In fact, Bruno despises the way that wrestling is nowadays. He hates Vince McMahon with a passion and doesn’t like the direction that ECW or WCW is going. Bruno isn’t much of a fan of anything except the old-style wrestling that is still practiced in the backwoods in the East. Bruno retired from wrestling several times, but his last match was in 1985 when he tagged with his son David at Madison Square Garden. To give you an idea of the popularity of this man in his heyday, he headlined MSG 211 times and sold it out 187 of those times. Hulk Hogan headlined MSG 21 times and it sold-out 6 of those times.
Bruno could bench 565 lbs. and that is with absolutely no steroids or muscle-enhancers because he not only refused to take them, but there were no available at his time. Bruno was THE real wrestler of his time, but he has a big problem.
When Bruno returned to commentating in the early 80’s he found the business to be despicable and drug use rampant. He thought the fans had changed for the worse and he also thought very little of Vince McMahon, who had just taken over from his father. To this day Bruno will not watch WCW or WWF and he has very little to do with wrestling in general. Bruno has been out of the game for about 12 years, but he still thinks he knows what is going on. He claims that drug use is still going on and that the policies that WWF and WCW use are complete jokes. He even says that drug use was condoned by the WWF in 80’s. I’m sure Bruno would know better than me about his stuff going on, but he has been out of the business for over a decade and he still runs down everything that wrestling has to do with. Here is an excerpt of a chat conversation that Bruno had about a year ago:
Reck PILLMAN (Prodigy Member)
BRUNO - what's the biggest difference between yesterday's wrestling fan, and the fan of today???
Bruno Sammartino (Speaker)
Well, yesteryear...when I wrestled...they believed in us. They were
extremely responsive during matches. They were into it every minute of
every match. They'd be standing and sitting and screaming and hollering.
When I came back to commentate when all the changes happened, it was
completely different. People didn't respond in the same sense. Example,
when I wrestled Stan Hanson and came back for the return match after the
broken neck, the police had to escort him from the dressing room to
the ring and wait for him to take him back to the dressing room and then to
his car. When I did commentating for Vince McMahon they would have a guy
go to the ring and attack someone and beat him to a pulp...and when these
guys come out of the ring, fans would ask him for his autograph. Now they
just look at it as a show. There is no real feeling towards the
individuals.
I think that Bruno needs to let go of his disdain for the world and realize that things change with time and that the whole concept of change isn’t necessarily bad. If he expected wrestling to sell out MSG without making any changes for the rest of time then he is as stupid as he looks.
Bruno doesn’t like the idea that the plate that fed him all those years has changed. Sometimes, you just need to accept change and move on and embrace it.
I’m sorry about the lack of quality in this column but I got my wisdom teeth pulled out yesterday and I’m high as a kite on these painkillers. I didn’t want to short-change my readers though, so I wrote a basic column.
For the full transcript of the Bruno Sammartino chat go to http://www.pro-wrestling.com/wrestleweb/interviews/bruno100897 Thanks for bearing with me and respond please.
