Superstardom, Screwjobs and World Championships - The Lasting Impact Of Chief Don Eagle - Grappling With Canada

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Today's episode is brought to you by our good friends at Manscaped.

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Today's episode contains mature subject matter.
While not the entirety of the program, there is talk of murder, suicide, violence, cultural
appropriation and intergenerational trauma.

(01:14):
Please take care while listening.

(02:14):
Here's Manny Wise to give us the time.

(02:39):
17 minutes 12 seconds the winner Don Eagle.

(02:59):
Don Eagle was a Mohawk from the Gwanawaki Reserve just outside of Montreal, Quebec,
Canada.
He was one of the greatest box office attractions in the earliest days of television wrestling.
Fans from across Canada, across America and across international borders were glued to

(03:24):
the television screens to watch one of the most impressive wrestlers of the 1950s apply
his trade.
But what happened to Don Eagle's career that so derailed his path to superstardom?
And why is it that so many folks are focused on March 17, 1966?

(03:51):
Join us this month on Grappling with Canada as we take a deep dive look into the impressive
life and everlasting career of Chief Don Eagle.

(04:11):
Hello everyone and welcome back, welcome back, welcome back to Grappling with Canada.
As with every month, I am your host, The Taxman.
This month's episode is going to be quite the historical deep dive and I'm really, really

(04:33):
looking forward to uncovering some tremendous information regarding our subject of the month
in April.
But before we get into all that, if this is your first time to the program, welcome to
Grappling with Canada.
You can go in the back catalog and check out some incredible episodes that we have featuring

(04:57):
some Canadian professional wrestling talent such as Ronda Singh, Abdul the Butcher, Billy
Two Rivers, Dino Bravo, Gene Kniiski, George Kornienko and many others.
Simply search for Grappling with Canada in any certain podcasting platform such as Google
Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, Spotify, basically wherever you buy, sell,

(05:23):
trade, barter or steal your favourite podcasts, you will find Grappling with Canada.
While you're there, please leave a five star rating and a written review.
Best part, if you leave a written review, I will be sure to read it on the next available
episode of Grappling with Canada.

(05:45):
I want to make mention as well before we get any further that there are several ways that
you can contact myself and get in contact with the show.
You can follow me on Twitter at 6 underscore podcast.
You can find this show on YouTube, youtube.com slash c slash six sided podcast.

(06:06):
We are marching our way to a thousand subscribers.
So even if you listen to this on one of the various podcast platform feeds, please go
ahead and subscribe to this show on YouTube as well.
You can also find us on Instagram under Grappling with Canada.
You can come on in and like our Grappling with Canada Facebook page as well as you can

(06:29):
come in and join the conversation on the Facebook group, Canadian professional wrestling history.
All of these are tremendous ways to get in touch with me and especially via email at
six side pod at gmail.com.
You can email me anytime and I do read everything that you guys said.

(06:49):
Now before we get into today's episode, I just want to thank everybody for checking
out last month's episode, which was actually the second part of our two part series covering
Rowdy Roddy Piper.
We had some tremendous feedback over the course of those two episodes.
I'm very pleased with the amount of information that we were able to uncover regarding Roddy

(07:11):
Roddy Piper.
It's interesting that he's one of clearly the biggest stars in professional wrestling
history, but it's interesting about how many people, one, didn't realize that he was from
Canada, two, thought they knew the whole story of Roddy Roddy Piper, which we naturally
blew the doors off last month.

(07:33):
I'm really, really proud of the work that we had done on uncovering some unknown and
misinformed information, if you will, and three, just the amount of stuff that's out
there that is so skewed by media, we'll say.
I'm very pleased that I had some tremendous guests with me on for the previous two part

(07:57):
series to uncover some interesting parts about Rowdy Roddy Piper, not just the wrestler.
More specifically, Rowdy Roddy Piper, the person, obviously Cam Carter was a big part
of that, and Rowdy Roddy Piper, the cultural icon.
It's funny that we still bring that up because I had just had a conversation with Ead, who

(08:19):
was a guest on part two of that program, where there was just recently another Rowdy Roddy
Piper reference on Bob's Burgers, which is a tremendous show that I really enjoy watching.
Just when you think that the influence of Piper has subsided over the years, guess again,

(08:42):
and he's back in it.
Just tremendous stuff.
Thank you again, everybody, for checking out that program.
Once again, if this is your first time with the program, and maybe last month was your
first time with the Rowdy Piper series, great stuff.
I highly suggest that you go in the back catalog.
I put a lot of time, effort, and energy, we'll say, into these programs, but more specifically

(09:08):
than that, it's the guests that make the program.
Today is absolutely on point with that concept.
Today I have three tremendous guests who are going to be shedding some light on the topic
of this month's episode, Chief Don Eagle.

(09:31):
Now, this might be a name that you're familiar with.
Possibly this is a name you're familiar with for negative context.
That point we're going to get into a little bit later in the program today, but I think
what we're going to do today is really spell out who Chief Don Eagle was, both as a wrestler

(09:55):
and as a man.
We're also going to dig in deep into what he meant to Indigenous professional wrestlers,
the Indigenous community, as well as the national and international viewing markets of professional
wrestling, especially during the advent of televised wrestling.

(10:19):
There's many names from that era that most wrestling fans are familiar with.
Gorgeous George comes to mind right off the bat.
But I think that we're going to open some eyes about just how influential, just how
big Chief Don Eagle was, the potential that was left on the table, and how later aspects

(10:46):
of his life kind of will say cast a shadow on the previous work that he did throughout
his career.
I want to make something implicitly clear before we get into really the meat of today's
program.
While we are going to be discussing some of the dark aspects, especially towards the end

(11:10):
of his life, I want to make implicitly clear that this program is not going to be sensationalizing
or presenting these, we'll say, aspects out of context.
I'm also not going to be putting my personal views on what happened during those events

(11:37):
that we're going to be discussing later on in this program.
I feel like there are many outlets, some of which I'm going to discuss later on in this
program, who have put their personal narratives, we'll say, on the Don Eagle story, which I
feel is very unfortunate and very unfair to the actual story, which I think is super interesting,

(12:04):
really exhilarating, and really something that has not been explored in great depth
and detail in easily 20 plus years, probably since Greg Oliver did on the slamwrestling.net
website, which we're going to get into that a little bit later as well.

(12:26):
I feel like I needed to get into that before because I understand that, especially with
the content warning at the top of the program, and it is something that is important.
I really do hope and appreciate that people will take a little bit of time with this program

(12:50):
and really let what is talked about, discussed, and brought up to sink in, and then move forward
with it.
I would encourage anybody who listens to this program, if you have further research or information
that you want to find out on Don Eagle, that you would pursue it, for sure.

(13:11):
I would be mindful of what you are reading and what you are pursuing, if that makes any
sense.
You guys are a smart audience.
I'm pretty sure you can read between the lines and you know exactly what I'm getting at,
but I just wanted to put that note out there as well.
Also, I feel like I need to add an additional content warning to this episode today.

(13:39):
There is talk of domestic abuse.
If you or someone you know is suffering from domestic abuse, you are not alone.
There are resources available clandestinely, if that's the case, that can help you.
Please reach out.
You do not need to suffer in silence.

(14:01):
You do not need to go through anything alone.
Hell, I'm just a random podcaster from Winnipeg, Manitoba, but if you need somebody to contact,
please, even if it's me, contact somebody.
Let somebody know.
Ask for help.
Reach out.
There are resources available.

(14:22):
There are people to help.
You do not have to go through it alone.
Okay.
With all that being said, there's a little bit more housekeeping that we're going to
get into, and then we're going to jump into today's episode because there is a lot of
information to cover.
Like I said, we have some tremendous guests to get to, and we are going to have a ton

(14:43):
of fun today.
There are some ways that you can help support the program because unfortunately, this program,
not just as a time suck, but there is a financial responsibility to the show as well.
If you're able to financially support the show, there are a great many ways that you

(15:04):
can do that.
You can look in the link tree link in the show notes of this program.
You can find ways to donate to this program via PayPal.
You can also go on buymeacoffee.com slash grappling.
You can buy me a beer on there.
It is thirsty work doing this podcast after all.
You can also use the tip jar function on Goodpods.

(15:28):
And best part of all, you can also find the official Grappling with Canada merchandise
at grapplingwithcanada.threadless.com.
And as I've said many times before, all proceeds of the classic Grappling with Canada logo
t-shirt, the one with the Canadian flag, all proceeds of that shirt are going to be donated

(15:53):
towards charity.
And at the end of the year, I'm hoping that we're going to have a nice check to donate
to the Children's Hospital here in friendly Winnipeg, Manitoba.
So once again, you can find all that wonderful information in the link tree link on the show
notes of this show.

(16:14):
So please take a look.
I hope that you can support the program.
And if you can't, hey, the best thing you could possibly do is leave a five star rating
and review.
Like I said, if you leave a five star review, I will be happy to read it out on the next
available program.
Actually, I lied.
Absolutely.

(16:35):
The best thing you can do is tell a friend about this program.
You're probably on your phone right now.
You're probably at a computer right now.
You probably have access to Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, whatever.
Let your friends and family know that you are listening to Grappling with Canada and
let them know that what we are doing here is important stuff.

(16:57):
And not just because it's me saying it, but because these stories, if they are not talked
about, reported on, passed along truthfully and factually, then my big fear is that they'll
be lost to the sands of time.
And clearly I don't want that to happen.
So once again, pass the program along.

(17:18):
And I appreciate each and every one of you for listening to the show.
But enough of me rambling on.
We are going to get into the show on the other side of this.
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Now we're going to break this episode up a little bit differently than I normally do.
Normally I would give a brief synopsis of someone's life and career and then kind of
get into the interview and conversation aspect of the show.
However today I think we're going to break that mold a little bit and splice aspects

(20:45):
of his life and career in between different conversation segments of the program.
But I suppose the best way that we can start off today's program is to talk about the
early life of Chief Don Eagle.
Karl Donald Bell was born August 25th 1925 in Garnier Waukeh Quebec.

(21:11):
He ended up pursuing a boxing career in 1945 after a brief time working in the steel and
construction industry.
Now this is important to note because I feel like this is an aspect of his story that is
kind of misreported or not reported on properly.
There's been many times in wrestling history where people have exaggerated their sports

(21:37):
backgrounds.
Case in point is the Rowdy Roddy Piper episode.
The difference is today that Don Eagle was actually a Golden Gloves boxing champion.
He ended up having a 20 fight career.
He had 16 wins and 4 losses.

(21:58):
And it is interesting that he ended up starting his boxing career in 1947.
This would have been out of Louisville, Kentucky funny enough.
Which is interesting because you figure somebody from Garnier Waukeh which is just outside
of Montreal Quebec although he spent quite a bit of time of his life growing up in Ohio

(22:24):
which we're going to talk about later on in the program you would think that he probably
would have started his professional boxing career there.
But no his first professional fight was in Jefferson County in Louisville, Kentucky.
He ended up going 4-0 in his first 4 bouts.
With losing one he ended up going another 4 win streak while losing one.

(22:49):
You can see the pattern here.
Ended up on another 4 win streak.
Lost one.
Ended up on a third 4 win streak.
And then ended up losing his final bout.
What's also interesting is that he won of his 16 fights 6 by decision which is you know

(23:16):
an interesting way to win a match but won 10 of his 16 fights by knockout.
Pretty impressive and like I said ended up winning the Golden Gloves championship.
Now after his boxing career had wound to an end he ended up training for wrestling under
his father Chief Joseph War Eagle who was himself a former professional wrestler and

(23:43):
a former junior heavyweight champion.
Now he was a large star during his time something that we're going to be discussing later on
in this program though he never ended up reaching the highest heights that Chief Don Eagle ended
up reaching.
Though it is interesting that Don ended up being the next generation wrestler and ended

(24:09):
up surpassing his dad.
This is something that doesn't always happen in professional wrestling.
There are certain times where it has.
Case in point is many of the Hart children surpassed Stu Hart as a professional wrestler.
But we've seen countless times throughout history that second and third generation wrestlers

(24:30):
sometimes have a hard time breaking out of the shadow of their parent.
This was clearly not the case with Chief Don Eagle.
Now over the years it's been widely accepted that his first set of matches happened just
outside of Montreal or in Montreal.

(24:54):
However, new information has come to light with some tremendous research by a guest that
I'm going to be bringing on the program right away which totally changes the course of history
as it regards Chief Don Eagle.
Jamie Greer has done some tremendous research into the history of the Windsor area wrestling

(25:22):
scene, and he uncovered the true starting dates for Chief Don Eagle.
And this truly changes the game in terms of the Don Eagle story, but more importantly
adds further context and sheds some light, further light on the story and misconceptions

(25:46):
of Chief Don Eagle.
Now before I bring on Jamie Greer, I'm going to play some classic wrestling audio.
This is a match from the 1950s involving Chief Don Eagle and one of his most famous wrestling
holds that you are also going to hear quite a bit about coming up in my conversation.

(26:13):
So I'm going to play this classic audio and on the other side we start rewriting history
with Jamie Greer.

(26:44):
This is the version of the Indian Death Block.
It's a finishing hole and Dan Miller I believe has given up.

(27:05):
Same hole as Sonny Warcraft used to use, it's a finishing hole and he has won.
Dan Miller to call it quits.
He got his legs locked in there, put pressure on him, it's a very painful hold.
We have not seen Don Eagle use that before.

(27:26):
He could have had trouble getting his arm back.
Dan Miller was subjected to a very painful hold there.
He still can't use his legs as you can see.
A great finish for Don Eagle who took quite a going over before he was finally able to

(27:46):
pull it out.
Here's Manny Weiss now with the official time.
Manny is getting the official name of that hole too.
The time, 11 minutes and 7 seconds, the winner with the bridging Indian Death Block, Don

(28:12):
Eagle.
Well we call that Indian Death Block for you.
He calls it a fridge because he's up in the air on it.
It's very similar to the one that Sonny Warcraft employed here a few years ago, the same principle
except that Sonny had his leg in there and Don Eagle used his arm and did a bridge with
it.
Well there you have Don Eagle the winner over at Dan Miller.

(28:36):
Joining me on the line tonight, Jamie Greer.
Jamie how you doing man?
Very good yourself?
Not too bad.
It's been a night of wrestling so far for you so hopefully we put you in the proper
mindset for our discussion tonight.
Oh yeah, yeah.
A little backstory because obviously nobody knows what day of the week we're recording

(28:56):
and this is recorded on Wednesday so hence why our wrestling mindsets are in a good spot
tonight but how's everything going in Ontario this, during this past little while?
It's been alright.
The weather's been pretty nice here in Windsor, Ontario.
It's one of the perks of being the southernmost city.

(29:17):
Yeah a lot more south than I am that's for sure.
Yeah it was a balmy 6 degrees out today.
Oh fancy.
I think the highest we got was minus 16 today.
But we're easing our way out of it.
Yeah exactly.
So obviously we've kind of spoiled a little bit of the reason for having you on the program

(29:41):
tonight but your connection with Windsor is something that has come up in conversation
and research tied in with the subject matter that we're talking about tonight, Chief Don
Eagle and there were some interesting facts that you had uncovered in your research for

(30:03):
Windsor but before we get into all of that and our discussion about Chief Don Eagle,
give everybody who may not be familiar with yourself a little bit of background about
yourself and your relationship with professional wrestling.
Alright well my name is Jamie Greer.
I'm from Windsor, Ontario as mentioned.

(30:24):
So I was a musician and I was a music journalist here in Windsor, Ontario for about 20 years.
I've been a wrestling fan since I was a young lad.
That would be like the late 70s, early 80s.
About six, seven years ago I kind of decided to switch from music to wrestling.

(30:50):
So I've been writing.
I've been writing.
I worked for a site, Last Word on Pro Wrestling, part of the Last Word on Sports family.
I've written for Pro Wrestling Illustrated and various publications around Windsor including
The Windsor Star.
That was for music sorry.

(31:11):
The Windsor Star.
But just in the last, I guess during the pandemic I just kind of started thinking you know,
because I read a lot of history books.
I'm a bit of a OCD when it comes to wrestling.
I like to go backwards as well as forwards.

(31:32):
And so I read a lot of books and I you know, a lot of books from Tim Hornabaker and Pat
LePrad and a lot of these history books and I started thinking about it.
I wonder if Windsor has a history, you know, because in some towns they're just little,
you don't realize what's happened or what's going on.

(31:54):
And Windsor has a city our size, has two members in the WWE Hall of Fame already.
Taylor Kowalski and Abdul La Butcher are both from Windsor, Ontario.
That's correct.
So I started thinking, you know, at least that's a start.
And then we've got Scott D'Amour who runs Impact Wrestling.

(32:17):
He's from Windsor, Ontario.
Petey Williams.
And then you know, I started stumbling more stuff like women's wrestler Sandy Parker.
She's from BC originally.
She moved out to Windsor to live with some family for a bit.
She was a huge wrestling fan.
Got trained as a wrestler in Detroit with Lou Klein and ended up going to Japan in 1973,

(32:46):
I believe.
She won the the World Championship for All Japan Women's.
She became the first black woman and LGBTQ person to win a World Championship.
So that gave us a bit more.
It's like, oh, you know, there's something here.

(33:08):
Yeah.
You know, I'll look into it.
So I signed up for one of these newspaper websites that has all the papers going back
to whenever they started, so to speak, and just started looking to see, you know, when
wrestling started in Windsor and found the first few exhibitions in 1906.
1929, one of the Toronto promoters branched out and added Windsor to his territory.

(33:36):
And it exploded after that.
We had a weekly program that was here from 1929 all the way through to about 1960.
And then things kind of petered off with TV getting more popular.
But so it just became a lot more deep and interesting.

(33:57):
And I started seeing my first step was to catalog all Kirby single card we've had.
Now, thankfully, back then, like the 20s to the 60s, they still treated wrestling as being,
you know, on the up and up, so to speak.
Yes.
They were fun at it.
But they were every the next day in the new sports section, you would have the complete

(34:21):
review of the show.
Oh, yes.
Awesome.
And stuff.
So I mean, very much like if you're reading, say, like a raw or dynamite review, you know,
like today on a website, that's what was in the sports paper for your town.
So I got so I started, you know, reading the feuds and who was working with who and, you
know, who was wearing the card.

(34:43):
And you see all these people, you know, seeing like Dory Funk Senior, you know, coming through
was a young person seeing extra boy Buddy Rogers coming through before he's a huge TV
star gorgeous George coming through here, all these names throughout.
And so it was through all this work, which was when I kind of stumbled across the information

(35:06):
with Chief Don Eagle, who wasn't a chief yet when he came through Windsor.
But so a lot of the stuff that I read previous to all this research, claimed that Don Eagle
started his wrestling career in the Montreal circuit in August of 1945, which would make

(35:30):
sense to sort of super surface look at his background because he is from Kananakwe, the
Mohoke reservation just outside Montreal there.
So but a lot of like we were discussing earlier off of the film there that he he actually
grew up in the Cleveland, Ohio area, because his dad, Chief War Eagle, it was a famous

(35:55):
wrestler in the 1910s to the 1930s worked out there.
So he ended up sort of growing up there.
He was a Cleveland Golden Glove boxer.
So he started off in that area.
And so he started off in the Ohio and the Michigan territories in the early 40s there.

(36:15):
And he ended up coming through Windsor in February of 45, which is about seven months
before the Montreal debut.
So he kind of came through here.
He was here for about six months, had some good had some sort of main event matches in
the Windsor area.

(36:35):
They weren't exactly big names he was facing.
They would have been bigger names, you know, inside of the area.
You know, things like Bird Ruby and you know, some of the earlier names there.
But his dad was along with him.
His dad, Chief War Eagle, was his manager, his second, as they called it in his book,

(36:56):
managers or valets, you had a second.
Yeah.
And so, yeah, his dad was his second.
And then he was off and he went to Montreal and Montreal, of course, was one of the biggest
markets in North America at the time.
So he became a big star there, heading back to his sort of home territory, so to speak.
And the rest was history.

(37:19):
And then TV came along a couple of years later and he became a pretty big star on TV.
Yeah, made quite the name for himself.
And obviously, that's something we're going to expand upon later on in this program as
well.
But a couple of points that I wanted to hit on just and then we'll kind of bear down on
some of this information.

(37:39):
And I know that, you know, some people might be wondering, well, you know, what are a couple
of, you know, First Nations people from just outside of Montreal doing in Cleveland or
in Detroit?
Well, the reason for that for people may not understand is a lot of the Mohawk territory

(38:01):
spanned into Detroit and into Cleveland as well, and what a lot of them were doing down
there is steelwork and ironwork.
So you would have and it's been documented there, there is generations upon generations
of Mohawks from Gona Waka from, oh, what's the from the Ochre Reserve from from the other

(38:25):
reservations in and around Montreal, specifically because that was their territory, who would
go down to Detroit, go down to New York.
Actually, there's there's footage and pictures of Mohawk First Nations people working on
the I believe it's the Empire State Building.

(38:47):
Crazy enough.
So, so there's a long lineage of Mohawks from the Montreal area who have been all down and
a lot of them don't necessarily call themselves American or Canadian, they would have like
an Iroquois passport.
So there's a whole there's a whole layer of why.

(39:08):
So it sounds funny that there'd be, you know, a couple of First Nations guys down in, you
know, boxing or wrestling in Cleveland, but it's not when you kind of understand the geopolitical
landscape at that point in time.
And then the other portion that you brought up and we this is going to kind of tie into
something that we discussed off air in terms of someone who was a big part of being the

(39:36):
intermediary and a name that you brought up that I want you to bring up again.
But so Chief War Eagle was down in the states making a name for himself, like you said,
essentially lived in Cleveland, but that's not he wasn't there specifically for bringing
wrestlers down or networking First Nations wrestlers down there.

(40:01):
He was there to work.
He was there to work pretty much.
This was at the end of his career now.
And so there there was a name that we had discussed off air and who is kind of like
the networker.
So what was the relationship between Chief War Eagle, Chief Don Eagle, him and then the

(40:21):
other First Nations wrestlers that were come through the territory?
Well, so one of the names that I came across studying the Windsor stuff was so around the
early 1940s, Harry Light, who for those who don't know was he was the promoter, bookie,

(40:43):
bookmaker, the book of man for Detroit's territory.
And in 1948, he was one of the original co founders of the NWA.
He was sort of he was good at a group working relationship with Al Haft, who ran the Ohio

(41:05):
territory.
And so they both kind of used Windsor as almost like a developmental where a lot of the younger
guys who were they were kind of, you know, get them some more ring time, some more working
in front of a crowd.
They would send them to Windsor.
And one of the names that I came across that was used quite a bit was a gentleman named

(41:28):
Frankie Clemens.
Of course, the spelling in old newspapers, I've seen it spelled like Clemens, Roger Clemens,
like C-L-E-M-O-N-S.
I've seen it spelled like ENS or ONS.
You ever come across the ONDS or whatever, you know, Clemens?

(41:51):
I guess it's one of those things that when people are calling in their story, people
are transcribed.
That's right.
Yeah.
There was no Google Translate back in the day.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I would see this gentleman named Frankie Clemens, who was from Battle Creek, Michigan,

(42:12):
and he was a Cherokee, Cherokee Indian in the US, Battle Creek, Michigan there.
He did a lot of work in the Midwest.
He would occasionally go other places like the East and stuff like that.
But he, I would say his main bread and butter was the Ohio and Michigan circuits.
And he was used for he was one of those utility guys that he was never the big star.

(42:37):
He was never the main event guy.
I never I didn't see he was he worked about 20 years almost in the Windsors.
Wow.
And he never he never he never seemed to he was never the focal point of a big feud or
a big angle.
But he was one of those guys that he would work with the young guys in the first match.
He could carry midway mid card feuds for a couple weeks to get somebody up to the next

(43:03):
level.
And once or twice a year, he might get a big, you know, a big a big match.
He was a fill in to he also refereed quite a bit.
He also refereed quite a bit.
So he seemed to be one of those utility guys that and Harry Light was like I said, was
running the Windsor show.
So he was part of Harry Light, Harry Light's crew that helped a lot there.

(43:26):
But I noticed that one of the things was he was one of the guys that seemed to work with
a lot of the indigenous native wrestlers when they came through.
Like he was working with Don Eagle when he first came through in 45 there.
But Frankie Frankie played a heel.
So he was and he was a bit rough.
Like he lost a lot of his matches by DQ.

(43:48):
Yeah.
So he was a guy that, you know, he could make your he made new guys look like heroes.
But made him work for them.
Sure.
Absolutely.
But so the guy, his name was Indio Yakui.

(44:09):
I probably butchered that.
I'll spell it Y-A-Q-U-I.
Somebody can maybe post a comment or contact and tell us how badly I've written this.
Mexican indigenous.
This guy ended up becoming known as Chief Lone Eagle.
There was also another one from Oklahoma, I believe, Boc Estes, his name was and then

(44:30):
Chief White Owl.
But these were all indigenous native wrestlers that came through.
Clemens, it seemed like he had a hand in sort of helping push some indigenous wrestlers
through.
And they all seem to be the faces too.
Like it seemed like, you know, with the Germans and the Japanese, a lot of times they would
automatically make the ethnic people the villains.

(44:53):
Yeah.
I mean, obviously they had to come to the backdrop of World War Two and stuff.
But they definitely seemed to push them mostly as a face.
I haven't seen many pictures of Frankie Clemens, but he definitely, if they hadn't, they didn't
keep mentioning that he was Cherokee.
You can see he's got some indigenous features, but they cut his hair and he didn't wear the

(45:18):
ceremony dress and everything like that.
So they kind of made him not appear so much and they used him as the heel.
But he definitely seemed to be one of those guys that he seemed to go to bat for.
I know when at one point near the end of, they briefly turned Frankie into more of a

(45:41):
face about three or four months into Don Eagles running Windsor.
And they kind of made a big deal that Frankie had taken him back to his farm, so to speak,
in Battle Creek to train him for, he had a title match against one of the regional.
Yeah.
Like it was like a Michigan version of the World Light Heavyweight belt.

(46:07):
Yeah.
So for a couple of weeks, they were running stories that, you know, Don Eagles, you know,
over at Battle Creek, he's training with Frankie's, Frankie's toughen them up, you know.
So.
Insert your 80s training massage or montage here for sure.
Yeah, you got a Rocky montage for sure.

(46:30):
So it's cool reading stuff like that, but it definitely came across that Frankie was
probably very instrumental in helping Don Eagle get to where he was.
Sure, if I dug a bit deeper, he probably was wrestling Don Eagle in Michigan as well as
Ohio just prior to coming up.

(46:51):
So that was a cool little thing is finding people that probably deserve more flowers.
There's not a lot of them, so I'm relying on sifting through sports pages from multiple
towns.
But so he's definitely somebody I'm going to be digging in a lot more over the next

(47:12):
year.
But I definitely think he was an instrumental guy because he had his chief lone eagle with
no first chief war eagle.
Don Eagles dad definitely was he wasn't really wrestling by this point anymore.
He he was wrestling in like 1915.
Yes, he predated Don by quite a quite a few years.
Yeah, yeah.

(47:34):
And then you had mentioned as well that during that time, Chief War Eagle was he was the
manager at that point for Don.
It was or a second as you had phrased it.
Yeah, yeah.
One of the things I noticed in the papers, they refer to them, they didn't call them
managers or ballets like we use now or advocates or whatever you want to call them.

(48:00):
And they called them seconds in the paper, so you know, like somebody seconding him,
you know, like in a boxing match, you have your second ring there.
But yeah, Chief War Eagle kind of came out because he still had a bit of a name, you
know, it would be like, you know, Aaron Anderson now managing some Cody Rhodes or what have
you.

(48:21):
Yes.
So yeah, so he came out for the first first couple years.
He was the second for Don Eagle to kind of help bring up some bring some recognition
to him and establish some family lineage in the whole the whole gimmicks.
Now, there's a couple of points that I just want to circle back to quickly.
And the first one is in terms of First Nations wrestlers being mostly portrayed as faces.

(48:48):
And I know that a lot of people will, you know, especially focus in on American history
and how the portrayal of the First Nations people has not been kind over the years.
But during this period of time, you know, the early 40s to the mid 50s, and even a little
bit beyond because I want to say it was still popular, that aspect of it into the mid 60s.

(49:14):
But there was a large fascination, especially in America with with the the red man, as they
call them, clearly not politically correct nowadays.
But there were there was a big subset of not just wrestling, but, you know, media books,
whatever there was there was a lot of focus and a lot of wanting to learn more about this

(49:42):
culture.
And then when you have someone like, you know, Chief War Eagle, you know, introducing his
son, but they've got the big war headdresses on.
And they look super imposing.
And you're not used to seeing people like this.
It's instantly it's it's that fascination, right?
So I absolutely I mean, it's one of the things you look back and you go, Oh, that's

(50:07):
stereotypical, like 98% of all indigenous wrestlers were, I mean, even up until the
90s, pretty much.
I mean, I mean, to talk, I was still very much.
Yes, that's true.
Yeah.
You have to you have to be in tribal dress.
You can't.
But yeah, no, you're absolutely right.

(50:28):
And I mean, one of the things I noticed, I mean, there's a lot of African American
wrestlers coming through Windsor as well during the 30s to the 60s, because Canada was
obviously slavery of abandon cattle before the Civil War.
Not that we were there was no prejudice and racism was cured.

(50:51):
Yeah.
It didn't have the segregation in the wrestling as much.
You know, I mean, it was it wasn't like Memphis or or Mid-South, for example.
Yeah. Like where they had they had Negro world champions.
Yes.
It was like it was like the whites and blacks would never meet in a match.

(51:12):
Yeah.
Right.
It was.
Yes.
Yeah.
It was it was black versus black and white versus white.
There was no it was segregated wrestling like the very thing is the second or third card.
They've already had a guy named Jack Nelson who was an African American from Alabama,
I believe, for Tennessee.
But he was on the cards and he had one of the first angles.

(51:36):
So, I mean, I think the North was a little better for that.
But still reading some of the descriptions they have for the Asians and the African Americans and the indigenous wrestlers.
There are hearts in the right place for the time that they're trying really hard to say, you know, they're great wrestlers.
But there's always one or two words.

(51:58):
Yes.
Kind of condescending that it's almost like, oh, look at them.
They can wrestle just like the white person.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You can't you can't read the articles with twenty twenty two eyes.
Right.
You almost have to know.
No, no, no.
And obviously not excusing it even back then.
But again, you brought up the good point of like they're trying to frame it for their their presenting audience, if you will, kind of thing.

(52:29):
So, yeah, they have to they're trying to phrase it a certain way to get the point across while still using the terminology of the time, we'll say.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But no, no, but it's it's it's fascinating.
I mean, Donnie was a kid was a guy that I mean, it's a tragic story.

(52:52):
His story is tragic.
I mean, he was he was up there.
You know, he was up there with gorgeous George and, you know, like Lou says and guys like that.
He was like one of the first big breakout stars in the TV, the TV realm.
And he just got hurt, injured and injured early, unfortunately, or earlier, too early into his career.

(53:17):
And that just caused problems.
And then, of course, he had his rather tragic ending at the end of a gun.
Yes. And obviously, we're going to expand on that a little bit later in this program as well tonight.
But there's a couple of things I wanted to to focus on as well still in terms of Windsor and the surrounding areas, because this is another bit of discussion that you and I had had off air.

(53:48):
And so I want to kind of bring everyone else up to speed and a lot of people will automatically assume that with obviously Windsor is proximity to Toronto that it it would have been a subsidiary or a feeder for Toronto.
But what you've been able to to uncover is that no Windsor was actually more of a feeder for Detroit or the Ohio territory.

(54:13):
So can you expand a little bit more on that? Yeah.
In a way, Windsor was kind of like the 205 live for Detroit.
Well put.
Because, I mean, yeah, I mean, a lot of people, I think a lot of a lot of sites that have dabbled on looking into Windsor a little bit.

(54:39):
Yeah, just naturally put it in because Toronto is our closest, was our closest big territory in Canada.
But the Tonys actually historically did terrible in Windsor.
They tried a couple of times to come in and take over as the head booker.
And they had two, maybe three attempts and one of them lasted longer than about three months.

(55:05):
Well, obviously, we're extrapolating a little bit because we weren't around at that time.
But why do you think their attempts failed? Was it just they they didn't understand the market or what?
What's your perception of what happened? Yeah, I think they didn't understand the market.
The reason why I say that they were the 205 live for Detroit was because Detroit, Detroit, a lot of people don't realize that Detroit is north of us.

(55:30):
We're one of the few American cities that say America is north of us. Yeah.
Detroit, Detroit is, you know, it's a 15 minute drive.
Like I can drive to to where the Red Wing is playing about 15, 20 minutes of it.
If it's smooth sailing at the tunnel. Ah, the pizza oven. Oh, yes.

(55:51):
Yeah. Wait, when is there a joke is jokingly referred to as self Detroit?
Because we're that close. We're essentially another suburb of Detroit that's just cut off with the river crosses.
So for most of most of that, from twenty nine to sixty, most for most of that we were where like I mentioned earlier, we're a lot of the smaller where a lot of the younger guys starting out would come in.

(56:18):
But because Detroit was right there and they had a Cobo Arena or the Olympia or whatever, whatever arena they were using at the time, Detroit got all the big heavyweight names like Jim Lando's would go there and sell to twenty thousand people.
You know, Luth Desk would be there. Harley Race would be there. You know, Dorie Fong Jr. would be there. All the all the superstar big, big names were there. Yes.

(56:44):
So they so for when they were booking Windsor, they specialize more in the junior heavyweights and the light heavyweights.
It was so in a way it was it was a good idea because it meant they could keep the heavyweights that they knew were going to draw, you know, not many people.

(57:06):
I mean, obviously, Windsor people are driving over to Detroit to see these shows at the big arena. So they tried it once in a while.
But that's why the Toneys always fail was they would always come and try and do a show that was too similar to what Detroit had just done up, you know, two weeks before.
And they all saw that. So you'd have a guy who sold out, you know, twelve thousand people in Detroit two months ago and he comes back to Windsor and six hundred people show up.

(57:36):
Because it's like, well, we see him all the time. Yeah, we're not going to drive over there or whatever.
So they wanted something different. So it was a lot more of the smaller guys.
Anthony Araka came through here, but it was a lot more the smaller guys like Bert Ruby and Lewis Klein, Lewis Klein, who were two who went on to become hugely influential trainers.

(58:01):
But the Sheik, Leaping Larry Shane, a whole bunch of different guys that kind of came through.
So there was more of a Jim Haney, where he was from, Indiana, maybe. But it was more of the junior heavyweights, like a lot of world junior heavyweight titles or light heavyweight titles were defended in Windsor.

(58:22):
We didn't really get that. We would get the Luthaz wrestled here once, I think.
Like it wasn't a heavyweight town. So that's why I was saying, you know, it's more like two or five.
So it became where it became like they could build up the smaller guys, the technical wrestlers, those kind of things, the brawlers.

(58:44):
And then Detroit got the superstars. When the Tonnages came down, they would bring, they brought down Whipper Billy Watson several times.
But Windsor is a place, and I noticed this even when it's with music or what have you, is Windsor's a fiercely, they were much, it's a union town.

(59:05):
It's, you know, it's auto workers and everything else. So it's fiercely loyal of its local people.
Yes. So, you know, if you're from Detroit or you're from Windsor, then they'll tear and root you on and everything else.
And they don't take you kindly to Toronto. So there was always Windsor and Detroit guys throughout Pepper, throughout the roster.

(59:28):
But whenever the Tonnages came through, they wouldn't use any local guys.
There would always be guys from Toronto or what have you, or guys that had just come through Detroit. So they did.
They just never did well. And that was one of the things that actually killed the Detroit or the Windsor area in the late, early 60s
was when Harry Light kind of lost power in Detroit and Jim Barnett and Johnny Dorel in the Chicago territory came in

(59:55):
and kind of strong-armed taking over the NWA territory in Detroit.
They took over Windsor and they ended up doing the same thing because they didn't even want to use Detroit wrestlers even in Detroit.
They wanted Detroit to be an extension of Chicago. So they're using all Chicago wrestlers.
So, I mean, that's why they ended up leaving Detroit altogether. And they went to Australia and opened the first World Championship.

(01:00:21):
That's right. Yeah.
That's when the Sheik took over. And the Sheik kind of gave Windsor back what it had in a two degree.
But I think by that, a lot of the damage had been done.
But yeah, for 30 years almost, Windsor was essentially a feeder system for the Michigan and the Ohio and the Midwest.

(01:00:51):
And then Jack Britten ended up coming to work for Harry Light as well. He was a big part of the Montreal circuit.
So we also got a lot of the Montreal, French Canadian starters coming through.
They would kind of be there the last stop before they were sent into the U.S. on a tour.

(01:01:15):
Maurice Mad Dog, Ben Achon actually got unmasked in Windsor. He was a masked wrestler when he arrived here called the Shadow.
Yeah, that's right too.
He was born in 1953 and by about July he got unmasked as Maurice Flash on and then he was off.
And then he was the Mad Dog. Good times.

(01:01:37):
Restless history. I find it's fascinating that the couple of points that you just brought up with,
one Windsor being kind of a feeder system, fits in perfectly with the Dawn Eagle kind of story.
Getting him in, getting him ready there because it seems like it's almost a perfect fit.

(01:02:02):
Especially at that time, seemed like a perfect storm almost of getting him ready for his role later in life.
And then the point that you just brought up about them being a feeder for Montreal,
which obviously we know several months after his now discovered actual debut,

(01:02:24):
he has his written about debut in Montreal.
So it's interesting to see kind of this progression but how all of these places are linked.
It's interesting that, like I was saying, you'll see a lot of patterns where a lot of the Ontario and the Quebec wrestlers would come

(01:02:46):
and Windsor would be kind of like their last, they would spend, I'd say three to six months in Windsor.
Obviously they'd be working in Michigan as well but they were pretty much every week, maybe three times a month,
working programs in Windsor and then they would be launched into the US and that's when they would go and start working the territory.

(01:03:13):
So it was kind of like Windsor was kind of like your last kid stopped in Canada before you could set in the rest of the world kind of a thing.
But here's Dawn Eagle, a Canadian, well, my birth, obviously Mohawk by nation.
But actually Windsor was actually his gateway into Canada.

(01:03:36):
He wasn't coming from Montreal to go into the US, he was coming from the US into Canada to get sent to Montreal.
So it was kind of a reverse there.
But yeah, it was kind of a gateway of getting guys ready.
Man, reading the descriptions, it sounded like it was ECW every week. I mean the blood that they're talking about.

(01:04:02):
I mean there were so many matches where they were just stopped because a guy jumped out, missed something, smashed his head open.
Jesus.
There's so many complaints to the letter, the letter is saying that they can't believe how violent it is.
One of the biggest weapons that the villains use, this is the 1940s.

(01:04:23):
By the way, this isn't like 1970s, this is 1940s.
One of the biggest weapons that the heels use is a coat hanger.
They could open the triangle part.
You could pull it out to be big enough to fit around a guy's neck so you could choke him with it.

(01:04:44):
Right? But then they would hook the hook part around and then have their strangler in a guy and they would think it's a big thing.
Just gag him. Jesus.
Like there's descriptions of this in the paper.
It's just like, things like, I'm like, oh my God, people are saying, oh my God, I can't believe they're using a pizza cutter.
It's like, they were using coat hangers!

(01:05:09):
Pizza cutters at least have an edge that is designed to cut something so much more.
It's actually designed to cut things, whereas like a coat hanger is not meant for that.
Oh, God damn.
Like they're constantly talking about, there was always a St. John's ambulance parked.

(01:05:30):
If it was in the arena, it would be in the venue itself.
The other one was outside. So many reviews I'm reading up the shows.
Excuse me.
Where it's like, oh, but then so and so is being stretchered off to the ambulance where you have to have 13 stitches.
Oh yeah. Or so and so had to spend the night in Hotel Dew Hospital. Oh yeah.

(01:05:56):
I get automatically the picture in my mind is from the first Slap Shot movie when he's got the ambulance parked outside.
Oh yeah, just hit the siren a couple of times or whatever.
Yeah. It's crazy. It's crazy.
But again, it's so fascinating that these stories we would never know about, right?

(01:06:21):
Unless you were going back and you want to find them, right?
Which is like how you get from, okay, I want to learn more about this person to now you're learning about what the territory was actually like to who was in the territory and how many people go through in a certain amount of time.

(01:06:44):
Well, it's like there's territories within territories within territories.
Yes.
You know, I think we've gotten to the point where it's almost time for the NWA and everything else.
And it's almost like it's been, you see everyone sees the maps of, you know, like, okay, this is mid-south.
This is mid-Atlantic. This is, you know, this is California.
This is Pacific Northwest. Stampede territory. Maple Leaf Wrestling territory.

(01:07:07):
So you kind of start to, you know, you get a picture like this of the map.
You don't realize that, okay, yes, this is the Detroit territory.
This is the Ohio territory, but there's little territories within that.
Yes.
It's, yeah, it's crazy. It's like, it's like farm teams for NHL.
Yeah, pretty well. Yeah, very, very apt description.

(01:07:31):
It's like AAA or AA. It's like, oh, send them up to North Bay.
Send them up to the WC.
So obviously we've gone into great detail of Don Eagle's actual start in professional wrestling.
But do you know through your research, did he come back through Windsor after he was established?

(01:07:54):
He did. He came back in 1953. It was just after his back injury.
Yes, I was going to say that. It must have been right around that time.
Yeah, he came back with Billy Two Rivers.
That's right.
Who was essentially, he was like his Dick Grayson, his ward.

(01:08:18):
He had gone back, when he hurt his back there, an unfortunate back injury that pretty much plagued him the rest of his life.
It kind of derailed him, so to speak, that he couldn't do as much of the stuff that made him the star.
He went back to kind of heal up in Montreal there at Connock Way.

(01:08:39):
He found this guy, Billy Two Rivers, who was going through problems, not doing well.
So Don Eagle pretty much rehabbed himself to get back into wrestling by training this kid how to wrestle.

(01:09:00):
I think he was about 17 or 18.
He took him back out on the road with him, Billy Two Rivers.
Billy would become a huge star himself.
Yes.
I don't think he quite made it. In the UK, he was probably pretty close to Don Eagle's TV run.

(01:09:21):
So yeah, he came through in 1953 briefly.
Now he was coming from Montreal, bringing Billy Two Rivers back into the US with him.
So he came back briefly for, I think it was about two or three weeks.
It wasn't very long.
It was a quick sort of a return stop as he was going through the border, I guess.

(01:09:44):
He did come back again in 59 and 60 for a couple more sporadic shows.
At that point, that must have been when he was just either right before retirement or shortly after due to the back.
Yeah, because it was something like he blew a bunch of discs out.

(01:10:07):
Back surgery back then is not anything close to what it is today.
No, no, no. Because yeah, he was in constant pain.
I mean, because he would, you know, he had a pretty serious, he was drinking and everything else by the end there.
I think he finally retired in 65, but I think he pretty much hit semi retirement by the late 50s, early 60s there because he just couldn't do it in a full time schedule.

(01:10:38):
He would do the occasional appearance here and there.
But for the most part, he was pretty much retired by the early 60s there.
Yeah, but it's crazy like just how how impactful his run was, but also how short it was to when you look at it in the grand scheme of it.

(01:11:00):
It's it's a shame. And and like we've been saying, right, if a lot of the information, especially here in Canada is not is not kept very well.
Right. We were also discussing off air how it seems to be a lot easier to get a lot of the American wrestling results, especially with the boxing career.

(01:11:22):
That's we didn't even touch on that part of it.
But I mean, it's a lot easier to find that than it is to find what he did here in Canada, especially, you know, the Windsor stuff was essentially mothballed until it was discovered.
So yeah, it just it's fascinating that somebody who is that popular rose that much just it's like the Neil Young song, right?

(01:11:47):
You just burn out. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
In a lot of ways, he almost should have stayed and been more of a Montreal because I mean, Montreal, Chicago, New York City, Boston as well.
There's four probably four before biggest L.A. was pretty close, but I was in the West Coast.
Yeah, I can't I don't see that he would have been the same sore in L.A.

(01:12:11):
I could be wrong, but I don't see that it can happen.
No, no. He was he was in the Chicago Chicago, New York, Boston, Montreal circuit.
But I think he because the whole the whole of gorgeous George, the original Montreal screw job.
Yes. Fast camp or Chicago fast.

(01:12:34):
I was called that really kind of derailed his his momentum.
I think that was kind of the beginning of the end for him.
Not so much from his standpoint, his work got worse or anything, but it was it was a shady kind of power play like the Al Haff.

(01:12:57):
So we've talked about the Ohio promoter was kind of he kind of had the booking rights for Don Eagle because he was from Ohio.
Yes. He was based out of Ohio.
So like I was saying, how Al Haff was friends with Al Haff was had secret alliances. So he was on one hand, he was friends with Fred Kohler, the main NWA promoter from Chicago.

(01:13:25):
But there was like an outlaw promoter from Chicago that he also had an alliance with.
And that I forget his name. It's like Schwartz. No, it wasn't Schwartz.
I forget the name. But and he was kind of in cahoots with Paul Bowser from Boston, who had the first AWA not related at all.

(01:13:52):
Yeah, totally different. Yeah. Yeah.
So they kind of like like Don Eagle, by that point was was in the NWA.
He was one of Luthaz's first feuds after Luthaz won the NWA World Championship.

(01:14:13):
And he was handpicked, I believe. Right. Was it not that Luthaz had handpicked him?
Because at that time, yes. Yeah, he was. Yeah, he picked who he wanted to who he wanted to match up with.
He had a few with Orville Brown, who was the first NWA World Champion, the one right before Luthaz there.
But he was fighting everybody. I mean, he was fighting Gorgeous George.

(01:14:36):
Like that was that's the TV money draw. Yes. Don Eagle versus Gorgeous George.
I mean, there was even talk at one point that Don Eagle was going to become an NWA World Champion, you know, down the line there.
But then they did. He they had them.
They had picked Don Eagle to beat Frank Sexton, who had been the AWA World Champion.

(01:15:00):
The AWA was one of the last ones to kind of get on board with the NWA's World Champion.
So this was, you know, 1950, whatever it was. And Don Eagle beat him. He'd been champ for five years.
Like that's like beating Bruno. Yeah. This was this was Boston was a huge territory, but it wasn't part of the NWA at this point.

(01:15:21):
So this was a huge news. And then, you know, seven days later in Chicago for this CD, other promoter, not Fred Kohler's promotion.
Here's all kinds of rumors that they told Gorgeous George to shoot on them.
They don't know if it was that's true or if it told the ref to fast count.

(01:15:43):
But whatever it was, you know, he did the one, two, three in a span of a minute, one, one and a half.
And Gorgeous George walked out with the belt. I mean, they didn't even give Gorgeous George the belt.
Yeah, that's right. They got him out. Yeah.
I mean, Don Eagle won it back a few weeks later, wherever it was. But that was on TV, the big loss.

(01:16:07):
And it kind of I mean, you can watch that. It's on YouTube. You can watch that. You can watch the fast count match.
But it definitely seemed it was almost like that they intensely that he was kind of an incident that L have probably wanted somebody else
instead of Luthes to be the world champion. And so I don't know, maybe he wanted someone instead of maybe he was up.

(01:16:32):
He was jealous because they were looking to take Don Eagle away from him.
But whatever it was, they really tried to dismantle his buzz that Don Eagle had.
And he definitely had some opportunities, but it definitely seemed like he was on a skyrocket.
And then that whole thing kind of stuttered it. Yes.

(01:16:55):
And then it was like, you know, a couple of years after that, 20 years ago back.
So he never fully recovered from the title loss and then gets the injury that he never quite recovered from either,
which just led to his mental health issues and his physical issues and worse, which led to his demise, unfortunately.

(01:17:17):
Now, in your research, going through all the newspapers when he had passed away, did that make the Windsor News then?
You know what? I didn't check.
I definitely found a few other ones. I don't know if I ever did make them.
When did he? No, no, they kind of stopped.

(01:17:41):
Or they weren't they weren't focused on pro wrestling at that point in the sports section.
By the 60s, the wrestling coverage, they would.
Up until about the mid 60s, like I said, there were there was previews.
There was interviews. There was reviews. There was everything.
By the 60s, I'm getting the cards off the off the advertisement that they paid for.

(01:18:07):
They kind of finally decided we're not really going to cover wrestling.
So it wasn't much of the deaths, not much wrestling news made it to the paper anymore.
So, but no, I mean, I did find a few other articles, but I don't remember any of them being from Windsor, though.

(01:18:28):
It definitely made it much more. Some of the bigger markets that talk about it.
Yes. But yeah, that's a whole dark side of the ring itself.
I mean, there's all kinds of theories from various family members about what happened at the end there.
Yes, it's. It's a tale that was sorry. Go ahead, please.

(01:18:54):
Even when Fes was talking about it years later, not after he died.
Because his wife died two years later. Yeah, it's.
It gets dark. It gets dark. Yes, very quickly.

(01:19:15):
You know, he was for those who don't know, he was 1966, the year after he officially retired.
He was found dead in his kitchen. It was about a parent self or a parent self gunshot wound.
Then some of the facts start getting a bit weird after that.

(01:19:37):
There was other bullet holes in the walls or something.
And did he just miss himself several times or? Yeah.
Was he shooting them? And that's yes, that's something that we're going to dig deep into in a later conversation in this program tonight.

(01:20:02):
But boy, it's almost a shame to to let that be, you know, kind of the end of the of the story at this point.
Right. In terms of how much has been rediscovered and how much it.

(01:20:24):
Boy, I don't know what the proper way to say this is, but it's it's almost disappointing that that's the one thing that everybody just.
Falls back on at the end of it. You know what I mean?
Yeah, rather rather than and I'm not saying that everything is, you know, rainbows and unicorns and whatever.
It's clearly not. And I'm not also not trying to paint this or look through this with rose colored glasses, for example.

(01:20:50):
But it's it's hard to not, you know, kind of shadow all of this great information with the end of the story.
And I think that I think that what we've done, at least on, you know, with the Windsor portion, is kind of bring a lot of that to light.

(01:21:15):
Yes, we know what happens at the end, but it's fascinating to be able to go back and look at what happened before all of that, which I think is super impressive.
Before we got into wrestling in the 40s, he was he was a boxer.
He didn't go pro, but he was he was I believe he was 16 and four. Yeah, that's right.

(01:21:36):
He was he was a very good boxer.
His dad was a boxer before he started wrestling, too.
So, yeah, so I mean, he had a great boxing promise.
He started hot out the gate.
And like I said, he started in 45 and by 1950, he was I mean, by 1948, he was he was facing Orville Brown.

(01:22:03):
And yeah, he was a huge star.
Three years he was already a contender for the NWA World Series. Yeah. The 10 pounds of gold.
Still my favorite belt. Yeah.
Actually, it wouldn't have been the 10 pounds of gold. Not back then, no.
Yeah. When was that? Was it about 71 or something like that? That one came in.

(01:22:26):
The one that they have right now. Yeah. I want to say Harley Race maybe was the one who debuted that one. Yeah.
I think you're right. Yeah. But yeah, so I mean, he was you can still see a bunch of his matches on there.
The unfortunate thing is with a lot of these star on YouTube, a lot of these stars, unfortunately, is that all these early TV shows,

(01:22:48):
most of these stations erased the tape because tape was so expensive back then that they would just keep filming over it.
So so much is lost. I mean, Billy Two Rivers is still alive.
I mean, I wish somebody with more connections and funds to document something, to do a documentary,
to really get in and talk to some of his surviving family because Billy Two Rivers is still alive.

(01:23:11):
He's about 83, 86 between around there. Yeah. I actually had him on season one.
We did had him on for a show. Yeah. Yeah.
And that was one of the one of my most and that interview with him still stands still sticks out to me.
Right. That's one of my favorite episodes that I've done to this of this program because we talked for oh my God.

(01:23:38):
To all over two hours, you know, just not just on the program, but just talking generally speaking.
And, you know, with with Billy, there are things if he wants to talk about it, he'll he'll go all the way with it.
Right. And there are things that he didn't want to discuss. And I was fine with it.

(01:24:01):
It's his story to tell. But I'm with you.
It would be fascinating to actually have a documentary crew not only for him and his family,
but also the community because and this is something that this is something that we talked about on the program with him is how everything is passed out orally throughout the community.

(01:24:25):
So while he he has his stories that he's told and been told over the years, his family has those.
But so does the community. So it would be fascinating to and good God, Lord knows I don't have the funds for this or whatever.
But it would be fascinating to to do an actual series like a you know, a mini series of yeah.

(01:24:49):
How how this all works with each with itself and with each other.
Absolutely. I mean, and that's what I think, like, because I think because like.
It's tough to tell Don Eagles story just because of the fact that I mean, like you said, I mean.
I guess that when it starts with that gorgeous George, the screw job, it's like that.

(01:25:15):
That is the injury and that's and then it's done.
And it's kind of like, God, there's three terrible acts at the end.
Yeah, it's like, oh, my God, which which all sorry. Go ahead.
I was going to say just that like you said that the spotlight keeps getting taken from the first half of his story.

(01:25:39):
Yes, going on. The back end is dark and.
And kind of depressing, as I guess, but there was so much more at the beginning that you don't realize how big a star that he was.
You know, he was up there. He was a world contender. He was a world champion.
And two time world champion with the Boston and started it all in Windsor.

(01:26:03):
Funny enough. Yeah.
So this is obviously been a tremendous conversation.
What I what we didn't touch on and I meant to at the start of this all is.
Obviously, we've gone heavy with the Windsor project that you're working on, but you also have something else in the works.

(01:26:28):
Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Do I with the book?
What do I have with the book, right?
Oh, the book. Yeah, that's the research. Yeah.
I was trying to give you the Iggy there.
Look at that. Look at that. See, that's why I was terrible with girls.

(01:26:52):
I don't pick up on a hint.
Yeah. So the whole reason why I'm doing all the Windsor research on Windsor isn't just to satisfy my OCD and my ADHD, which it is as well.
But I'm writing my first book.
It's tentatively called Killers, Butchers, Crybabies and Canadian Destroyers.
The History of Professional Wrestling in Windsor, Ontario.

(01:27:17):
And it's all about just the history of wrestling coming into the area and how it's sort of fit into the world.
So I look at sort of like it was saying at territory within the territory because we were like a little territorial feeder for Michigan mostly, but also Ontario and Ohio.

(01:27:39):
So the name is in case someone goes, hey, that sounds like it is a homage because there's a book, great book by Pat LaPrade and Bertrand Ebert about the history of the Montreal scene.
It's called Mad Dogs, Midgets and Screw jobs. The untold story of how Montreal shaped the world of wrestling.

(01:28:02):
So it is a conscious nod.
And I know Pat appreciated it because I saw you pop Pat on Twitter there.
Yeah, yeah. Actually, because of that, Pat actually got a hold of me yesterday.
He just sent me a DM and I'm not going to say yet who because I want to I don't want to jinx things and all that.

(01:28:26):
But he did pass along some contacts for me that are going to be invaluable.
So I will send another shout out to Pat for that because...
Yeah, pretty excited. Yeah, so that's the end game. I mean, it's probably going to take a while. It's still a lot to go into.
Well, you only have like a hundred years of news to go through.

(01:28:53):
Well, I've right now I've cataloged and gone through and I've written down every card from 1906 until 1990.
So pretty much from the beginning up to the modern era. Yes.
The modern era after that, it is pretty much almost 99 percent border city wrestling, which is our which is our indie promotion, which is also owned and run by Scott DeMore.

(01:29:16):
Yes, which that stuff is all easier for me to obtain.
Scott and I have been friends for years.
That is easier to track down information. So I'm going to spend the next year pretty much getting the first 60 years dialed in.
Yeah. Yeah.

(01:29:38):
So, yeah, so I've got every all the cards to know the next day just to go through all these and find the find the narratives, find the feuds, find who the regulars were and all that stuff.
So, yeah, that's that's why I stumbled across with the Don Eagle stuff because I was a bit shocked to see him arrive in the story earlier than I thought he would show up.

(01:30:00):
Yeah. Well, like I said, off the top of the program, you weren't the only one who was shocked. And it's funny how you can you can dig in and research and do all this stuff.
And and it's that one random tidbit just changes the game. And it's crazy how how it happens like that.

(01:30:22):
Yeah. Yeah. And it's it really it's one of those things that, you know, I'm glad I did this now and not say five years ago or something because a lot of these books like I've got a whack of Tim Horner Baker stuff and there's so many great writers that do great documenting history that, you know, stumbling across a lot of these older names that if I hadn't read so and so's book, you know, a year or two years ago or years ago that this name might have.

(01:30:51):
I might not have keyed in, you know, and kind of gone, oh, why is that important? But now I'm seeing things it's like, oh, yeah, so it's.
Thankfully, my wife, my wife, I can say that my obsession with reading and collecting history books about wrestling is paid off.
And like I said, at the top of the program, you have quite the quite the collection in the background there. So obviously, our listeners can't see it. But yeah, I was quite quite the sight for me to to get a glimpse at at least. So yeah, it's super tremendous.

(01:31:25):
Yeah.
All the workbooks all sitting here.
All the resource books.
Good times. The best of times and obviously dealing with wrestling history. So obviously something very, very near and dear to myself as well.
Yeah, it just makes everything more interesting. I mean,

(01:31:49):
when you see that there's so much wrestling today that people say is so far away from what it was.
And then you realize it's not really. I mean, I've come across some absolutely silly gimmicks when people say things about, you know, like Dan housing or someone like that.
Yeah.
These kind of stupid things. And it's like, well, I found a guy who didn't add for coming in. He was a.

(01:32:15):
He was an American wrestler, but he wasn't doing very well under his name. So we put on this crazy mask in 1950. He was called Zuma, the man from Mars. Space helmet and everything else.
And it's like they had some pretty ridiculous gimmicks back then, too.
Yeah. Yeah. It's not just everybody being very nice and very evil today.

(01:32:37):
I can't do Dan housing voice. That was awful.
That's all right. And, you know, people don't realize, I mean, because Dan is Detroit. So we kind of.
He sort of started in this area. He was also, you know, in the Michigan, Ohio area.
So he's you know, when he was done with Dan House and he was almost like a MMA style kind of, you know, he didn't have the makeup.

(01:33:04):
He was more of a shoot fighter. Yeah. More of a technical guy.
But he realized that there's a million guys doing that right now.
So, you know, as most things he does, he does less work in the ring, puts on some makeup and now he's selling merch through the roof.
Yeah, exactly. Who's really winning? Yeah.
That's the very definition of work smarter, not harder.

(01:33:31):
Well, Jamie, this is an absolute treat for me and I can't wait for when the book comes out, I'll be keeping tabs on that throughout the next.
I'm going to have to go back and check out that Billy Two Rivers interview.
I highly recommend it. Not to plug my own stuff on my own program.
I didn't realize, so I'm excited to hear that.

(01:33:52):
Now, before we proceed further with the Don Eagle story, there is something that came up in conversation with Jamie Greer that I want to expand upon a little bit more.
Now, naturally, quite a bit of our conversation is not following a proper timeline set of events, right?
It's not like we talked about the 20s and the 30s and the 40s and the 50s and the 60s.

(01:34:15):
There are events that happened throughout the time period, but not set in a continual time frame, if you will.
One of those events that we had talked about was the back injury that Chief Don Eagle had sustained.
And I want to discuss this because it's going to play into later conversations that we have during the course of this program.

(01:34:43):
So, during a 1953 match with the notorious Hans Schmidt, Eagle was thrown over the top rope and into the ringside chairs,
which ended up damaging several spinal discs and breaking two ribs.
This left him in a full body cast and doctors told him that he would never wrestle again.
But, Eagle's belief, faith and love of wrestling pulled him through this time.

(01:35:08):
As he recuperated, he created new moves in his mind which he believed would make him even more technically competent than he was before.
He took a year off in total, during which time he began training Billy Two Rivers.
You can hear much more about that in my episode with Billy Two Rivers in Season 1 of Grappling with Canada.

(01:35:31):
So, I just wanted to clarify that a little bit more to provide some context because it will end up clearing some of the conversation that I have coming up.
And especially later on in the program.
Also, there are some poignant quotes that I feel now is a very good time to interject into the program.

(01:35:57):
Now, these quotes come from a SlamWrestling.net article written by friend of the show, Greg Oliver.
And these are various wrestlers talking about their experiences with Chief Don Eagle.
And I think again, plays into conversations that I just had with Jamie and conversations that you're going to hear right away with the next guest on the program.

(01:36:23):
Quote, I think the main thing with him, besides the fact that he was a good wrestler, a scientific wrestler, was that he gave the white people or the rest of Canada a better look at what the native people were like.
Explained Don Leo Jonathan.
Nowadays, First Nations people stand different to the eyes of their fellow Canadians than they did 40 years ago.

(01:36:48):
It was a slow process, but I think one that Don Eagle helped to speed up.
I think that quote is very important because that really plays into the cultural awakening and cultural recognition that Don Eagle was really bringing in especially the Ohio area, but also to other parts of Canada.

(01:37:09):
And naturally, the soon to be widespread television wrestling audience that was watching Don Eagle before their very eyes, not in living color naturally in black and white at that time, but interesting quotes nonetheless.
Billy Two Rivers, who if you had listened to the season one episode, you would know intimately well at this point, had this to say.

(01:37:35):
Quote, it's always been the curiosity of the red man in any kind of sport and he personified that in his career.
Basically, he was one of the front runners in the television era of wrestling.
He was the pioneer in wrestling as an Indian person, combined with his natural abilities and the colorfulness of ourselves in costumes.

(01:37:56):
And I guess the curiosity, he was a boom to wrestling, but he was also a role model for a lot of Indian people.
And again, this further exemplifies the facts that we had talked about and are going to be brought up later on in the program as well.
Something that was discussed during my conversation with Jamie Greer was the outlandish way that Chief Don Eagle arrived to the wrestling venues, namely driving a long Cadillac with a 20 foot canoe on top.

(01:38:32):
And Don Leo Jonathan had some tremendous memories of this and some thoughts as well.
Quote, he had an outrigger built for that old thing.
I've been out with him. I used to go out on the reserve and we would go to the Lachine Rapids, Spear Sturgeon, shoot ducks and geese.
He used it. He was quite a sportsman.

(01:38:53):
Two things that he loved was Indian cornbread and roasted goose.
And another conversation or part of the conversation that we had with Jamie and something that gets brought up later on in the program as well is how involved Chief Don Eagle was in communities and how well he was involved in charities as well.

(01:39:15):
And Billage Rivers had this to say about that.
They used to visit hospitals and scout troops together.
And he had purchased property in Vermont where he hoped to open a boys club or a boys camp.
He was a wonderful person, a very giving person, a good person to know.
And as well, another quote that Don Eagle or regarding Don Eagle and another quote regarding just the impact and recognition of Don Eagle from Billage Rivers.

(01:39:45):
Quote, he always made it a point that it was Don Eagle from the Mohawk community of Guanajuacay.
A lot of times the wrestling announcers would say Don Eagle from Montreal or Don Eagle from Quebec, Canada.
And if that was done, he'd correct it.
I took that as an example to my travels.
And that's something that I've come across during multiple matches of Don Eagle that I've watched, you know, even on YouTube.

(01:40:13):
Right.
They're very quick to point out Guanajuacay and if they say just Quebec, then the announcer usually gets some kind of tap on the shoulder to to remind him of where Don Eagle was actually from.
Now, another aspect that we had talked about was the essentially unfamiliarity of First Nations people with the general population, we'll say, in areas such as Ohio.

(01:40:49):
And this is, again, where Don Eagle's colourful persona, we'll say, was a blessing and a curse because, yes, he was quite the attraction, but it could also come off as a distraction.
Don Leo Jonathan kind of expanded on that a little bit.

(01:41:10):
Quote, people never did understand him.
You take white people looking at an Indian, they look at it completely differently than an Indian looking at an Indian.
Since I was raised pretty much around Indians and with Indians, I understood him a lot better than anybody else.
He was just an Indian.
He was through and through an Indian, even though he dealt with white people and he learned to get along in that world.

(01:41:35):
He wasn't completely accepted in that society or he didn't want to be in it.
And perhaps that's why people said that he had problems.
Myself, I never saw him have more than a couple of beers.
I know when we were at the Indian dances and stuff in Ohio, I never saw him drink.
But that's not to mean, you know, how people are.

(01:41:57):
Some people have serious problems that some people never know about.
Some people function better drunk than they do sober.
And this is a topic of conversation that comes up later in the program today.
And I want to, I suppose, apologize a little bit for the language used.
However, these are quotes from specific people set in a specific time.

(01:42:24):
Right. And this is a topic of conversation that comes up later on in the program as well today.
A lot of the language used, you know, in terms of this program from back in the day,
isn't obviously, you know, language we would use or me specifically that I would use in 2022.

(01:42:49):
Unfortunately, we can't judge information and conversation the way that we do in 2022
the way that we should have back then.
So I just want to clear that up a little bit because there are there's terminology used that I'm not specifically comfortable with.

(01:43:11):
However, it is part of the Dawn Eagle story.
And they are interesting quotes that do shed some more light on the Dawn Eagle story.
So I feel like they should be included.
Now, there are other quotes regarding that article in slam wrestling dot net that we're going to get to later on in the program

(01:43:33):
because it relates to something a little bit different.
But in terms of overall cultural significance and big moments in professional wrestling history,
there's probably one that unfortunately stands heads and shoulders above almost anything else that Dawn Eagle ended up accomplishing in the professional wrestling ring.

(01:44:02):
And that is the Chicago short count screw job.
To join me in discussing this matter is two time guest to Grappling with Canada, Javier Oist.
Javier Oist is an exceptional contributor to pro wrestling stories dot com,

(01:44:25):
as well as several other websites that you can hear about later on in this program.
But he's going to come on and talk about his article, his research into the Chicago short count screw job
and some more undiscovered information regarding the life and career of Chief Dawn Eagle.

(01:44:49):
But before then, I'm going to play some more classic wrestling audio.
And on the other side, we get into the infamous Chicago short count.

(01:45:23):
He's got a leg lock. Watch him use these ropes.

(01:45:53):
This is the first time Lou Gordon, one of the commissioners in here, War Eagle.
Everybody boy, this is a shamble. The fans are throwing things into them.
Hey, Don, come here. Come here, boy. Honest to goodness.
Things have really happened around here. Don Eagle took out after Molly and Molly and beat him to the dressing room.

(01:46:17):
And Don Eagle is still on the outside. Here's gorgeous. George trying to get him.
Where'd you come from, Junior? Hey, look, no spectators in the ring, kid.
That's right, boys. Stay with this little character. Who on earth is he?
He just had to take a shortcut through there on the way home.
But at any rate, gorgeous George has won this match from Don Eagle.

(01:46:39):
And that's one of the biggest upsets in the wrestling business for a long time,
because this kid, Eagle, had gone along for a number of bouts before finally losing this one.
It's the first one in something like 135 or 40 bouts that the boy actually lost on.
Gorgeous George has got on a snoot here. The fans are grabbing at him.

(01:47:01):
This crowd is really on its ear.
I've never seen a crowd in as ugly a mood as this gang is here tonight.
It was very much a... Look at him.
All directions from all parts of the house.

(01:47:23):
Just to make it official, the ring announcer tried to announce the fact that
Gorgeous George had won the match from Don Eagle, but couldn't even make himself heard.
He just gave it up as a bad job.
Jeff Reeds and George are still standing here, wondering perhaps whether or not to risk a trip out through the audience.
Well, here we go. Let's see what happens.
Oh, somebody yanking at his robe. Look at him kick at him.

(01:47:47):
Hey, hey, wait a minute. That's an Andy Frane guy who's trying to protect you, George.
Men all around him here. Oh, look at him taking on Gorgeous George.
I haven't seen an ugly crowd...
Javier Oist, welcome back to the program tonight. How are you doing, man?
Great. Thanks for having me back, Andy.
It's absolutely my pleasure.

(01:48:10):
We've been chatting a little bit off air, trying to get our dates straight for our tremendous conversation that we're going to have regarding tonight's topic of the evening, if you will.
And that would be discussing the Chicago short count screw job.
But before we get into all of that, for anybody who hasn't listened to you on the past episode of Grappling with Canada, can you give everybody a little background about yourself?

(01:48:40):
Sure, no problem. I mostly write for pro wrestling stories. I've been able to contribute to slam wrestling as well.
I'm very proud. I'm also in GFan magazine. For those Godzilla fans, you know what that is.
But the bulk of my work is at pro wrestling stories, and I'm super excited to be back on your show. I really enjoy listening to your stuff.

(01:49:04):
Well, obviously I enjoy having you. And for anybody who's...
Not Bertha Faye, Bertha Faye was the other show.
That's correct, yes. And I can't believe I...usually I'm pretty on the spot of promoting my own projects.
Monster Ripper.
Yes, the Monster Ripper. Which is like, actually funny enough, that ended up being one of the most listened to episodes of season one.

(01:49:30):
So you have a little bit of a championship belt swagger to carry throughout the episode tonight.
Great, that was the IC belt. Maybe we can get the heavyweight title tonight.
I think we're going to be rocking it tonight, so this is going to be a lot of fun.
But the reason we have you back on, not withstanding your tremendous personality and your quick wit getting me off my feet here.

(01:49:55):
But obviously the articles that you're writing for pro wrestling stories are...and I put you over big time last time.
You just do such a fantastic job of presenting a fair and accurate article through and through each and every time.
When you were on previously, you were a few articles away from a hundred.

(01:50:18):
What I'm more impressed with and more fascinated by is your choice of articles.
And obviously the one that we're going to be discussing in great detail tonight is regarding the Chicago Short Count Screwjob.
So before we get into that, what tipped you off to this story and what was it about it that fascinated you enough to write the article about it in the first place?

(01:50:43):
I think I remember I was writing...I had just finished writing an article for the site.
And I was just looking for different ideas and I ran into this one.
I just start putting in different keywords. I try to search to see what's been written about, what hasn't, what can be...what can we try to...

(01:51:07):
Maybe there's mention of a certain incident in a story, just a mention, and that catches my eye where I'm thinking maybe this could be a whole article.
And everyone talks about...most people are familiar with the Montreal Screwjob and what happened to Wendy Richter and the WWF.
I know that's kind of years back, but these so-called screw jobs or these double crosses in wrestling,

(01:51:37):
there's been several documented cases and this was one of them that really grabbed my attention, especially because Gorgeous George, the one and only, the Toast of the Coast, the Human Orchid was involved in it.
So I thought that would be really something that caught the reader's attention and I thought, hey, Gorgeous George is in it. It's got to be interesting. It's got to be an interesting read.

(01:52:05):
Well, an interesting tale it is for sure. And just to kind of echo your sentiments on that, most wrestling fans, yeah, I would agree.
Montreal Screwjob, you can talk for hours about that, whatever happened. Even the Fabulous Moolah and Wendy Richter incident.
That was the late 80s, I believe, in the WWF. But same thing, you could talk hours about what happened, what didn't happen, what was the backstory, etc.

(01:52:36):
And then going through the annals of time, you heard some of the pioneers, right, like incidents with Frank Gotch, for example.
But this one, funny enough, in my research, when I was doing my storyboard for season two, I had Don Eagle pegged because of my conversation in season one with Billie Two Rivers.

(01:53:05):
And what I wanted to do was go down that, go down the, not bloodline, but go down that alley of the Mohawk wrestling nation coming out of, you know, just outside of Montreal, Quebec.
I had no idea. I didn't know anything about the Screwjob aspect of his story until I got into it.

(01:53:26):
And obviously, that's where I came across your article. And to me, it almost encapsulates his entire set of circumstances inside of wrestling in this one story.
But obviously, we're going to get into it in great depth and detail here.
But it is interesting to note that this was, or he was, essentially the first Canadian involved in a double-crossed Screwjob. And it was, you know, what would that have been, 40 years before the infamous one in Montreal?

(01:54:04):
Yeah. Yeah. And just for the listeners, if they're not familiar with the Billie Two Rivers, Billie Two Rivers was the protege of Don Eagle. Right?
Yes. Yeah. From what I recall in our conversation, it was, he's from the same reserve, Konawaque, outside of Montreal.

(01:54:30):
Billie Two Rivers was big into sports. He was a big time lacrosse player, actually. And things were not going well in terms of his life on the reserve.
And that was the same time when Don Eagle was coming back to rehab his back. So at the same time was training Billie Two Rivers and two other wrestlers who didn't end up making it.

(01:54:53):
But yeah, Billie Two Rivers ended up being his protege. And they had massive runs as tag teams.
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. He was one of a couple. Don Eagle took under his wing. And he's at least the only one I know that it can be said that made it in the sport.

(01:55:14):
I'm not familiar with the other two, but Billie Two Rivers is, and props for you for getting him on the show. That's great for you to get him on the show.
He's a wrestler, at least in the United States. Not too many people are familiar with him. And that's a real shame. And that's again one of the reasons why your show is just a real great listen in for you to be getting guests like that.

(01:55:39):
For his story specifically, I was more, and I know we're getting off topic here and I apologize for everybody listening at home, but for his story, and this kind of ties in with Don Eagle as well, I was more fascinated by how big he was in Europe.
Because you know me sitting in Winnipeg, I wouldn't think that a wrestler, just a Canadian in general, but never mind a Mohawk from just outside of Montreal would be as big of a star as he was overseas.

(01:56:16):
And then you learn about what was happening at the time and you know with not racial stereotyping of whatever, but there was a lot of trying to learn about Indigenous people from Canada, we'll say.

(01:56:40):
And I'll kind of phrase it that way, which also played into a large part of why he was so successful overseas. Coincidentally, a lot of that ties into why Don Eagle was so successful at the time that he was.
So it is, as much as they're different stories, they still have very strong similarities.

(01:57:02):
Yeah, very interesting. Good, good. I knew about Billy too, just to close on Billy, two rivers, I knew about him first in that wrestling documentary, Wrestling Queen, that's where I knew about him.
Oh yes. Yeah, because I started, I was watching the matches and the matches were, a lot of those were amazing, I'm like who are these guys, because a lot of them weren't all labeled, they didn't put the names underneath them.

(01:57:25):
Oh, that's right too, yeah. So they're just kind of, they just throw you in the middle of a match and I'm like who is this guy, I want to know who this guy is, I want to learn more about him, I want to watch more of his matches, and one was Billy Two Rivers.
This is just hitting each other with, slapping each other's chest, full force chops, like oh my god.

(01:57:47):
Yeah, and just laying everything in as they say. Yeah, laying it in man, laying it in, it's like when you watch WWE, the current product, you know they change the camera angle a lot of times, and you kind of miss the strike.
When I saw Billy Two Rivers in that documentary, you were seeing everything. Yeah, there was no edits.

(01:58:11):
Hard cam, the hard cam and the handheld, yeah the handheld, yeah.
Well getting into the Chicago short count screw job.
So listeners of tonight's program, we teased it a little bit with my guest earlier on in the program, but I really wanted to get into what happened with yourself because obviously the article is tremendous, and we're not going to go word for word in the article.

(01:58:41):
Again, this is a perfect companion piece for anybody listening to this right now. While you're listening to this, go head on over to Pro Wrestling Stories.com and search out the article to kind of follow along as we go here.
But if you could just give everybody a bit of a backstory of what was happening in the Chicago area before this event took place.

(01:59:06):
Well in the Chicago area you had a Fred Kohler. Fred Kohler was, he was the member of the NWA like several other promoters at the time.
But even back then you had what you would call outlaw promoters, outlaw promotions, people who are not part of the NWA. This is what they would call them, outlaws.

(01:59:30):
You know that's what they would call them even though, let's say you were the promoter for Illinois, you know the Chicago area, and I start promoting shows and I'm not part of the NWA, I'm considered an outlaw.
Yes.
So I'm like the troublemaker. So that was Fred Kohler, and the outlaw promoter of the area, his name was Leonard Schwartz.

(01:59:52):
And he mostly ran shows in the Rainbow Arena in Chicago, Illinois, that's what it was called. And he was, what I researched, he was the owner as well.
And he was doing very well, his business was doing very well, he would get people like Jim Londas. Jim Londas was a huge deal back then.
Yes.

(02:00:13):
This is a superstar that has been kind of lost in time, you know, but if you look up Jim Londas, he was one of the first true superstars of pro wrestling that was when it was transitioning more to an entertainment product.
I mean, but this is the 50s, it was, you know, it was still changing a little bit. And Schwartz, since he was not part of the NWA, a guy by the name of Jack Pfeffer would get him talent.

(02:00:44):
Jack Pfeffer is a guy who was in and out with the NWA, sometimes he was cool with them, sometimes he wasn't. When he wasn't, he was exposing the business with the press.
And if he couldn't get Buddy Rogers, he'd get a guy with bleach blonde hair and call him like, what was it, Bummy Rogers or make up his name.

(02:01:10):
Yeah, that's right.
Jack Pfeffer, Jack Pfeffer was pure, carny promoter, but he would have little people, you know, they would call them the midgets, but you know, little people wrestlers, he would have women, he would have any kind of wrestler with like bizarre gimmicks.
If you weren't Native American, he'd make you Native American. If you weren't truly from the deep jungles of Africa, he would make you, if you were dark skinned and he would, you know, he would put an outfit on you, a mask and okay, there you go, there's your African

(02:01:40):
savage or whatever.
Yes.
And he didn't shy away from his wrestlers to be more of the entertainment aspect. He's quoted in several places where he's like, look, this is the kind of product I think the people like and this is what sells.
You know, this is he was insinuating that his product, this is what wrestling is, even though the others masquerade around like if it's a true sport, you know, pure sport, he's telling you, look, this is entertainment, and I'm just taking it up to the next level.

(02:02:19):
So what was going on is Fred Kohler was having trouble with this, with this outlaw promotion. And on top of that, promoter Al Haft was also providing talent to Schwartz.
Al Haft was a promoter of the NWA in the Ohio area, Cleveland, Ohio area. And this is where Don Eagle comes in. Don Eagle was a big deal in the 40s and the 50s. When TV came along, Don Eagle became a big star.

(02:02:53):
And what happens is back then, certain promoters had kind of like, they had a certain kind of ownership over some of the talent. And with Don Eagle, there was something called a personal management contract, where he would be lent out to different promoters.
The problem was, he first started out wrestling, let's say, everyone wanted to be on Kohler's shows, because in Chicago, he was part of the Dumont, Dumont Network.

(02:03:27):
Which was a massive television network.
Yeah, Dumont is, let's say, it's what TBS, the Super Station, became much later on. Dumont was the competition of CBS, ABC. They were in 32 cities at the time. And then big markets, New York, Chicago, they weren't like little towns.

(02:03:50):
So, so if you're on Kohler's shows, you were more apt at becoming a star. And this is what Don Eagle became. But what was going on, it was Al Haft was kind of sharing Don Eagle with Kohler less and less, and more with the the rival outlaw promotion.

(02:04:12):
And this is what sets up the whole, the whole encounter on for May, what was it, 29, May 23, 1950. I believe that's the date, once you want to double check that.
And that's, that's the, that's the so-called screw job between both of them. The short count, Chicago short count screw job.

(02:04:35):
Well, the 23rd was when Don Eagle became the AWH champion, which kind of predates, which, which predates this, but it figures in heavily into, into what we're going to be discussing a little bit later on. But just something I wanted to circle back to.
That's right. But before we get there, just something I wanted to circle back to is, I really want to really put it out there that,

(02:05:04):
you know, with the advent of television, Don Eagle was like, he was the guy in the Ohio area. And that, those stations went all over the place. And again, this is a conversation that I touched on briefly in, in my earlier conversation with, with my previous guests.
But I don't think it could be understated just how much of a, of a rocket ship essentially Don Eagle was on at that time. Coincidentally, you also have kind of some, you know, backstage dealings, if you will, that you just alluded to with, you know, essentially his, his personal manager kind of playing him against both sides of the same town.

(02:05:51):
So all of these things are kind of bubbling to the surface. And then obviously we're, we're moving into the direction of what ended up happening in, in Chicago. But I, sorry, I didn't want to cut you off, but I wanted to kind of lay, lay a bit more of that story a little bit better.
And you just, you just helped me remember Jim Barnett was also involved. He was a Kohler's business partner. That's right too. Jim Barnett, Jim Barnett was a, was a power broker in wrestling for, for many, many years. He was, he was the main guy.

(02:06:22):
You know, he was down in Georgia. He was, he established Australia, was a world championship wrestling in Australia. That's right. The original world championship wrestling.
But that was a, but that was the name of the one in Australia. Jim Barnett, if you look into it, he was everywhere, business dealings. And when the Tri-WF started, he was right there. The office had like five, six people. He was one of the people as their, one of their original employees.

(02:06:51):
So he was, he was back there. He was backing up a Kohler against all this happening. And he, and he's one who he had his mitts in everything and he was everywhere is the other part of that. And yeah, sorry, sorry. Please continue.
And I want, and I wanted to stress, like you said, back, this is, this is right when TV was, was giving wrestling such a huge push. And this is also the time when people have to kind of place themselves in that era. Now we got the, you know, the internet, we got things at our fingertips.

(02:07:26):
Instant information is right there. Back then your, your news source was the newspaper, the radio, and TV, and TV to a, to a certain degree. But what's funny about the newspaper is a lot of times a newspaper could be docked, could be doctored or influenced by promoters.

(02:07:50):
So sometimes when you're researching these articles, the newspaper, you can't always take it like this is exactly what happened because I've come across the newspaper having two different results.
That's right. One thing, one page. Then these are official clippings. This is not, this is not something off the internet and on a chat. These are official clippings and one says someone, certain person won this happen.

(02:08:16):
The other one, the other one, this happened with my Mildred Burke article. There was different reports on who had won and how they won for the same match.
But this, this is, this is the beginning of the 1950s and George Wagner, who became, he changed himself to Gorgeous George. When they became basically a cultural icon of the time. Gorgeous George is one of the wrestlers where it's like Mohammed Ali.

(02:08:46):
A lot of people never saw him box, but you know, you've heard his name. Kind of like what happened like the Hulk Hogan later on. A lot of people who never saw wrestling know who Hulk Hogan was.
It's like the, just a cultural, influential icon for wrestling. Gorgeous George inspired Mohammed Ali. He told Mohammed Ali how he could market himself better.

(02:09:10):
Look, like you said, you're a great athlete, but you know, people want, are going to go want to watch you. You got to, you got to get on their nerves. You got to be telling them how pretty you are, how great you are. Just got to get on their nerves.
That's, you know, he, he helped Mohammed Ali get to that, to that other level. And, you know, just jumping way ahead, but just this little, uh, bracket, uh, parentheses here.

(02:09:33):
Later on you had Adrian Street with the, with the similar gimmick. Yes. Much later you had, you had Adrian Adonis, you know, but uh, gorgeous, uh, oh, and even before that, of course you had Buddy Rogers.
Buddy Rogers had a, a sort of effeminate, uh, tough guy, very brash, uh, uh, image to him. And later you had Ric Flair, all these guys, they, Gorgeous George played a part in, in their image and then how they, uh, conducted themselves, you know.

(02:10:06):
And, uh, and then basically, uh, Don Eagle and Gorgeous George are gonna, are gonna, Don Eagle is the AWA champion. One, one important thing about this AWA championship, championship title is it, it is not the one, uh, of Verdon Gania and Pat O'Connor from the 60s.

(02:10:28):
This is an older AWA based out of Boston. Yes. And, and they claim, they claim that this title was, had even ties to Hackenschmidt back in 1905 at Strangler in 1928. So this is the old AWA no, none of us saw.
Yeah. It began in 1930. Uh, and, uh, the head of this NWA, the head, the head of this, uh, AWA, it's interesting. This, his last name was Bowser. This was, this was the promoter, Paul Bowser. He was part of the NWA, but he was kind of like on the fence.

(02:11:11):
He was a part of it, but he was still promoting his champion, which was, uh, Don Eagle, his AWA champion. And this is kind of like the setup with, uh, with Don Eagle and Gorgeous George and all, and, and, and behind all this is promoter Fred Kohler.
And, uh, where Don, he saw that Don Eagle was the key to all this. He's the, he's the guy who's influencing, uh, where the money's going, where people are, are going to watch for shows, you know.

(02:11:42):
Okay. That's a fascinating part that I really want to key into as well. Um, so hang onto that thought for one second. Something you brought up, uh, in regards to Gorgeous George presentation wise is something that's fascinating to think about now at this point, because here you have, and obviously we're, we're winding our way to the meeting of Don Eagle and Gorgeous George, but you have Gorgeous George who is flamboyant and funny.

(02:12:11):
He's flamboyant and flashy and effeminate. And he's all about self-promotion and doing a masterful job. On the flip side, you have Don Eagle who has, you know, the, the feather, um, what's the term I'm looking for? Uh, like the, the war feathers. Yeah.

(02:12:32):
War feather headbands, right? He's got the paint, you know, he, he, he pulls up to, uh, he pulls up to venues. He's got this big, you know, Cadillac that he's driving with the canoe strapped to the top. Like he, you're talking about two guys who are all about self-promotion, two different ways, but are, are at this point in time, really like the, the two, two of the guys at the forefront of television.

(02:12:59):
So it's, it's just interesting to see like, you know, who, who's being promoted by who, who's promoting who and how they're being promoted is interesting that you have two guys essentially, you know, diametrically, you know, presented by, are both just massive television stars at that point in time.
Yeah. Yeah. Just, yeah. Just imagine Don Eagle with that, with the, I think it's a war, um, a war bonnet, right? Yeah, that's it. Yes. Yeah. War bonnet. And, uh, well, and, and, and going back again to that, to that era, a Native American character, this, this was not the usual thing in, in wrestling and wrestling was still pretty conservative.

(02:13:47):
And then you also, you have gorgeous George who just put names on it, on its head. He just put the whole wrestling industry on its head. There was no one like this guy. He, he did have someone did influence them before. I forget the name and I know there are, there are historians listening to this are going to say this guy influenced, uh, gorgeous George. I, I forget the name, but for our purposes, other than this other person, there was no one like, uh, gorgeous George.

(02:14:16):
Ever. People didn't know what did, people did not know what to make of him. And then you have, uh, Don Eagle who was, this was a very exotic, different looking, uh, wrestling character. And it's, and it's still today. Still today. Uh, someone with a dress, you know, that war bonnet and, and you know, that, that, that huge car, it's gonna, it's going to turn heads, you know, and he was very proud of his heritage and he was, he was literally, you know, he was, he was, he was, he was the one, the person that he became.

(02:14:45):
He was he was legitimately Native American heritage. He wasn't wasn't wasn't Joe Scarpa, right? It wasn't yeah
Chief J Strong, but he wasn't an Italian dressed up or whatever
No, and with all due respect to Chief J Strong, but who had legions of fans in one and was super over
Don Eagle was a real deal and super talented in the ring athletic

(02:15:10):
Fast this guy this guy was a this guy was a tie. He was a used to box
You know this guy was a top athlete now and gorgeous George with all his his looks of
His prissiness and his manager and he's throwing the perfume around and his little his little golden bobby pins
Gorgeous George was a legit wrestler. He had an amateur wrestling background

(02:15:33):
He could he could hold him he can hold himself real well in the ring
He wasn't just someone just prancing around so this is a great really really good setup for the fans
so I can I can only imagine the atmosphere in the building heading into this and and
This is a date that the date that we are going with is

(02:15:56):
May 26
1950 at the International Amphitheater in Chicago
There are other dates floating in the ether
But and this is something that we had talked about off-air
and I think we've come to the consensus that there's other dates because of
The airing dates of the program which obviously would be different than the actual

(02:16:21):
day of the fight
Yeah
We've confirmed it in several
Very reputable books, so I'm going with May 26 1950
And what's interesting about?
Sorry, go ahead. I didn't mean to cut you off
What's interesting and a lot of people you know who will search this out on YouTube?

(02:16:45):
Which I highly suggest or maybe reading the article
Glossing over it is they don't they don't they're like oh, it's a two or three fall match. Why was it that so can you?
Can you explain why this was a two out of three?
two out of three falls match
Traditionally for the championship two out of three falls was was the usual stipulation

(02:17:12):
when it went when it was going to be a championship and
Most most but even though most most matches back then were two out of three falls
Is that what your research that's what it is yeah, but it's I find it interesting that it's kind of is one of those things
that is a loss to
you know most fans nowadays because you know we've had

(02:17:35):
40 years of kind of a standardized way of running shows, but before that
Especially in the NWA every championship match was a two or three fall unless there was some kind of difference
That's right
Anyway, yep, and yeah, and that's and what and that's important because

(02:17:56):
Remember Don Eagle is the claimant of the AW a championship not the vermin anyone but older a VA
So this was but before the match
That's one of things that we're going to talk about where it's not that title is kind of like not really mentioned in the match as far
as the

(02:18:16):
the
The commentator yes, which is interesting
And no belt and I'm jumping ahead of myself
I'm sorry and no belt is presented at the end to either one of these competitors, so I won't give away the winner
You don't see that the beginning you don't see at the beginning you don't see at the end but coming into the match

(02:18:39):
Don Eagle chief Don Eagle was the
AWA champ champion and another thing I think we should just
you know as we kind of set the stage for what happens is
the program that was aired on television was
Interestingly edited we'll say so what what you'll see in video form

(02:19:04):
there are
Moments that are missing there are time jumps and like you just said
There are
Aspects of the match that are left out on the television
Production side of it which which does play further into the into the overall story of what ends up happening here

(02:19:25):
Yeah, and I would say either
Inconveniently or conveniently some major editing was done with the video of the match the first fall
We'll get into that is fine. But then after the first fall though, that's when things kind of get a little strange
Okay, it was a little challenging writing an article because you're thinking

(02:19:49):
Maybe I should seek out a better copy or else. I'm gonna be writing a BS article. Yeah
There you know, well so so let's get into this so
for the first fall I
believe it was
Don Eagle takes the first fall with with the handstand Indian leg lock

(02:20:11):
And he makes George tap for the first fall, correct?
Yes, it's a I mean it's technically what it's a technically the Indian leg lock
But he does it with his hands and sit up with his leg
So I thought I had never seen that before so that was super interesting to me when I saw that he does that he kind of ties

(02:20:33):
George's
legs into
his into Donny Don eagle ties his arms into George's legs and does then does a hands headstand and then goes into a bridge and
And gorgeous George submits
Which is first fall. Yeah, and and that's
Notable. I mean, that's the best I can describe it people gonna have to go and watch the the black and white

(02:20:57):
The match it's it's it's there. It's really interesting. Yeah, and it's it's an interesting
aspect to the match itself because normally you don't see a
Champion contender tap in the first fall, right? We've seen we've seen champions lose the belt
via submission a notable one would be when Kineski lost it to

(02:21:22):
George Vang jr. Would be a notable one, but
Not this isn't something that you would normally see which is further
You know, we're talking about weird things that happen in the match
This gets further exasperated by what happens with the second fall, which is
You know based on what we have for video evidence is almost conjecture

(02:21:44):
The second the second fall is
It gets a little strange because there's a part where Don eagle is like
Yeah, I believe he's thrown out the ring, correct. Yes, he gets thrown away. Yeah, and he runs a camera
Camera gets lost and you know, it's black and white footage. It's kind of chaotic and then he's then all of a sudden you see

(02:22:11):
Gorgeous George in the corner and they're kind of like preparing him for
basically for the second fall, you know once once once once uh
Don eagle gets back inside that's a that's there's some weird editing there. That's for sure
And he was counted out. He was counted out. That's what happens

(02:22:32):
So then once he's counted out then they're one fall apiece
Which is very strange
Yes, the commentator mentions that that Don eagle hit his head on the on the outside or something and then
But then it's one one fall apiece to Gorgeous George submits in the first one

(02:22:53):
Then Don eagle is counted out on the second and then they're going into the third fall now
What's what's also interesting about the the count out for the second fall is that war eagle is there at the same time now?
And and again, we kind of lose that aspect in the in the editing of the match where it's like
As as people listening would know at this point Don eagle had his father as his second for for the majority of his

(02:23:21):
Definitely of his early career for sure
But it's just interesting that he's not there and then he's like it's it's like a like a stand-in almost. It's very strange
Yeah, he's there
But you but you see him at the beginning of the match, right?
Basically, you only see him outside of the right
Behind the ring post on the on the apron. Yes at the beginning you see him at the beginning of each fall and that's all

(02:23:44):
You you see him in but again the the footage is is
It's really old footage. We need someone to go in and make this into a some kind of
Colorization and maybe 4k
But uh
But it's clear that there's there's been a lot of
editing and very very strange way to lose a second fall and

(02:24:09):
and the third fall
Gorgeous George
pins
well
Just a preface to this throughout the whole match. The referee does a pretty steady count
You can see him going one two, you know
Just a steady count and and I'm sure if you're working in the ring that that's really cool

(02:24:29):
Just a steady count and and I'm sure if you're working in the ring that that's really appreciated because you don't have a referee
Who's counting too fast or too slow?
but for the third and and and decisive fall
uh
Gorgeous George kind of gets tangled up, you know in some kind of leg lock with Don eagle gorgeous george is over Don eagle

(02:24:50):
And he's bouncing off the ropes
bounces off the ropes a couple of times trying to pin Don eagle
And at some point the the referee decides that Don eagle's shoulders were indeed
Uh down on the on the mat for three seconds and if you go back and watch it
Uh, it's close, but I would say that's was kind of screwy pun intended

(02:25:13):
by the referee
Errol his name is Earl mullahan
Um
so he was
Very questionable counting for the third and final fall and Don eagle just goes I write
and you're looking at this and i'm and i'm you know part of the
Part of the big the artistry and pro wrestling is for them to convince you

(02:25:37):
That that uh, I don't like using that word real or fake, you know
But part of the artistry is for them to for you to be watching wrestling and and you're like oh, that's not a work
Oh, he's really angry there and Don eagle looks legitimately angry at the referee
And if it wasn't for his father, who knows what he will if maybe he would have done one of those leg locks on on the

(02:25:58):
Referee he was he ripped his shirt off. He tried to punch him a couple of times
Yeah, and he escaped the ring. The only thing that softened was his dad
His dad. Yeah. Yeah
Yeah, and and all through and through all this
I've seen the video several times and gorgeous george is just kind of
You know in the background. He's not getting involved. They put his robe on

(02:26:22):
They try to raise his hand his arm and he just kind of pulls away
So you're not
It's not you're not certain whether gorgeous george was in on this or not so you
But but gorgeous george certainly has a hard time getting out of the ring
Out of the ring, you know, they pull on his robe. He kicks a couple of fans and he's getting mauled while he's trying to

(02:26:45):
You know go back to the dressing room one. The fans are irate there. Oh, yeah
Yeah, they're throwing stuff. Yeah. Yeah, like we've seen, you know, um
We'll equate this to something more modern right when when hogan turned heel for example and the ring gets littered with garbage. Well
it's it's not 30,000 people but

(02:27:07):
The you got, you know 6 000 fans or whatever
Or I I think the number was like 5200 or whatever. But anyways, but they just trashed the building like they were they were
They were not happy
Well thing is think about it. Gorgeous george had tremendous heat whether he won or lost and that's the other part of it, too

(02:27:27):
Yes, and and I mean gorgeous george would just walk in the arena
And people were like booing him cussing him and people just they were kind of they were like fascinated by him
But they kind of they hated him at the same time. Like who is this guy?
Who does he think he is and to beat don eagle like that and in such a strange way that people were not liking it

(02:27:49):
There was like a sense of anger and confusion
Of what had what had gone on and and you can see that they're trying to maul gorgeous george
While he's trying to leave and you can see he can also observe that
uh gorgeous george is kind of he puts his robe on
And he's trying to break he's bracing himself because he knows he knows there's gonna be trouble

(02:28:09):
Yes, and he hasn't and this is not the first time he can sense that the people are they just want to you know
They want blood. Yeah
But this time but this time he must have thought I think
Whether he was in it or not. He knew he was in trouble
Now what else is interesting is on the audio
component of the video and

(02:28:31):
You have to remind me who who is doing the commentating but
He starts going on. Okay, okay. Yes, that's correct
And he and he's going on that it was you know, one of the biggest upsets in in wrestling and um,
I believe he was saying that
He's super
I'm sorry, he's a good guy. He's a good guy. He's a good guy

(02:28:52):
He's super he's i'm sorry. I'm interrupting. He's super exaggerated. I I remember I put this in the article
He's super exaggerated by saying uh that that don eagle hadn't lost like in about
135 to 140 matches
And he had won
If if he's talking about the title
Which they don't mention but just just putting the title in there. He had won it like three days before

(02:29:18):
So that was he was super super k-faming
Uh, he was putting the don eagles record there, you know, just putting more gasoline to the fire just throwing more
Making it flam more flammable
but russe davis if people
uh if the listeners
If if people watch the really
older stuff from like chicago

(02:29:41):
Uh the stuff they would they would uh show like in the movie theaters and now you know
You can get get it on youtube for free, but he's the commentator. He kind of talks like uh,
Uh, he really puts a lot of personality in and is commenting and it's just him
It's not him and someone else. So he makes these little voices
If if it's women's wrestling he makes little he goes. Oh the little little miss pre didn't like that

(02:30:07):
If you go back and listen to his matches he's real funny he's real fun to listen to but uh
Uh, but he was he was definitely selling it as one of the biggest upsets in in in in wrestling
In wrestling history in a long time. I believe he said
Yeah, and it was it was yeah, uh the over exaggeration was

(02:30:30):
Odd and i'm not sure
Oh boy, and obviously we're we're just totally
Really talking out of turn or out loud or whatever but I don't know if it if it was him or if he was
Told to say a line like that or or how in the world that you would get 140 straight matches or it just

(02:30:51):
It just it adds to the bizarre
Yeah, you know everything that happened in in the whole event
That's why I that's why I love these these stories and
and if someone
I mean he's he says that in in when he's narrating the match, you know, obviously in the edited version
um

(02:31:12):
And I and I put that in the article because i'm like, well, this is his quote and he said this let the reader
Let the reader I mean if
If if you know if that's if that's obviously kf that's fine
But this is what makes these these uh stories so fun
And back then there was something still very magical about the whole the whole wrestling product. Yeah

(02:31:35):
so in the immediate aftermath of what happened obviously the
We had
Illiterated that the fence just went insane
Uh, there was a bunch of arrests. I believe don eagle got arrested as well, right?
And he was he was he was charged and released in the same day
But it's orderly combat

(02:31:56):
Uh, it was about it was almost 300 in in today's money. Yes what he was
And close close to six six thousand fans. It was it was closer to
5200 you know when they talk about how many people
Attended a card they always estimate estimate upward, right? But it's about five thousand two hundred fans

(02:32:22):
That attended this this show to watch that
And I thought remember one thing one thing we left out the
the what the story is behind this remember this is
Again, don eagle why why this happened?
uh
Fred kohler was behind this right and you want you want to get into that right now?
Yes, let's get into that because I

(02:32:43):
Yeah, I I think that that's
That's a good way to uh to really dig into
what happened afterwards because um
You know we had we had
Discussed earlier how don eagle was on this rocket ship
trajectory essentially and then this happened and that was kind of

(02:33:06):
It killed us. It killed them essentially and
There there are reasons for it very specific reasons why that happened and very specific people who were behind it
So yeah, let's get into that one
Yeah, oh this this was later confirmed by him
but he wanted to

(02:33:28):
diminish the
the value
of
Chief don eagle he's like if i'm not getting him
I'll be damned if he's gonna be of value to my uh to my competitors and remember and on top of all that
Fred kohler was a legitimate uh member of the nwa and yet he's not doesn't seem like he's gonna be

(02:33:49):
Doesn't seem like he's getting too much help from the organization to yes to fight quite off these guys if if you
If you research later examples of outlaw promotions, you can see
direct action of the nwa to help out
The the endangered promotion like like what happened in georgia?

(02:34:10):
In the in the early 70s with uh with angunkle, which is which is another interesting story
Not not canadian but a very interesting story of angunkle and the uh and her outlaw promotion the early 70s where the nwa did
help eliminate
Her promotion but in this case what I researched the nwa was a little slow to react

(02:34:33):
And fred kohler decided to take things in his own manner in his own hands
And all points to it all points to uh the mullhand the the
Earl mullhand the uh the the referee was involved because that's it was just a strange count
But it's unconfirmed whether gorge george was involved and it's doubtful

(02:34:54):
Uh chief don eagle was I in my opinion
I I can't see him being a part of it because
I mean it would have to be something super twisted and convoluted where where he would benefit from something like that
I mean he did get even more press, but it was I don't see it. I don't see why he would

(02:35:14):
Would have been involved in this
Because there there and there's a couple of aspects
to further exemplify that part of it, right because
It killed his trajectory
uh, it killed the awa title because that was
That although it had the the
You know legacy

(02:35:35):
That we had discussed earlier. It's after this happened. It was devalued. So
You devalued the wrestler you devalued the title
Now you have
the nwa's plans
uh, which had included I believe um a match between thes and

(02:35:56):
um
Was is it thes and eagle or was it thed and gorgeous george but it derailed the nwa's plans like this this one thing just
Tipped so many
Just set so many things off wrongly and in that era of wrestling
Yeah, this was a this was a time when when the nwa was was kind of fed up with all these different uh titles

(02:36:20):
people claiming
world championship so
Uh the awa and bowser he was he was a defender of that but when this happened he finally
Uh fell in line. He and he and he enjoyed joined the nwa 100 percent. Yes
That a w title was was uh discontinued it

(02:36:43):
No longer it ceased to exist after that and then luthez
was the first uh
Undisputed heavyweight champion. That's what they wanted and undisputed
Heavyweight champion
after uh, remember was it was orville orville brown who got into a
Car accident. Yes, and he was good. He was going to be the first one

(02:37:05):
But luthez had to had to be at and this is again. This is the early 1950s and the nwa was established in 48
So it was it was like a it was an infinite in its infancy, but that's what they wanted. They wanted one title
And this was this was the beginning of that
and uh
eventually

(02:37:26):
Even surprisingly after this even after this happened
Uh, they they claim they made chicago what they call an open city
Where they allowed schwartz to continue promoting but with abc tv
But this is when kohler really really

(02:37:46):
Really decided to dig in he he quit for a while and he said look this can't be this isn't possible
I've been i've been faithful to
To the organization you guys got to help me out
So what happened was later on they gave him priority when when the champions were in town
Where where they would still allow it but kohler would get priority when when you would get the the champs in the area

(02:38:11):
Yeah, well and then and then obviously he had the the unified world champion at that time. So
You're you're just giving him all the
All this ammunition to really stake his claim as as you know the show in chicago
Yeah, absolutely

(02:38:32):
and uh
I believe he had to speak with sam munchnick sam munchnick is a name a lot of people
Will recognize that was around 53
and um
Once with the unified title the nwa is is is more or less
What we what we understand what the territories were

(02:38:55):
until until uh
The early to mid 80s when things started falling apart, but they had a very very successful system for
a little over 40 years
So there's there's more years. There's one more piece to the fred kohler story that I that's part of your article
And I want to get into he was interviewed by the justice department over this. Yeah, can you let's get into this one now?

(02:39:22):
This remember this is this is when people you know, this is when wrestling is uh
I guess considered, you know legit sport and then uh, you know, so the justice department gets involved
And kohler admits to them that this was first of all, he starts
He tells them tells them that you know war eagle and chief don eagle

(02:39:44):
You know they were difficult to work with and this and that they wanted special privileges
And they were getting expensive
but uh, he did confirm that the reason behind all this was to uh,
Devalue don eagle
and
Give him give him when he would return to

(02:40:04):
Schwartz which was his is the outlaw rival. He would don eagle's value would would be
You know down
You know way below below it was before
And uh, it was very vindictive of of frake kohler to do this and with don eagle, which was
Pretty much a de-starved time along with uh gorgeous george

(02:40:28):
And uh, he even told him he even claims that I remember in the article it says he even claims that
He invited the illinois athletic commission to look at the film and time the seconds and you know the three
Seconds don eagle shoulders were on the mat and it was all confirmed and it was all clean and
I mean, this is incredible that it's that it's all documented by

(02:40:52):
by uh articles and uh, and like you said the justice department involved in in in
In an investigation over a pro wrestling match
It's interesting too and another aspect that you had written in your article was
And this kind of circles back to our al haft uh conversation earlier
Uh, so he was essentially saying that uh al haft was begging him to push don eagle on his shows

(02:41:20):
But then once he was pushed and became a star
Uh that half tied him up so it made it harder for
Eagle to work in his territory and then obviously we have the the splitting between
uh colder and the outlaws which which goes into that but it's
He kind of uh, he he he tries to baby face himself in the whole uh

(02:41:43):
And in the whole deposition that's a real good way, but he tries to baby face himself
uh and uh
but there's also
I've also according to my research. It seems like he asked
gorgeous george look if you can pin him pin him
And I haven't seen I I have never seen anything where gorgeous george talks about this incident either

(02:42:09):
Uh, either in his book or in other articles the book. I I read the book a while ago
So I have to confirm that but I don't think he ever said anything about it ever. I I found nothing on that
I found nothing on that. I wish I wish
Maybe during uh conversations at the bar. Maybe he told someone but uh, nothing official

(02:42:30):
Nothing nothing to the press or anything
If anyone knows or anyone has a story, I would love to hear it
Please email me at six side pot at gmail.com. I want to hear it
Yes, if there's anything written on gorgeous george talking about this incident
Even if it's a a sentence or two
I would love to see that if it's
If it's a microfiche somewhere in some water, you know in in in chicago or something something. Yeah

(02:42:58):
But yeah, like it's it's just it's a little bit after yeah, go ahead go ahead
No, I was going to say it's just it's wild how this one event just
Absolutely changed the landscape is certainly in the midwest
And and really set the stage for the nwa to become what they ended up becoming which is

(02:43:20):
It's so weird how one just one thing like this just sets off so many different
Aspects of pro wrestling history, it's it's it's so wild
Yeah, and it's and it's uh
It was so wild
Yeah, and and it's and it's uh, it was fascinating to me to see

(02:43:45):
Where sometimes we
We look at wrestling back in the day and i'd say i'm talking about back in day when i want to talk about black and white footage
And you know these super classic matches we we see them through uh
Through some kind of filter where things were so much purer and things were so
Uh more more like sport and not like the circus we see now

(02:44:09):
Wrestling hasn't changed that much in decades. Let's not
Wrestling has stayed. Yes. This is this is like, uh, this is like mirroring the montreal. This is like, um, you know the
wendy richter there are differences
There are differences because there's a promoter back behind all this and there was like a lot of things

(02:44:31):
Happening behind a curtain
um and it wasn't
As far as we know it wasn't gorgeous george like, you know hooking
Hooking uh don eagle and going into business for himself because remember gorgeous george. He didn't need a title
This is a kind of you know when you go when when when fans talk about
Wrestlers, he should have been world champion or he should have had a run with the title gorgeous george never needed any of that

(02:44:57):
That's right. Yeah
Once he became gorgeous george, of course, he didn't need any he was just being himself
He and he was the perfect, uh
opponent
for champions, you know, he
This whole this whole thing pretty much
Ended when a gorgeous george lost to luthes and in uh straight falls

(02:45:19):
putting an end to any kind of controversy who was the uh, the awa champion
And then it's this was in uh, yeah, and and then it's wild that you know, the you know all the big players of this
Uh event essentially in 10 years were all gone, right it's it's

(02:45:39):
and that's that's
one of the saddest part
sorry, it's one of the saddest parts about this whole thing is
you know for all the
Um hoopla and all the steam that came out of this and and all the
The fractures that ended up happening
All the three players, you know don eagle fred kohler and gorgeous george, you know didn't make it past

(02:46:06):
You know the mid 60s
No, and uh, unfortunately gorgeous george he
For years he was struggling with uh, you know alcoholism and and it's tragic because gorgeous george was
One of the if not the top paid athlete

(02:46:26):
uh sports athlete uh entertainment entertainer of his time of his era
And when you compare them to the baseball players of the time, I believe like, you know, let's say like joe dimaggio and and
And what's his name? Milton burrow?
You know george gorgeous george always claimed that he sold more television sets than uh, milton burrow

(02:46:48):
Which was which is a top entertainer of the time and and and gorgeous george didn't live past 48
Um, what's his name don eagle didn't live past 40
You know, just just just horrible
You know and and i'm not sure if he went in went with billy george

(02:47:08):
When with billy two rivers he I don't know if he discussed uh
Uh don eagle did you discuss anything about that with him when you talked to billy two rivers?
Uh, I had a bit of about about
about the end
About the day about the death of uh don eagle about the the supposedly he commits suicide, which is super sad

(02:47:32):
but but then there are people who
Well, i've read that billy two rivers assures that it was it was uh, you know a murder unfortunately
Yes, it's it's it's it's in it's something that we are going to
Get into later on in in this program tonight. Um
in terms of what

(02:47:53):
Billy two rivers had said to me most of what he said to me made
air on on the interview that I had done with him and
And uh, there were things that
were uh not
put on air if you will so I think that I think that's uh,
The most tactful really the tactful way that I can say

(02:48:16):
Yeah, it's just super super horrible
things to talk about it and the way these these uh, these these superstars of wrestling just
live the life and uh, they're just gone and
and uh
uh, and I forgot I forgot to to just
begin tonight's conversation, I really wanted to

(02:48:38):
just
take
You know a little a couple seconds to to to say that i'm super super down because of the scott hall. Yes
uh passing away I I I wanted I forgot mentioning that because
But I forgot to mention it before the show but I've been thinking about that for these days
All you know these days and uh, that's super sad

(02:49:01):
How things happen and my heart goes out to his family
Uh his so many fans loved him and he was he was
Super super entertaining to watch but but I went went through a lot of things went through
Hell and back fought demons for years and made a comeback and had had turned things around and um, and um

(02:49:24):
Now he's gone super sad
And so wrestling, uh, it's just a trap. It's just tragic that way and uh, we can't get enough of it
And we can't stop talking about it. It seems
Yeah, no matter that no matter the era, right?
Yeah, it's
funny you mentioned that like right in in front of me is uh,

(02:49:45):
I have uh a couple of scott hall autographed, uh
Uh memorabilia items in my little office here. Yeah, that one that one hurt hurt me personally
I never
Yeah, sorry. I never got to meet him personally. I've you know, I was always a big fan and uh

(02:50:06):
boy that was uh
It was a hard day. Yeah
Yeah, those things. I mean, I mean, uh, I mean you understand when people
pass away
old age or
Scott all wasn't with with with everything that happened. He was he wasn't old, you know, he was in his 60s, you know

(02:50:28):
But uh, just tragic and and just as just a side note of all this I hadn't I had
Just to show you how wrestling can can bring people together
Uh things like wrestling I hadn't talked to one of my brothers in months. We had kind of a falling out
And the thing that the cover the topic that opened up

(02:50:49):
The conversation between us and now we're we're we're good again, you know, you know, we uh, we're talking again is
Scott hall he brought up the topic. I was I and I answered and
and and now my brother and I have made up and and and and everything's okay, but
Just so you can see how wrestling can really be a positive influence

(02:51:11):
With people and then and it brought me and my brother together again, you know
So just a side note on on on all this don eagle and gorgeous georgia
Debacle the scott hall passing was very very very sad for for so many people
I guess it also kind of frames our conversation in a bit more context, right is is uh,

(02:51:34):
You know, obviously this this event in the in these people are kind of an Arab
Before us but we can still go back and understand
the emotion and
The connection that they had with their fans and then obviously it that
It translates to us losing someone like scott hall, right? It's

(02:51:54):
Wrestling is one of those things that it's
It's very generational and it's very it's it's a bonding experience
I find for a lot of it and you know, say what you will about the
the current product i'm
you know not getting into that whole thing, but
I really hope that

(02:52:16):
As you know time progresses and as
You know, we start losing some people that people take that time to
You know really realize what they what they were privileged to see and and experience
Throughout their wrestling fandom, I guess is is kind of what i'm trying to get at

(02:52:37):
Yep, I I I agree 100% you know what what these guys
What these guys and you know what these men and women go through in the ring
these bumps and the traveling and and the
the uh
How much is expected of their bodies and
And just the pull it takes

(02:52:58):
is is uh, pretty much unbelievable
It's it's not like it's not like football. It's not like basketball. It's it's these are like, uh
Kind of like a combination of rock stars and and athletes. Yeah. Yeah
I think that's a clever way to say it. We'll never we'll never we'll never understand it, you know
so much respect to to scott hall and much respect to everyone who

(02:53:22):
who makes a career in in in wrestling and uh
And uh, you know when gorgeous george and don eagle passed
George george was hated by so many people
In the wrestling context, but i'm sure when he passed people realized man that
He that he was
Unforgettable unforgettable character

(02:53:46):
Well, i'm we're still talking about him today right
And as we as as we should
These these these people these these wrestlers these talents should never ever be forgotten never
Never and uh, and that's what your show is. That's what your show is for. That's what
Sites like pro wrestling stories tries to do we of course it's for

(02:54:08):
You know, we try to entertain but we we also want to remember remember these wrestlers all the good
They did all the bad they did all the you know, all these stories, you know
It just paints them as a as a whole they're all human, you know, we we see them as larger than life
We see them as superheroes. We see them, but these are all human beings with emotions. They feel pain

(02:54:29):
They feel sad. They feel happy, you know, they they get depressed they get excited
Uh, they're just human beings on on a very large stage that have provided
Entertainment for us for years and years
And uh, and uh, my heart goes out to all of them and their families when when they pass when they pass away
Yeah, I can't uh, I can't say it any better than that

(02:54:53):
I think I think you you perfectly encapsulated, uh
the sentiment at the at the end of the of the segment here today, but uh
on a
On a lighter note, perhaps if we could
Um, what's on on on a lighter note just remember
These these guys are going to be remembered forever

(02:55:16):
They're going to be remembered, you know, they're not going to be forgotten. Yes
I think it's I think if you if if you pass away and you're forgotten
Uh, that kind of sucks if you're remembered you live forever, you know, the bad guy is going to live forever
People will remember that guy, you know, but
Go ahead I I interrupted you. No, that's okay. Please. Hey man, you can interrupt me anytime that you

(02:55:39):
Anytime that you want but I was gonna ask uh,
What can we look forward from yourself on the aforementioned pro wrestling stories?
Site and what what else do you have going on coming up lately?
Yeah, sure. There's a there's a couple articles coming up. Uh
You'll have one on the website. I'll put it on the website. I'll put it on the website

(02:56:00):
Uh
You'll have one you'll have one on this is this is my work. There's always articles from other writers
But as for me, you're gonna get gory guerrero
You're gonna get one on matt morgan. Oh, wow, you'll be getting you'll be getting one on. Yeah, look at me
I'm writing about uh new newer newer

(02:56:21):
Uh, what was it? Oh steve kern
Steve oh, yeah, okay cool. He was the uh
Uh, what was it the the fabulous ones right the fabulous ones and uh
A lot of people remember him as skinner, which was an interesting character
But mostly steve kern the old school steve kernan in florida
and uh
there's a

(02:56:42):
Of course, there's going to be an article about outlandish
Arrests you might not have heard about outlandish wrestler arrests. You might not be familiar with you know that that's going to be in there
we always try to
get stuff like that and um
Couple more a couple more are i've been submitted not published yet, but uh, they'll be they'll be

(02:57:03):
Getting out with shirley. Oh, there's there's a really really fun interview of uh, savio vega
Oh awesome that I uh
Well, I didn't conduct an interview, but I was able to transcribe it. Yeah
and uh, and I added different things so it so it's it's an article out of the uh,
Interview pro wrestling stories, uh, and jp zarka who is the owner of the site?

(02:57:26):
He he conducted an interview, but I I asked him hey
I would love to make this interview into an article and uh and and that'll be coming out
I believe that might be the next one coming out
In the next couple of weeks, but a lot of interesting stuff coming out
you know in terms of my work and uh
Go to pro wrestling stories.com and there's a lot of cool articles there that that I think that your readers are going to love

(02:57:50):
Your readers are going to enjoy
Well, listen, hobby. Uh, this was uh, this was tremendous tonight. I I can't thank you enough for uh,
Coming on the program tonight talking about
this
amazing event that happened in uh
in wrestling history and uh dealing with me and the time change if you will that's uh,

(02:58:13):
That's a funny story that we're gonna we're gonna leave in the off air
Yeah, I don't I i'm
I know what time I have and I know what time you have but i'm not sure what time
uh
What time zone i'm in
Oh, we'll get it straight. No one of these days

(02:58:35):
I was just hanging out and they're like hey, uh the links there whenever you want to be ready
I'm like you're 45 minutes early, but yeah, we can do it if you want man
You're like no time right now
So you thought it was 15 minutes late I thought I was 45 minutes, uh early and uh, but we got it done

(02:58:56):
Well, and i'm very thankful for it man. This this was an absolute treat for me. Thank you so much for coming back on the program
Well, thank you for inviting me man. If I have the time and uh, and I can do it i'll do it again, man
I appreciate it
Now before you proceed further with the dawn eagle story
There is another controversial portion

(02:59:18):
of his life that we
Need to discuss and tackle on the program tonight
and that
is regarding his
passing
now there is
Some conjecture out there and there are quite a few different opinions about what ended up happening

(02:59:38):
Uh some of which you were going to hear later on
in the
Discussion with my or conversation I should say with my upcoming guest
however
I don't want to
Involve my personal opinions on to uh what happened with the situation. So what i'm going to do is

(03:00:00):
Present the facts as we know it
I'm going to provide some context
From some of the people who know him best in professional wrestling
There are also a couple of stories that I kind of want to
highlight and debunk because they're
out there
And they're out there for a couple of specific reasons in my opinion

(03:00:25):
so I feel like
This is as good a time as any to discuss these and then
We can kind of life in his spirits a little bit
with
My upcoming conversation if you will
Chief don eagle ended up passing away on march 17th

(03:00:46):
1966
Now there are two
Different accounts of what happened factually speaking
One is that he had committed suicide with via a self-inflicted gunshot wound
One is that it was a murder
This is because there were several other

(03:01:07):
bullet holes found in the surrounding area
in any case
Don eagle ended up dying on march 17th 1966
conjecturally speaking
Many people had said that it had something to do
With the number of construction projects setbacks

(03:01:29):
namely a logan county indian village
An expansion program in the zane schwan a caverns
and a 12 million
First nations center during or near montreal
Now naturally these
are

(03:01:50):
All aspects kind of based in community
or all aspects kind of based in conjecture in reality
Nobody knows specifically
What happened at the end of don eagle's life? However, there are some
Opinions

(03:02:11):
Stated by his friends, which I wanted to get in here because I think that it kind of
Illustrates the high regard that he was held in some people's
Minds so once again, we're jumping back into the slam rest in don net article. I have a couple of quotes here
This one comes from don leo jonathan

(03:02:32):
Quote a lot of times when you know a person there's just certain things that you figure they would never do
I heard that he had terminated his own life. I find that hard to believe
And I have a quote here as well from billy to rivers who has been very outspoken
in the years since about
Uh the fact that it was a suicide so in this article quote

(03:02:56):
I went out and had a couple of beers with him. We talked and sort of said how things were
He said that he was finding it difficult being retired and that his back was giving him a lot of troubles
I personally don't believe that it was suicide. I have my own conclusions that I draw
Let me tell you safely that it was not emine's enemies. It was not suicide

(03:03:22):
Now i'm not going to get into uh, who done it I don't think that that's
the
proper way to discuss this
subject and I
again
I don't want to come off as being sensationalist in
the aspects of the

(03:03:45):
incident
However, there are a couple of things that have gone on in years past that I want to
discuss
and debunk one of which is
Wrestling media's portrayal of certain events, especially dark events in professional wrestling history
Now modern wrestling fans will know full well the

(03:04:09):
Unfortunate circumstances that have arisen from series like dark side of the ring
specifically the plane ride from hell episode which
Boy, oh boy cost a lot of people their livelihoods if you will
Yes wrestling has
its dark sides
So does hockey so does

(03:04:31):
professional football so does
Everything everyone everything has their dark sides
however
I find
unfortunately that a lot of
mainstream wrestling media tends to

(03:04:52):
Exponentially focus on
The dark side and negativity surrounding the dark side
and negativity surrounding wrestling because unfortunately
That's what sells
magazines or that's what gets clicks or that's what
You know inspires

(03:05:13):
content unfortunately and it's it's a very sad truth and maybe it's uh
Maybe it's quite a comment
socially speaking on where we are as a society and
uh, you know a philosophical discussion on all of that kind of stuff is probably something better saved for

(03:05:34):
somebody much more
Philosophically educated than myself. However, this is not a new
Um
Phenomenon if you will
case in point
the wrestling
Or sorry the wrestler magazine from 1970
november

(03:05:55):
of 1970
Had a
Very tasteless
article if you will in regards to this but
to further frame the
Media landscape at that time
Unfortunately, it ain't much different nowadays. I want to tell you the cover art on this magazine

(03:06:17):
so one quote is
On the top of the magazine rapist invades girls dressing room
That's
on a magazine to sell subscriptions in 1970 but
In terms of and there's a whole article about

(03:06:38):
Oh goodness
Uh, like the mighty igor dealing with a rapist in a in a back room of a
Building it's so it's bizarre. It's so bizarre. But what's
as bizarre or

(03:06:59):
Certainly very questionable at least is content relating, um don eagle
And this is in regards to an article that was written by former wrestler and photographer tony lanza who
Supposedly was on the phone at the time when don eagle took his own life

(03:07:23):
now
this
article is uh
Is obviously from the
viewpoint of somebody maybe trying to
I don't know get their name in the tabloids if you will. It's very
It's very strange and very soared and uh, oh boy

(03:07:48):
I have i'm having a hard time with
Describing the article itself and there's there's a lot in here that I don't really want to get into
but
How they've framed this article is
Yeah, you know what i'm not gonna say that that doesn't need to be said on the program it's
Again there are articles and there are substances in there and there are

(03:08:11):
Fabrications out there that have been in the ether and unfortunately that is one of them. Uh
But if anybody thinks that current wrestling media is uh, the only
You know kind of toxic form that this
Industry has taken over the years. That's simply not true

(03:08:33):
And unfortunately, there is uh, there is evidence of exactly that
another thing that was brought up is
A theory postulated by luthes
Now, I think that's a very interesting thing
A theory postulated by luthes

(03:08:54):
Now this came up in a big media sensation
And I want to say the year 2000 kind of the advent age of the early
wrestling
message boards
now
i'm going to read this a little bit and
then i'm going to kind of debunk of

(03:09:15):
Of what the actual facts are in regards to
what happened so
Somebody had asked luthes
on a message board in the 1950s, uh
Again a term I don't use
Indian wrestler don eagle was quite a sensation today a little is mentioned. What do you remember him about him?

(03:09:37):
And luthes had mentioned
He was from kanawake
Quebec's indian reservation. He was a fighter before he wrestled and he was very colorful as a wrestling performer
I wrestled him in montreal and he wasn't doing well as a wrestler
So when the ref called break, he copped a sundae on me
I went after him and took him down did the stepover toehold and made him conceive

(03:10:00):
concede
His uncle and this is
I'm, just going to read it and then we're going to debunk this after
His uncle who posed at his father told eddie quinn
And he will never wrestle with us again to which eddie replied. He will never wrestle here again
Story has it that he
That his wife shot and killed him after many of his beatings

(03:10:22):
She was not charged with any crime and left and went to florida
The uncle asked her to come back and was forgiven and for some kind of ceremony. They killed her
I guess wrestling tries to talk
I was a little about the part of his profession as possible, but you asked
so
there's a couple of things in his
statement that are

(03:10:44):
factually
Uncheckable, right? One is obviously the the aspect of how
Uh chief don eagle was killed
Or died by suicide is
Completely unabstantiated
unsubstantiated
Listen to me talk

(03:11:04):
Now the other part of it is
This incident that supposedly happened in matriarch now. I could not find throughout my records any
incident like this taking place
unfortunately
luth has had a reputation of
Disparaging people who he didn't get along with in professional wrestling now. I'm I cannot say for certain

(03:11:29):
whether
this
Incident happened or not
I can't find it
I've i've scoured so many wrestling databases and it's not come up to me this specific incident. So
Whether or not it happened
Is is up to the reader's mind, I suppose

(03:11:50):
however
It's interesting that he would bring up that type of story and then bring up the
Uh aspect about war eagle as well and this kind of
ties into a different aspect of the story that we haven't really covered
and that is the
cultural appropriation aspect of

(03:12:12):
first nations wrestlers in
professional wrestling now
We can trace the lineage of chief don eagle through the mohawks
for generations
You're going to hear a lot about that in a little bit with my upcoming guest
Unfortunately throughout professional wrestling history there are there have been and still are as far as I know

(03:12:38):
wrestlers who wrestle under assumed identities
Coincidentally, they also wrestle under assumed
heritages
And we've seen throughout the years whether or not
and we've seen throughout the years whether it's
sunny two rivers or

(03:12:59):
There was another don eagle wrestling
in world of sport in the uk and I believe the 1980s so naturally well after
uh, the real don eagle had passed away, but
uh, he was
you know, just your run-of-the-mill white guy, but was wearing the headdress trying to portray the

(03:13:19):
um first nations
gimmick
Uh chief j chief j strongbow is another one who comes to mind there's been countless
wrestlers throughout the years who
have appropriated
the
We'll say

(03:13:40):
cultural
Um
Um givings if you will of what they're trying to present in the ring and as a character and unfortunately
Because this has happened so many times throughout history
when you do see somebody who is actually a first nations wrestler, they almost get discounted because

(03:14:02):
It's happened in the past and oh it's got to be a fake because so-and-so was a fake
And I feel like that's that's uh pretty unfair
Fair characterization and unfair position for first nations wrestlers to be in
And I think that that also plays a part in what luth as was bringing up right he's

(03:14:23):
It almost seemed like in his dissertation
It was a hit piece almost and then he
brings up the fact where his
uncle
quote-unquote
Uh was pretending to be his dad. We know that this is factually incorrect as well. This was another story that was going around
about dawn eagle in the

(03:14:47):
Previous we'll say wrestling
Newsletters for lack of a better term
Unfortunately, you know sensational headlines sell
And that's where a lot of that comes from and then it gets repeated and passed along and unless
It's been properly researched and debunked then it kind of progresses. So with all that being said

(03:15:12):
as much as uh
as
Much as the end of his life
Was horrific whatever happened
we can't really
we can't really use that as a
means to discredit his
his career or to further feed

(03:15:36):
uh outstanding conjecture if you will and I think that that's about the best way that I can put
uh the
Period and fine point on that one. So
Well, I know that that was a little bit of a heavy listening material and I apologize, but it is part of the story

(03:15:58):
and uh and something that we
also needed to get into and that
That also doesn't even take into account how his wife was murdered as well
and
That is a story that is
horrific as well and I suppose I can

(03:16:22):
quickly give the coles notes version because again
I I really don't want to make this program about
just murder and death and and
the darkness that surrounded everything but
unfortunately, uh his wife was

(03:16:43):
found murdered in the back of a of a vehicle on
the gana wake reserve
a few years after uh
Don eagle had passed away now. I'm being vague with details because
I i'm having a hard time separating or trying to present it

(03:17:09):
Factually without having all the facts. So all I can give is the facts of what?
Happened when she was found
Unfortunately to do anything else would be to sensationalize it I
Feel and i'm not comfortable with doing
That portion of it. It is out there. You can read about it

(03:17:32):
online
Through I would hope reputable sources
But in terms of this conversation, it's not something that I'm going to be talking about
I'm going to speculate or or deeply get involved in and that's
Out of respect for her and out of respect for the family as well because that's not something that anybody really wants to
dig up and
Oh boy

(03:17:53):
I've gone way way way longer and more in depth into
This part of it than I ever
Truly meant to but I'm going to be talking about it in a little bit
I'm going to be talking about it in a little bit
More in depth into this part of it than I ever truly meant to but unfortunately
It's part of the story that has to get covered

(03:18:17):
And that's part of you know presenting a factual and uh, and honest program so I hope you guys understand
Why I
chose
to include the facts I did
and uh, and I hope you'll understand my hesitation about
diving deeper into

(03:18:40):
You know conjecture and conspiracy and and
All that kind of stuff because I really don't think that that
Solves or furthers the program in any way shape or form so
Huh now to liven the program quite a bit because again that was very dark

(03:19:01):
I am joined by my third guest of the evening
I was absolutely blessed to be joined by
one of the sons of
Chief Don eagle flint eagle
Now for those of you who are not familiar flint is a hollywood star

(03:19:21):
A hollywood stunt man and a stunt coordinator
He's appeared in 400 plus
Uh television shows and movies
He has multiple speaking roles in quite a bit of movies as well
I've been watching actually quite a bit of them on youtube funny enough lately
And uh, it was an absolute treat and a complete

(03:19:45):
Honor to uh be talking with flint. He was very gracious enough to be taking time
away from his very busy filming schedule to talk to me so
Without further ado my conversation with flint eagle and on the other side
We are going to uh wrap up the program for tonight
Ladies and gentlemen my conversation with flint eagle

(03:20:09):
All right, i'm super pleased to be joined on the line today
By one of the sons of chief don eagle flint eagle flint. How you doing, man?
I'm good. I'm good
Before we get into the conversation today. Can you tell everybody a little bit about yourself?
um
As I guess as you know now, my name is flint eagle and mohawk. My mohawk name is

(03:20:33):
Ana de Consejo Reneate Aguix
Um
I don't expect anybody to remember that
However, um, yeah
I'm a
I'm entering my 34
33rd year
Um as a professional stunt performer actor stunt actor and stunt coordinator

(03:20:55):
I've done a little over 400 movies and television shows as a professional stunt performer and coordinator. I
I really
Don't even know where to begin
Well, that's a great either I get the job or I don't
I either it's like you're either gonna beat me up or kill me
I

(03:21:16):
Make a living out of dying
And that's I can honestly say that that's the first time i've ever had that come up in a conversation on this program
So we were talking a little bit off air in regards to you know
The preparation what actually goes into this type of work
And I was surprised

(03:21:37):
And this is something that came up during as we were talking off air the course of the roddy piper episode
But just how much time and effort and coordination goes into one of these fight scenes
Is absolutely mind-blowing
Yeah, it's um, I mean just to get
20 seconds 30 seconds even a minute of of a fight scene will take weeks to months to to shoot

(03:22:03):
Especially depends on how
How involved the actors are?
Primarily when it's stunt performers
Um and stunt doubles
Um, you know, it goes pretty quick. But but again, you know, primarily actors are not
usually um
You know heightened athletics

(03:22:23):
athletes
And um, so it takes a little bit longer working with actors
You know to develop fight scenes also we develop the fight scenes with the actors and with their stunt doubles
and um
So the stunt doubles are doing the the main part of the fight and then for the close-ups and things we have the actors coming

(03:22:43):
But the actors also have to know the fight, but the stunt doubles
have to
Train to be able to mimic the actor. It's not the actor mimicking the stunt performer
It's the stunt performer stunt double who has to carry on the the physical attributes
The mechanical movements everything

(03:23:05):
the even the little personality nuances of the
Actor, you know to be a proper stunt double stunt performer
Um because you've got to sell it like you're the guy
So it's all uh, it's a relationship and it's a development and sometimes it takes a little bit longer
It's funny how

(03:23:26):
much your line of work resembles your father's line of work not in terms of
Uh, you know just the name obviously, you know wrestling and and stunt acting if you will is they're two different things
But how much time coordination?
um
How much preparation goes into these type of ventures?

(03:23:47):
It's it's very interesting that you would come upon that line of work. What drew you to stunt acting? I should ask as well
well, um
as
as a child, um
Well, I mean I was
I began training to fight
you know, uh
with my father when I was three years old and um

(03:24:09):
You know, so like then everybody expected that of me
Um, I grew up, you know fighting everywhere I went everybody, you know, wanted to fight Don Eagle's kid wanted to fight the Indian
My parents were my parents were murdered when I was small and I went to live with my grandmother in Florida
Of course, you know, everybody's get the Indian everybody want to fight the Indian

(03:24:32):
So, you know fighting whether I wanted to or not, it wasn't a choice
You know something that I was I was born into something that I was brought into and something that was
Um
culturally and relatively forced upon me by
society
And by children, you know growing up, you know

(03:24:54):
um
Um
And uh, just you know, I got I I entered into the fight world
Um, I was doing shoot fighting
um mma
Um, I was going to uh, we of course I was living in florida just north of clear water

(03:25:15):
Where everybody was, you know, terry, uh the hulk
hulk hogan
And uh eddie bruce barber bruce the barber bbq the nasty boys
And we were all buddies. We were always hanging out the um
you know
uh
the hearts
um
yeah, so, uh, you know, those were some of my buddies growing up and and

(03:25:40):
As it was going, um eddie wanted me to be his tag team partner
So, um, I was going to come in as the son of don eagle, you know
And blah blah blah and you know, but eddie had his accident. I went a different way
um
Yeah, I I
you know
I I guess i'm not prepared

(03:26:04):
For this conversation
But um, they all um, you know, uh hulk hogan
You know, it's like they they said my father was the reason
That they became professional wrestlers
But they wanted to be wrestlers because everybody it was don eagle, right? Yes
Um, he was you know, uh held the title for 10 years
um world heavyweight title

(03:26:26):
uh, my grandfather was his father was um
uh world middle heavyweight champion
um
My great grandfather was uh, there's just this magnificent just incredible white man killer
and um
Righteous stuff the only you know only bad dudes. Yes, and um

(03:26:49):
You know, so uh
Poof here I am
I didn't yeah, I didn't it ended up in in fighting
I ended up having to fight a lot of my friends
In competition and when you end up having to fight your friends you lose your friends
So I lost who I believe were my closest friends because once you beat them, they don't want to be your friends anymore

(03:27:09):
They don't want to talk to anymore. Yes
and um, but that's in the you know in competition not in the professional wrestling ring and um
anyway, just uh
One day um
You know, I got a call I moved back to my reservation just outside of montreal called gunna wogget

(03:27:31):
And which is a mohawk reservation?
and um
Just one day. I got a call from production company. I started racing canoes is what it was
I came in fifth in the world games
and um
And I came in first in the canadian voyager games
And I got a phone call one day and this production uh wanted me to um,

(03:27:52):
Pave la canoe down some rapids
It was the last shot they needed of this production and they were having a hard time getting it because they couldn't get anybody to do the job
So they called me up. I did the job
Uh the next day they called me for a speaking role in another film
I did that the following week. They called me for a principal role in a five-hour miniseries where I was the killer

(03:28:13):
So that is how it began
So I did 10 films in the first year and I didn't even know I was in the film industry
um, I thought the uh actra and sag were I thought that they were you know, um,
Some mafia trying to get my money
They're calling me i'll say hey, when are you gonna come down and join the union i'm like, uh, what union what's this all about?

(03:28:36):
Yeah, are you people because all I knew you know from television and history and stuff that unions were organized crime. Yeah
and
You know, uh, but I don't need to say anything about that
And um now um 32 plus years later i've done, you know a little over 400 movies in television shows

(03:28:56):
And it has been my full-time profession for the last
Going on 33 years
That's what an incredible story and I I can't imagine the journey
Just in terms of the whirlwind almost that it would have been like
Like you said 10 movies in the first year and then you're just kind of thrusting into this whole thing

(03:29:18):
And like you were saying as well. Is it what 400 plus at this point in time?
Yes. Yeah, that's incredible
That's absolutely incredible
Uh, thank you and I
And I I I
Please go ahead. You feel very very blessed
Uh, I know that uh, I I know that my ancestors are watching over me all the time

(03:29:42):
it's
You know, it's um
It's just it's it's a great life. It's a beautiful life, but it's tough. You got to train
You've got to uh, you get broken bones you get you know, you bleed you know
You know sometimes unfortunately we lose
Um on average five stunt performers every year

(03:30:03):
perish on set
and um
And i'm sure you know, we don't hear a lot about it in the news, but we have heard, you know a bit of it
and um
I i've come close to death. Um minimum five times
and
You know, you know, you know
But the thing is if you don't get any bumps cuts and bruises and broken bones, you haven't done it

(03:30:30):
Yeah, that's that's just part of the game. It's part of the part of the uh job much the same as
you know, um
Uh professional wrestling wrestling entertainment
You know those wrestlers everybody says oh it's fake and it's it's choreographed and it's staged and yes
There's there's the amount of uh choreography that goes with it

(03:30:51):
You know who's the winner who's the loser and stuff, but the athleticism?
You know, um is so high the injuries the intensity. It's uh,
You know it is you if you are not
An incredible athlete in that ring then then you're not going to last for one. Yes in the industry

(03:31:14):
and uh, and you will
You you know the injuries will end your career
You know and injuries do you know like you know, like everybody my father
You know, um, it was a broken back
You know that ended his career a broken back sustained in the ring. Yes
Yeah, it's it's uh, go ahead please

(03:31:35):
Yes, no, I mean he he had done, you know attempted a comeback
but the
You know the the pain and the constant pain and the injuries it's uh
You know and you have
You know
You know, you know professional wrestlers in there, you know who aren't given the time to re

(03:31:56):
recuperate to recover properly and they get back in the ring and they only
Re-injure themselves or increase, you know the sustained injury
And it's interesting as well, especially in his time
There was no there. Well, even now there is no offseason in wrestling
Right. So you you have these athletes. Yes, they're in an incredible shape and they can do incredible things

(03:32:20):
But an injury is an injury and it needs a certain amount of time and there's even today you hear you hear it all the time that
You know guys and girls don't take that time off that they need to take to absolutely rehab that injury properly
And it creeps up and it creeps up and it creeps up and years and years and years
These guys just get beaten down and worn down
And you know, we continue to see it even to this day, right? Uh, like we we had just lost scott hall who had

(03:32:48):
You know
He was he was in the um profession for almost four decades
Of just absolute punishment, right? He was one of the boys we hung out with down in florida. Oh, no way
Yeah, thanks scott hall. Yeah, it's like, you know, it's such a small world and florida is such a small place

(03:33:08):
Yes, it is actually it's funny. You mentioned that
You know and um
Yeah, it's just uh, and it's just it again. It's a very small world. It's a tight-knit world small world and predominantly
You know everybody supports each other. It's like we were hanging out
We were always together. We were on the beach clear water beach playing volleyball

(03:33:30):
Just laying around, you know, we'd be just eating and drinking beer and playing volleyball and just having a blast. Yeah
There were a couple of things that you brought up that I kind of wanted to circle back to and kind of
Dig into a little bit if you don't mind
One was you mentioned that uh, you're about three years old when you kind of started learning how to fight with your father

(03:33:54):
Were you able at that point because I know it would have been late
In his career, were you ever able to see him wrestle live?
um, I did
You know, it's like as an infant yes mother's arms, you know, it had brought me to the ring
and so I I had
As I recall, I had only seen one of his matches

(03:34:19):
But even still that's that's got to be something that you at least try and mentally hold
onto a like
The feeling and just the sight
That that's got to be just a special memory for yourself
Yeah, just the the I mean it was
It was very frightening, you know the fear of the trembling in a little child an infant child's chest and his heart and you know

(03:34:43):
Knowing that's his father
in the ring and just the
You know the violence and the yeah
Yeah, it was just
Devastation. Yeah, it was it was a lot of taking it. It's interesting
uh that point that you bring up specifically because we've heard throughout the years and read in in biographies and

(03:35:06):
Such like in bret hart's book, for example, he tells of you know seeing stew getting
assaulted in the ring by whoever the the mongolian stomper for example
And just the fear that he had of seeing his dad being beaten down and beat up and in a fight for his life
And then you know juxtapose it with what you learn after the fact right that it's there's a bit of cooperation

(03:35:29):
Yeah, it's violent it for sure is and it it's not the easiest profession, but it's it's got to be
wild for yourself
Seeing that and then understanding a little bit later in life of what was happening and and what was going on in the ring
Yeah, you know and then you know, um
Growing up under the legacy of my father and my grandfather

(03:35:53):
Um
You know
Everything we built we took uh, you know cutting the lawn and filling up garbage bags and building rings
You know building rings along the horse fence so we could have turnbuckles
Bounce off the fences
The bounce off the fencing and you know, and uh, just yeah

(03:36:18):
So we all so you know it has that
Effect on you, you know, and of course, you know, my mother holding me reassuring me that uh, you know
That it was what it was
but the injuries
You know, you cannot play like that
You can't play like that. You can't you can't rough house like that without sustaining injury. Yes

(03:36:41):
and
and these these
professional wrestlers men and women
alike
You know the timing if the timing is a little off and it happens in stunts, too
Timing gets a little off and that's when you get hurt. Yes
that's when if your timing's off if somebody else's timing is off and

(03:37:03):
You know that is they are fine
fine tuned athletes
Athletes
You know that much the same as in film. We have a script. Yeah, we have to stick to
you know, but the
the the ability
to
To perform the ability and even with injuries sustained in the ring at the time

(03:37:28):
You know, they continue fighting
You know, it's you know, if it's a very severe injury then it's
It's looked after everybody knows, you know, everybody's watching each other and you know, they're talking to each other. Yeah
You know and you know the the rookies have a tendency to get a little bit
more punished

(03:37:50):
You know in the ring, it's part of the learning scale
And um, I mean we don't we don't punish the newbies in the stunt industry
Um
But uh in the wrestling ring
You know the veterans you get you get some young guys that are a little cocky and stuff like that and they need to be put

(03:38:11):
in their place
you know and that's uh, you know when that happens you see them, you know, and then um,
You know and everybody's got personalities and so sometimes
Sometimes you know, sometimes fists do fly in the ring sometimes
you know, um
You know
They connect a little bit. Yeah, you put a little bit a little bit extra on it

(03:38:36):
Yeah, and uh, then you know, um depending on the opponent
They get a little bit of payback just a little bit of lesson to learn. Yes
The uh, the other thing that you had mentioned and that I kind of wanted to circle back to as well is
Like you had mentioned that you were raised in florida. Obviously. That's been a big part of our conversation today

(03:38:58):
When you had gone back to gana wake
And this is a conversation that I had with uh billy two rivers is that the
Its oral history is huge with your people
Yeah
when you had gone back, did you
encounter a lot of
Oral history being passed to you about what your father what your grandfather what your great-grandfather had done in professional wrestling?

(03:39:28):
um
Not really
Um, I I grew up with the knowledge of my father. Okay in his in his professional career
um
But when I returned to gana waken
It was uh, of course, you know billy's an old friend of mine
My dad brought billy in and taught billy. Yes

(03:39:49):
and um
And you know, you know people like billy, you know telling me about my father, you know and things like that
But I had my grandmother
You know and my other relatives, you know all sharing but
It you know, it was a different life. It was a different
um

(03:40:10):
it wasn't so much about the
the professional life that I learned about my father as opposed to the personal and cultural life. Yes
and I guess that's something we can expand on a little bit more because
you know
Unfortunately, you didn't have
Anywhere close to a full life with your father

(03:40:30):
naturally you you would have gotten quite a few stories from from your your grandmother like you just said, but
What were you able to?
kind of learn uh
throughout the years that
Maybe sticks out to you more than just you know, some of the road stories if you will for lack of a better term
well, um, you know to the world

(03:40:53):
um
To the world my father was this hero to the world of native
Americans native north americans the aboriginal people of north america
He was an icon. He was
He was an icon. He was a hero they had I mean all across north america

(03:41:14):
Like the most famous haircut was the don eagle haircut. Yes, you know kids would go in that then everybody knew I wanted don eagle
You know, so they give them a hawk haircut
um
I would I would have to say
um
There are two sides to every coin

(03:41:35):
um the
The home life and family life was was not the life of a hero
um
You know to the people in ganahua, it's like, you know, things are different behind closed doors. He
Yeah
He was a generous man. He was a good man. He was a strong man. He was a role model

(03:41:57):
He was so many things outside the ring
um
But at home, um, it was quite a different story
um
He was abusive to my mother, um, he was abusive to me
To my brother and sister

(03:42:19):
I am the youngest of all the children and uh
He was quite cruel at home and as was my grandfather
um
And that is where my father that is how my father learned

(03:42:41):
To be a cruel man at home because his father was cruel. Yes
And unfortunately, um
Um, I got to know my grandfather
Quite a bit more than I had known my father and um
Um, it was a brutal time. It was a cruel time

(03:43:06):
um
That's about all I gotta say about that and naturally, you know, we we can't look at
Time periods, you know with today's eyes and obviously i'm not I would never condone
you know any type of abuse like that, but
It's uh, it's interesting the point that you bring up about, you know kind of learned behavior, right and then it

(03:43:31):
Eventually it goes to when does it stop?
Right. So yeah the sins of the father. Yes
um, you know and
Sorry, I I just
There there's been stories out there about that portion of it
Obviously, it's something we touch on a little bit in this program, but
it's not

(03:43:51):
It's not meant to
be meant to
Shine a negative light on a person's entire story
I guess it's the proper way to phrase it right every like the way that you phrase it is perfect. There's always two sides, right?
and we've heard a lot of
um positive stories, unfortunately, there are

(03:44:15):
Individuals and
We'll say resources out there that like to focus on the negative side and it is out there
some of which you just described but
You almost can't tell the story without telling that portion of it
So I thank you for sharing at least that portion of it and saying it phrasing it the way that you did

(03:44:35):
Yeah, he had you know
What he accomplished outside of the home what he accomplished in the ring what he accomplished in
The world of entertainment was grand and what a grand
grand um movement and statement and
to empower

(03:44:56):
Aboriginal people throughout north america
um
To empower them a sense of honor sense of dignity a sense of power and pride sense of strength
Um, that was a very great thing. But you know the the the pressures
um
You know, uh
Again, my grandfather had taught him how to deal with his personal life and his personal pressures

(03:45:21):
um, which
Were not conducive to a healthy home life. Yes and um
Yeah, it just um, but he had accomplished so much for the aboriginal community
um
Especially my own in guanahua for the mohawks not only of guanahua but mohawks throughout north america. Yes

(03:45:48):
Which is something that we keep coming up to over and over again in the research for this program
Is just what a what a cultural impact he had made right whether it's
in canada, especially
in america
like in uh, ohio specifically
um detroit there's a lot of time spent
and then there there was one story that I I don't mean to digress too much, but

(03:46:13):
When I was talking to billy trevor's there was one story that he had told where they were
In a series of matches and I think uh, it was cuba
And you wouldn't think that two mohawks from just outside of montreal would be you know
Big stars in a different country, but they were and and he was just saying like the

(03:46:35):
The crowd just ate everything up and wanted to learn more about the culture and I think that that is
is
Super impressive too that
Yes, he was big. He was a big star and he whether or not it's simply because he was
You know of a different color
um the fact of
How he wrestled how he presented himself and what he brought culturally to these different places and just drew people's interest in

(03:47:00):
I think it's super interesting
Yeah, um
um, I had one
um one out of
Just hundreds of experiences but one in particular I was sailing
In the atlantic ocean. I had been sailing for six months
And we had come across um, I worked for a company called international you got exchangers

(03:47:23):
There was the captain navigator myself his first mate and we were delivering yachts from
Fort lauderdale st. Pete, florida
to
You know, uh, whoever purchased the lot
Whoever purchased the boat. Yes, the sailboat
So we were we had delivered down to uh tortola

(03:47:43):
Uh 70 foot csy and we were bringing back a 52 footer
um
You know to have refitted
And we got hit by the tail of a hurricane for two days and three nights blown
Wow, of course all the instruments and everything wiped out
and
About 2 10 in the morning on a tuesday morning. We hit a coral reef and sank about

(03:48:08):
I'd say a one and a half nautical miles on the shore of maguana
An island out in the atlantic
And so it took it was about eight days before the coast guard could come in and rescue us
um meanwhile
Um, uh the coast guard had you know radioed the island. They sent a little fishing boat little like maybe 14 foot

(03:48:33):
Fishing aluminum, you know, yeah, just a centered. Yeah
and um
And while I was there
Um, it was so it was just so wonderful my experience there was so wonderful
But I was walking down this old goat path on the island and I came across this little shack the little shack had to be

(03:48:54):
Be no bigger than eight by eight or maybe six by eight. It was a tiny little shack in the middle of nowhere
and there were four
Very i'd say quite elderly men
um of of island descent
um
They the gray hair they were beautiful. They were playing dominoes and no windows no door and no windows in the building

(03:49:18):
Yeah
And one man looks up and he says
He he looked out as I was passing by and he goes he goes
It's the man
The man is here the man come back
and
i'm in my
I at the time mid late 20s
and

(03:49:40):
um
And they all came out of the these four little men came out of well, you know
Two of them are kind of tall but they were all you know, skinny and yes
You know, they were island boys
and uh
They came out of this little shed
and
And they just they were in disbelief and they said

(03:50:00):
They said come here boy. You look just like the man and they told me and like
Well, what do you tell them? They they would tell me how this story how they would go
They would travel by boat for 15 hours to the main island
Island to gather around there was one television on the main island

(03:50:21):
And they were 15 hours everybody had boats would get in their little boats and the boats would be almost sinking
They said with people just to go watch
professional wrestling on sunday to watch and they and the man they called my father the man and it was
And and they're like, you know, and then they just lost I was like a god

(03:50:43):
God on the island and they found out that that was my father. That's incredible. He was still their hero
All these years passed, uh, you know his life gone all those years passed but
His legend and his memory remained, you know that beautiful effect that beautiful
You know, you know regardless of how

(03:51:06):
How hard our lives are it sheds that light?
On how important it is?
How we affect people we don't even know we affect them. Yes, but he affected he did not affect
A thousand people he didn't affect a hundred thousand. He didn't affect a million. He affected the world

(03:51:28):
And the world that knew him through athletic entertainment
they
to him
he was
their hero
And and they just the whole time I was there they celebrated me
The entire time it was nothing that I had done
But because to them I looked just like my father when they were young when they were boys watching him on

(03:51:56):
On the television on the mainland
That's an incredible story
I yeah, i'm
It has happened all over the world to me
I'm i'm shooting films or something in different places in the world and there's always
Always an elderly man or elderly woman that gives reference to my father

(03:52:22):
And that I without even knowing who I am, yeah how I remind them of he
That's something else that I found throughout
Both, you know research and i've been in contact with some of these people who have had
there's
uh blogs written
like pages long blogs of people and their experience of you know

(03:52:44):
either gather around a television like you just said or going to the matches and seeing your father and
You know, we're what?
40 years passed, right?
And it's I have no idea and it's still well some of them were almost 50 years some of those matches
But they still talk about them. So i've been in contact with these people and they're from like you said all over the world

(03:53:09):
i've talked to people from
Uh from america i've talked to people from scotland. I've talked to people from ireland. I've had people contacted from people in the uk
and just
It's it's all
via these
long dissertation stories of their experience watching your dad

(03:53:30):
on television or live and then
it's what's more interesting I find about that is how many of these people have gone now and
researched his people because of him
And there's there's one blog in particular and i'm trying to think
Where is she from? She is from

(03:53:51):
California, I believe
and she had gone and
started researching the gauna wakia reserve and everybody that came from there and then
Spawned her to billy tree rivers spawn her to everything else that was coming out of that
That territory and just it's wild how one man
Just creates this this cascade effect, right? It's crazy

(03:54:15):
Yeah
And still and still does today right and some of these blogs are from
from like the one it was from 2020 one's from uh 2019 and you know, then I contact these people and they're just like
You know the email back and forth. It's like chains, right? It's it's so crazy
Yeah
Yeah in the in the world of professional wrestling my father

(03:54:40):
is
Still the aboriginal icon native american icon. Yes of professional wrestling, you know, it's like
You know, you had wahoo mcdaniels you had you know, all these others you had uh, um
What's his name the
The warrior I can't all right tatanka was one and then yeah

(03:55:03):
Yeah, the ultimate warrior and this and that this and that you know regardless of regardless of their achievements
Um no one had even to this day achieve
as much
as much as
a world-renowned icon and professional wrestler
Uh native in a native aspect aboriginal aspect than my father

(03:55:29):
Yeah, I I can't even argue that for one second it's not even close
And even the biggest wrestlers
the
Biggest names in wrestling hulk hogan, you know
You know, uh for instance, you know there my father was their hero
my and they
Literally say rocky johnson, you know that that my father was the reason

(03:55:55):
They became professional wrestlers
Which that's maybe the biggest legacy that he could leave right and
to spawn
You know these great superstars that we would know of today
Who then in turn inspire all these other stars it kind of all
You know, you can you can trace the lineage, right?
and it's almost a direct line and

(03:56:18):
Man, that's it's
You sometimes
Yeah, and sometimes you you don't you
We don't stop and think sometimes in especially in today's era of
Everything's now now now and
You know you're watching it's over you watch this guy and it's over whatever
We have a hard time nowadays of sitting and thinking like okay. Where did this start? Where where?

(03:56:39):
Where was the seed planted? Where did this germinate from?
and a lot of the guys that you just mentioned and you can like I said draw a straight line right to him and
Boy, oh boy. It's it's absolutely incredible that
You know your father just
Just a guy from a reserve outside of québec just inspires

(03:57:01):
Countless people it's it's really impressive
Yeah, he um
he
had
in a sense
even unbewitting to him
had shaped
Had been an intricate part of shaping professional wrestling

(03:57:23):
That he was a household name in the united states he was
You couldn't go anywhere anywhere in florida
Without everybody
Absolutely knowing who don eagle was
Yeah, it's just and and what's even more wild about all of that is
How short his pro career was right like just imagine if he didn't sustain the back injury what it how much?

(03:57:50):
bigger it could have been or how like
It's it's unfathomable
Yeah, it's um
You will never know you know and as I was stating
um, you know to all
men
not not just
my father but to all

(03:58:11):
Professional athletes to all if you're an athlete if you're not an athlete if you're a computer guy
There's always a dark side. We all have a dark side. I know I do
and
um, if you
If you look deep enough and focus on that then you're focusing on the wrong thing

(03:58:35):
Yes, you know it it needs to be you know, there were so many great
Beautiful wonderful things that that people had achieved
And it's those beautiful things that we should hold on to the things of positive things that have affected our lives. I mean
Everybody you can look you can go through the dossier

(03:58:56):
Jake the snake Roberts, you can go through everything and and see the dark sides. You know the
but that
Power that in
encouragement that that
Light that they had turned on in in millions of people

(03:59:19):
They were so powerful
people
They were the reasons and they there was a time when my father was the my father was
single-handedly the reason
all those people in
Megwana every Sunday would pile up dangerously and

(03:59:41):
Go to the main island just to watch him for a few hours on television
You know that that
That's powerful and
And millions of people tuning in around the world to watch to watch their heroes to watch these superstars
You know, it's amazing and but you know, remember

(04:00:02):
Everyone remember they are also only men
And I think that's uh, I couldn't phrase that aspect of it better myself that is
Absolutely powerful and absolutely true as well
Yeah, you put me speechless. There's not many times that I'm I'm

(04:00:23):
very
uh for clempt and uh and bumfuzzled, but you've got me here and uh
the stories that and again
These are stories that if they're not shared or talked about and told
properly within the proper context
When they're gone, they're gone and
uh, and you know, there's been a lot of information that we've uncovered throughout the course of this program that's

(04:00:50):
You know if if we didn't uncover it if if guys like jamie didn't you know, put in the research to find out how
you know
His career actually like where his first set of matches actually happened if the stories like yourself of telling
You know a random island out in the middle of the atlantic
Of people who pilot a boat and watch like if these stories aren't shared and and passed along

(04:01:14):
and
and heard
then they're they're gone and uh
I'm
I'm beyond words that uh that you were gracious enough to share those stories with us today
No, thank you so much
Yeah, I I I hate to cut it short
But i've got a lot of work to do to prepare for tomorrow 100% start to track strange new worlds

(04:01:39):
Well, listen, this has been
You can tell by the smile on my face. This has been absolutely a treat for me
Before I let you go
What's the best way that someone can contact yourself?
If they were looking to reach out and and get in touch with you
Regarding this program or regarding your stunt work?
Anybody wants to contact me they can contact me on um through facebook or instagram

(04:02:07):
I believe uh, I think I have a whatsapp
And uh, you don't have that so you've you've beat me on this one
If I if I was if I was technologically, um adequate, uh, I wouldn't be a stunt guy
Uh, well, listen, this has been they don't hire me on they don't hire me in movies to uh, to to for my um

(04:02:34):
Technological aspects. Yeah
You're there to beat people up and get beat up
Usually I i'm the guy getting beaten up
Always by the heroes
Well, this has been a great experience
I'm the guy getting beaten up. I'm always by the heroes. Well, this has been an absolute treat. Thank you so much for your time today

(04:02:58):
Okay. Thank you so much
Now before we finish up this evening, I just want to really thank my three guests that I had on the program tonight
Jamie
Javier
And flint
I could not have done this program without the three of you tonight
And it was my absolute honor and pleasure to have all three of you on the program

(04:03:19):
And i'm looking forward to our conversations
in the future
I also want to thank each and every one of you for checking out the program tonight because
Really you could have been doing anything else at all in the entire wonderful world that we live in
But you chose to check out this program on dawn eagle and i'm forever grateful

(04:03:41):
It would mean a lot to me if you could rate this program five stars on whatever podcasting platform that you are listening to
And as well if you could leave a five star written rate rate
written
Review you can tell right at the end folks
Oh great stuff, but I hope that everybody learned quite a bit in today's episode

(04:04:07):
I hope that we've opened up quite a few eyes
About really one of the true
wrestling
Early wrestling pioneers and superstars from the television area and really what dawn eagle meant to
Not just indigenous wrestling here in canada not just indigenous indigenous wrestling in north america, but

(04:04:30):
The whole phenomenon of that
50s era the early age of television professional wrestling
Cheese you just you almost can't
Underscore it enough just how
important he was and I I truly hope
That we were able to hit the nail on the head on those specific points tonight

(04:04:56):
Once again, you can find this program on any podcasting platform of your choice whether that's
Spotify, stitcher, goodpods, google podcasts
Again, wherever you buy sell trade barter or steal your favorite podcast. You will find grappling with canada
Like I asked previously leave a five star rating and written review
Also, tell your friends and family and pass this thing along

(04:05:19):
truth truthfully the
The best way that this program can be passed along is word of mouth, which means it's up to you the listener
So if you enjoyed this program share it
to share it through whatever social media platform or
You know that good old texting device that you carry probably in your pocket

(04:05:43):
And let your friends know what you heard on the program today
Also, the ways that you can support the program to keep this whole thing going
is
All located in the link tree link
In the link tree link in the show notes of the program. You can also go to
buy me a coffee.com

(04:06:04):
Grappling to buy me the tax man a refreshing beer because
Boy, oh boy. It is thirsty work delivering a program like this. You can also donate to the program directly
via the paypal link
And the tip jar function over at good pods
I also want to make mention of the merchandise that you can produce or you can get for the podcast

(04:06:31):
Threadless, sorry grappling with canada.threadless.com is where you can find all of those wonderful things
and
All proceeds from the classic grappling with canada
T-shirt logo the classic one are donated to charity
So let's raise some money for the children's hospital here in friendly, winnipeg, manitoba

(04:06:56):
And I apologize to everybody for being totally out of breath on the the last part of this program. I have
quite the uh
quite the hockey injury i'm dealing with right now in terms of uh
In terms of breathability and my ribs
so I apologize for the the breathy aspect of the close of this program today, but

(04:07:20):
Boy, oh boy. That's uh, that's just the way she goes sometimes and that's part of the fun of podcasting
so
With all of that being said
for myself the tax man
For my wonderful guests and all three of you
Javier, Jamie and flint. I cannot thank the three of you enough

(04:07:43):
For all of them for myself to all of you
I will leave you as I always do
Take care of yourselves
And each other
Good night everyone

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Superstardom, Screwjobs and World Championships - The Lasting Impact Of Chief Don Eagle

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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;}Superstardom, Screwjobs and World Championships - The Lasting Impact Of Chief Don Eagle