This past weekend, on Saturday, February 22nd, there was a Portland Wrestling Expo. It featured some of the top names of the past including: The Grappler, Nord The Barbarian, Moondog Moretti, Bushwhacker Luke, CW Bergstrom, Ricky Santana, David Sierra, Mike Miller and Ricky Vaughn.
Conversations and stories were told. There was speculation about another Expo to be held in the near future and names started being bandied around about who could come.
Someone mentioned they were surprised that announcer Don Coss was not in attendance. Then someone indicated that they had heard a rumor that Don Coss had passed away.
After some quick investigation, it was confirmed that the Portland Wrestling TV announcer from 1982 to 1992 had indeed died, confirmed by his daughter; it is believed that it was on January 15, 2025. He was 85.
Frank Bonema had been the previous wrestling announcer and he is remembered very fondly. He had a deadpan delivery that resonated with the wrestling fans. Bonema died in October of 1982 at the age of 49.
Coss was a radio announcer and would go on to own his own radio stations. He was tabbed to be the next wrestling announcer, though had been around the KPTV-TV Channel 12, filling in on occasion with the wrestling since 1967.
In an interview with the Tom Zenk website, Coss talked about the transition. “Frank had worked with the (PNW owners Don and Barry) Owens for 15 years, so I was stepping into some big shoes. I remember Frank was there in the black and white days of PNW but the night of the first color broadcast, he became ill and I stepped in.”
Dutch Savage served as his co-announcer to make sure things went smoothly from the wrestling standpoint.
Coss had a different style than Bonema, but it was a style that fans soon gravitated to.
With an easy going manner to him, Coss was quick with a pun, and he was good with transitions. He could get a green wrestler thru an interview with ease.
“It gets a little dangerous, but I expect no hazardous duty pay for having fun,” Coss told the Sunday Oregonian newspaper in 1985. “Every Saturday night is an adventure.”
Later Stan Stasiak was tabbed as co-host with Don Coss. Stasiak was not quite as good on the microphone as Savage, but Coss made that transition easy as well.
There was one a conversation on the Wrestling Classics board about Don Coss being on a list of bad wrestling announcers. Pacific Northwest fans quickly came to his defense. Points brought up were his voice, his upbeat manner, and his ability to be enthused about the product. It was also noted that Coss made sure that it was always about the wrestling and never about him.
After a few years of co-announcers, Coss served as announcer by himself. He now had the experience to mesh the TV side of things with the wrestling side of things and had earned the trust of the promotion.
Coss would unleash the catch phrases at times — “Katie Bar the Door” and “There’s Excitement in the Air” are two that I think can be credited to him. He deemed the Portland Sports Arena the House of Action.
Roddy Piper and Don Coss. Photo by RP Strickland
They did pair him with one other co-host in 1987. Scotty The Body served as co-host of Portland Wrestling for quite some time. At first it was to introduce Scotty as a personality and later to get key points over in the broadcast. Scotty (later known as Raven) and Coss had fantastic chemistry. Coss became the straight man for Scotty’s humor. Coss would also have humorous comebacks and the banter between them became a highlight of the show.
On the Zenk website, Coss detailed an average taping:
A typical Saturday evening for Don Coss consisted of arriving at the Portland Sports Arena around 7:45pm. He would head to Don Owen’s office and get the lineup for that night’s taping. Owen would tell Coss some things he would want promoted in the course of the interviews or ring announcements and that was it.
“Sometimes I would go into the locker room and meet up with Don, Barry or whoever was booking (The Grappler did some booking in the 80s during Zenk’s stay) and get the information. Then I’d head to the ‘crow’s nest’ and make out my cue boards (a list of special things about that night or upcoming matches) for reference. When I started, everything was live, but in the late 70s, they went to a ‘live to tape’ format which allowed for some editing, if there was an injury or something. But almost all of what the TV audience saw was the way it happened. Channel 12 never went out of their way producing the show. There was no third camera at ringside, just the two from the ‘crow’s nest’ that caught the action in the ring, then swung around for the interview segments where I was.”
“Those interviews were always on the fly. I knew who was up next, but sometimes another guy would try to horn in or the interview went badly. One time I was filling in for Tom Peterson (the local sponsor) and doing his commercials. He got me the script and told me not to let anything happen to his products (some TV sets). Jimmy ‘Superfly’ Snuka and Bull Ramos, a mountain of a man, came to the interview segment and started out talking. That turned into yelling, then shoving and Snuka fell backward into some chicken wire. He jumped up and shoved Ramos. Pretty soon one punch led to another and Snuka went down. I was backing off, trying not to be involved, when Snuka got up and headed for one of the sets on the desk. He hit Ramos with it. The set bounced off his shoulder, and hit the floor and broke. We got some police to end it and went to a commercial! Funny thing about it all — that set sold for way more than it was worth because it had been used in a fight! You just never knew what would happen during an interview.”
When the last episode of Portland Wrestling went off the air in 1992, Coss gave a spirited goodbye. He thanked the production crew, his former co-announcers and other points of detail.
He made it very clear doing his wrestling announcing job, that Portland Wrestling was not over, just the TV broadcasts had come to an end. He urged fans to continue to keep coming out to Portland Wrestling in the weeks to come.
Coss would make appearances for future promotions over the years. He would do some more announcing and ring announcing. He was a fixture on the wrestling scene after Portland Wrestling folded, and was a part of a couple of attempts to restart the territory.
A very private man, not a lot is known about Donald D. Coss’ life. His sparse LinkedIn page notes that he attended Harvard Business School from 1975 -77. On a radio memories page, his son, Derec, noted that his father and mother met while they were both working at KGAR.
Coss had worked at Portland radio stations KGAR and KRDR as the morning man, and also worked at KWAY & KUIK; his brother, Todd Coss, also worked in radio. Later, Don Coss was involved in sales and was general manager at stations, eventually graduating to owning various stations through the years, including Woodburn, Oregon, stations La Clásica 95.1-FM, KWBY-AM 940 “La Pantera” and KCKX-AM 1490, selling them apparently around 2014, and another in Salem.
His ten years of announcing made him synonymous with Portland Wrestling.
— with files from Greg Oliver
