Waldo was tough and completely controlled the match.  He pummeled DeFazio all over the ring.  Jumping Johnny got a few moves in, a drop kick a failed sunset flip attempt.  Eventually, Waldo tossed him out of the ring and he could not beat the ten count.  Waldo won but was unable to pin our hero.  Next up was the main event, the World Champion Bruno Sammartino & The Battman (complete with Bat belt and full costume) against the hated villains Professor Toru Tanaka and The Russian Bear, Ivan Koloff.  I had to admit at this time Ivan Koloff was probably my favorite wrestler, being part Russian myself (well Slovak any way), I always cheered for him on TV.  But Bruno was also my favorite.  We ran down to ringside to try to get autographs.  Battman was passing out little plastic Bat rings to the kids.  Unlike in the opening match, there were 100’s of kids trying for autographs.  We were too small (I was 8, Joey was 7) and we were nowhere close to getting a Bat ring or an autograph. 

The match start was delayed as Prof. Tanaka did his pre-match ritual tossing salt in all four corners of the ring, to ward off evil spirits my dad told us.  When he was done he stuck the leftover salt into his tights.  Koloff and Tanaka were brutal.  They pummeled Battman all over the place.  The crowd booed.  As long as Ivan Koloff was doing the beating I didn’t mind.  It was a 2 out of 3 fall match according to the newspaper but I don’t recall who won or how they won the first 2 falls.  The Referee Izzy Model would never let Bruno in the ring.  Several times Battman tagged him in but Izzy missed the tag and forced Bruno to the corner.  Finally Bruno got in and cleaned house.  He knocked both the bad guys all over the place Tanaka reached in his tights and pulled out that salt and tried to throw it into Bruno’s eyes.  Fortunately for Bruno, the ref Izzy Model stepped in front of him and took the salt to his eyes.  At 10:25 in the third fall, the ref disqualified Tanaka & Koloff and warded the match to Bruno & The Battman.  Joey and me were happy (well, I felt bad for Ivan) we talked about the show for weeks afterwards.  They announced as we were leaving that the next month Bruno Sammartino would return to face his nemesis, Killer Kowalski, also the Battman would return to face Ivan Koloff, plus the aforementioned ladies tag match.    The next day’s paper (which I recently looked up at the library) stated that the crowd was 2917.  We could hardly wait for next month.  

NEXT MONTH:

The final days of this area and its change to Super Pro Wrestling.