Last month I talked about what the word “champion” means in pro wrestling circles, and there I said the man who, to me at least, best personifies the word “champion” is Bob Backlund.  However, I may have left out another very important person, Bruno Sammartino.  That’s because Bruno goes beyond the term champion and enters into the world of being a “legend.”  It’s sort of sad that everyone and their brother seems to be able to tack on this word to their names now, but I don’t think anyone personifies this term better than Bruno, and this month I’m going to cover his last several years as an active performer.

To start, Bruno was on top for an awful long time, even for the 1960s and ‘70s, which lends credence to him being called a true legend in this sport.  And I would venture to say he would have been champion a lot longer had one simple mishap not happened in 1977.  Bruno, now well into his second long reign as WWWF Champion met on this night another big man with a lot of power and youth on his side, named Stan “The Lariat” Hansen.  They were working a usual title defense when something went terribly wrong.  Hansen sent Sammartino to the turnbuckle and followed it up with a powerslam, but he botched the move and broke the legendary champion’s neck.

I don’t think anyone could outright blame Hansen for the move, since he was just a young green wrestler at the time, and word has it he did feel terrible after the incident.  On TV they blamed the incident on Hansen’s power saying he sent Sammartino into the buckle with such force, it snapped Bruno’s neck, breaking it.  This was a surefire way of getting Hansen over as a monster heel, and setting up many lucrative rematches.  However, for Bruno it was the beginning of the end of a tremendous career.

It’s no coincidence that shortly after the incident Bruno dropped the strap to another young up and comer named “Superstar” Billy Graham, and the rematches there proved just as lucrative.  They had steel cage matches, no rules matches, matches with special referees, and so on, but Bruno could not rest the title from Graham’s hands.  However, Bruno had nothing left to prove since he had done it all over his nearly 15 years of being on top in the WWWF, with almost 12 of those years holding the company’s top title.  He needed to slow down, and the neck injury was as good an excuse as any.  There was only one thing left for a legend of his stature to add that exclamation point to the end of a great career: a last hurrah.  Enter Larry Zbysko.   More...