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Tony Nardo 1965-2016

Posted: Feb 17th 2016 By: Mick Foley

Tony Nardo. It may not have been a household name, but he was a big part of my formative years in professional wrestling. Tony passed away on February 10th of a heart attack ? way too young at 51.

Over the past week, I have been thinking about some of the times I spent with Tony - at Dominec DeNucci's wrestling school, the early independents in Ohio and West Virginia, the 1986 squash matches for WWE and as a fixture on some of those overseas trips I will never forget: Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Italy, Equador and the West Indies.

He was in the ring as Eric the Red Jr in Nigeria, facing the great Power Uti, the night I was bludgeoned by fans. I was only 22, and a few months removed from college, and had no idea that Nigerian fans hadn't gotten the memo on the entertainment aspect a professional wrestling. As a result, they took my act of handing Tony a huge cow's bone to use on the Nigerian champion very seriously, and let their displeasure be known by beating me bloody with steel chairs. It was only after being rescued by several of the local wrestlers and being stitched up at a chemist's office with a dirt floor (I was told we could not trust the hospitals) that I was returned to my hotel, and over a Chinese dinner with Tony Nardo, made a keen observation: "I need to write a book!" Within a day or so of that dinner, we were told by the promoter that we could no longer eat at the Chinese restaurant, because it cost too much money. So I went home with 11 stitches and $180 for my two weeks of work 5,000 miles from home.

I was very nearly Tony's long-term tag-team partner, after being asked by DeNucci if I would bleach my hair and beard and become a Moondog - with the assurance that I would be far more likely to be booked as a Moondog than as Cactus Jack. It was only through my friend Troy Martin's (Shane Douglas) insistence that we would look ridiculous as a tag-team that DeNucci finally relented, and Cactus Jack lived on. Tony was about 5'9 and a barrel-chested 260, whereas I was then a legit 6'4, and a not-so-barrel-chested 235. In retrospect, I'm very fortunate that Troy was so insistent, as Tony and I would have looked like Abbott and Costello out there. But I think we would have made quite a team nonetheless.

As I write this, I'm thinking about the eve of our first trip for WWE. I'd had all of one match ? a classic contest with Kurt Kaufman - and in two days time, I would receive a very rude awakening from the Dynamite Kid. But on the night before our trip, with our whole careers and lives before us, Tony and I were envisioning and acting out the stardom that would surely find us in our futures - going up for slams, and throwing big haymakers in the little apartment I was subletting for the summer at the University of Pittsburgh.

Tony Nardo may not have become a household name - but he was a hard worker, a quick learner, and a good worker who plied his trade on four different continents.

He was a Dominic DeNucci student, a proud West Virginian, a father, a husband and a friend. RIP.