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Nutley looks back at 60 years of pro and high school wrestling

Posted: May 27th 2017 By: Northjersey.com

World Wrestling Federation’s Chief Jay Strongbow was an Italian-American who hailed from Nutley.

During his career, Joseph Luke Scarpa was called the Rebel and Joltin’ Joe Scarpa, but he was best known as the professional tag-team wrestler Chief Jay Strongbow.

Sal Scarpa recently talked about his late brother’s career at a Nutley Museum program. The event gave accounts of Nutley’s ties to professional wrestling, along with the
history of Nutley High School wrestling.

Among the Chief’s memorabilia on display were a tag-team championship belt, headdress, tomahawk and action figure. The model wrestling ring, which was the table centerpiece at
his WWF Hall of Fame induction in 1994, was also featured.

The wrestler was inducted into the Nutley Hall of Fame in 2013, a year after his death.

Called Luke by his family, Scarpa graduated from NHS in 1951, his brother said.

“He was always strong,” Sal said. “He used to rip a phone book like it was a piece of paper.”

For a promotion, Scarpa was asked to tear apart a rubber basketball to prove Wilson’s leather basketball was better. When he did, a wrestling agent took notice.

His first match was a tag-team event on Jan. 7, 1956, at the then-Laurel Garden sports arena in Newark, noted Sal. “He wrestled 118 times in the Garden, more than any other
wrestler,” his brother recalled.

Early in Scarpa’s career, when offered 10 cents on the dollar, he opted to get paid a straight fee for matches, Sal said. “He always regretted it because he would have been on
'high street' had he taken a percentage, but that’s the way things go.”

Fellow wrestler Gorilla Monsoon helped Scarpa come up with the Native-American ring persona, which would have prompted some PC pushback these days.

Chief Jay Strongbow competed in Vincent McMahon’s WWF in the 1970s and 1980s. He wrestled off and on until 1999, his brother said. Out of the ring, he served as a wrestling
agent the following 10 years, before retiring.