As the late great Gorilla Monsoon used to refer to it as “the Mecca of professional wrestling” the Maple Leaf Gardens have seen them all and seen it all. Yes just about all the Gardens can tell a story. From the Louisville Gardens in Louisville, Kentucky which saw greats such as the Mongolian Stomper, “Dirty” Dick Slater and many others, Madison Square Garden in New York City seeing Hulk Hogan defeat the Iron Sheik for the WWF Championship, Jimmy Snuka making the infamous leap of the steel cage onto “The Magnificent” Don Muracho, but it was truly the Maple Leaf Garden fans that can say they’ve seen it all. Since the very first match at the Garden in 1931 to the final event on September 17, 1995 (this event was just the final wrestling card at MLG as the arena would close in 1999 after the 98-99 NHL season). Every major promotion’s world champion has fought in the Garden from the AWA, NWA and W/WWF.  

I think before we get onto the official history of wrestling at Maple Leaf Gardens we should first take into count the arena’s history. For the 68 years that MLG was around it played host to countless hockey games, concerts, and pro wrestling events. In fact the first event at the Maple Leaf Gardens was a hockey game featuring the Toronto Maple Leafs, but the second event was a pro wrestling event. For 64 years on the third Sunday of every month unless it was a religious holiday (i.e. Christmas, Easter) Frank Tunney and then nephew Jack would run wrestling cards, sometimes featuring Terry Funk defending the NWA World Heavyweight Championship against say Harley Race, Nick Bokwinkle defending the AWA World Championship against Verne Gange and WWF Champion Bob Backlund defending the strap against Greg “the Hammer” Valentine, sometimes you would get all that on one card!  

Obviously with just about every promotion sending their world champion to fight in Toronto one would believe that the fans of Toronto saw many title changes take place at Maple Leaf Gardens. Actually it’s quite the contrary. Very few world title changes took place at Maple Leaf Gardens in it’s 64 year wrestling history. The first title change to take place in Maple Leaf Gardens happened on March 16, 1956 when Whipper Billy Watson defeated the late great Lou Thesz ending Thesz’s near 7 year reign. Thesz again lost the NWA World Heavyweight Championship again at the Maple Leaf Garden on November 14, 1957 Thesz lost the strap to Dick Hutton. Finaly lady luck appeared to be on the side of Lou Thesz in Toronto when on January 24, 1963 Lou defeated world champion Buddy Rogers. Thesz would hold onto the title for 3 more years in which he would then lose it to a great Canadian grappler Gene Kininski in St. Louis, Missouri. However of the few title changes that took place in the Maple Leaf Gardens none is more famous then on February, 6, 1977 Harley Race defeated Terry Funk for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship.  

In 1983 Frank Tunney passed away. The originator of wrestling in Toronto and the Maple Leaf Garden in general left the wrestling rights to his nephew Jack Tunney, which would prove to change the Toronto wrestling scene forever. In 1984 Jack joined forces with Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation and thus the WWF was the only company to promote wrestling in Toronto until 1995. The WWF began promoting events at the Maple Leaf Gardens every month, and on April 1^st 1990 Jack Tunney and Vince McMahon set the stage for WrestleMania VI the very first wrestling event at the brand new Toronto SkyDome. The event set a one day attendance record for the SkyDome of 68,287. Indeed Jack Tunney helped launch the WWF(E) to the superstar status that it is today. In 1995 Jack Tunney left the World Wrestling Federation an it would be another two years until pro wrestling returned to Toronto since Jack owned all promotional rights to the territory.  Sadly on January 24, 2004 Jack Tunney passed away at the age of 68 at a Toronto hospital after a sudden illness. His death hit the fans of Toronto hard because they knew that without him and his family that pro wrestling would not be as big in Canada as it is today. 

NEXT MONTH:

A tribute to the beloved heroes and hated villains of the Toronto territory. The Toronto territory was a hot bed for professional wrestling from the 1930’s right up until today.