Mat Matters: Me, Kurt and The Colonel

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story contains profanity and adult stories.

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It’s a photo that cannot be reproduced here, and still gives my wife trauma.

Back in the day when you had to send your film out to be processed, it came back and … oh my God, it’s a naked Colonel!

He was standing beside a three-coil steamer in the tiny bathroom of the dive motel we were staying in near the Riviera Hotel, home of that year’s Cauliflower Alley Club reunion.

Yep, who else in the world has a photo of Ed Wiskoski in his birthday suit standing beside a giant shit in the toilet? Only this guy.

And it’s best it stays that way.

But that speaks to the kind of guy that the Colonel was.

A hoot. A nut. A guy who had zero fucks to give and even less of a filter. (And I will be respecting the Colonel and not taking out the swearing — you have been warned.)

When Kurt Nielsen took the photo, pre-selfie days, kiddos, he recalled Ed saying, “Isn’t it a peach?”

I can’t think of Ed Wiskoski, who died on January 22, without Kurt Nielsen.

There was a time, before social media, where the message boards were a true place for wrestling fans to gather … and for some wrestlers to shit-post. Buddy Rose was a notorious dick on the boards, and often created other aliases to stir up more shit. Easy Ed was one of Buddy’s best friends, even if Buddy often drove Ed nuts, especially when it came to drug use. Wiskoski was on the boards, but not in the same capacity as Playboy.

On the WrestlingClassics news board, there was a thread about an upcoming Cauliflower Alley Club reunion in 2003, and I had posted about looking for a roommate to save some money. Little did I know that I’d make a best friend and get to know The Colonel.

It was an unorthodox trio. Kurt knew Ed since he had befriended Buddy Rose and created a website for Playboy; Kurt had also done a bit of wrestling training with Roland Alexander but never went anywhere. Though it wasn’t discussed initially, Kurt was also a closeted gay guy, something I didn’t learn for a few years — not that that mattered to me and Kurt never told Ed.

The Colonel was always funny, always honest, and always shocking.

I was pretty straightlaced compared to those two, who I had never even met before moving in with them for a few days.

But the room sharing worked, with Kurt taking the floor. He lived in Los Angeles, so he would drive him to Vegas (and I did the drive a couple of times with him), stocked with cheap liquor and snacks so we wouldn’t have to spend a ton of time hunting for drinks and food.

Alcohol was involved. At one CAC banquet, The Colonel passed out. In a subsequent email to me, he noted, “Hope I can pace myself to make it through the banquet.”

It might have been at that banquet or another were the term “Geigeling” was coined, based on the non-stop flatulence from the elderly former Kansas City promoter that permeated the next table over, where Kurt and Colonel were sitting.

Another year, we let Alex Cools into the room as a fourth to save a few bucks, which changed the vibe, but other memories were created, like trying to figure out Alex’s truly odd accent as he was a guy from the southern U.S. who lived in Belgium.

The Colonel had some health issues. He missed the 2006 CAC as his blood pressure was off the charts and was sent to the emergency room. Those stories / excuses would only compound through the years. It got to the point that Kurt and I decided we had to take action.

We told the Colonel we were flying to Phoenix, picking him up, and bringing him to CAC, whether he wanted to go or not. We met in Phoenix, and, perhaps more importantly, met his long-time companion, Suzzanne; it was fascinating to see how different Ed was when she was around. They lived in a little gated community just off a golf course outside of Phoenix, the kind of place where just about everyone had a golf cart to get around. Kurt and I bunked at a place down the street where neighbors were out of town, and enjoyed a lovely half-day just hanging out in the pool, before the morning departure for Vegas.

Those trips, man, wow. Ed told story after story after story. Most were even true. Who else tells you, “[Redacted] love hairy pussy”?

As I went through my files, there are some stories that are too good not to share, but too vile to list the names. That okay? Tough shit if it isn’t.

• Unnamed woman wrestler: “The reason she got in the business is that she was under 17 and [redacted] was fucking her. I think she just kind of blackmailed him.”
• On a former world champion who was near death: “You don’t think the steroid use caught up with him, do you? I only seen his cock and balls one time and they were minute. It was kind of like the joke of the locker room. He wouldn’t walk around naked. He had that towel, man.”
• Placidyls were the drug of choice for [redacted]: “One time he said to me, ‘Goddamn, I’ve got to quit these things. I pissed the bed the other night and I didn’t even know it.'”
• An unnamed heel: “We had the same arena rat, this big nurse named Sally. She made more than the wrestlers. She was a cardiac care nurse … I think he almost left his wife over her, to tell you the truth … I remember she had big tits.”
• An unnamed big guy: “Stinking motherfucker … He didn’t wear deodorant. He’d take that fucking cologne and slap it on, he’d even put it under his armpits.”

There have been plenty of on-the-record quotes from Easy Ed on SlamWrestling.net and in my books through the years too. I loved the line that Sonny Myers was a “bandido from the word go” for one.

I’ve never used this, but talk about descriptive. Gust Karras was the local promoter who broke Ed in, therefore Wiskoski spent a lot of time with him. “He used to smoke cigars, and goddamn, you’d come home after going up to Cedar Rapids or Waterloo, 300- or 325-mile trips, and god, you couldn’t breathe. Your throat was sore because he was constantly smoking cigars and drinking beer.”

At the CAC in 2005, he saw Don Fargo for the first time in a long time. He went up to Fargo, a man of many names, and said, “The last time I’d seen you, you’d come to the television station with a shotgun, wanting to kill somebody.” Naturally, Ed told more later: “Basically, what happened was everybody had walked out on Leroy McGuirk — me, Eddie Gilbert, Ricky Morton, Jerry Brown. Leroy’s wife was stealing from Leroy and stealing from the boys. Finally, everything came to a head, and all the boys walked out of Oklahoma City on a sell-out house. ‘Fuck this guy, fuck her, fuck that.’ She called Amarillo for replacements, and of course, Fargo was working down there with Ede Kozak, I believe. She had terminal cancer at the time, and was playing that sympathy role. I just said, ‘I’m not going to Amarillo from here. Too fucking far for me to drive from Tulsa.’ All those guys drove all night to get in to do the television, because Oklahoma City ran on a Friday night, and Saturday morning was television. Fargo came in loaded with all his weapons. He goofy enough that you didn’t know what he was going to do. He had one of his partners in Florida that he left him out to die when they were doing the Hell’s Angels thing. The idea preceded him that nobody wanted to test him or anything like that.”

Wiskoski had asked Fargo about his memory, and Ed recalled Don: “He said, ‘Them sons-of-bitches told us you guys were threatening Leroy and were going to kill him.’ I said, ‘Oh fuck.’ Leroy was the one threatening us. Leroy got into his drawer when Jerry Brown started screaming. He grabbed a gun. ‘Hey, I’m a blind man’ — Wikky, that was the guy in the office — ‘just aim the trigger. You won’t get in no trouble. Just aim it for me.’ Of course, he was blind. Jerry was drunk, and he said, ‘Shoot me you old son of a bitch.'”

This one is just funny, no firearms. When he was based in the Pacific Northwest, Ed would attend the annual reunions held by former Seattle promoter Dean Silverstone. Ed ran into Dean Higuchi / Dean Ho at one of the gatherings. “I said, ‘Fuji!’ Oh, that pissed him off. ‘Goddamnit, I’m not Fuji!’ I said, ‘Well, who are you then? You look like Fuji.’ He said, ‘I’m Dean Ho!’ I laughed. ‘I know who you are, Dean. Jesus Christ, we worked a lot together.’ ‘Oh, you son of a bitch.'”

Most of my file on him is full of stories about other people, rather than himself.

When we found quiet time together, I tried to learn more about the actual Ed, not the nonstop storytelling Colonel. We talked about kids, and he had some regret with the way he was distanced from his two from his first marriage. On another call, he said, “I don’t see them too often. It’s not that we’re estranged or anything, it’s just they’ve got their lives, and here, I’m sitting on my ass in Arizona.”

I’d send him an email here and there, call him on occasion; in retrospect, I never called enough, and now he’s gone.

I think Easy Ed liked me because I listened and asked follow-up questions, and I showed both respect for the wrestling business and didn’t go off tattling after hearing stories, like the “Pussy Palace.”

On one conversation, he considered his early days, and how the oldtimers looked at getting advice.

“When I broke into the business, if you listened, they would help you. If you didn’t listen, fuck ya,” Wiskoski said. “That’s the way it worked. Somebody would give you a little advice, and you’d take it. They’d watch you again and if you didn’t make the same mistake, they’d point out another thing.”

It was always a pleasure — and a laugh — listening to Ed.

He was very comfortable with his legacy, and never overplayed it. Naturally, the Colonel gets the last word:

“I had moderate success. I ain’t no fucking Hulk Hogan. So take it for what it’s worth.”

TOP PHOTO: Kurt Nielsen, Greg Oliver and Ed Wiskoski at the 2004 Cauliflower Alley Club reunion.

ED WISKOSKI STORIES

• Jan. 26, 2025: ‘Colonel DeBeers’ Ed Wiskoski dead at 80
• July 12, 2009: Tales of Buddy Rose, courtesy Easy Ed Wiskoski
• Apr 17, 2004: Guest column: Col. DeBeers: It’s an honor to be honored