With his in-ring career almost a full 25 years behind him, Stan “The Lariat” Hansen doesn’t get many opportunities to discuss memories of being a wrestler all that much these days. But there are a select few people that Hansen respects enough to make exceptions.
One of those is the legendary Bruno Sammartino.
So when a fundraiser was announced by the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank to honor Sammartino’s legacy, it was a no-brainer for the 75-year-old Hansen to attend. The event, titled “Bruno Forever”, takes place Saturday March 15th at the Ross Township Recreation Center. It is being put together by the Polinsky Family, who have been involved with promoting wrestling in the Pennsylvania area, on and off, since 1999 and includes patriarch Dan Polinsky and his two sons, international star Sam Adonis and WWE commentator Corey Graves.
While it might be a long trip from Texas to Pittsburgh, Hansen still has deep admiration for Sammartino, both professionally and personally. Speaking to SlamWrestling in February, Hansen spoke positively about most everyone and referred to most big names he recalls as “class acts.”
But in Sammartino’s case, the term might be a misnomer because Sammartino wasn’t an act; he was as classy when the cameras were off as when they were on.
“I’ve been to New York a couple of times but there was NOBODY like Bruno. He was a class act. There will never be anybody like him or as over as he was,” Hansen recalled.
Though most of his memories of Sammartino have faded, Hansen does still recall some minor details about their earlier interactions. It was northeast wrestler Mike Paidousis who introduced the two men either in Allentown or Reading while serving as an agent of sorts for Vince McMahon, Sr., who had his stronghold in the northeastern United States which included Pittsburgh. At the time Hansen, was only three or so years into his professional wrestling career while Sammartino was selling out shows left and right opposite nationwide top heels like “Big Cat” Ernie Ladd and “Superstar” Billy Graham. But Sammartino saw promise in Hansen and decided to work with him in main-event matches, which would, in turn, have an enormous impact on both men’s careers.
In his 2011 book, The Last Outlaw, Hansen described working with High Chief Peter Maivia in Dallas and coming up with a move where he would catch his opponent off the rope and bodyslam him. This worked with Maivia who, according to Hansen, would turn this around by sliding down Hansen’s back and turn this into a pinning move. Sammartino, however, didn’t know that such a move was coming and so naturally stiffened during his match with Hansen on April 26, 1976, at Madison Square Garden, leading to a miscommunication that led to Sammartino being dropped on his head, damaging his neck.
Here is what Hansen wrote in his autobiography:
During my match with Bruno, I scooped him, just like I did Peter. However, Bruno wasn’t expecting me to do that. Being uncertain of what I was going to do, he stiffened up. His reaction threw me off balance, and when I tried to go through with the slam, I ended up slamming him on the back of his head and the back of his neck, rather than flat on his back.
Sammartino and Hansen finished the bout, which was actually stopped due to blood after Hansen used his loaded armband.
Hansen further describes in his book how that slam cracked three of Sammartino’s vertebrae and put him out of action for two months. The elder McMahon was furious. Many people on those shows up and down the card were upset with Hansen because, from their perspectives, he had taken away their meal ticket — though after it was announced on TV that Hansen’s lariat had broken Sammartino’s neck, Ivan Putski against Hansen brought in a turn-away crowd at the Garden.
As for Sammartino, he had could’ve reacted to this situation negatively and with vindictiveness, or he could’ve tried to make something positive out of this.
He chose the latter.
First there was the businessman approach to this situation. Sammartino knew his audience, many of whom were regulars, noticed something was wrong before news officially broke out that he was hurt, and they would pay top dollar to see Sammartino come back. The Living Legend knew he would be back from this injury, it was only a matter of when.
“Our situation didn’t change after the neck injury. Bruno was smart and knew things could happen,” Hansen said.
To that end Sammartino ensured that Hansen would not only keep working in the New York territory until he came back, but he also exerted enough influence over Vince Sr.’s promotional machine to ensure that Hansen would be booked strongly so that fans would be more fired up than usual to see the eventual rematch. Sure enough the two met at Showdown at Shea on June 25th with Sammartino emerging victorious and driving Hansen out of the territory; 32,000 fans turned out for the show, which also included a screening of Antonio Inoki versus Muhammad Ali.
Hansen never worked for a McMahon again, though; Sammartino didn’t have enough sway to convince Vince that this was just a mistake. But there was a silver lining: Sammartino’s injury was attributed to Hansen’s Western Lariat finisher and that fearsome reputation followed Hansen for the rest of his in-ring career … which lasted all the way until 2001.
“The promoter tried to make it look more marketable by saying he did it by the lariat but that’s not how it happened! The lariat became very famous after that!” Sammartino told writer Michael Strider in 2005.
As for the personal side, Sammartino, once again, showed class. He assured Hansen over and over that he wasn’t seriously hurt and told him to take care of himself and the other wrestlers. There didn’t appear to be a single vindictive bone in Sammartino’s body, and he proved this further after the feud between them ran its course.
With Hansen’s time working for McMahon coming to an end, it was Sammartino who told him something that he “would never, ever, EVER, forget.”
“If Baba gives you his word, it’s good,” Sammartino told Hansen.
Sammartino’s praise of Shohei “Giant” Baba’s fabled honesty as a promoter and how he could get honest work wrestling for the AJPW founder set the stage for Hansen’s future. And while there was indeed a written contract for Hansen during his first two years wrestling for All Japan, after that, the entire decades-long relationship between Baba and All Japan was built on a handshake and nothing more. And Baba kept his word to Hansen for the rest of his life, with Hansen having a fruitful and successful career in AJPW that spanned another 25 years.
While his wrestling career is long over, Hansen’s legacy lives on through his various imitators and tributes. From the many to adopt his trademark lariat as their finishers to the stories that have emerged from wrestling promotions around the world, Hansen’s name still carries quite a bit of weight, even if, by the man’s own admission: “You gotta have a long memory to remember the name ‘Stan Hansen’.”
But Hansen is still forever grateful to the people that helped his career whenever they could, which is why he’s happy to be a part of an event honoring arguably the most legendary figure in American wrestling history. And even if he’s only in Pittsburgh for a few hours, he’ll still get to relive a memory of seeing that city’s skyline for the first time. “When you fly into Pittsburgh and drive into this city you go through this long tunnel, you come out and BAM, there’s this huge city that stares at you, like where did it come from?” he chuckled.
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