Saying Goodbye to Mr. Kowalski

“Shoot for the Moon…If you miss, you may hit a star.” – Walter “Killer” Kowalski

Photo courtesy of wwe.com


The professional wrestling world lost a true legend this pass weekend as Walter “Killer” Kowalski, one of wrestling’s biggest stars and most heinous villains when wrestling offered a nightly selection of mayhem in the infancy of television, passed away at the age of 81 on Aug. 30, 2008.

Kowalski, who was a few months shy of his 82^nd birthday, had been in critical condition at a hospital in Everett Mass. since suffering a massive heart attack on Aug 8 of this year, which was first reported by The Wrestling Observer, and his family had decided to have him taken off life support 12 days ago.

A 30-year veteran of professional wrestling, which spanned from 1947-77, the 6-foot-7, 285-pound Kowalski earned his nickname “Killer” as a result of his hard hitting and brutal style of wrestling.

Kowalski was most famous for an incident during a 1954 match against Yukon Eric in Montreal, Canada. During the match, Kowalski accidentally ripped off part of Eric’s ear while performing a simple knee-drop.

Later that night in the hospital, Kowalski visited Eric, who had his head wrapped in bandages, and the two were sharing a laugh over the incident when a reporter happen to see this and mistakenly reported in the newspaper the next day that Kowalski was laughing AT Eric, not with him.

Even though Eric’s ears were terribly cauliflowered due to years of abuse before the match, the incident and mistaken report labeled Kowalski as being a ruthless villain who ripped his opponent’s ear off and the moniker stuck with Kowalski for the rest of his career. Even his stomach-claw finisher was appropriately called the “Killer Clutch.”

After retiring from the ring in 1977, Kowalski opened up his own pro wrestling school in Malden, Mass. In 2003, as a result of health problems, Kowalski stopped being involved with the school and but not before training a crop of alumni that included Perry Saturn, John Kronus, Big John Studd, Damien Kane, Chris Nowinski, Matt "A’Train" Bloom, April Hunter, Frankie Kazarian, Nikki Roxx, Kenny Dykstra, Kelly Moretti, Brittany Brown, Joanie “Chyna” Laurer and Paul “Triple H” Levesque.

In 1996, Kowalski was inducted in the WWE Hall of Fame by Levesque and in 2003, was inducted into the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum. Kowalski was also featured in all three “Legends of Wrestling” video games released by Acclaim from 2001-04.

Since I was born in 1984, I did not get to see much of Kowalski’s in-ring career, other than what WWE would release on their Coliseum Videos during the infancy years of VHS tapes in the 1980’s. The little I did see of his matches, I knew that if I had been alive when his career first started, I would have been scared of him, which meant he was doing his job to perfection.

Before I conclude this entry, I would like to share with you a simple slide-show tribute I made for Mr. Kowalski by using Windows Movie Maker and is available on youtube. The photos are courtesy of the WWE, Obsessed with Wrestling and Killer Kowalski Wrestling School websites, and are set to the WWE Hall-of-Fame theme.