Bruno Sammartino made his pro wrestling debut at Hopewell High School on Nov. 9, 1959.
Sammartino won, of course, launching an immensely successful career that would earn him the nickname "The Living Legend," as his popularity helped elevate professional wrestling to mainstream status.
On Wednesday morning, World Wrestling Entertainment announced Sammartino, of Ross Township, had died at age 82. Family friend and former wrestling announcer Christopher Cruise confirmed Sammartino died Wednesday morning and had been hospitalized for two months.The cause of death wasn't immediately announced.
"He's one of those guys you thought would never be gone," said Shane Douglas, a championship wrestler in multiple pro leagues, who as a boy growing up in New Brighton would root for Sammartino during matches at Pittsburgh's Civic Arena.
"Whatever heights wrestling has achieved owe a large part to the groundwork he had laid," Douglas said. "You can't underscore what Bruno meant for the business with the massive audience he achieved. The records he set were crazy. They almost sound fake. Like he sold out every match he headlined over a 12-year period, which is a staggering number. Having been a champion, I can tell you sellouts are tough. That's a record that might never be broken."
Sammartino sold out Madison Square Garden an unprecedented 187 times. His Italian heritage made him a hero in wrestling hotbeds like Pittsburgh and New York that had a strong Italian-American presence.
"Bruno would talk in Italian and speak to his paisans, and those people just ate it up," Douglas said. "If you watch the old tapes, you'll see a lot of little old Italian ladies in the crowd and Italian men, too, who knew he was from the Old Country and was legit."
Sammartino's story is that of the American Dream, said Wednesday's online tribute from World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), the dominant pro wrestling league that inducted Sammartino into its hall of fame in 2013. It was an honor many fans felt was way overdue for the man who was wrestling's biggest box-office draw in the 1960s and 1970s and held the championship for more than 11 years (4,040 days) over two title runs when the WWE was known as the World Wide Wrestling Federation.
Sammartino grew up in Abruzzi, Italy, a mountainous town he fled with his mother shortly before it was conquered by Adolf Hitler's Nazi troops. During the German occupation, he and his mother hid in a town called Valla Rocca as Sammartino dreamed of life in America, where he had believed the tales that the streets were paved with gold. In 1950, Sammartino and his mom moved to Pittsburgh, where his father had emigrated to years earlier.
Never wanting to run or hide from anyone again, Sammartino began lifting weights, developing into one of the strongest men on earth who set a world record in 1959 by bench-pressing 565 pounds.
His strength made him a natural fit for pro wrestling, starting with that 1959 match in Hopewell, which Sammartino recalled in a 2013 interview with The Times.
"I remember being pretty nervous,” Sammartino said. “I wrestled a guy named Jack Vansky. It was a short match.”
Sammartino pinned him in 3 minutes, 27 seconds.
Just a few weeks later, Sammartino was a budding star on “Studio Wrestling” on Pittsburgh's WIIC-TV (Channel 11). His wrestling skills, strength and humble demeanor made him a literal overnight sensation, who by Jan. 2, 1960, was grappling at New York's famed Madison Square Garden. He won the title belt there on May 17, 1963, in front of nearly 20,000 fans, most of whom cheered him on as he pinned Buddy Rogers in just 48 seconds.
New York and its influential media loved Sammartino.
Sammartino had a photo from the old days in his North Hills house showing him out for dinner at a New York restaurant surrounded by baseball immortals Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle and boxing legend Sugar Ray Robinson.
"Bruno's in the center of the picture, and all those other sports legends are clearly excited to be hanging out with the world wrestling champ," Douglas said.
The bright lights of the big city didn't alter the personality of Sammartino, though. He remained humble and identified himself as a hardworking and proud Pittsburgher, for which he was beloved by western Pennsylvanians.
Longtime friend Dominic DeNucci of New Sewickley Township was a tag-team partner with Sammartino on wrestling tours throughout North America, Japan and Australia and said, "Everybody knew Bruno; wrestling fans and regular people, too."
"He was popular everywhere and nobody can say anything bad about him," DeNucci said. "Not because he passed away, but because that was his life. He was respectful to everyone. I mean, you didn't want to step on his foot obviously. But he understood you have to be respectful to the people who come out to see you. If they want to talk to you and take your picture, you let them."
DeNucci witnessed the April 1976 Madison Square Garden match in which title-holder Sammartino broke his neck wrestling against Stan Hansen. Wrestling officials urged Sammartino to see medical attention at a New York hospital, but the wrestler refused, saying he didn't want his elderly parents to be scared if they learned about his injury from a New York media report. Instead, Sammartino decided to fly back to Pittsburgh, where he could tell his mom first. DeNucci offered to help Sammartino get to the New York airport, "but he said, 'No, you need to get sleep. ... I'll take a cab,'" DeNucci said.
Sammartino was treated for a crushed vertebrae at Divine Providence Hospital, where doctors questioned if he should ever wrestle again. Sammartino predicted he'd be back in the ring by June. Sure enough, a rehabbed Sammartino beat Hansen in a rematch at New York’s Shea Stadium on June 25, a contest Pro Wrestling Illustrated magazine named its “Match of the Year.”
In a Wednesday tweet, WWE star and Olympic gold medalist Kurt Angle, a Mount Lebanon native, called Sammartino "a hometown hero," adding, "I grew up watching Bruno. He was an amazing performer, who made his Pittsburgh natives proud."
Douglas agrees.
"I always said before the Penguins got good, we had the Steelers, the Pirates and Bruno Sammartino. He meant as much to the cultural sports fabric here as the Steelers and Pirates," Douglas said.
Douglas recalls a time Sammartino paid a surprise visit to DeNucci's wrestling school in New Sewickley, ready to give tips to eager young pupils.
"He'd say like, 'Hey, kid, don't turn that way,'" Douglas said.
"He never had a big ego. Most people in this business do, but I never saw that with Bruno," Douglas said.
Sammartino announced his retirement from wrestling after defeating his former protege, Larry Zbyszko, at Shea Stadium on Aug. 9, 1980, in front of 35,000 fans.
No wrestler ever really retires, however, and several years later he was back with the WWF as a ringside announcer, and in 1986 he stepped into the squared circle again to compete in a battle royal at the second WrestleMania.
Sammartino had a falling out with league officials in the late '80s, unhappy with the edgier direction it was pursuing. Sammartino became an outspoken critic of steroid use by wrestlers, taking his crusade to TV talk shows such as those hosted by Geraldo Rivera, Phil Donahue and Larry King.
Sammartino's relationship with the WWE began to improve around 2009, when the league hired Pittsburgh neurosurgeon Dr. Joseph Maroon as its medical director. Maroon, a concussion specialist for the Steelers, had performed the surgery on Sammartino that had relieved the extensive spinal cord compression that had immobilized the wrestling legend. In conversations with Maroon, Sammartino became satisfied that the WWE had taken major strides in testing wrestlers for concussions and heart problems, as well as curtailing the use of performance-enhancing drugs.
With things patched up, Sammartino agreed to be enshrined by the WWE hall of fame in 2013. Arnold Schwarzenegger handled the induction, as wrestling stars and fans alike cheered.
“Bruno is the equivalent to Babe Ruth in the eyes of thousands of fans worldwide, and his induction truly validates what the WWE Hall of Fame means,” hall-of-fame wrestling announcer Jim "J.R." Ross said at the time.