Windsor wrestling ‘opus’ has a heck of a lot of Detroit too
When one thinks of professional wrestling hotbeds, cities with long historical ties such as New York, Charlotte, Dallas, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Chicago, Memphis, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Detroit all come to mind.
Located across from Detroit and on the Canadian side lies the city of Windsor, Ontario, which thanks to its proximity to Detroit has enjoyed a rather long history with the all things wrestling; as well as being the hometown for such icons in the business as WWE Hall of Famers Walter “Killer” Kowalski and Abdullah the Butcher, and the filming home for promotions, including The Sheik’s Big Time Wrestling and George Cannon’s Superstars of Wrestling.
Windsor and its wrestling history is the subject of Jamie Scott Greer’s newly-released opus Killers, Butchers, Cry-Babys & Canadian Destroyers: The History of Pro Wrestling in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Weighing in at over 600 pages, it is safe to say that this is the most complete tome ever published on the history of professional wrestling in Windsor.
But is it something that’s going to appeal to a wide reading audience?
Probably not.
Not surprisingly, the author is from Windsor and has a long cultural history with his hometown, so this book was clearly a labor of love. And while one can’t help but marvel at the amount of work and research that went into this brick of a book, when I read this, I couldn’t help but feel that a similar book on say Toronto, Montreal, and Calgary (just to name the three most prominent Canadian wrestling hotbeds, in my opinion) or the aforementioned American wrestling meccas would probably have held my interest more.
As it stands, there is obviously a lot of cross pollination in this book with the goings on in Detroit wrestling. Having just recently read Brian R. Solomon’s superb Blood and Fire: The Unbelievable Real-Life Story of Wrestling’s Original Sheik I couldn’t help but feel that a lot of the Detroit “stuff” had been covered there already. At the same time, one sympathizes with the author in trying to tell the “independent” story of Windsor wrestling when right beside it is one of the most famous/infamous of all wrestling cities, especially in the days when The Sheik ran the show.
So what are we left with?
Well, if you grew up in Windsor and spent time experiencing the local wrestling scene, then this book is clearly in your wheelhouse.
If you are a keen wrestling historian, you will happy to see a number of talents that have been perhaps relegated to the memories of those that saw them receive some much belated recognition, including largely forgotten names like Sandy Parker (first black female claimant to a world title), local wrestlers like Art Neilson and Stan Holek (Stan Lisowski/Stan Neilson) who would team up as fictional Neilson Brothers and capture a version of AWA tag titles, and Cowboy Frankie Laine, who headlined shows all over California in the 1970s before moving on to Calgary, Detroit, Toronto, and Puerto Rico over the course of a two-decade career.
To see a host of wrestlers who have been forgotten by the passage of time finally receive their due is the main reason for the aficionado to add this to their personal wrestling library, although they may be best advised to put on the bottom shelf of their bookcase, especially if the top shelf isn’t well secured.
Now, about a similar book that covers the long and storied history of professional wrestling in Toronto … hmm.
