Al Fridell was an overlooked shooter

In the historian community, names come up for discussion here and there, often decidedly not the main eventers. The undercard wrestlers, the homesteaders, are the backbone of the business.

Seattle, Washington’s Al Fridell was one oldtimer that arose recently, and the guess was that he would be about 98 or 99 years of age.

Except the wrestling world had missed his death back on September 6, 2016.

Fortunately, he talked to SlamWrestling.net on a few occasions, so his story is not lost to time.

At least not now.

Alfred K. Fridell was born on September 21, 1926 in Chicago, one of five brothers. Of note, his family lived in Seattle, and Fridell happened to come along when they were in Chicago visiting an uncle.

His brother worked for Boeing, the massive aircraft manufacturer, which was about to become a lot busier as World War II started.

Al and his brothers all attended James A. Garfield High School, and were competitive in many sports.

Though the war was winding down when Fridell was of age, he still signed up, joining the Army Air Corps. Within a year, he had been made a top turret gunner and flight engineer on North American B-25 Mitchell planes.

Though he didn’t see any action, he served as a part of the US occupation of Japan.

Of note, during his time in the service, Fridell competed as a light-heavyweight boxer, and met Leo Stern, who was a competitive bodybuilder; it was Stern that set the stage for Fridell’s next career.

Returning to Seattle in 1949, he met his wife, Patricia, whom he married within six months. They would have two sons, Jeff and Steven.

Fridell opened a gym in the north end of Seattle.

“I had a gym in Seattle called the Century Athletic Club. The wrestlers used to come up and work out, the Masked Marvel and some of the other guys came around,” Fridell told this writer in 2004. The wrestlers saw something in him. “One day they asked me, ‘Why don’t you get in the ring and work out with us?’ So I did that. Then later on, a little more. ‘Why don’t you start wrestling?’ So I started…”

In Whatever Happened to … ? issue #8, Fridell told Scott Teal that Al Watkins was someone he knew through the gym and he started going to the matches with him, and Watkins later became a pro wrestler too. Other regulars at the gym included Eric Pederson and Buddy Knox — who worked under a hood as the Masked Marvel (a gimmick Fridell himself would use a little bit, and he was also the Black Knight and Al Beal). Fridell would workout with whomever came into the gym, including Lou Thesz and Pepper Gomez.

His first pro match was in Tacoma, Washington, in 1951, against Dano McDonald (“he was a great guy, I really liked him”), who had started out in Hamilton, Ontario, but later settled in the Pacific Northwest.

According to a post on the Retired Seattle Police Officers’ Association website — we’ll get to that career in a moment — Fridell “not only worked out in his gym, but on the side, he moved furniture to supplement the family income because he now had two growing sons. A couple of local professional wrestlers started to come to the gym. They noticed Al was big and coordinated, so they introduced him to the profession. Al was good. He got to meet many of the old pros like Gorgeous George, Leo ‘Battler’ Garibaldi, Bronko ‘The Horse’ Nagurski, and Pepper Gomez. Al lost all his front teeth during a match when an opponent face-planted him into the ring’s turnbuckle. He began to travel throughout the West Coast as the Masked Marvel.”

Left out of much of the story is Fridell’s time on the carnival circuit, where he took on all comers; that meant he had to have a solid shooting footing, able to bend but not break to snuff out the determination of fired-up locals. That reputation as a shooter continued into his time in the pros, and historians suspect that is partly why he never got a major push — promoters were perhaps a tad worried that they couldn’t trust him not to have his way.

“He was around during the carnival. Yeah, Al could handle himself okay,” said Don Leo Jonathan in 2011, adding that Fridell was “such a nice guy.”

Pacific Northwest historian Mike Rodgers admitted I also don’t know much about Fridell’s career. “I looked and he has a little over 100 recorded matches in a 12-year career,” noted Rodgers, referring to results he has collected through the years. The carnival bouts, on the periphery of the wrestling business, were never recorded.

A newspaper story previewing a bout in March 1955, in Olympia, Washington, hints at as much. “Al Fridell, who meets Frank Hurley in the two best of three falls semi-windup, started his wrestling career as an amateur in high school in Seattle and continued on to win several AAU championships before turning professional about six years ago. Tall and powerful, Fridell is one of the smoothest and slipperiest men in the game today and, while doesn’t believe in always turning the other cheek to a roughhouse opponent, prefers science over slugging and has tied many a rowdy in knots who tried the latter style.”

Other newspaper stories note that he attended the University of Washington, but this appears to be ballyhoo.

Early exposure on the Seattle wrestling TV show promoted by Harry Elliott, who lived to be 101. Fridell contributed to Elliott’s obituary at SlamWrestling,net, his thoughts detailing his own career.

“Harry was always a fair guy. I liked him. He was upfront when he talked to you. There wasn’t nothing that he’d try to slip behind you. When he told you that you were going to be working, you worked. He paid reasonably. He gave you enough money that it was worth your while. In other places you went,” said Fridell, starting to laugh, “when I first started wrestling, it was terrible; you had a match and you might get $15 and you’d be 20 minutes to a half hour getting the hell beat out of you. It wasn’t much money.”

The TV show helped. “I was on there a few times. I was a young man when I first started. You didn’t get on the main events, you got on the primaries, the small opening shots where you’d be 20 minutes to a half hour,” said Fridell. “That’s where I got the chance to get a little exposure.”

The 6-foot-3, 240-pound Fridell was nothing if not modest, and claimed that nothing really stood out from his career: “[I] worked out hard, always took good care of myself. That’s about it. I wrestled when they needed me. Usually the guys on the circuit, they went all over, but we had to stay here because of our jobs. And I didn’t want to throw my job away at that time.”

Villainy didn’t suit Fridell. “I was always a straight, clean guy,” he said.

In 1956, after almost five years a full-time pro wrestler, he broke both elbows on a fall out of the ring.

At that point, he joined the Seattle Police Department, along with his younger brother, Stan, both hired on December 17, 1956. For the first five years of his new career, Fridell worked the Wallingford Precinct, and tried to wrestle on the side.

“I wrestled 12 years and the city of Seattle came out with a ruling that there were no professional athletics involved if you were a policeman. That’s understandable, because if you were off and something happened, they’d have to cover you under the pension,” said Fridell. “So I dropped my wrestling. For a while I wore a mask after that, but it wasn’t long. I only did it for about three weeks. After that, I said it’s not worth my career.”

There’s a story in Fridell’s obituary on the Retired Seattle Police Officers’ Association website that was all wet:

In 1961, “Gorgeous George” was wrestling “The Battler Garibaldi” at the Aqua Theater at Green Lake (by the Shell House) for the first floating mat match. The Battler threw Gorgeous over the ropes, into the lake. Gorgeous could not swim, so Al had to “rescue” George. This made the local and national sports news. The Department was not pleased with the notoriety, so Al was transferred to the Seattle Center for the World’s Fair. There, he met all kinds of famous entertainers. He was Elvis’s body guard, and also worked security for The Stones, Beatles, and other groups. This did not hurt his wrestling jobs. In fact, it helped him get a few movie spots as an extra. The movies included McQ with John Wayne, It Happened One Night at the World’s Fair with Elvis, and 99 and 44/100% Dead! with Richard Harris. Frank Sinatra encouraged Al to do a casting call in Hollywood for one of Frank’s movies.

There were many roles for Fridell with the Seattle PD. He learned to fly a helicopter and was a diver. “It was dangerous at times. I flew the police helicopter and I had some real wild and wooly tales up in the hills, picking them up when the weather was real bad,” Fridell said.

He walked the beat and was a detective for a year. In 1978, he was made the Communications Lieutenant; again, the Retired Seattle Police Officers’ Association comes through with a great story:

To celebrate his promotion, he went to a Thunderbirds hockey game in the Seattle Center Coliseum. The security crew was having trouble with five young drunk men. They asked Al and another policeman to sit next to the five trouble-makers. During the match, the five guys started throwing beer and causing a disturbance. Then, one police officer asked them to knock it off, so they punched him, knocking him over the seats. This is when Al stepped in. He knocked out two of the trouble-makers and slapped a third. The remaining sat down and behaved the rest of the match. So, it was just like the old saying “Al went to the fights and a hockey game broke out.”

Al Fridell

In 1980, Fridell started working with the 911 line, as Director of Communications. That was his last job with the Seattle PD, and he retired after 27 years. For the next couple of years, he was the Assistant Chief of Police with the Tacoma Police Department. There was a wrestling tie-in to his wrestling career too. Frank Stojack was an established wrestler locally who went into policing too, and was the Sheriff of Pierce County, near Tacoma, when Fridell worked there. They knew each other through both gigs.

After getting out of policing completely in 1990, Fridell went back to personal training, and always kept in tip-top shape. He also flew helicopters commercially. Al and Patricia liked to travel, and she was a painter; on one trip, they headed to Kenya so she could depict the African wildlife.

Fridell was a regular at Dean Silverstone‘s Pacific Northwest wrestling reunions, just outside Seattle. Jonathan recalled one of them. “A few years ago, there were 40 of us there, and the only one that wasn’t hurt there was Al, and he had a sore elbow! Al was one of the oldest and the one with the least amount of damage.”

In Fridell’s obituary after his death on September 6, 2016, it was noted that he was “bigger than life.” It was quite the life. Talking to SlamWrestling just before his 80th birthday, he cracked, “When you look back down the road, my God, how did I get this old this quick?”

Fridell was survived by his wife, Patricia Fridell; sons Jeff Fridell and Steven Fridell; three grandchildren and a brother, Michael Fridell.