Now Rogers may be the only man in the history of any sport to become a World Champion by losing a World Title, but that’s just what he did. McMahon, Sr., like his son, was a fan of the flashier wrestlers, even if they possessed a lower quality of mat skills, so he would probably have favored Rogers over Thesz as champion anyway. Another account on this website says Rogers won the World Title at a later date in a tournament in Rio de Janeiro. This would certainly have been a phantom world title tournament. A WWF calendar I own from 1983 has several important dates on it has the tournament listed as taking place on the date of the Thesz match, proving that wrestling history tends to rewrite itself.

Anyway, McMahon and the promoters who followed him out of the NWA did not feel Rogers was long for the World Title either. He had held the title for about three years prior to the split, and they probably felt he was getting stale. They needed a new face to carry the organization. Enter Bruno Sammartino. Bruno was young and charismatic, but compared to other wrestlers of his day, his mat skills were less than average (compared to other wrestlers of today, they would be considered excellent, but you just don’t see "wrestling" in wrestling anymore. But that’s another tirade for another time and place). Sammartino had only been wrestling for about four years before winning this company’s gold. He was still considered somewhat green, but he was still their choice.

Now they needed to carry out their final plan. They first chose to have the big match in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Maybe this was supposed to be a test run to see how Bruno would be received, or maybe they just felt it didn’t take on the first try, but for whatever reason, they negated the title change in Toronto, and said it didn’t count because Rogers was injured. They scheduled another match again in New York’s Madison Square Garden. The site was chosen because it would be the new organization’s stronghold arena. The arena already had a long history in the wrestling game, having already seen World Titles changes involving wrestlers such as Ed "Strangler" Lewis, Joe Stetcher, Dick Shikat and Stanislaus Zbyszco.

The time and place was set. The match was scheduled for one fall, even though the WWWF refused to recognize Thesz’s win because it was one fall, not best of three, so the split was definitely contrived. They had already failed to drive home the title change once, so everything was riding on this match. Then tragedy struck.

"Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers called the WWWF’s offices about three weeks before the big match to tell the promoters he suffered what he called a "mild" heart attack. But he told them not to worry, because he was still planning to be in New York for the big match. When the day of the match came, it turned out Rogers’ condition was far worse than he was letting on. He showed up that night in a wheel chair. Now keep in mind that this was not an angle where the heel shows up in bandages to try to get out of the match. Roger’s condition was kept a secret to the fans, because the promoters were afraid they would have to cancel the show and reschedule the already postponed title change to another date yet again. Such an occurrence would probably have been tragic to the already fledgling promotion. But Rogers knew what this match meant to the promoters and promised he would go on no matter his condition. As the night wore on, the promoters grew more and more worrisome because Rogers never left his wheel chair. On top of that, he was said to have looked "out of it." The preliminary matches were going on as nobody knew if the scheduled main event would take place or not. Since Rogers promised to go on no matter what, there was no backup plan. If he could stand up out of his wheel chair and make it to the ring they would have to tell 20,000 plus wrestling fans there was no main event tonight.

According to reports, the only time Rogers got out of the wheel chair that night was when he rose to walk to the ring for his match. But he was still to have looked out of it. Sammartino knew he had to be gentle with him that night, so Rogers took the dive and found himself in the bear-hug and submitted in just 48 seconds. The promoters wondered what the response would be for such a short match, especially when fans were used to hour-long World Title matches at the time, but the response was unbelievable. Nobody could believe a relative nobody like Bruno could defeat the already legendary Rogers so easily, and Bruno became an overnight success. Now Rogers deserves an awful lot of credit just for showing up that night, and putting over Bruno.

Unfortunately, this marked the beginning of the end for Rogers, who received very few rematches with the new champ. Mostly they met in tag matches so Rogers could stand on the apron and not work too hard. Rogers went into semi-retirement, and was never the same since. Despite my attempt to create drama over this behind-the-scenes piece of wrestling history, I should also point out that other reports have the heart attack incident taking place at the Toronto show, and the rematch was rescheduled for MSG in New York. The MSG match still took 48 seconds because the worrisome match in Toronto turned out to be success. Which scenario is correct? The world may never know.

I’ll look at the WWWF’s return to the NWA, and cover both of Bruno Sammartino’s title reigns, but hold onto your hat because I’ll be running through it at breakneck speeds.