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Gene Kiniski Was The Real Deal

Posted: Apr 26th 2010 By: CMBurnham

Gene Kiniski had the rare distinction of holding both the NWA and AWA world heavyweight titles.

So rare, in fact, that it?s the only time that feat was ever accomplished.

But Eugene Nicholas Kiniski, who died April 14 at the age of 81 following a long battle with cancer, was more than just a professional wrestling champion. He was a man?s man who never backed down from anyone ? inside or outside the ring.

A giant among giants in the world of pro wrestling, the man who once proclaimed himself ?Canada?s greatest athlete? was rough and rugged. His features, hardened from years of doing battle, reflected the classic profile of a villain: a tough-looking kisser with a buzz cut, cauliflower ears, a potato for a nose, and a gravelly voice with a fierce glare to match.

The 6-5, 270-pound behemoth was a natural ?bad guy? the fans loved to hate, and he enraged crowds from Toronto to Tokyo.

Behind that gruff exterior, though, was a man with a heart of gold, says a longtime friend and wrestling associate.

?He was quite an individual,? said Dutch Savage, who wrestled against and teamed with Kiniski. ?Out of the sight of cameras and other people, he was a completely different person. He was laid-back, easygoing, nothing too good for his friends.?

Not everyone got to see that side of Kiniski. A man with a quick wit, a practical joker with a good sense of humor and the kind of charisma that could take over a crowded room.

?A lot of guys say they knew him because they knew him in the dressing room or spent some time in the territories with him. But they didn?t really know Gene Kiniski. I was with Gene for nearly 50 years. Gene and I were practically neighbors,? said the 74-year-old Savage, who lives on a farm in the mountains of southwest Washington state, a couple hundred miles from Blaine, Wash., on the Canadian border, where Kiniski had lived since the late ?60s.

?He was a very gentle, very loving, very caring human being. He only showed the side the public wanted. Especially the boys ... they never saw the other side of him.?

Savage also remembered his friend as ?a true gentleman.?

?If he liked you, there was nothing too good for you, and no one had better badmouth you around him.?

Wrestling fans around the world remember ?Big Thunder? as one of the top heels in the history of the sport. He defeated two of the greatest pure wrestlers of all time in claiming both the National Wrestling Alliance and American Wrestling Association titles. He captured the AWA crown from Verne Gagne in 1961, and took the NWA belt from Lou Thesz five years later in front of nearly 12 thousand fans at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis.

Kiniski, who made his pro wrestling debut in 1952, continued to be a top attraction through the 1970s. He headlined events in major arenas and baseball stadiums across the globe, including a 1957 match with Killer Kowalski in Montreal in front of more than 21,000 fans.

Kiniski, who also worked for many years as a promoter in the Vancouver area, served as the guest referee for the NWA world title match between Ric Flair and Harley Race at the inaugural Starrcade in 1983, and worked his last bout in 1994 at the age of 66. He held a slew of national, international and regional titles along the way, and defeated the top stars of the generation.

Changing of the guard

One of the biggest matches of his career, ironically, was when he dropped the NWA world title to a 28-year-old Dory Funk, Jr. in 1969 in Tampa. In many ways it represented a passing of the torch.

Funk won the bout with the spinning toe hold, which would become his signature maneuver, and would go on to hold the title for 4 1/2 years, which ranks as the second-longest uninterrupted reign of any NWA world champion

?No one could be prouder of my career as NWA champion than Gene Kiniski,? said Funk. ?Gene was my mentor, adviser and at times caretaker ... Gene Kiniski was like a second father to me.?

Funk, son of the legendary Dory Funk Sr., who had a hand in training Kiniski as a wrestler, had fought Kiniski to an hour draw during his rookie year in 1963. To this day, he says, it was one of his toughest matches ever.


Kiniski would continue to play a pivotal role in his career. Funk never forgot the advice Kiniski gave him when he first came to the wrestling mecca of St. Louis.

?Listen, kid, I don?t want to catch you staying at the Claridge Hotel or at the Senator Hotel where all the other wrestlers stay,? Kiniski told the youngster. ?You stay at a first-class hotel, the Jefferson Hotel over on 12th Street. I want to always see you in a suit or a sport coat. If you are going to make it to the top, you have got to dress and live like you are at the top.?

That advice extended to the ring.

?When you go into the ring, I want to see some wrestling holds, not just meat chopping. The sign out front says wrestling, and that is what people want to see.?

?You see a lot of Gene?s moves in Dory,? said Savage.

Saying goodbye

A celebration of Gene Kiniski?s life will be held today at son Nick?s Reef Tavern in Point Roberts, Wash. His ashes will be spread to the four winds over his favorite hunting ground in British Columbia.

Savage, now an ordained pastor who teaches King James scripture on public access cable out of Portland, Ore., won?t be in attendance at the memorial service But that?s OK, he says, because ?I remember Gene in my heart. That?s all that matters to me.?

?There?s about three thousand guys who owe an awful lot to Gene that he?s helped monetarily, mentally, spiritually,? said Savage. ?He was a complete agnostic and atheist, but I loved him and would defend his right to believe whatever he wants to believe. Gene helped so many people. He?s put in good words in advance for guys before they ever got to the territory. They never knew that he would say things to the bosses there. Not too many guys (in the wrestling business) would do that. He was a different human being.?

?He had two boys who loved him,? said Savage, referring to Nick and Kelly Kiniski, both collegiate wrestling stars who worked briefly in the pro ranks. Kiniski raised both sons following his ex-wife?s death more than 35 years ago.

?He did a great job with those boys. Both of them went to college, both got degrees and both were All-Americans in wrestling. They had a good teacher.?

Kiniski never remarried. His ex-wife, Marian, who had battled depression and drinking problems, committed suicide not long after a divorce in 1973.

Kiniski rarely discussed that sad chapter in his life, but he did address it in the 2007 book ?The Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame: The Heels.?

?My wife was a very, very attractive girl, exceptionally attractive. She just couldn?t handle aging. The boys were growing up and she was so depressed.?

After the divorce, said Kiniski, ?she started drinking and I never realized she had a drinking problem. It was a very, very sad thing.?

?That was the love of his life,? said Savage. ?She was a gorgeous woman. Just as kind as could be.?

?I was the only person who could walk into the office, in front of all the boys in there who were getting their checks, and bend down and kiss Marian on the cheek. Gene was very protective of her. He?d just look at me and say, ?You big dummy.? He could put your head on your foot for you if he wanted to. It took a lot of get him angry.?

What would get Kiniski hot, says Savage, was a lazy wrestler in the ring.

?Gene was a human dynamo with an adrenaline gland about the size of a turkey. He would go, go, go and want to go some more,? noted Savage.

Savage recalled an angle with Kiniski and Don Leo Jonathan in Seattle many years ago where the two giants battled to a 45-minute draw the first week. The two came back on the next show and went to an hour Broadway.

?People were really angry about that because it was another draw,? says Savage.

?They came back a month later with no time limit, anything goes, no disqualifications, for the title. The Washington state athletic commissioner jumped into the ring at 12:30 and stopped the match because you weren?t supposed to go past 12:30 in the state of Washington for boxing and wrestling matches. That?s when the riot started. They had a terrible time. They had to bring in extra police. Guys were hiding under the ring. Chairs were coming down from the balcony.?

It was just another day at the office for Kiniski. He had that unique ability to draw heat and infuriate fans, along with an extraordinary understanding of ring psychology.

Made for the mat

Kiniski, who hailed from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, worked a realistic style and was extremely quick for a big man. Relentless and intense in the ring, he was regarded as one of the best workers of his era.

?He was stiff and moved in only one direction, forward,? former NWA world champion Jack Brisco, who passed away earlier this year, wrote in his autobiography.

?He was a pretty quick fellow for his size. He could really motor,? said Savage. ?He once tore all the muscles off my shinbone doing a criss-cross while working a six-man tag. He ran across me and his heel caught my shinbone. He came back to the dressing room later and apologized, and he babied me for nearly two weeks. He?d call me at home and check up on me. I kind of enjoyed it.?

Kiniski had learned amateur wrestling at the local YMCA, but started his athletic career playing football, on scholarship at the University of Arizona, and then for a couple of seasons with the Edmonton Eskimos of the Canadian Football League.

It was in Arizona where Kiniski met a local promoter, Rod Fenton, who turned him on to the pro wrestling game.

Kiniski briefly returned to the Eskimos, where two of his teammates were future pro wrestling stars Wilbur Snyder and Joe Blanchard, but called it quits when a knee injury forced him out of football and into wrestling full-time.

It was a golden age in professional wrestling, and the money was good for a top star. And Kiniski became one of the best.

The highly decorated gladiator was inducted into the George Tragos/Lou Thesz Professional Hall of Fame at the International Wrestling Institute in 2004, the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2008, the St. Louis Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2007 and the NWA Hall of Fame in 2009.

Kiniski was a great sportsman and an avid hunter outside the ring. One of his most treasured possessions was a shotgun Savage gave to him many years ago. It was during a tour of Japan that Kiniski had arranged for Savage that he bought the gun.

?Nobody ever got Gene anything for all the things he?d done for them,? said Savage. ?I was having a hard time in my first marriage, and Gene booked me in Japan. It was 1964, and I didn?t know how to get booked over there.?

Kiniski, on the other hand, was considered a legend in Japan where he had made numerous tours.

?He taught Baba how to work. Rikidozan didn?t know squat until Gene taught him some timing,? Savage said of the two legendary Japanese performers.

Savage purchased an over and under 12-guage, 2 3/4-inch Magnum with carved stock. ?I just had to have that gun to get him in appreciation for what he had done for me.?

Savage says he?ll never forget the look on Kiniski?s face when he arrived back in the states and presented his friend with the gift. Savage remembers walking into the arena with what looked like a violin case and thanking Kiniski for his gesture.

?I want to thank you so very much, Gene, for getting me booked in Japan,? Savage told him. ?You helped me out, and my family appreciates you, and I think you know that.?

?Oh, don?t even talk about it, Dutch, you and I are friends, we don?t talk about that kind of stuff,? Kiniski replied.

?Well, I found this on the corner of the plane somewhere, and I wanted to give this to you,? said Savage, presenting the gift to his friend.

?He opened that case and he started crying,? recalls Savage. ?Right there in the dressing room. He had to turn his head. He went into the bathroom by himself. That?s the kind of man Gene Kiniski was.?

Thirty-six years later his friend still remembered. That shotgun, says Savage, was all Kiniski talked about the week before he died.

Savage first met Kiniski in the ?60s while appearing at the Chase Park Plaza Hotel in St. Louis. He recalls working with Dr. Bill Miller. The two had worked a criss-cross, and Savage tripped over his own feet.

?As I came down, Bill had his knee up in the air, and he caught me in the right eye. My eye went purple. It was big as a pear. Bill was just beside himself after the match. Bill also was a big softie. Gene walked over and said, ?You?re Dutch Savage.? I said, ?Yes sir.? He said, ?How would you like to work for me???

Kiniski had just bought into the Vancouver territory, and offered Savage the chance to work there. Savage took him up on the offer, headed to the West Coast and ended up staying there for most of his career.

Savage and Kiniski remained friends for nearly half a century. As the years went by, the delightful ogre?s famous scowl turned into a big grin. A lifelong fitness fanatic, he was still doing 2,000 crunches a day well into his senior years.

But his health had begun to deteriorate over the past decade, and congestive heart failure hospitalized him earlier this year. The cancer returned and spread to his brain.

Kiniski recently asked his friend what his life had been like.

?My life?s been great, Gene, you?ve been in it,? Savage replied. ?You?re one of the few friends I can count on my right hand.?

?You know what a friend is, don?t you,? Savage asked. ?It?s somebody who walks in when somebody else walks out.?

Kiniski chided him for stealing his lines.

?It?s the truth, and that?s what you taught me years ago, and that?s how I feel about you,? Savage told him.

The two never finished the conversation. But they didn?t need to.

?It was an amazing life he had,? says Savage. ?I?ll never forget him.?

-- Six WWE performers were released last week in advance of Monday night?s draft. Released were Shelton Benjamin, Mickie James, Katie Lea Burchill, Jimmy Wang Yang, Kung Funaki and Slam Master J.

-- Old School Championship Wrestling will present a show today at Omar Shrine Auditorium, 176 Patriots Point Road, Mount Pleasant. Bell time is 6 p.m. Former WCW and WWE star ?Psycho? Sid Vicious will meet Hans in the main event. Semifinal will pit Big Hoss against Asylum. Adult admission (cash) $10; kids 12 and under $5. For more information, visit www.oscwonline.com or call 743-4800.

-- George?s Sports Bar, 1300 Savannah Highway, will air WWE?s Extreme Rules pay-per-view at 8 p.m. today. Cover charge is $5.

Tags: NWA, AWA, Dutch Savage, Lou Thesz, Verne Gagne, Ric Flair, Harley Race, Dory Funk, Jr., Jack Brisco, Joe Blanchard, WCW, WWE