle, asked me at the place since I ran the Tolos Brothers International Fan Club,
the only fan club they ever had, but Chris Jr. named after John's brothers.
But that's what they called him, Chris Jr., even though he was John's son.
He asked me to be Paul Bearer at John's funeral, which was kind of a big deal for me.

(39:45):
And I got to speak a little bit about what John meant.
But Chris was every bit as important, too.
So it pained me, the one Maple Leaf Garden show I came in, because I loved that venue,
I'd always wanted to shoot there and seeing Chris have to be in an opener.
When, in his heyday, he was a main event, or when he came into Los Angeles in 72,
he and John shot up and were our local area America's tag team champions,

(40:10):
feuding with Keller Kowalski, fresh out of Montreal's Grand Prix, and Tanya Shibuya,
in heel team, and John and Chris were the greatest people to work for, and John in particular.
The stuff he did, the magic, and he was all over, both global guys,
but John's magic in Los Angeles can't be denied.

(40:32):
He was my home base territory as the ringside photographer, and John was magic.
Obviously, the Fred Plassie feud was one of Rustling's longest, and we could talk about that.
Let me see if you get some questions before I motor mouth.
Yeah, well, I guess we're kind of jumping ahead a little bit,

(40:53):
but one thing that you did touch on in regards to the funeral,
I'm surprised that there was a lack of wrestling people at John's funeral.
That's really surprising to me.
Well, but it was still packed. It was packed with family and friends.
John's ex-wife Ingrid came, and the, I wouldn't say illegitimate daughter,

(41:20):
but while he was married, he had a daughter with somebody in the Northeast,
I think in the Boston area, and no one had ever seen her before,
and this woman was extremely knowledgeable, beautiful, knew his history,
and she came out, and that was John's daughter.
Wow.
So it made up for that.
But at Rustling's funeral, it often happened, like within days, they announced the service,
or in this case, it was an open casket.

(41:42):
I'll never get that image of seeing a gangrene John with the open casket.
I wanted to pay my respects, but it was kind of horrific.
He dropped a lot of weight like the Sheik did, and looked at me shaded in there.
But like with Buddy Rogers' thing, he died after a freak accident.

(42:05):
He slipped in a supermarket when some fan asked him to autograph something.
He was waiting in the checkout line, if you can imagine Buddy Rogers in the checkout line,
and broke his elbow, and in the hospital they gave him an antibiotic he had a known allergy to.
He died, they had the funeral days later.
So a lot of people can't plan.

(42:27):
These older guys at Rustling, they need some time to schedule plans.
Yeah, there's an order.
Fans, to and from, all of that stuff.
So I've been to, unlike Andre's funeral, which they paced it out well enough,
so tons of people from Vince Jr. on down could go, similar to Owen Hart's funeral,

(42:50):
which nearly everybody in the business who met anything was there, as well as Eddie Guerrero's funeral.
But there are a lot of these, like the Brian Pillman thing, where there's not as many wrestlers as you would want or hope.
It's often because of scheduling conflicts.
If they're current wrestlers, they're stuck, they can't quite get out of events they're advertised on.
And then the older guys just need a little more than two, three, four days to book something,

(43:15):
whether they're flying cross-country perhaps from California or to Florida or New York.
So I've been to funerals where there's X amount.
At another funeral I served as a Paul Bearer, too, who John Tolis had an amazing feud with in LA,
Pampero Furpo in 74, 75, there were X amount of people, including Dave Meltzer at that one.

(43:41):
And some wrestling announcers like Dick Lane packed with wrestling people.
So not always the case, but some of the roller derby legends, you go and there's like nobody from roller derby.
And these are major, major main event caliber stars.
That's like wrestling on roller skates, stars from the 60s and 70s.
So it's rough going to these funerals.

(44:03):
But John's was a beauty, an immaculate, beautiful Greek Orthodox church.
It was all white with gold fixtures.
It looked like Donald Trump had something to do with all the gold fixtures.
It was everywhere you looked.
But it was a gorgeous church and it was packed.
It was packed, but I wish more people from the wrestling industry had been there.

(44:25):
Some said like Gene LaBelle when I nagged him as to why he didn't come shoot of Gene LaBelle, lifelong friends with Tolis.
John said he just wanted to remember John the way he was and his glory.
He heard it was going to be an open casket.
He decided he just couldn't go.
Didn't want to see him.
So it's rough, but I've never not, somebody that meant something, somebody in my life like John Tolis, I got to be there.

(44:52):
I wasn't at Chris's or the sister that passed away that had, I believe she had the same thing I have MS, John and Chris's sister.
John was such a good brother.
He would make annual treks back home to help take care of the sister who Chris was kind of saddled with and didn't get to pursue wrestling as much as he could have in the 70s

(45:14):
when he's jobbing on either Sheik shows nearby home or at Maple Leaf, not that far from, it wasn't a long stretch for him to drive there to either of those.
That's pretty much it.
I don't think he worked any Ohio or Buffalo, Pedro Martinez, NWF shows in concert with Johnny Powers.
I think he jobbed a couple of times there, but it's hard seeing a reading results that Chris Tolis jobbing.

(45:39):
This guy is an incredible talent.
And to hear, John was state of the art promos when he had the feud with Fred Blassie and I'll shut up.
But Chris came in and the first time ever he worked as a babyface.
I think the only place he worked as a babyface because John had already turned babyface and was feuding with Killer Kowalski as our killer heel starting in February of 1972.

(46:02):
And then Chris comes in to help him battle Kowalski.
And Chris could not pronounce any of the Hispanic wrestlers names like Miel Moskowitz or he couldn't even pronounce Kenji Shibuya.
He called him Shibuya or Black Orpheum and Great Goliath.
Those were kind of easy compared to Raul Mata or Ray Mendoza, which Chris had a hard time with.

(46:23):
But I have these audio tapes and I was going to, we moved, but I was going to try to find them to play some audio for you.
I'll send them to you in the future.
But I taped from about late 71 on all of our TV, you know, just a regular old cassette deck, the interviews from Los Angeles and San Francisco TV.
So I've got Chris botching all these wrestler names, but also they reprised their classic 50s and 60s bit where John would say something and Chris would go, you're absolutely right, brother John.

(46:53):
That's right.
Something Chris would say, you're absolutely right, brother Chris. But they were doing it as baby faces and it was magic. It was really something.
I guess it's an interesting thing that gets overlooked and obviously we have a whole lot to get into.
But just with Chris specifically, he could have had a much larger, much more involved wrestling career, but it was a family life, right?

(47:18):
Because I believe he also took care of his mother, if I'm not mistaken.
So he stuck very close to home.
Yeah, I mean, he was an excellent five star chef.
I don't know if you know much about his training on that, but he put out like two cookbooks.
That's right.
And so he was quite the deal in terms of food and John would always brag.

(47:44):
These brothers, they never cross word between the two of them and they really had their heyday.
Obviously the 50s, but primarily the 60s in various territories like in Boston,
which kind of was oddly separate for a time from the Tri-WF Capital Sports of Vint Senior where John and Chris were tag champions,

(48:05):
I think at least twice, feuding around 65 with another heel tag team, McGrela Monsoon and Killer Kowalski.
So there is one of John's lifelong friends who he never ever had a bad match with and Killer Kowalski.
And just a thought, I don't think any footage exists.
Have you found any footage of the Tollis brothers against Monsoon and Kowalski heel versus heel?

(48:27):
That had to have been for the time, incredible heel or incredible tag stuff.
I haven't seen any footage of that. I'm sure it's out there, but I haven't seen it yet.
Well, you don't know because when I was flown out in 92 by WWF when the Ring Boy scandal and the Steroids scandal were about to hit

(48:49):
and the journalists were flown in for a day at Titan Towers and to go tour the video facility, there was a lot of video missing.
A lot of Vint Senior stuff was not saved or was taped over because the two inch,
the three quarter inch format tapes were expensive then.
Oh, and that's back when they used to reuse everything too.

(49:10):
Yeah, once it made all the towns, you would just recycle it and tape the next set of shows on three quarter tapes.
But I think they did a good job, but there's a lot of stuff that is completely missing.
And that's why their archivist, who I'm well aware of, Ben there,
Ben Brown was looking at various guys who shot handheld without any audio at Madison Square Garden.

(49:37):
There's two guys that shot from about 71 on and one guy sold it.
He had Bruno dropping the title to Ivan Koloff and whatever year that was, 71.
And the other guy had Stasiak beating Pedro and then 10 days later, December 10th, 73, Bruno beating Stan Stasiak at Madison Square Garden to get the strap back.

(50:04):
But they didn't buy that footage. Anyway, I've seen all of that. Thank God there were guys doing it.
And while I was shooting Ringsight at the Olympic Auditorium for the program,
my best friend, actor, comedian Richard Dawson's son, Mark Dawson, was filming from the front row.
And he caught audio like Jimmy Lennon Jr. introducing everybody.
Poulos, Blassie, the Shee, Mille Moskos, Bobo Brazil, you name it.

(50:32):
But that's really a very short window from 72 to about April of 75.
And then Mark and his brother Gary lost interest in wrestling and he stopped going. I kept shooting at Poulos.
But I was shooting stills.
And the video that Mark shot of like the last meaningful Blassie-Poulos matches in 1973, there were two,

(50:57):
spaced two weeks apart at the Olympic Auditorium, which was the primo house show venue for Mike LaBelle's territory.
And Fred, by that time, he was just on his way over for his first ever Inoki New Japan Tour
because he had previously worked for Ricky Dawson's group, which morphed basically, kind of morphed almost into,

(51:19):
in terms of the staff and workers, into Bobo's All Japan in late December 72, early January 73 for All Japan.
And Blassie was like a mainstay for that group. He did multiple tours for Bobo.
But then when New Japan signed up with then Tri-WF and Vince Senior, the relationship changed.

(51:46):
And then Bruno and Pedro and Blassie managing, let's see, Nikolai Volkoff.
That's when all the Tri-WF guys switched from All Japan to New Japan.
And it was kind of earth shattering at the time.
But so Blassie would, you know, you see they're coming into LA to do business because he quit the territory.
He and John quit after their August 1971 famous outdoor Coliseum match, which was the greatest angle.

(52:13):
And I've seen them all. I've seen Cebisco turning on Bruno.
But the Blassie told us, Mumsil's Powder, that they stretched out like seven months,
filming Fred at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California, you know, with a patch over his eye.
And the hospital doctor was our own Dr. Bernhard Schwartz, our boxing wrestling ringside doctor at the Olympic Auditorium.

(52:36):
Why? He is the attending physician for Blassie.
But they filmed the stuff, they stretched it out, and then it drew, you know, somewhere, it might be a work figure, but about 28, 29,000.
So like the second longest big, huge global feud Blassie told us,
underneath it is the actual longest feud at that time, Sheik and Boba Brazil.

(53:00):
Oh, yeah, that's right.
And so to have all this stuff, and we had our own version of Tolless brothers against Monsoon, Killer Kowalski,
and Heel Heel for our local tag straps, Shibuya and Saedo, and that's Masa Saedo, the real Saedo,
against Black, Gorman and Goliath, they were huge in Mexico, even bigger.

(53:21):
OK, so you have that match, which reminded me in some ways, because it was very unusual to not just have a Heel Heel match,
but a Heel versus Heel tag match.
You had Meal Mosquers against the original El Solitario, which stole the show.
El Solitario, who died, I believe it was a car accident.
If people haven't looked at him and only seen his son Solitario Jr., not even remotely as good.

(53:45):
Solitario against Mosquers in his prime, just absolutely incredible.
Like the opening match had Pat Patterson and Ray Stevens on this show.
Oh my goodness.
Shire sent him down.
So that was reminiscent of the good times in L.A., because we had a lot of shitty, not so good periods, you know,
like from 75 on, which was saved by the three years, seemed like three years of Chavo Guerrero versus Roddy Piper feud.

(54:12):
La Cucaracha, La Cucaracha.
You know, Roddy, Canadian Roddy, who was one of my best friends, and I was at both his funeral and his memorial.
The memorial was held by his manager at the L.A. Comedy Store on Sunset Boulevard.
This was a couple of weeks after the funeral, because Roddy was trying to become a stand-up comic,

(54:38):
because the film and TV just wasn't happening for him, and it was kind of devastating.
So this guy, I can't think of his name, who did the killer Steve Austin imitations on Mad TV,
Will Sasso, was working very closely with Roddy.
But I bring that up because Roddy, when he came into our territory, and this will even bring me back to something further.

(55:02):
I mentioned earlier that Fred Blassie and John Tolis quit on Mike LaBelle over the August.
Mike LaBelle was the first promoter to ever do closed circuit TV.
That's right.
And he started with some of the three shows prior to the outdoor Coliseum show, you know,
capped by Blassie and John Tolis, which Blassie went over to get his revenge for being blinded by John Tolis back in like February of that year.

(55:26):
And they stretched that angle out all of those months.
I don't know if anyone's ever heard, other than Wardlow and AEW, of stretching out an angle for such a long period of time.
But so Blassie and Tolis quit, and John quit on Mike LaBelle, and they quit over money.
There were share that they felt they should have gotten from the closed circuit stuff leading up to that and the LA Coliseum outdoor show.

(55:54):
But John would always return.
Blassie accepted Vince Senior's offer to become a manager and leave and move, sell his California house, move to Connecticut, work as a heel manager,
starting with the first charge and Nikolai Volkov.
But Tolis would always come back.
And so when Roddy Piper came in, and it was supposed to just be for a couple of days,
Red Bastine, who was booking for and with Paul Bosch in Houston, really was sending Roddy to San Francisco, to Roy Shire.

(56:20):
And he would come in, do our January 1975 Battle Royale, and maybe TV, and then go up to Roy.
But our booker at the time, Leo Garibaldi, saw something in Piper.
So Piper came in. He debuted in LA that January, I think it was the 11th, 1976 Battle Royale, 1976.

(56:42):
And like the third from the bottom in a 10-minute Broadway as a babyface against and also babyface Tony Rocco,
who was a journeyman with great talent in New Japan, very good wrestler.
And Leo Garibaldi, within a week when Roddy, so he worked with Roddy, who also picked John Tolis' brain for a couple of years,

(57:04):
which is why I'm bringing up Roddy, but Leo Garibaldi had him start using the bagpipes and wear a kiln
and do all this stuff that he would later finesse.
And John Tolis had been a part of three and a half, four years, actually four years earlier.
Superstar Billy Graham came in as, I forget the name, Roy Shire, penned on him in San Francisco,

(57:28):
the American dream machine, you know, goofy because of the Russers, including Desert Rose, would take that.
The American spirit, I think that's actually what it was called.
But he was wearing just leather chaps, like a leather cowboy jacket with chaps,
the long pieces of leather hanging down in San Francisco.
He comes down for us, debuts around February of 72.

(57:49):
And for some reason, you know, John and Jeff Walton, I think, Michael Bell and Gene worked with Billy Graham,
who was kind of, you know, he'd already came in for us when he had jet black hair.
Same with Dr. Jerry Graham, no relation.
Jerry Graham discovered him actually legit in Phoenix, Arizona,
when he was driving to L.A. for us from Detroit, from Sheeps territory.

(58:13):
And so Billy Graham, you know, they had him bleach his hair.
They had him start doing tie dye.
And he did that for about three months, feuding with John Tolis over the America's title.
And at that point, we had some killer heels.
We had Billy Graham, who, you know, he had done some great work in San Francisco,
for Shire, teaming with Pat Patterson before Pat turned face.

(58:37):
They held the tag straps as heels until Pat turned baby face, et cetera.
But Billy Graham, with the tie dye, it developed that whole, it started using the brand new nickname.
And John Tolis was a part of creating that superstar Billy Graham.
And from there, he took the tie dye to the AWA, began feuding with Wally McDaniel,

(58:59):
worked for Paul Bosch in Houston, Florida bit for Eddie Graham.
And that's when he gets the call from Vince Senor to take the strap from Bruno.
You know, Bruno wanted the strap off himself.
So John Tolis had a big hand in that and also helped Leo Garibaldi in 1976,
Vanessa Roddy Piper teach him how to do promo skills,

(59:22):
whereas Gene LaBelle was working on the in-ring stuff, teaching Roddy, you know, more legit grappling,
because Roddy was very green.
And Tolis taught him how to be a great baby face, as Roddy was quick to say.
And Tolis was like his pseudo father before Don Owen in Portland became Roddy's true wrestling father,

(59:45):
because Roddy really didn't, you know, he claimed he didn't really know his biological dad and blah, blah, blah.
So Tolis was one of Roddy Piper's earliest surrogates, other than Red Bastine,
in part Roy Shire, who Roddy said, you know, kind of disgusted him because he would spit cigar juice all over the floor,
or wherever Roy would put it. But anyway, so there we have that Coliseum thing.

(01:00:09):
But obviously, John, you know, I was trying to find a late 40s, like a 1947, 48 picture of John Tolis,
as a total teen idol baby face, you know, like late 40s, might have been as late as 1950,
where he has, for the time, kind of long, slick back hair.
He didn't look like the Tolis we would know.

(01:00:30):
Baby face Tolis, he's in a beautiful blue velour ring short jacket,
and he's holding like a giant Japanese bouquet of flowers you get as a recipe.
He hadn't yet debuted in Japan.
And it's this photo that was in like a sports book, you know, where they devoted two pages only to pro wrestling.
And I think it was put out by Time Life, who publishes Sports Illustrated or did, you know,

(01:00:56):
I don't know if it was as far back as that. I think Sports Illustrated went that far back.
But that was one of the first photos I'd ever seen, or the earliest I can find of John as a wrestler.
And he, they had another photo of him teaming with Bo Bo Rizzo as a baby face.
Wow.
So Tolis was a face, and later a kind of a mid-card heel in Los Angeles, like around 67, 68, 69 before.

(01:01:24):
When Fred Blasey turned face after a three cage bout, spaced over six weeks, so three matches total,
in the Blasey cage against the Sheik, heel heel, where Blasey finally turns baby face.
In the area's longest heel since 1959, you know, when you have that kind of stretch as a totally aided heel,

(01:01:49):
and you turn face, you know, you become like the polar opposite, the greatest baby face ever.
Yeah.
You've seen it a million times with guys like Flair when he turned face.
But, and Tolis would do the same thing in late 71.
After the August match, the blow off thing where he drops the two out of three to Fred at the Coliseum,

(01:02:10):
he slowly turned baby face.
So I'm jumping around here, but it's memories like this, he challenged Black Gorman for the America's championship,
who had defeated Blasey after destroying Fred Sombrero that a fan had given him.
So Fred was so beloved, you know, audience people would give him Serapis to wear around his neck, this is Blasey,

(01:02:33):
or Sombrero, which they would later give to Tolis in late 71, 72.
But it did, Tolis before, right after the Coliseum show, but before he turned face,
he began teaming up with another lifelong friend of he and Fred Blasey's, and Dick Beyer, the Destroyer,
who's got his own, you know, Ontario history.
And John, for the only time in his life, put on, well, until he became Mr. California,

(01:02:59):
Russer, heel manager at 75, who didn't speak, he's a heel manager, but he doesn't say a word.
Because the rest of the Luzno leave town match, he turned heel by then again.
At the time, John held the record for turning face heel more times than any other Russer in the 70s,
and that was in our LA territory.
But John is teaming with the Destroyer for just like maybe 10 days, and John puts on a mask to match the Distorius match,

(01:03:28):
but it was called, it was a golden mask, but it looked exactly like the Distorius mask.
And John gave no reason why he just put on a mask to cut promos.
You know, again, state of the art promos, because Dick Beyer could cut hellacious promos, as did Blasey, as did Tolis.
And he called it the golden mask, so he's teaming up, you know, just like a one-off.

(01:03:50):
And then John fully turned face after Shibuya and Saeedo's heels for our December Christmas 1971 show.
They turned heel on Tolis in a six-man tag, and then they tore off his clothes, you know, down to his underpants,
just like Ric Flair would do later on.
And so for our Christmas show, because Giant Baba, Shohei Baba was such a legend in Los Angeles after Ricky Dozan was even bigger,

(01:04:21):
and portrayed as just, you know, not as a stereotypical Japanese anything, just a normal guy who happened to be Japanese.
So Tolis said, I'm bringing in big Baba.
And so they completely destroyed it in a two-and-a-three-fall squash.
Main event, Shibuya and Saeedo.
John Tolis, for I think the only time, not even in his All Japan tour, he's ever teamed with Baba.
So he's teamed with Baba.

(01:04:43):
The most unlikely, you know, they call them the odd couples, how they were advertised.
The golden green John Tolis, before he became the maniac, got to turn and heel, like February of 73 with Victor Rivera.
In the hair versus hair match, you know, which is a babyface-babyface match.
John loses. Jimmy Lennon Sr. has to cut off John's hair.

(01:05:04):
He's very respectful. He goes, OK, I lost. I have to have my head shaved now.
He sits down, but after his head is shaved, he just turned mega heel, destroyed Victor Rivera.
After the Sheik, had earlier that night, had a title match already with Rivera, who was champion for us.
And then he becomes our greatest heel, you know, and Blasey, you know, left.

(01:05:27):
And Tolis would be there.
But John would make occasional forays, not just to Ontario, but like in 74, 75, he would come in and do quite a bit of shots for his pal Red Besteen and his even greater pal Paul Bosch in Houston.
Main event, big time, it gets Wahoo, it gets Red Besteen, it gets Johnny Valentine in three matches.

(01:05:48):
And then he'd make appearances in Kansas City for his pal Bob Geigel and maybe mid card, you know, nothing happening.
He appeared on like two Keele Auditorium shows when he was in Kansas City next door.
And then he would go up on occasion, take a vacation from L.A. or when he quit Michael Bell over money and it would always return.

(01:06:09):
He'd go up to Vancouver and work with his pal, Don Lee of Jonathan, Gene Knitkey, Stasiak, Dutch Savage, those guys maybe do a couple of shots in Portland, Oregon for Don Owen.
But, you know, John was an in demand guy and John had X amount of All Japan tours after working for Ricky Dozen's Japan Pro Group and then All Japan.

(01:06:32):
But then he too switched when our office switched to Inoki's All Japan and John had one big tour where he wrestled Inoki almost every single night or Seiji Sakaguchi,
a United national big title feud with in both Japan.
All Japan, well, All Japan didn't even start yet, so it's still Japan Pro with Sakaguchi in 71.

(01:06:57):
Like John was still a heel there and it was after that window between the Coliseum match and then turning baby face a little bit later on.
But John had two big matches over the United National Championship, which he dropped Seiji Sakaguchi, who for X amount of time was with Baba in All Japan before he switched over to Inoki's group.

(01:07:20):
Now something that we've completely glossed over and I feel like we should investigate and expand a little bit on is, so you're in California, the Tollis Brothers natural air from Hamilton.
So how does a guy from California end up running the fan club for the Canadian Wrecking Crew out of Hamilton? How did that come to be?

(01:07:43):
The Greek Canadian Wrecking Crew, I was already maybe a year into co-running Fred Blassie's fan club with John O'Rizzi.
My immediate boss in the Los Angeles wrestling territory had run in the 60s Fred Blassie's International Fan Club, Jeff Walton.
And he got hired as the publicist and to make the program.

(01:08:05):
So he was my immediate boss since I worked for him and got paid by him to shoot ringside for our program.
And I was the only one of our three photographers that included BWI Stan Weston's legend Theo Aron, who was my photographer trainer, Sensei,
and Dan Westbrook, who really only shot for Japan for X period of time.

(01:08:27):
But I was shooting for Japan as well as every other magazine we had like for a time in the early to mid 70s, maybe up through 77.
We had like 15 different monthly wrestling magazines on new scenes.
I worked for all of them. There was Norm Keitzer at Wrestling Review and Wrestling Monthly.
There was Wrestling World, my editor there, Lou Sahadi.
I was already at Stan Weston's magazines even before Bill After came aboard as senior editor a bit later in 72, early 72, late 71.

(01:08:57):
Tommy K's two wrestling mags, Wrestling Guide, Big Book of Wrestling.
Ring Wrestling that my editor was Tom Burke, legendary historian who has a lot of ties with Grand Prix of Montreal.
He still has the Grand Prix World title that was told to him.
I don't know where the tag straps are. The Vachon Brothers Great Promotion.

(01:09:19):
What I feel is the greatest territory war, second only to bruiser chic in Detroit, was Montreal.
Rouge's versus Vachon, Grand Prix, which was amazing. And then you had also that period of time and told us came and did one shot for her against Bruno San Martino.
It was Annie Gunkel taking on the entire Georgia NWA office.

(01:09:42):
That's right. Yeah. In the Georgia wars.
Yeah. Well, because she felt dissed when her husband Ray Gunkel died in the ring against Ox Baker.
You know, it wasn't Ox's fault. But and so she took him on and for like two years she outdrew them many times.
And that office head Booker of a team of Bookers, they all brought in all these heavyweight guys was Bill Watts.

(01:10:05):
So how does Annie Gunkel beat the all powerful Bill Watts?
She did. The amazing woman and the first female promoter, unless we count Joyce Sparrow, the Sheik's wife,
who co ran the Detroit wrestling office quietly with the Sheik.
You know, so we did have powerful women. But and anyway, so I'm running the Blassey fan club with but I was only the vice president.

(01:10:32):
I was second in command of the Blassey fan club. So we took it over the Blassey fan club and asked my boss, Jeff Walt, hey, can we continue on the fan club?
Because you had to give it up to become the publicist for Michael Bell, our LA promoter. And he goes, Sure, just ask John.
So I asked John, I asked Chris and had him sign the paperwork in 72. And I just felt like doing it.

(01:10:55):
I go, Well, I'm doing it for my, you know, my two favorite, one of my favorite guys, Fred Blassey.
And I go, Jesus, John told John and Chris never had a fan club. Really? I tried to look back at the records.
Did they have anything in the 60s? Nothing. So I ran it. And the interesting thing about the Tollis brothers fan club and John really helped.

(01:11:17):
Fred helped us a lot. And John helped to always said anything you need, interview, anything for the bulletin.
Because this was before the sheets. And so my Tollis brothers, I with John originally,
we won all the awards at the 1975 WFIA. That was the fan club thing that we recognized bulletins, best fan.

(01:11:38):
So we won everything, best fan club, fan club bulletin of the year.
And two years later, I won all the awards on my own for the Tollis brothers fan club.
But the interesting stuff, we all of us old timers, whether it's Mick Karch with the Bachwinkle brigade,
and he did a great first class newsletter, or Ron Dobratz, who produced like the best looking newsletter.

(01:12:01):
I forget what it was called. He was out of Chicago, but it covered the territory.
So I thought with my Tollis brothers fan club bulletin, the reason we did that was a way to communicate to others and express ourselves.
And most fan club bulletins like George M. Macropoulos is one for Buddy Rogers or Bruno.
Every single page was on the namesakes, Bruno Rogers or Chet Wallach, Johnny Valentine's tag partner.

(01:12:29):
In my case, I looked at Ron Dobratz's newsletter, which was not a fan club, but it was a newsletter covering results in Illinois and Missouri.
And I go, well, I want to cover the entire world.
You know, I'm writing for Ring Wrestling, and Tom Burke was writing about wrestling in England and South Africa and Canada, places that you may not have heard of.

(01:12:54):
And so I am asked at my peak, and I had to give up the fan club when I went to dental school.
And I moved from L.A. to San Francisco. I wanted to get away for time from my parents, you know, as any kid does, to sell my oats and date as many girls as possible.
And so, you know, I moved 400 miles up north, but I had to give up the fan club.

(01:13:19):
And Dr. Tom Pritchard said he would watch my collection. So he gives me 500 as a bond. He would watch my wrestling collection while I went to dental school.
Little did I know he ended up keeping it and his checkmats. So to this day, I had like tons of Gong magazines.
I had the Meal Mosquera Gong Japan book, a book like 300 pages devoted to Meal Mosquera from like 1972, 73.

(01:13:48):
And it kills me that I entrusted that to my old pal Tom Pritchard, who came in, one of his first territories, wrestling as a green boy, the piss boy, after Houston.
You know, his native Houston was for us in L.A. He came in and cowboy Tom Pritchard, this before the fake doctor title.
I don't know where he got that title. But so anyway, I am at my heyday with the Tolless Brothers fan club.

(01:14:15):
I still have some stuff on them, whatever they were doing.
But from what I saw with Rondo Bradstead's newsletter, with Tom Burke's physical magazine Ring Wrestling, I started covering all the territories and I amassed about 88 correspondents.
I had three people, including Japan's all time number one photographer, writer Koichi Yoshizawa, one of my regular correspondents, sending me ticket stuff, programs, posters, and his photos to put in the bulletin.

(01:14:44):
And I had two others. Dave Meltzer, who wrote, who I had been corresponding and became good friends.
He was doing the California Wrestling Report, which covered basically just Roy Shire results, the territory.
But he would send me stuff to put in my newsletter. And Urizi sent me stuff.
I had every territory covered, but not just in the U.S. and Canada. Folks in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, etc.

(01:15:12):
Calgary, but some of the Hart brothers sending me stuff there.
Eddie Gilbert and Cornette were my two first subscribers to the Tolless Brothers.
Oh, no way.
And they were, like me, ringside photographers. They started out as ringside photographers, them in Goulas and later Jared, before Jimmy became a great manager and Eddie Gilbert an incredible talent.

(01:15:36):
And I was there when Eddie debuted in both Kansas City and at Keel Auditorium.
And Kansas City teamed with his dad Tommy in a tag match against bruiser Bob Sweetin and Akiyo Sato, who would later become a part, Bob is number two in the All Japan office.
And you were, most people, more recently in the 80s, remember him as part of whatever that team was with the masked guy managed by Fuji in WWF. That was Akiyo Sato.

(01:16:02):
But anyway, so I covered like wrestling in England and South Africa and the Indian promotion in India and, you know, everywhere.
And the burgeoning stuff, because then we only had three promotions in Japan. The AWA affiliated IWE, where guys like Superstar Graham and the Vashons and Billy Robinson would wrestle.

(01:16:26):
And I think IWE was there before it was, before All Japan and New Japan. And that's where Andre, we're going to talk about, you know, Canadian fame.
And Andre became machine fair and was really finessed by Carpentier and the Vashons and Leo and Killer Kowalski and Montreal's Grand Prix.
But before that, and when he was summoned to Montreal, he worked in IWE show where Carl Gotch and Billy Robinson were paired with him in like tags and six-mans to finesse this guy.

(01:16:59):
Yeah. Imagine the amount of knowledge in the ring at one time for that type of match. That's incredible.
Well, that's why when Inoki started, unlike Baba, who, you know, when Baba started All Japan, he had, you know, the more show busy wrestlers, Blassey, King Curtis, Tiger Singh early on, the Sheik, guys like that to start with.

(01:17:20):
But Inoki, to give New Japan credibility in December of 72, the very first guys he booked in were Thez and Carl Gotch for that credibility.
That's as impressive as it gets. And then he brought in Johnny Valentine and Johnny Powers, who were more, you know, the classic pro wrestling.
You know, and nobody greater than Johnny Valentine, who, you know, amazing guy. He had not as many Maple Leaf Gardens main events against The Sheik as he should have.

(01:17:45):
But anyway, but so I'm covering all of this stuff. And it was like I come out publicly and say, geez, if I only continue this beyond 82 and Meltzer started The Observer, that's kind of like what I felt happened here.
I'm covering it in a newsletter. And my newsletter sometimes is 40, 50 pages long.

(01:18:06):
Wow. Xeroxing, Ticket Stubs from Mexico City and Japan, of course, for those three promotions. IWE, which is AWA affiliated, All Japan and New Japan until, you know, the weird stuff happened because All Japan was getting Tri-WF wrestlers and NWA wrestlers.
That's where the money deal for Briscoe to drop the strap to giant Baba for a week, like eight days time and then regain it before he left Japan occurred.

(01:18:36):
And, you know, I guess he somehow made the play to get the WWF guys. And then that's when Tolis came in when the WWF guys started and got his I think it was just one New Japan tour after so many All Japan tours for Baba, etc.
Chris, I can't recall, I was trying to do research. He must have done at least one tour with John for Ricky Dozan's group, but I can't find proof of that.

(01:19:03):
Or, you know, a lot else of Chris other than working predominantly for Tony and maybe later the Bear Man, McKinney in Ontario.
Obviously a lot of undercard stuff for the Sheik. And you look at the guys that Chris Tolis is hanging around with in Detroit, for example, Dr. Jerry Graham,

(01:19:25):
Tokyo Tom Ray Urbano, who would later become the first great Kabuki with face paint before the real All Japan, you know, great Kabuki.
Most people, you know, remember from Georgia Championship and world class and Ernie Roth, who is a close friend of Chris Tolis's for the Sheik territory later,

(01:19:47):
Creechman, because Chris could speak fairly decent French, I mean, X amount of words. So he could pronounce that, but he could pronounce Japanese or Mexican Russian names.
Maybe it was a work because Chris was portrayed versus John Tolis, who was more an area, not erudite, but, you know, he would sometimes reference real things happening in the news,

(01:20:11):
whereas Chris was more the blue collar brother of the Tolis brothers. And maybe that was kind of a work on Chris's part.
You know, he's a D's and Do's type guy versus John, who was perhaps one of the greatest promo guys ever in the history of the biz.
And most everybody would say so, whether it was, you know, there's that period when John was the liaison from the Los Angeles Lobel office to Vince McMahon Senors Tri-WF.

(01:20:39):
And he would, you know, go back and forth. He would sometimes supervise and send in some of our talent.
Like they never teamed, but he'd send in Black Orbit separately, then Great Goliath separately.
In 76, Chavo and then Piper, you know, would do just like one shot so they could say they worked at Madison Square Garden.
But Bruno in 75 had that, sadly, it wasn't a very long match against Bruno, who beat him with the bear hug or the backbreaker.

(01:21:08):
I'm sorry, the backbreaker. And John had cut individualized promos. We watched him do them at KCOP Channel 13 studios in Hollywood for Vince Senior only to use because Vince's TV had not yet come through.
So they cut the promos in advance of John going there to meet Bruno. But while John was there, he was doing Lobel office work in the office of Vince Senior with Monsoon and Phil Zacco.

(01:21:39):
You know, because Willie Gelsenberg, I don't really think did much. It was more Monsoon and Phil Zacco and one other promoter with Vince Senior in the office, obviously Arne Scovill, who was a tight friend of Tolis.
John was like friends with everybody in the business, whether it was Monsoon or Johnny Valentine or as I mentioned, Red Vestine or Spirits Arian, because John made at least one Australia tour for Jim Barnett that a lot of people forget.

(01:22:10):
When you look at all the incredible heels that went in and out of, or some of them stayed, like King Curtis and Abbey stayed for great periods of time with Killer Carl Cox, Timo Killer Kowalski and Tolis going in there and Ray Stevens as the heel.
So John was global. And John and Fred Blassie often bitched in the locker room at the Olympic Auditorium because it was difficult for them because they worked on one side, whereas I think the lucha guys from Moskvist on, the real guys, not guys who were born in the US or had their history, all of their rest of history like Pepper Gomez or Ricky Romero or the Taurus brothers that really didn't have that.

(01:22:54):
history in Mexico or Mexico City and the Luterov promotions. But John and Fred would agonize that they had to now learn how to work the other side with the Mexican guys.
Neil Moskvist and Ray Mendoza and Raul Reyes and Raul Mata, Raul Carlos Mata, etc. And John did far better than Blassie. And in fact, I think the boys all voted John as the guy who did the best working that other side and learning it very quickly.

(01:23:26):
And then when he was heel, for example, with Victor Rivera or Ruben Juarez or Hispanic guys, you couldn't do this now. But John gave a lot of state of the art anti Hispanic anti Mexican promos like the infamous one with I think it was with Moskvist where he would take a bite of a taco, a burrito, a tamale and spit them out.

(01:23:48):
Yeah, I've seen that one. Yeah. Is it online anywhere? It used to be on Daily Motion. I have to see if it's still on there or not. Daily Motion. Yeah, I think it was last time I saw it. I swear it was on there.

(01:24:09):
Wow. Yeah, please let me know because I have the audio the entire audio. I have like every interview, such, you know, I tried to be meticulous with my record keeping and history. But every Blassie every told us pretty much everybody's promos.
And sometimes I would do the commentary from former movie TV star Dick Lane, who was our English announcer. We had two shows in LA. And it was weird and John would say he'd get frazzled because on Saturday nights in Hollywood was KCOP 13.

(01:24:42):
90 minutes all English with Jimmy Lennon senior doing color and ring announcing to Dick Lane the movie TV star actor who was one of the all time greats, maybe a peg at that time in the 70s, early 80s down below Gordon solely for commentary.
Whereas Stu Hart's announcer, what was his name? Ed Whalen. Yeah, one of the worst announcers ever. A lot of the time, Ed just did not like wrestling. You know, he was sort of obliged to do it. Whereas Dick Lane and Gordon solely you could tell or Boyd Pierce.

(01:25:17):
You could tell those guys a lot more. All Bosch doing is commentary. Bill West. They love the business. So what was what was I getting onto about this? We lost another in 1970.
We lost our other second wrestling show of the week on KTLA, you know, all English, you know, our strongest in non network Channel five and it moved to Channel 34 Hispanic station.

(01:25:49):
That was the birth of the Spanish International Network that would syndicate our Wednesday night Lucha Libre from the Olympic auditorium shows to parts of New York, parts of Massachusetts like Boston and parts of Florida like Miami, where there's a Hispanic population.
And they would start getting our TV from about late 72 early 73 on and John would be interviewed by Miguel Alonso and or Luis Magana, the Hispanic guys. They would ask questions in Spanish and he was like supposed to know, you know, but he would respond in English.

(01:26:23):
So there'd be no translation. They would ask these questions in Spanish and John, you know, kind of knew in advance a question. One is this an English question to is that he really understand never really learned Spanish as he did like Chris did with, you know, fairly decent get by French.
But that was just part of that stuff and you could not do that stuff today where you were dogging Hispanic people call.

(01:26:53):
Cut some of the promos with Bruno or any. I think some of those have to be online because people tape them on data Max's told us his promos against Bruno shown on try WFTV their fill your hamburger. You know, he had been seen at two weekly shows and John is calling Bruno a spaghetti vendor.
But in LA, he would call the Hispanic wrestlers like Victor Rivera, etc. Taco vendors. So you couldn't say this stuff in our politically sensitive world nowadays, but then it was we were just going, oh man, can you believe, you know, I mean, I don't think any territory had anybody not Jackie Fargo not Jerry Lawler.

(01:27:37):
You know, biting into some nationalistic food, even in Hawaii, like King Curtis biting into poi and spitting it out saying this tastes like cement. John was like the first to do that. John was also the first.
He was jumping around, but against Blassey before the Coliseum show in like 1970, not Jake Roberts, the first guy to ever bring a Python snake into wrestling with John told us right in the surprise box. So he for two weeks he kept scaring glassy.

(01:28:07):
I'm not going to be prepared for what's in my surprise box. I bring the ring in the middle of the ring. And when he did, he pulled out this snake, you know, the Python and he's like holding it and people were gasping, you know, shooting pictures, people are gasping.
And another cool thing, there's so many firsts that John told us did in LA. I know I'm talking about LA, but you know, I didn't miss anything that told us did there. And he and Fred had a dog collar thing. But since both of their finishes were knee drops, they had studied with spikes, sharp spikes.

(01:28:43):
And these leather things around their neck with spikes on them. So that meant neither guy was going to do their knee drop. Yeah, that was because they didn't want to pierce their knee. So all these crazy and say they must have had a jillion matches and the place was sold out 10,400 every Olympic auditorium show.
And then they would have at celery matches that are smaller city venues for Michael Bell, El Monte, all the dinky cities, San Diego, which wasn't a dinky city, but you know, the prize venue is the Olympic auditorium every other Friday night.

(01:29:15):
So in San Diego Mondays, I think Tuesday was El Monte, there was Bakersfield, San Bernardino, Ventura County on the beach up north, occasionally Reno, Nevada, Vegas. And you could have pairings of like, Tolis Blassey.
And then on the 22, when the Tollis brothers were just insanely popular baby faces, I shot the Tollis brothers against Sheik and Ernie Roth as Abdullah Farouk. And Farouk, of course, the only time he got in the ring was at the end.

(01:29:50):
And Chris, I think, put submission on for that one. But we would have these, you know, they would have unique matches we never got at the Olympic auditorium because I don't think I can even recall Ernie Roth of Dua Farouk as Sheik's manager in Detroit ever wrestling a tag with the Sheik or even getting in the ring other than being locked in the small cage above the ring.

(01:30:18):
And during Blassey's three cage matches with the Sheik that finally turned a baby face, and all three of them, I think actually maybe just the last two, Ernie Roth suspended above the ring in the small cage.
And he was throwing gimmicks like the pencil down to the Sheik.
And I don't know if you've seen that, but Dave Burzynski was at the Coliseum show and he got these pictures backstage breaking kayfabe and they hadn't been seen at all until Dave finally put them in one of his books.

(01:30:50):
And I have, you know, copies of them because it meant a lot to me because Tollis and Fred after their main event, both bloody after the LA Coliseum match, they got their arms around each other best of friends backstage where the marks couldn't see them.
And that was really for August of 71 breaking kayfabe to the max.
You just didn't hear about it.
I would always watch my peace and cues when I was shooting in the dressing room.

(01:31:12):
Like whatever the end of the champion came in, whether it was Dory Jr. or Terry or Harley, you know, I'd ask them to pose in our dinky Olympic auditorium locker room.
But I would respect the heels and faces because they're all down there.
You know, I wouldn't say a word, even though I was smart.
I wouldn't say a word, you know, just do my thing and get out of there so I can get my photos.
That's all I wanted was to shoot pictures and stuff.

(01:31:34):
Dave was the one who captured Freddie and John Tollis.
And man, that was like the greatest, greatest feud.
And I think I've seen a lot, a lot of great feuds, Flair Steamboat, etc.
Jerry Park, Heel Heel, Doug Ashonigan, Schiller Kowalski, the first of the Jerry Park spectaculars.

(01:31:56):
So much so.
So just circling back to a couple of things that we touched on in terms of and you were said how, you know, Tollis Blassey is probably one of the greatest feuds or maybe the greatest feud that you ever witnessed live.
What is the lasting legacy of that feud in the L.A. territory?
Is that something that people still bring up to this day?
Oh, yeah. I held high spots, Mike Bucci's, Russell Khan, the third and last.

(01:32:23):
They did it three years in Los Angeles.
It wasn't around WrestleMania then.
And 2012 was the last one.
And somebody that was going to do the opening event dropped out.
And so I had like three, four days.
And Mike Bucci asked me to do an opening welcoming event to the three day convention.
OK.
And I decided first I was just going to do a slideshow, my photos of L.A. wrestling history.

(01:32:47):
Then I thought I want to turn this into a Los Angeles territory tribute reunion with everybody still alive.
And I had Bill Anderson who wrestled for us as a job guy in the later 70s, drive Billy Graham in from Phoenix.
I had Dick Beyer flying with Wilma from Buffalo.
Roddy Piper came down from Portland.

(01:33:09):
All of the guys still alive.
Mondo and Chavo Sr.
Guerrero.
All of our jobbers.
All of our office people.
Judo, Jean LaBelle, Jeff Walton, our publicist.
Art Williams, our referees that were still alive, our jobbers.
And so that was the opening welcoming event, this tribute to the L.A. territory where I had three screens all showing different stuff like Tolla Splassy footage.

(01:33:35):
But before that we had Dick Lane calling Ricky Dozan against Splassy that was shown in Japan.
That's where we got that footage.
We're showing that.
So we had three screens going.
We have all the wrestlers taking turns at the microphone paying tribute to each other.
I did, I put together a slideshow with music saluting L.A. from 1932 on, you know, when we could trace it back because the Olympic Auditorium was built for the Olympics as a boxing venue in 32 for the L.A. Olympics.

(01:34:06):
And all of that stuff from until when Michael Bell sold our territory to Vince Jr.
And of all things before Vince went national December 83, January 84, the earliest.
But Vince Jr. bought our territory from Michael Bell December of 82.

(01:34:29):
Our territory had been dying a slow death for like two years with Adrian Street and Diamond Timothy Flowers from the Northwest part of Canada.
Not that they weren't great, but it wasn't the same.
Most of the card, yeah, it was most of the card.
People couldn't appreciate guys like Los Brasos and the Villanos.

(01:34:50):
All these incredible connect.
It would become later huge Lucha names, but they were it was predominantly that.
And then the worst thing was the kiss of death for our territory was not John Tollis's lead heel and last America's champion, but Jean LaBelle going from commentator, you know, simple on air commentator to our lead heel, feuding with a newly turned baby face Peter Mavia.

(01:35:17):
And that this was the last straw of the territory died, but Vince Jr. buying our territory December of 82.
And he promised Michael Bell, you know, that he would be listed as the West Coast promoter and he would have some duties and get, you know, a bonus and paydays and stuff, which didn't last very long.

(01:35:38):
At the same time, Vince Jr. and for a guy who were picking the bones of Roy Shire quit the same actually he quit in January of 82 and they were going to start promoting in San Francisco and Roy Shire goes to the L.A.
Times.
And I know this because John Tollis called me up and said, can't believe it.
Roy Shire went to not the San Francisco Chronicle, the top paper there, but the L.A. Times to expose the business and try to ruin it for Ganya and Vince Jr. bringing in house shows in the next month, February 1982 to San Francisco.

(01:36:12):
Vince did not reach going beyond the WWF's territory boundaries of his dad. And that was the first remnants and Tollis was there to see it. And he worked, you know, jobbing or second or third from the bottom matches for the earliest WWF house shows in L.A.
on their West Coast swings, both San Francisco and L.A.

(01:36:34):
John was also, let's get to your questions before I get in. You know, my point in motor mouthing it here is John in particular, although Chris was fantastic, the Tollis brothers, one of the greatest tag teams of all time.
They would include him with the Graham brothers and Lewin and Curtis and the Basteen brothers and Skull Murphy and Brute Bernard, all of the greatest legendary tag teams, not including today's teams like the Bucks, et cetera.

(01:37:06):
But John Tollis in particular was just such an amazing, amazing singles tag russo. No matter what he did, it was magic. He had a real mind for the business, but he never took over his head book or, you know, he would just offer suggestions and stuff.
So let me, that's why I'm passionate about him. What are some of your questions before I go out?
Yeah, I guess my, my, one of the last ones that maybe this will be a good one to kind of end off on is you brought up.

(01:37:33):
My point, we ended, I ended my, my little documentary, my slideshow with video with music with Tollis Blassie. So that's the lasting legacy of John's imprint on California is main event or to the end, heel or face, always main events for Los Angeles.
He feuded with Ernie Ladd. Ernie Ladd destroyed him as a face in 72 sent John packing up to Ontario in around June of 1972.

(01:38:04):
And, and Tollis comes back stronger than ever, you know, after a hiatus and the fans really would miss Tollis.
He was similar to Blassie and that Jeff Walton on a night in 72, like he did in 71 with Blassie, he gave everybody, everybody that bought a ticket got a John Tollis mask, one of those cheap cardboard things with a rubber band.

(01:38:26):
And he had fat eyes and a nose hole. So to see everybody nearly everybody in the audience wearing a Tollis mask at the height of his baby face majesty in 1972, you know, pretty emotional stuff.
You can hear it. You can hear the passion, right? Speak with someone like yourself who wasn't like you're not just a historian in this aspect of it, right? Like you ran the fan club, you, you, you hung out with them in person, you, you know, I didn't even talk about the food fight he had when he was managing the million dollar baby, Greg Valentine, fresh off the internet.

(01:39:06):
Okay, we got to hear that then. Maybe that'll be the last one to leave us off.
Well, where he was working as Johnny Fargo, you know, the NWF Tag Champs with Donny Fargo, no relation at all, no relation to Jackie Fargo. But Babyface Nelson went from using that gimmick to that.
And the first place he debuted under his not really given name, because that was like Greg Wisniewski, whatever Johnny Valentine's real last name was. But he comes into our territory for the first time as Greg Valentine.

(01:39:40):
But as he would do later on when he went to Dallas, he was at Houston, he was called the brother of Johnny Valentine. This is Greg, but John told us is managing him. He comes in late 70.
Let's see late 73. And, and he debuts in a battle royal where immediately Lonnie Maine goes after because Lonnie Maine was a great friend of Johnny Valentine. So he immediately and I snapped the only pictures of Greg Valentine locking up with Lonnie Moondog Maine.

(01:40:13):
But anyway, so John in, oh God, about January or December 74 on for about three, four months is managing Greg Valentine as his million dollar baby. It's the first time to my knowledge, Greg uses the Valentine name.
And we KCOP was off of Fairfax Boulevard, maybe three blocks, three, four blocks south of Sunset and five, six blocks south of Hollywood Boulevard.

(01:40:43):
You know, the epicenter, the Sunset Strip being Sunset Boulevard. And we're at the nearby McDonald's about three hours before the KCOP Channel 13 TV studios Saturday night tapings.
And I forget what the ruckus was about. They were arguing over some bit of rusting history and Greg started just threw a couple of French fries at John and John threw his Big Mac and fries at Greg.

(01:41:06):
And it was like, we were asked to leave. It was just the three of us were asked to leave.
And actually, I think Mark Dawson might have been there too. Richard Dawson, the actor, you know, my one of my best friends ever, but he was Richard Dawson, the Family Feud guy, the Hogan's Heroes guy, the laughing guy married to Bretton state, Marilyn Monroe, Diana Doors.

(01:41:30):
Anyway, so it's four of us. They're having this brief food fight. We're asked to leave. And it should have gotten notoriety because I snap pictures of it the way the Ken Patera, Masasaito thing did at what was it?
A Burger King and then later on, the Jim Cornette incident with Wendy's. Yeah, Gary Queen. Rusting fast food lore, but these wrestlers having a mock food fight, just having fun. I mean, I shot another one.

(01:42:01):
January 6th of 1991 at a Tenryu show in Japan at Karakuen Hall where in the back they repaired his tag team. Killer Tim Brooks and Bob Orton Jr. had a food fight. They didn't like their food in their bento box.
They started throwing food at each other. And then Shawn Michaels, Marty Cinetti, Jeff Jarrett were also on the tour with Naoki Sano fresh out of New Japan in a feud with Jushin Liger. And everybody started throwing food there until Jack Lanza, the agent for WWF, working in concert with Tenryu's group came and screamed and cleared everything up.

(01:42:41):
That was Jack Lanza, but that was a famous, I think the first famous to my knowledge, unless Buddy Rogers and Johnny Valentine did anything in restaurants, which they probably did in the late 50s, the first wrestling restaurant, even though it was a fast food, you know, kind of a dumpy McDonald's. And the McDonald's is still there.

(01:43:02):
That's funny. That's funny. Any other quick questions? I think we've covered a ton of ground tonight. Is there anything that we...
I gotta say this. I gotta say this because before Bret Hart would make sure they introduced him from Calgary, Alberta, Canada, making, you know, paying tribute to Great City, wonderful Canadian town, John Tolis and Chris, John in particular from his debut in LA in around 67, always had to be introduced as from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

(01:43:38):
And, you know, it was like a lengthy introduction to pay tribute to Canada. And John felt very strongly about, you know, his roots because so many guys, I mean, that was a hotbed of talent coming out of Hamilton.
Yeah, was it ever.
A lot of tremendous, tremendous talents. And that's why I couldn't understand Vince doing the thing with Bret when he turned Bret heel, you know, towards the end before Bret left. And, you know, you were having like Canada portrayed his heels, which was complete asinine.

(01:44:15):
We should be celebrating like all of the guys loved going up there. I mean, look at, you know, even though it kind of use out of Vancouver. I don't know if he was really truly Canadian, but Don Leo Jonathan and Keniski and Killer Kowalski, these total greatest wrestlers of all time, Healer, what have you, loved Canada.
And so many guys, the Funk Brothers loved Terry said it was like one of his place to go was working in Calgary. So all of these guys, these legends love Canada. I don't know why not celebrate Canada instead of like the classic Vince. Maybe that's why all the karma is visiting Vince now is because.

(01:44:55):
Wouldn't that be something.
Mostly words, stuff.
What was Canada thinking of Vince thing? Are the papers covering it? The TV covering it like ours have?
They're covering it, not as much as in the States. It's more of us wrestling fans are all over it. We're just kind of waiting to see what happens.
Because our strongest, the wrestling station from like 1949 until 1970, KTLA 5, our strongest non-ABC, NBC, CBS network station, they like three times already, they're entertainment reporter on the regular news and they repeated it hourly because it's almost news all day long.

(01:45:35):
The first two Wall Street Journal articles, the guy was reading from it and showing Vince footage. So that was on a big California news channel.
It's part of the CW network, but from like four in the morning until two in the afternoon and then from four o'clock on it's all news. So they repeated, especially the first Wall Street Journal article, it was that segment they re-showed during every broadcast.

(01:46:05):
It's the same thing. So I don't know. I mean it's not good for the business. I hope it gets washed away, gets resolved because it's casting advertisers and stuff.
We don't want it to affect advertisers for other groups like AEW that might say, oh, this wrestling stuff. Vince, you don't want it casting a taint, if I can say that word, a taint on pro wrestling promotions because it's just limited to him.

(01:46:36):
None of the wrestlers, they weren't involved in it in WWE, that home base. So I just hope it goes away and whatever punishment happens, happens. Let's move on.
Yeah, I agree with that for sure. Well, listen, Mike, this was an absolute blast chatting with you. I know I took up a lot more of your time than we intended, but this was such great conversation.

(01:46:59):
And I just, what a wealth of knowledge just in regards to the Tolles Brothers that you had to bring to the program today. I'm really, really happy.
I mean, I can't really comment on their 50s stuff really, but John was a journeyman all over the place, you know, and so I'm not as good a historian as I should be on the 50s Tolles, but I know X amount on the 60s.

(01:47:22):
You know, the guy works like everywhere and I haven't even talked about Buffalo. Another John rib, I don't know if we're still taping, but this is okay to say another John rib was when Pedro Martinez, why he didn't pronounce it Martinez and John would often say all other Hispanic guys who have that as a last name.
I call it Martinez, like Luis Martinez. Yeah, but it was Peter Martinez notorious for stiffen guys. He was like the North's version of Gus.

(01:47:52):
What's his face in Memphis before Jared, who really wasn't a bad, it was not a bad promoter at all. But Nick Goulas was infamous for low paid.
You know, which really weren't as bad as some other territories like Kansas City. But anyway, so we have a cauliflower alley. It's like 1994 and for the very first time, Pedro Martinez and Michael Bell are coming and they both owe these two promoters at their only cauliflower alley reunions when we had it in LA at the Sportsman's Lodge.

(01:48:24):
It was the first ever and only times maybe because of this John organized ahead of time. Anybody that was owed money by either Michael Bell in LA or Pedro Martinez in Ohio, parts of Ohio, Buffalo, New York.
They both came in individually because the way we had it and I was part, you know, the guy photographing it, they would come in and be announced. I would snap pictures of them for our newsletter and our program, etc. And then they would walk through. So when both came in, Tolis had all of these guys, a long line of people owed money that had their hands out saying, where's my money?

(01:48:58):
And they both paid to Martinez from the East Coast and Michael Bell came in and Tolis organized that all of himself was like a gentle rib.
That's tremendous.
The other thing I can say, John was such a kind person. He would travel to Honolulu several times to visit Lord Tally Ho Bliers when he was starting to suffer Alzheimer's and his wife put him in a nursing home. Tolis went and visited him. But the main thing was Vic Christie, which was like John's father in the business.

(01:49:29):
You know, the old timer that preceded him in the LA office and the booking and the wrestling and everything else, Vic became ill. Vic was like the guy that did all the gentle ribs where when I did the Johnny Valentine book I called rib. Those were all the violent ribs.
I had Vic Christie do the forward. But when Vic got sick, John Tolis like daily was bringing in meals, taking TLC care of the Christie until he died. And the Christie family all said John was like a godsend because there was like none of the other family members could spend that much time.

(01:50:01):
And John was like living there taking care of him. So that's the type of guy, the character of Golden Greet the Maniac John Tolis class guy, Chris Tolis class guy, magic in the ring and beloved.
Nobody ever said a bad word except when Red Bastine gave an El Cimento award to John Tolis at one of his Dallas shootouts. John came in one time only and Bastine gave him an El Cimento crowbar award for being stiff.

(01:50:34):
But John was like a rib. John would take TLC and anybody in the ring with him. No one ever said John hurt him or anything like that. So it was just a Bastine rib. Tolis was like yelling and screaming at Tex McKenzie and other people there, Killer Cox and Valentine and Maurice Deschamps.
They were all there at that one. He goes, why am I getting this award? Look at Mad Dog, look at Valentine. They all stiffed all these other guys and potatoed them.

(01:50:59):
That's the perfect way to end this, Mike. Thank you again so much for your time tonight.
Anytime, anytime man. And hopefully I will shut up and let you ask more questions of whoever you have me back if you do.
Well, you'll be back for certain. I'll let you go and have a great rest of your night.
Thank you, thank you.
Now before I bring out my next guest for the evening, Evan Ginsberg, I'm going to play some more classic audio. Now this comes from an interview between John Tolis and Bill Aptor where John Tolis is going to be talking about the feud with classy Freddie Blassie.

(01:51:39):
And John Tolis puts himself over as only John Tolis can. So I'm going to play this classic audio clip. It's about three minutes or so.
And on the other side, I'm thrilled to present to you my conversation with Evan Ginsberg. So please enjoy this audio.

(01:52:02):
And then more importantly, please join my conversation with Mr. Ginsberg.
Okay John, let me ask you this. Do you still regret what you did to Fred Blassie? You came on saying you saw you didn't really want to blind the guy or permanently injure him. Now it seems that you and Blassie are really on such great terms again. Do you regret what you did to him yet?

(01:52:23):
I don't regret anything. I mean, he's done many things to me which I don't want to cry about. But what I did to Blassie, I do it again. In fact, we're having a big one. Loser leaves town in LA December the 21st in a Blassie cage match. And this is going to be a big one. There's no referee. Everything goes. It's going to be in a cage.

(01:52:44):
And the loser is going to leave town. I got very tired of Blassie. This is all I've been hearing about Blassie this and Blassie that. Blassie Blatt, I got real bloody sick of him. We're going to have it out and let it all lay down on the line and see who really is the best man.
Okay, now when Blassie comes here, literally he seems to have a split personality. And it seems like the Mexicans out in Los Angeles love this man. What's your reaction to this? Here they hate him, they love him over there. You think this guy's got a split personality or something?

(01:53:12):
I've always said he had a split personality. He's the type of guy that pats you on the back and the next moment he sticks a knife in you. This is the type. If you want to be a man, be a man. To me, he's half man and half woman. When we became buddy buddies there for a while, I couldn't understand him. We'd get in the ring together and we had a pretty fair team. And then all of a sudden something just didn't jell. I'm not blaming him and I'm not blaming me.

(01:53:35):
I've got to stop you here John. I've got to stop you here because the exact same thing happened with you and Victor Rivera. You said if you're going to be a man, be a man. But it seems you turned your back on Victor Rivera just when the guy was really friends with you.
Well the reason my head was shaved out of it was I actually had Rivera beat. And out of the clear blue sky something happened and he gave me a low blow and the man beat me. Now if you call that true sportsmanship then that's when I went wild. And when I went wild you'll never forget that.

(01:54:03):
I may have had my head shaved but I got news for you. I shaved his guts and there's no question about it. But tonight right here at Madison Square Garden I'm going to teach him a lesson just like the lesson I taught him in Los Angeles. Only this time it's going to be in front of his hometown fans.
What's your reaction now that John Tulis who is loved by those fans out in California, they're going the hell out of John Tulis now?

(01:54:25):
I like it that way. I don't care if they hate me or love me or want to come and see me in which they do. There's no man like John Tulis in Southern California. In fact there's no man like Tulis, Maynard Tulis in any wrestling city in the United States of Canada.
They hung on me, Maynard Tulis, the Golden Greek jerk, I don't care what they call me. They can call me anything because deep down inside the fans, the wrestling fans know that I am not only a great wrestler but I am a great great athlete. And when I'm in that ring I give not a thousand percent but one million percent of my ability.

(01:55:02):
Okay now why doesn't John Tulis get a title shot? Briscoe hasn't come out to California, Morales hasn't gone out there when he held the title. What's your reaction to this? Even Gania doesn't go out there and he's defended his title in Florida already which is owned by the NWA.
I have an open contract with the Hollywood Wrestling Office and the Olympic Auditorium. I have an open contract and anybody wants to come, come on down. In fact I tried to get here a long time ago to get Morales but they refused. I tried to go to Minneapolis and get Gania, they refused.

(01:55:32):
I tried for Funk Senior like, for Junior like crazy and I wanted to read in wrestling and Amarillo refused. Now I'm after Briscoe, one moment, now I'm after Briscoe and all of a sudden he's starting to refuse. There's only one thing about it. They're afraid of six foot two, 240 pounds of dynamite. And they know if they were in the same ring with me that I would beat them.

(01:55:55):
Well you feel that because Morales lost the title now you've been asked to come to this territory? I think so. There's no other way because I wanted to come in here a long time ago. I mean I'm not a preliminary man, I'm a top man. I'm one of the greatest wrestlers people have ever seen. I've been on TV here for three years now and I still didn't get a chance even at this close to coming to pay to Morales. I want to know why. Why? Because they're all afraid. Even the promoters are afraid.

(01:56:21):
Afraid they're going to hurt, you're going to hurt Morales? Well I'm going to get Morales and get him good. Okay John, one more question here. Have you got any gripes about wrestling about the use of foreign objects which we know that you've been using recently also? Have any? I would call myself a great scientific wrestler. I follow the rules. I follow the rules but I also believe an eye for an eye. And if you're in that ring with me and you can't take it then you better get the hell out. Okay, good enough. Bill After with John Tolas.

(01:56:50):
Alright, real please be joined online right now by Evan Ginsberg. Evan how you doing? Good thank you. Good, happy to be on. Well it's my pleasure to have you and you know it's interesting that a guy from Hamilton gets a couple of American starstruck we would have heard earlier on in the program. Your compatriot Dr. Mike Lane was on the program but I'm also happy to be speaking to you about one of the stars of tonight's episode, John Tolas.

(01:57:18):
Absolutely. As a kid in the 1970s you're probably too young to appreciate this. We had what was called UHF Dial and it was this mysterious dial on the TV and they had foreign language channels and public broadcasting channels and odds and ends and we never quite knew what was on.

(01:57:44):
So I discovered wrestling just by fiddling with these channels. And in New York City I'm a lifelong
talker. We got the California Olympic auditorium tapings and there was Tolas in his prime. One of the greatest promo guys, one of the great deals of all time and he used to say how do you spell wrestling? P-O-L-O-S. And I would say that's the way it was. And I would

(01:58:17):
LOS and this was before all the cat's phrases and everything and
Jack was just
And this and he was it was basically a normal-sized guy
He wasn't you know in New York to be super heavyweights who would you know wrestle Bruno and Pedro

(01:58:38):
and Pedro Morales
who were to be up and
So there was Tolos who was maybe
511 to 10 I'm estimating but he's not like a
Gigantic guy wasn't like a big bodybuilder anything, but this man could talk you into a seat
This this guy could make you buy a ticket and what happened was

(01:59:03):
He came to New York so hot on La TV at the Olympic
He came to New York to wrestle Bruno and Madison's
Web on this was a big deal. So there's Tolos and he's doing
all of these ethnic slurs

(01:59:25):
Bruno you spaghetti vendors
You know you're insulting my heritage and I'm gonna get you with the
I mean it was great. You know as a kid and a mock I mean
Oh
Tolos was

(01:59:47):
Him and Bruno was a really big deal and
I believe it was Bruno's last victory where he used back breaker
Was very dramatic. He put Tolos in the
I don't think he ever did that again at least not at Madison Square Garden. There was a very dramatic finish and the match itself was

(02:00:08):
You know tell us this came on every because he'd be in it's
It's funny you mentioned the catchphrase, you know, how do you spell wrestling to LOS, right?

(02:00:32):
Between that and you know what he was doing with his brother Chris, right brother Chris. That's right, brother
John like this there both of them was and especially John was so ahead of his time in terms of you know
Talking an audience into a building like you said perfectly, right?
He wasn't the biggest guy
But he didn't need to be because he had the ability to get you into the but you wanted to see him

(02:00:57):
In Bruno's instance get murdered by Bruno. Yeah, and and told us headlined everywhere. I mean everywhere. Yeah, he worked all the
territories I saw
Headlining in Texas. I didn't even realize
No, we campaigned. Oh, it was Tolos against Valentine in Texas. Got it Valentine

(02:01:20):
so
No, he made his way through all the territories
the Pacific Northwest
Stop, but he as far as America we knew
from California yes
Now in terms of because you had mentioned, you know with the UHF vision being what it was kind of a kind of a

(02:01:45):
underground network if you will of sorts
How prolific would do you think that that LA television permeated into?
New York and even more so the Northeast. Oh
It was big with some Spanish language channel 41
41 in New York and it was syndicated

(02:02:06):
so it was shown in other parts throughout the country the
commercials were in Spanish and
Yeah, I mean it got seen and a lot of those guys came into the
black board man the lion Victor Rivera because of the TV was very

(02:02:27):
730 night on a Wednesday, so it was basically prime time TV
Back in the day the
WWF ironically was on not only UHF but
It's not midnight. Oh
This California program that showcased all those was big

(02:02:48):
Okay, it's interesting then that then the LA time would have been earlier than the actual try to be F time
Yeah, 730 to 830 at night
Absolutely, that's interesting. I never knew I never realized that part of it because you know, you always think you know, New York the
WWF or try WF is primetime always is it that's what's in our minds now, but it's yeah

(02:03:16):
Midnight or early in the morning like the Saturday morning cartoons
Time juggernaut that it is now totally different ballgame back
You're talking like 70s, you know wrestling really didn't so the
You know hokum any rock and wrestling's

(02:03:38):
Wendy Rick, you know, so
Earlier it's always was at the dog
Well, you look down good for 103 years old
So

(02:04:03):
So in terms of like we obviously we've discussed his you know television presence was there a magazine presence in New York at that time
Oh, absolutely. We used to call it the after mags the lock mags and
Yes
And told us that glassy young offense probably don't realize this was a clock circuit

(02:04:29):
Spectacular. This was free, you know
people
Great pay-per-view this was closed
circuit glassy and talks this was prior
WrestleMania one many years before
101 and
You know, tell us glassy was the match of the century show my play. Oh

(02:04:55):
You know, it was a really really big
Tolos blinded with powder
Powder told us had a giant snake before yeah
He used to do a bit he put on a glove
It was just a glove and he made it like it was like this deadly

(02:05:15):
And he would go and I use my love
And you're a kid you're a market you're totally buying into it and sold everything. That was great
That's I think one of the things that is kind of lost on the on the generation
I guess you could label me as part of that generation
But we always think of like, you know, the the best interviews the best talkers

(02:05:39):
Whatever that's that stuff started in the 80s before that it was you know, this corny soundbites and blah blah blah
But when you actually start to go back in in history and relive some of the stuff that a lot of these guys are doing
you know
Like it told us a perfect example or you know, blasted. There's no way that that program
You know goes as well as it does if he's not doing his part as well, right? But there's so many guys from

(02:06:06):
the 70s the 60s you go back to the 50s guys who
would
Master the art of self-promotion and it's it's interesting how
Now it's it's almost taken for granted as a novelty of you know, because nowadays you don't find guys who can just come off
Naturally off the cuff and speak and get people talking, you know, maybe somebody like an MGF would be the closest thing today

(02:06:31):
but like
It's all
scripted stealthed robotic
You know, they're memorizing a lot
They're not actors that are capable of doing it. Yes
But I would rank top 10 all-time promo guys and you don't hear this today. I'll tell you what

(02:06:53):
Much of his work was at the Olympics and the geniuses the promoters to save money would take over
the tapes every week
So much of his legacy is gone. No and it's a shame. It's really a shame
I'm the WWE network a couple of matches with with Polos and then

(02:07:19):
AWH, he was
Thomas once said that the day he decided to quit he was on an AW race show
It was a snowstorm
He was in a prelude. This is good. That's enough. Yeah, he was on top in sunny, California

(02:07:44):
Like a grind and but I'll tell you
Polos
Top 10 all-time promo guys. I put him up there with Billy Graham. I mean dusty roads
just a tremendous walker and
My father would watch him with me every Wednesday
And he he just loved the guy because he realized it was all a work. Yeah

(02:08:08):
This guy is amazing
You know what?
I wish I just wish more of his career
It still existed with tape people like this. He's one of these guys that history was un-approved to
You know, also guys like Goldilban, Erics, Nervous Arian, a lot of these top top guys became before the Hulkamania era

(02:08:33):
Again where they were over a lot of the wrong stuff. People don't realize how great some of these guys were
Unfortunately, some of them when they were old
You know the fans of the generation of Paul Mio was not they perceived them as
They perceived them as quote-unquote jobbers because they didn't see them on top

(02:08:56):
I just saw some guy knocking Greg Valentine and I'm like, you don't know what you're saying. No, Greg Valentine was on top
on top in the 70s and 80s, this guy top 20 of all time
And Tolo's and Valentine were together in the same time
So
somebody

(02:09:18):
Late late in their career where they're losing other than winning or what?
They don't really get the true picture and a lot of those veterans in at least in the WWF
WWE or whatnot late 80s and 90s
You know, these guys were on top in other contours and even sometimes in WWE itself

(02:09:42):
I think Aaron Secuna he was a tag team champion Jerry Valiant, Richard Paul, Sean
Yeah, he's got champions these guys are headliners. But at that point no bits was using them there
Well, that's that's even like someone like Blasio as well, right?
Generally on top until the very end as far as I remember

(02:10:03):
Yeah, that's right. And it's it's while just circling back to you know
Talking about film that exists today, you know, you look at his match history and it's 1500 plus and
Really all that we're left with today is a handful
I don't I don't see a lot of them on YouTube
I don't lie. I mean, it's not like I'm you know, relentless searching but as far as I know

(02:10:30):
I don't think much of all those LA hit TV tapings are gone. That's a shame
Yeah, and that's an absolute shame
Because you figure how much not just a toll of history, but how many guys were in that territory
You know top top drawing stars who's I thought young I thought was there
I was just gonna say yeah, and oh, you know, you can hear the stories now about him and Guerrero

(02:10:56):
Right, but but you can't we've lost that it's
Unless somebody somehow was in the cheap seats with it like a soup raid or something. That's
I mean this footage, you know that shot handheld
It's it's great and there's no play-by-play was somebody is doing the play-by-play after the fact

(02:11:18):
But the legitimate stuff is gone for the most part
Yeah, they didn't they didn't realize what they had
Yeah, and it's it's not just them too like there's a lot of those territories where it's you know tape was expensive so
that
you know the old classic promoter trying to save a few bucks and

(02:11:39):
And they didn't think anybody would want to see these matches again. And now you fast forward to today where we're trying to
Really go back and find this stuff and recapture it and talk about it and and contextualize it properly
It's it's hard to do it
Plus, you know, we we do documentaries. We did the documentary 350 days

(02:12:01):
You know, the footage is actually valuable you have to rent or buy or lease, you know footage when you make
They basically destroy stuff that had unlimited value
They didn't even realize it was just trying to save the price
of a tape, of a cassette tape, the stupidity of it all and I say

(02:12:23):
There are some guys who I've heard throughout the years who
Went out of their way to record their own matches and one that comes to mind and maybe I'm talking off the top of my head
But I want to say the Mongolian stomper has tapes or when he was alive had tapes of all of his championship
televised matches that he ever had and somebody has those tapes somewhere so

(02:12:48):
If something like that can exist then I have to believe that somewhere there's there's footage of
John Tolos or the Tolos brothers out that somewhere in somebody's attic or it's it's somewhere but it's got to be found
I've seen 1950s footage commercially available of the Tolos brothers
But again, not a lot, not a lot. Yeah, I think I've seen some from Buffalo and

(02:13:13):
I've seen some from
Oh, where would that have been?
Some some Maple Leaf Wrestling as well. I know Andrew Calvert and those guys have been doing a pretty good job of
Transcribing a lot of the old tapes and again, there's no there's no
Commentary or anything like that, but at least you can see you can see the crowd. You can understand what it was like

(02:13:39):
Yeah, I
I regret I never got to the Maple Leaf Gardens
This is what happens with the older guys like, you know, we had certain it's like I went to the Mid-South Coliseum
I went down to Florida to the Miami Beach Convention Center, but you regret the legendary arenas that you didn't get to see
the class of wrestling and what can you do, you know at the time you're a kid you're a teenager and it's not just hopping on a

(02:14:06):
Train plane or automobile or whatnot in violence. So
but
Yeah, the guy like Tolos I really
Appreciate you doing this because for a lot of people
They just don't know they just don't know and he deserves for his legacy to be preserved and

(02:14:28):
Certainly Vince isn't going to do it out of sight out of mind. Well, and you know, that's the other
Unfortunate side about you know, the monopolization of wrestling and wrestling content is
Yeah, if they have it if they have it
Are they going to present it? Um, historically correct because as we all know the WWE has a has a very

(02:14:53):
fast and loose way of presenting history and
You know, we see it with in the AEW biographies. We see it in in a lot of their you know
WWE Studios releases however you want to call them, but they have a whole lot of history
You know WWE Studios releases however you want to call them, but they have a hard time with well even just look at this recent

(02:15:18):
Brett Hart and Shawn Michaels the rivalry show that they just had on A&E right and they still can't just
Tell the truth or explain history properly
self-serving and for me
Particularly disturbing is when I see them in their magazines. They'll have for example the top 50 heels of all time

(02:15:41):
And political walls 50 and the Miz is like yeah. Yeah, it's absurd
it's absolutely absurd and
I've been told by people who have actually worked there
That you know their hands on everything and it's like you can't put some guy who's dead or long retired in front of

(02:16:03):
Our current guy that we're pushing so there's no validity. There's no yeah
Any of it? I mean you could put a Shawn Michaels near a top of a list and I go with that
but don't tell me the Miz is greater than a you know, killer Kowalski or a John Tolo's because
Simply not true. Yeah, he's not sure what and even in their company, right?

(02:16:28):
Because they're there. It's not like toll is never wrestled for the wall
It would have been the tri-wf, but it's not like you and I guess he did the stint as the coach as well
I guess we'd be remiss to not discuss that but
Let's talk about that briefly sure
Pressurize
Here you have one of the greatest walkers of all time one of the greatest promo guys ever and they stick a whistle in his mouth

(02:16:56):
And don't let him talk what you know when you hear like this is a genius. I'm like, okay
He's a marketing genius. Yes, a lot of these guys. He just destroyed this made zero sense
zero sense and
And Tolo's came back to work for more people her baby rooms. Oh, yes, that's correct

(02:17:22):
Hey, really they actually you know, he's interfering in matches. He's cutting promos
So he was really no himself just older as a manager and that's what and I interviewed him backstage
You know her baby room show and oh no way
Yeah, I'll never forget
Her baby room comes to me somebody introduces us and I was doing what the time was up

(02:17:48):
I have them 99.5 in New York and
Her baby room says to me straight out I'll never forget he goes. Are you one of those guys who not me? You know in the media?
I don't know
You know here to
Olos and Lovano and I actually had a lot of fun at her baby room. So no show

(02:18:14):
Yeah, you know it was short time it actually lasted and
He gave me backstage access and I got to sit down and interview told us which was a thrill to me and the guy was so
Down to her gracious friendly
No, he didn't have like this big stop. I got five minutes. Yeah, whatever you need take your time

(02:18:40):
Just a good guy and everybody says the same thing about him and
Greg Valentine's a dear friend of mine and he says he loved Olos and
A lot of the legends who worked with him in New York boys a great guy, you know
Give you the shirt off his back
You know you're honoring somebody who not only was a great talent but a great person from what everybody has said and experienced

(02:19:05):
And let me add that like many wrestlers of that generation
Did not make the money he should have
Did not a lot of those guys never broke a hundred grand back in the day
They were on the road sending money back to their wife and kids and
And he you know afterwards he had day jobs like anybody else when he was in his 50s and 60s

(02:19:30):
So, you know after the glory it was not
For us for a lot of these guys, but think about it
Tolos was great enough to headline Madison Square in the 70s
That he made more figures for that
He didn't break ten grand. Trust me. I know what these guys made

(02:19:53):
He made four figures
You think Elton John or Rod Steward or Mick Jagger or whoever else was
Headlining the garden that same summer. Do you think they paid more money?
Of course, they did of course
So these guys were exploited in it exploited in the wrestling

(02:20:14):
Era is shame. It's a shame
It one thing that you did mention. I want to circle back to you is just the
prevailing comments from
promoters from people who interviewed him and from from his fellow workers
The one thing that carries through as a singular thread is just how nice he was and how he just dealt with everybody

(02:20:39):
As as equals as as as proper individuals instead of you know, he could have done the big shot thing and he could have
You know
How could we phrase it? He could have played the part outside of the ring and he didn't and I think that's almost more impressive because
It's very easy to you know

(02:21:00):
Be who you are on the screen and
Continue to be that person off the screen as well
Right and it seems like he was able to separate that and you know, Mike Leno told a tremendous story
you know when him and Blassey have a bloodbath match and they're trying to murder each other in the ring and
They're in the back after the match having a beer and laughing like all the friends. It's

(02:21:23):
It's what a scene I used to wait outside medicine square garden when I was a kid for autographs and
I'll tell you a couple stories you may find entertaining the door
The stage door was clearly labeled seven feet under the Giants did not have to duck
He was legit six nine or six ten. He had a huge afro that

(02:21:49):
accentuated
His height, but he was nowhere near seven four and
That's Billy Graham signing autographs body the Grand Wizard
Luau battle
Luau battle nicest could be George Steele, you know, he's supposed to be

(02:22:11):
Crazy animal
Just chatting with us. So his kids are really smart and young and the other side of it was dusty roads
Under the Giants would never sign autographs for us never
Okay, so you got smart enough pretty quick going some of these good guys aren't so nice and some of these bad guys are pretty nice

(02:22:33):
And this was pre-internet three sheets
You know pre I shouldn't say three sheets. They're pretty primitive back. Yes
But it was a different style back then like back then
It was the actual magazines. It was more
It was more news. It was more
The tangible stories rather than what the sheets ended up becoming and I mean today is such a far cry from what it

(02:23:00):
Even was in the 80s and 90s
Back in the 70s and early 80s the sheets were more like and you know fan publications
We printed the sheets and then we started to see the
You know fan publications we print results we print clips from different categories
Just like people that were really passionate about wrestling and you know

(02:23:25):
Then Nelson and Keller and some of these guys came along and became more of a business
Especially once wrestling exploded in the mid 80s then the internet of course came and it became an even bigger business
Yes, I'm senior editor right now pro wrestling stories
And you know with the the owner JP's off is based out of England, but the site goes everywhere

(02:23:48):
There's millions and millions of readers and it's not high for me. It's it's amazing
All that some of these wrestling sites have today. So
But back then it was basically fans and you'd send your primitive newsletter
I did one called wrestling and now you send it out to 50 or 100 or 150 people, you know, not not 15 million. Yeah

(02:24:17):
But it was a lot of fun and you met a lot of great people and the wrestling like John Tolo's
I mean one thing leads to another and there I am in a dressing room
20 years later, I'm not a kid anymore. I'm interviewing to Los and autumn is totally walking out
There's this was a childhood

(02:24:38):
It was nice and he was great. So, you know, it's an experience that I treasure
Yeah, when he when he I was truly saddened and
disgracefully
disgracefully
A Vince McMahon so much as you know mention them on on a TV show. Yeah, you know take 10 seconds and say

(02:25:04):
WWE extends condolences on the death of
What that doesn't cost you time?
Thank you. You know this guy this guy made money for them
Him and Chris were on top in the late 50s
It's that promotion. I mean, you know, you can't not somebody and it goes on the good list

(02:25:27):
When they're acknowledged?
Yeah
Very political
Yeah, I mean we there we could probably do almost a whole show on just an issue like that
And I mean not to get too deep into the weeds, but it's it's one of the problems I have with with how they deal with
With issues like that and you know, and though they're Hall of Fame and all that kind of stuff. That's a whole other

(02:25:51):
Basically, this is good. Yeah
Yeah, yeah
On his good list or guys he thinks you can make money from you know that glamorous enough those pickets and that cheap
when they do those all things and
They get TV exposure and it's usually part of the WrestleMania DVD
That that's a that generates money. Don't know if it's a there's still no physical Hall of Fame there

(02:26:19):
You know, so they've made money off of this for the longest time now
And you know without having to spend anything. Yeah, so
You know when you've had like thousand dollar tickets to a WWE Bowl of Fame
No
so last year for example, they put on Ray Stevens the you know, what's the term the

(02:26:45):
For the for the Golden Age guys. Oh
Yeah, I don't know what they what they call that I know what you're talking about. Yeah
Basically, it's like you're not good enough like the fellas
I'm Ray Stevens. You're not good enough for the main show, but you know
Honorable mentions is that what it is?

(02:27:07):
Yeah
Yeah
Like I said, that's a whole oh my god, I could spend
Far too much time going into something like that
One night one night call me back and it'll be like a 45 minute therapy session
That'll really get your blood pressure going then

(02:27:28):
Yeah, it's I'll tell you I have a love-hate relationship with WWE and
You know
especially
Acknowledge a guy like Tomo's like you're doing you're you're you're working hard all day today
Falling people interviewing people editing this eventually putting it out there promoting it you have more respect for the people

(02:27:50):
I mean and that and that knowledge and whatsoever
Yeah, well hopefully this this program tonight will open some people's eyes and
you know, it's conversations like like we're having right now and and with Mike and and
some of the stories that I've been able to uncover and some of the

(02:28:11):
History that I've been able to uncover and I've been able to uncover some of the stories that I've been able to uncover
and some of the the history that I'm gonna be more that is included and people have been listening to throughout this this
hours long program tonight is
Like that's what it's all about and it's if
Somebody who's been watching wrestling for 50 years attending all around the world

(02:28:37):
about the various capacities
Tolos is easy top 20 all-time hero
Personally, I put him in the top ten. I'm just saying easy top 20 and people have no idea
He's never in that conversation

(02:28:57):
And I'm saying I'm saying it having seen everybody
live this guy this guy's top 20 of all time and
To shame the footage isn't there to shame the announcement isn't there those who know know you talk to the old school like

(02:29:17):
California guys they'll tell you they'll tell you I
Guess that's that's about as perfect a bow as we can almost put on this part of the conversation
Is there anything that we didn't?
Bring up that you wanted to touch on Evan before I let you go for the night
Honor a legend

(02:29:39):
Give them their do
don't
Sit on Facebook or social media and go this one's overrated that one's overrated
You know
Talk about the guys who are unsung, you know, like a Chantolo's mystery
hasn't been kind to and

(02:30:01):
Acknowledge them every time I see a picture of
Thomas on on
Facebook I just feel happy
Great memories and I'm happy the guys being acknowledged and
You know people forget what a huge story was think about it. I saw I'm headline the garden in 74

(02:30:24):
That's 48 years ago. It's a long time. Yeah
It's also a real a reason that you know
Not everybody knows him like a whole cold in already
Man was great. I'll leave you with that. The man was great and
Check out our

(02:30:45):
our
Podcast wrestling every coast to coast we talk about guys like Thomas all the time
we haven't done a whole show on him, but you can always bring them up and I just want to thank you for having me on it's
been fun and
Catholic as
We head to the finish of tonight's program. I just want to mention some

(02:31:08):
extremely exciting information and
before I forget a
tremendous
Five-star review that was left on
Apple podcast
So this one reads props with a five-star
rating and a written review which reads
Incredible production quality. They really put the time and effort into these well researched and super interesting

(02:31:32):
that comes from pop etymology once again on Apple podcasts and
As you folks all know by now
And if you didn't now, you know if you leave a five-star rating and a written review on
Apple podcasts, I will make sure that it gets read on the next

(02:31:53):
Available episode of grappling with Canada now keep in mind. I don't get notified
Immediately when you guys leave a five-star rating and written review. So if you don't hear it the next month don't fret
It's coming and I'll make sure that it gets read on the next available program
Once again tonight. I really want to thank my two guests. Dr. Mike Lano a three-time

(02:32:19):
three time returning champ to grappling with Canada, I thought we
You know uncovered a lot of rocks in regards to
the Tolos brothers and I
Thought he provided a lot of insight about what it was like to run a fan club
back in the you know
70s into the 80s of professional wrestling because for a lot of us, you know

(02:32:43):
I'm an 80s, you know born in the 80s myself grew up in the 90s
We really didn't have that
So it's fascinating for me to go back and have that touchstone moment of what it was like to be
In that area at that time to follow your favorite wrestlers and what that was all about
I really also again want to thank Evan Ginsburg for joining the program

(02:33:05):
Man it was a great honor to talk to him
I've been following him for quite some time with his various projects
Obviously the wrestler I wax poetic about that one. That's one of my favorite movies of all time
And and his stuff on
Wrestling and everything from coast to coast with his co-host one of the which is

(02:33:26):
The aforementioned dr. Mike Lano, but Evan was was a great guest and check out everything that he's doing
on pro wrestling stories.com
Speaking of which
And this i'm so fired up about
It's been under wraps for a couple of months now, but i'm very happy

(02:33:50):
Very happy to share with each and every one of you that I am now a contributing
Member of the pro wrestling stories family
So if you log on to pro wrestling stories.com
about
Mid-month if you're listening to this right at the start of august

(02:34:13):
Obviously go in and check out the incredible articles. You'll see
uh many
past guests from this program like dr. Mike lano like mike or like uh,
Evan ginsburg, like you just heard like Javier ois who's been on a few times
And a couple of guests that you're going to hear in the future

(02:34:34):
But about halfway through the month you're going to see my debut article for pro wrestling stories.com
As I take an expanded look
At the najo singh story. This is something that I did the special episode on
In june, which was our precursor to july's episode on whippa billy watson

(02:34:59):
it's uh, it's quite the expanded view
of what happened
with najo singh
And the murder of his wife betty singh
Now I tried very hard in that episode to present it as factually as possible
And i'm really proud of what I was able to produce

(02:35:21):
With that article and I really hope that you guys uh check out
pro wrestling stories.com
For that article it should be out about mid august. I believe
Now I want to be able to contribute a article every month obviously
Uh, this program takes up

(02:35:41):
Oh my goodness
An exorbitant amount of time. I think you guys know
full well by now these are these uh episodes are not easy to
Put together research produce get guests, etc. I spend probably
If I do a four hour episode
Or a three hour episode or a two hour episode. It still is taking me anywhere between

(02:36:05):
you know
25 to 50 hours total when you factor everything in it's a labor of love. I really enjoy doing it
Because of that, I won't be personally a monthly contributor on
pro wrestling stories.com however
I will be contributing some stories that
People have never read in depth before some of which

(02:36:30):
Are tied to various episodes
in the grappling with canada pantheon
so
I'm really looking forward to it
I'm really looking forward to that. I hope you guys check out my article on nandu singh and the murder of betty singh

(02:36:50):
On pro wrestling stories.com that like I said should be out
About mid august if you're listening to this
on the first of august
And uh, i'm really looking forward to that and I hope that you guys give me your feedback as well
In addition all that
We are going to have a wrestling author historian wrestler

(02:37:15):
However, you want to phrase him vance nevada back on the program very very soon
For a follow-up episode regarding uncontrolled chaos his book about the canadian professional wrestling
Uh history scene
This thing I cannot wait for it. I've seen the cover art. It looks incredible
If you guys are not on the uncontrolled chaos book facebook group

(02:37:39):
I highly suggest that you hop on that
We are going to be doing a tremendous q a episode. It should be released about
Uh mid august as well before we get into september's episode
of grappling with canada
and
Thank you everybody who submitted

(02:38:01):
Um questions for that comments for that episode tune into that you're going to hear them all
We are going to pepper
vance nevada with questions
And uh, it's going to be quite the wild ride and we're going to see exactly
How far we can push in most of its comfort zone and really test the limits?

(02:38:23):
Of what vance nevada knows
Has reached researched and found out about canadian professional wrestling history and i'm looking forward to it
This is what we're here for right
uncovering the untold stories
Understanding the history
And finding out who these people were

(02:38:44):
And speaking of which I really hope that everybody enjoyed tonight's episode on the toltest brothers again
two of the most undersung
You know wrestling icons in my opinion in canadian professional wrestling history
And you know what it was a lot of work
You know digging up even just the audio clips that we found because

(02:39:07):
As we talked with mike and as we talked with evan a lot of this is simply lost to time
So if there is any chance that you have a relative
Who's somewhere in their addict they got some microfilm or maybe they have
Vhs tapes or maybe they got beta film whatever
If we can get some of this history out

(02:39:32):
Not specifically the toltest brothers, but also included the toltest brothers
I think it'll give everybody a big understanding of just what these people meant
To the history of professional wrestling and there's one other thing that I wanted to touch on before I
Let everybody go for it tonight and then we'll get to that

(02:39:53):
before I let everybody go for it tonight and that is
The level of stardom that we see
so, you know
We talked with mike we talked with evan big time
About you know, the star that chris told us was and the mega star really truthfully that john tolus was

(02:40:16):
And how at the end of their careers there was
Nothing
Um wrestling today is is
Obviously not the same in any way shape or form, you know
Guys are making big money and good on them, right? They got guaranteed contracts they can provide for their family

(02:40:36):
You know what it it's
Really really amazing to see the progression that we've seen in professional wrestling in terms of guys making the big money
We should never forget
That the guys of today and girls of today
Are set up because of the blood

(02:40:59):
sweat
and tears
of the people from our
wrestling past
Not just in canada
but worldwide
And I really want that to sink in and I really want everybody to think about that
Where we are today

(02:41:20):
It doesn't exist
Without people like the tolus brothers without people like classy freddy blassie without people
You know you go on and on down the line of history
and even go
on and on down the line of
Topics covered in this podcast

(02:41:41):
History is meant to be recorded and history needs to be reviewed by us
And people in the future
and I hope
that
All of you listening will go out of your way and uh
You know, maybe throw john tolus in your google machine and see what pops up maybe throw chris tolus in your google machine

(02:42:02):
See what pops up something that we haven't covered in this podcast today
Take the time
Learn the names
Understand the history
And most importantly
respect
What these men and women gave
For their lives for their bodies

(02:42:22):
You know, it's something that uh is
Almost intangible
And uh is something that's really important
That we don't lose sight of
In regards to professional wrestling history
So without leaving all everything on a downer
Ha ha ha ha

(02:42:43):
I will uh start to wrap this up
Once again, you can email me at any time
Sixsidepod at gmail.com
I read everything you guys send and I truly do appreciate everything that you guys said
You can hit me on twitter at six underscore podcast. You can find us on youtube youtube youtube

(02:43:05):
Dot com slash c slash six sided podcast
You can find us on facebook. The facebook group is canadian professional wrestling history
You can find the facebook page
Use that wonderful search bar facebook pages grappler with canada. You can also find us on instagram
Instagram dot com slash grappling with canada and the ways that you can donate to the program because

(02:43:28):
this thing
Like I said, it's a labor of love but it is
very uh intensive if you will so
Anything that you guys can donate to help really I do appreciate no
No donation is too small
And trust me no donation is too big
Hit the link to your link in the show notes to figure out how you can do that whether it's

(02:43:53):
The paypal direct link whether it's uh good pods the tip function jar or on buy me a coffee dot com
slash grappling
And don't forget to check out the official grappling with canada t-shirt store
Grappler with canada dot threadless dot com and once again as I always say

(02:44:13):
All t-shirt sales that include the grappling with canada classic logo with the canadian maple leaf flag
Those all go to charities. So
For myself the tax man
for my
Fantastic guests that I had tonight
I will leave each and every one of you as a

(02:44:35):
I will leave each and every one of you as I usually do
Take care of yourselves
And each other good night everyone

(02:45:12):
You

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Chris And John Tolos - The Canadian Wrecking Crew

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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;}Chris And John Tolos - The Canadian Wrecking Crew