The Phantom of the Ring

Cap’n Lou and The Phannies, Too

The recent death of “Captain” Lou Albano closed even further a door on not only WWE history as such, but also wrestling history. Lou Albano changed the pace of pro wrestling forever, taking it out of the dark arenas of cultural trivia into the bright lights of Pop Culture.

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And he did it without ever revealing who he really was. He was one of the few past WWE stars not to write a tell-all biography. He did, however, write a self-published autobiography; one that clocked in under 200 pages, hardly a scratch of the huge surface Albano’s life covered. Albano was too cagey for spilling the beans; he lived firmly within the code of Kayfabe, the central point of which was the less you know, the better off he was. In fact, he resided there so long that he developed a disease common among the performing arts: he began to buy his own ballyhoo. He literally became the character he played on and off stage. Except for rare quiet moments with his family, what we saw was what we got. I know this from personal experience.

I attended quite a few Cauliflower Alley Club benefits in New Jersey over the years and would often arrive early to the soiree, about an hour or so before it began. Commanding the festivities at the hotel bar was the loud, unmistakable voice of the Captain, bellowing out at a decibel level audible seemingly throughout the hotel.  I screwed up enough courage before one get-together to buy the Captain a drink at the bar. I can’t remember for the life of me what he was having. Usually, I’m a teetotaler, but I felt it wouldn’t serve my purpose not to order a proper drink, and whenever I did imbibe, it was always a Bushmill and soda. My purpose, of course, was to get information about Albano. One of my interests in wrestling is a wrestler’s early days before he became a star.  Such questions as “How did you get into the business?”, “Who trained you?”,  and “Where did you wrestle before you came to the WWF?” were tantamount always on my mind. But no matter how many times I would ask Albano this over the years, I inevitably hit the stonewall that was Kayfabe. Lou would admit to whatever was already public knowledge, such as his time for Fred Kohler in Chicago with Tony Altimore as The Sicilians. Anything else, however, and he’d steer the conversation away from the subject as only he could. After about three attempts I gave up, hoping that maybe he was saving this information for an autobiography.

Now the autobiography has been published, albeit independently. Until I can secure a copy for myself I will gave to go with the notes at hand that I have compiled over the years. A search of the Internet yields nothing other than what I already have.

What we do know about Albano is that he was born July 29, 1933, to Dr. Carmen and Eleanor Albano in Mount Vernon, New York. He attended the University of Tennessee on a football scholarship before serving a stint in the U. S. Army. During his Army hitch he was a boxer, and upon leaving he service he inquired about turning professional.  Legendary manager/trainer Lou Duva, who was a distant cousin, thought it best not to train a relative and sent him to Willie Gilzenberg, who promoted boxing and wrestling in the New Jersey. Gilzenberg took a look at Albano during a physical and advised him if he had any sort of amateur wrestling background. When Lou replied hat he was versed in wrestling, Gilzenberg advised him to make that his career because he was deemed too short to be a successful boxer.

After completing his training under Gilzenberg, Albano was sent up to Eddie Quinn in Montreal for seasoning. It was there that he made his professional wrestling debut in 1953, defeating Bob Lazaro.

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The next eight years are a haze, but sometime during the late Fifties he met up with fellow Army veteran Tony Altamore, with whom he formed a tag-team. In 1961 they found themselves working for Fred Kohler in Chicago, and Kohler remade them as The Sicilians. At the time the hottest show on television was The Untouchables, and as The Sicilians, Albano and Altamore came to the ring in tuxedo jackets and velvet gloves, with which they both held a model Thompson submachine gun. They also wore fedoras and each had a big cigar in his mouth. The gimmick went over like wildfire with the fans and a hot feud was ignited when the Sicilians battled The G-Men (Billy Goelz and Johnny Gilbert) for Kohler’s Midwest Tag belts. Supposedly the gimmick was so edgy that the Outfit informed Kohler that if he didn’t tone it down they’d shut him down. How much of that is real and how much ballyhoo is subject to speculation, but the gimmick, like most tag gimmicks, rapidly cooled down of its own accord and Albano and Altamore returned to the prelims.

As both were from the East (Altamore was from Connecticut), it was only natural that they should strike out to work in the east, and they settled in with Vince McMahon’s WWWF, where they became solid preliminary boys with the occasional mid-card appearance. Their previous tag success was noticed and it was decided to give them a push as a tag team, but this time without the elaborate costuming. They went over for the WWWF U.S. Tag Title on July 10, 1967, in Atlantic City, which was somewhat out of the way, usually being promoted only in the summer. Exactly from whom they won them is itself a bit dicey and symptomatic of that passes for wrestling history. Spyros Arion and Antonio Pugliese (Parisi) had won the U.S. belts on television on December 8, 1966, from Smasher Sloane and Baron Scicluna. Pugliese left the act in June, 1967, and Arnold Skaaland was given his half of the title. Now depending on which version you care to believe, Albano and Altamore either won them from Arion and Skaaland or Skaaland and Chuck Richards subbing for Arion that night. At any rate, Bruno Sammartino and Spyros Arion took the belts from them in Atlantic City two weeks later. Soon thereafter the title was abandoned, presumably for lack of interest.

So it was back to the prelims, but this time mainly as singles with only the occasional tag match. Then, in 1970 Lou Albano the wrestler disappeared, only to be replaced shortly thereafter by “Captain” Lou Albano, Manager. He was championed for the position by none other than Bruno Sammartino, who thought Albano was a good talker and could help with some of the less-talkative heels. The Captain’s first charge was Crusher Verdu (Ricardo Ferrera), a man with a huge chest and stick legs that moved at the speed of lava. Verdu was given a few title shots at Sammartino, but Bruno outclassed him so thoroughly that he quickly faded from regular main event status. Albano didn’t do badly with his first charge, and his loyalty to the firm was rewarded in December of 1970 when he became the manager of the Mongols and Ivan Koloff. The official story was that Albano traded the contract of Crusher Verdu to fellow manager Tony Angelo for the contract of the Mongols and Ivan Koloff. Albano announced he found a flaw in Koloff that prevented him from winning the title from Bruno, namely that Koloff was over training.  Albano simply had him working out stretching surgical tubing. The match with Bruno was set for January 18, 1971, at Madison Square Garden. That the sudden title shot was given without the usual television buildup should have alerted us that something was in the air. I was there at that match, attending with two friends. When Koloff pinned Bruno to win the title, the entire arena became so silent that you could have heard the proverbial pin drop. But Koloff was only meant to be an interim champion. He would lose the belt the next month to Pedro Morales. Albano’s new career, however, was only beginning. In June of 1971 he appeared with new charges Tarzan Tyler and Luke Graham, whom Albano had supposedly guided to the new WWWF Tag Team Championship at a tournament held in New Orleans. Of course, it was all hooey, but Albano was back in the driver’s seat and would remain as a constant force as a manager in the Tag Team and Intercontinental Championships.

Had it been left to just that, Albano would have been remembered in wrestling history as a pretty decent manager. But it was his next move that cemented him in Pop Culture and raised pro wrestling from the status of a blue-collar cult to a pop phenomenon worthy of the glitterati. And in true wrestling fashion, it happened accidentally.

While on a flight to New York from San Juan, Albano was approached by an up-and coming pink-haired pop star named Cyndi Lauper. She told Albano that she was a wrestling fan and a fan of his in particular. They spoke and Albano regaled the young lady with stories about his time in the business.  When she returned home she couldn’t stop raving to her boyfriend, David Wolff about meeting Captain Lou. Wolff got an idea. He called Epic Records, Cyndi’s label, and asked them to call the WWF and inquire as to the availability of Lou Albano. Wolff had the perfect role in mind for Albano, that of playing Lauper’s father in her upcoming music video for Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.   But when approached for the role, Albano’s instinct was to say no. Reputedly, he only changed his mind the night before shooting at the insistance of his wife. The video was shot, it was a hit, she was a hit, and the Captain was a hit.  A big hit, as it turned out; the video was one of the most played on MTV and established Lauper as one of their core artists.

For David Wolff the problem now became one of how best to capitalize on this success. He thought it over and came up with an idea he ran past Albano. Wolff and Albano then pitched the idea to Vince McMahon, Jr. at WWF Headquarters in Greenwich, Connecticut. McMahon was enthusiastic about the idea and the trio figured the best way to pull it off. Cyndi was no wrestler and she would be exposed in the ring. But she could be a manager, with her charge opposing Captain Lou’s. The question of whom the wrestlers were to be now came up, and McMahon had an idea for that as well. He had just purchased the rights to Fabulous Moolah’s title. Moolah had been alienating promoters for years by constantly putting herself over. This, in turn, caused the promoters to look elsewhere for women wrestlers and Moolah’s business suffered as a result. It was the perfect time to rejuvenate interest in women’s wrestling and McMahon had the perfect candidate to do it in one of Moolah’s workers, Wendi Richter, a tall, lanky, good-looking Texan. It was decided that Albano would manage Moolah and Lauper would manage Richter, with Richter going over as the new women’s champ.

The buildup of the angle proper began on the “Piper’s Pit” installment of All Star Wrestling in late May. For about two weeks before, Albano had been making remarks that it was he and he alone who was responsible not only for the success of Lauper’s videos but also her pop career. Now, Cyndi Lauper was going to appear to refute the charges and clear the air. The showdown began slowly, then picked up real steam when Albano demanded that Lauper tell everyone how she was “coming off his reputation.” That Lauper wouldn’t have been a star if Albano had not graciously agreed to appear in her videos. He then ratcheted it up even further when he then demanded that Cyndi tell the audience how, in reality, women are nothing but slime. This was too much for Lauper, who threw over a table, jumped to her feet, and clocked Albano squarely in the head with her purse. The feud was now on.

Wolff took the inevitable next step when he, accompanied by Albano and Piper, and carrying a tape of the altercation, paid a visit to MTV’s head of programming, Les Garland. They pitched the concept of the feud to Garland, who was so impressed that he agreed not only to promote it, he also offered to televise the payoff bout live on MTV. On the next installment of All Star Wrestling, fans were treated to a video of Captain Lou ranting, slobbering milk from his beard, as he accused Lauper of being a liar, a cheat and a disgrace. It was followed by Cyndi’s response. She formally laid down the challenge to Albano: Pick your wrestler and I’ll pick mine. In the videos that followed both announced their choices. Then came the fun. The videos thereafter showed each manager putting their wrestler through the paces. It was almost like a reenactment of Goofus and Gallant from Highlights for Children. Lauper emphasized hard work and healthy food for Wendi Richter while Lou Albano did practically no training with Moolah but fed her on a diet of huge submarine sandwiches and 2-liter bottles of soda. On July 23 they finally met live on MTV in a show entitled The Brawl to Settle It All.  Following Lauper’s victory, Albano apologized and floated over to being a babyface. Thus the Rock ‘n’ Wrestling Connection was born.

But it was more than teenagers who were entranced by what they saw going on in the ring. The bohemian crowd that Lauper appealed to also found the suet ballet to be most enchanting. The New York Post reported that Andy Warhol was thinking of painting Hulk Hogan. Wrestlers began showing up on talk shows such as Live With Regis and Kathie Lee, and Late Night With David Letterman. As Shaun Assael and Mike Mooneyham so succinctly put it, “the irony crowd had discovered wrestling.”

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The enormous success of the angle opened new doors to Albano, enabling him to leave the WWF in 1986 for movies and television. His biggest impact was in television, playing the video game character Mario in The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! Besides providing the voice of Mario in the cartoon, he also costarred in live action segments during interludes of the cartoon. He also expanded his horizons into music, managing the rock band NRBQ. He was the subject of the song Captain Lou on their Lou and the Q album.

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But he didn’t leave wrestling entirely. He returned to the WWF in 1994 for a brief sojourn managing The Headshrinkers. In 1997 he co-authored The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Pro Wrestling with Bert Randolph Sugar, although judging from the book one wonders how firm his input was. As mentioned before, in 2008 he released his autobiography, Captain Lou Albano: Often Imitated, Never Duplicated, which was the mantra of his life in wrestling.  Cyndi Lauper wrote the foreword.

What he did to permanently transform wrestling also has been often imitated, but never duplicated.

NOTE: The Phantom would like to acknowledge his debt to Shaun Assael and Mike Mooneyham for their definitive history of the WWF, Sex, Lies and Headlocks, not only the best book on the WWF ever written, but one of the best books on wrestling history itself and a book no serious wrestling fan should be without. For those interested, the book can still be purchased on both Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

THE OCTOBER PHANNIES

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here they are, the October Phannies, the awards that keep on giving. Giving us various forms of heartburn and nausea, that is.

WORST IMITATION OF THE BOWERY BOYS: Sean Michaels and Preparation HGH. Remember the Bowery Boys? They started movie life as the Dead End Kids. They were teenagers then, so their antics were funny. Then they became the East Side Kids, but they were still young, so fans wrote them a pass. But when the became the Bowery Boys, fans were suddenly faced with a bunch of 40+ men who were still acting like teenagers. Not funny. Now cut to wrestling. What two 40+ wrestlers do you know who are married with children and still acting like idiots?  Hmmmm.

BIGGEST MEATHEAD: Scott Steiner, who caused a near riot in Zurich, Switzerland, when he ripped a Swiss flag. This caused the crowd in attendance to throw water bottles and chairs into the ring. Okay, so it being a TNA event, one could probably count the crowd in less than a minute by hand.

WORST EXPLOSIONS: What is causing this seeming epidemic of WWE divas seeing their implants explode? First Mickey James, now Gail Kim has suffered a malfunction. We wonder, were the implants done by explosives expert Dr. Sidney Alford? Or were they purchased at Murray’s House of Discount Implants?

WORST LOOSE CANNON: TNA makes Lacey Von Erich retract some words she had about the departed Angelina Love. Von Erich was quoted as saying that Love was not a good fit and that “nobody really missed her that much.” She went on to say that she has never met Angelina, and based on what some people have said, she doesn’t know if she wants to. That was a bit too much for the suits at TNA who made her print something of a retraction on her Facebook account.

WORST RESIGNATION: Booker T leaving the relative peace and harmony of TNA for what he thinks are the greener pastures of WWE. Supposedly Booker was unhappy at TNA, especially since he was asked to job to Matt Morgan on the telly. He has supposedly told friends that once his contract with TNA is up, he will be heading back to WWE. We can’t really blame him if he thinks that jobbing to Matt Morgan on television is distasteful, but what if he comes to WWE and has to job to Hornswoggle? Morgan will seem like Lou Thesz in comparison.

Dishonorable Mention - Shane McMahon, the Executive Vice President of Global Media for WWE also announced his resignation, presumably to help Maw in her futile bid for the U.S. Senate. Backstage rumors, though, have him as being forced out by Princess Stephanie and her husband, Prep HGH in a struggle for future control of the Evil Empire. This scenario does make a modicum of sense to us: Princess Stepover is indeed ambitious, and Trips wouldn’t have married her if she were poor. Love that title, though, “Executive Vice President of Global Media.” We’d like a title like that with WWE. How about “Executive Vice President in Charge of Putting Things on Top of Other Things?” Well . . . ?

WORST POLITICAL MOMENT OF THE MONTH: WWE and their lawyers had YouTube remove a video posted by the Connecticut Democratic Party showing, amongst other things, footage of Scott Steiner threatening to rape Stephanie McMahon, Trips wearing a Kane mask having sex with Kane’s “dead” girl friend, Katie Vick, in a casket, Edge and Lita having sex live on the set of Raw, and Vince McMahon choking out his own daughter with a pipe during a match. In other words, it’s more of the McMahon style of “family” entertainment. If the family is the Manson family, that is. Ed Patru, McMahon flack, said Dodd and his supporters “should be more interested in improving the economy that worrying about professional wrestling.”  We can’t say we blame Dodd, though. Compared to Linda McMahon, he comes off as ethical. The only way he’s going to lose if he gets a gander of her platform and laughs himself to death.

WORST DEMOTION: Traci Brooks, TNA Knockout, Playboy model wannabe, has suddenly found herself bounced from not only the cover of Playboy, but also from the magazine itself. In the end, and editor who supposedly doesn’t care for wrestling demoted her pictorial to the Playboy Website. And who was she demoted for, pray tell? Halle Berry? No. Jessica Alba? No. Gong Li? No. Vanessa Rousso? No, no, and no. It was Marge Simpson. Marge Simpson?! One question: Do you think in a million years that Vince McMahon would have stood by and let that happen to one of his Divas?

WORST DVD TITLE: The upcoming Jeff Hardy collection, titled Jeff Hardy: My Life, My Rules. Perhaps, given his legal tangles, it should be titled Jeff Hardy: My Rules, Serving Life.

WORST DVD: Hulk Hogan latest three-disc abomination, Hulk Hogan’s Unreleased Collector’s Series. It contains 27 matches in their entirety. Pass the Xanax. It will be released (Escape?) November 17.

WORST MUSINGS: Bret Hart, in an interview with a New Zealand based website, said he is open to the possibility of hosting Raw in the future. Sure he is; what else has he been doing with himself these days? He said, though, that he would have to think it over if Shawn and Trips were involved. We suppose that translates into a “pay me more” request. We can just see Bret now on Raw, as DX smushes a pie into his face, or pants him on television. Maybe Hornswoggle can appear as “Hit Man Jr.”
The possibilities are endless.

WORST BOOK REVELATION: The New York Daily News ran a story about Hulk Hogan revealing he was close to suicide after wife Linda filed for divorce. He had taken a cocktail of Xanax and rum and was ready to put the gun to his head when Layla Ali, his co-host on American Gladiators, called to ask if there was anything wrong. Amazing how this comes out right before his “tell all” book goes on the market. What would have happened had he pulled the trigger? About an hour latter he would have rubbed his forehead and said “Ow!”

WORST RAW HOSTING MOMENT: Snoop Dog inviting six Divas and Hornswoggle into the ring as he belted out a rap. The Divas moved around like a demonstration of how people look when they go spastic. Hornswoggle suddenly becomes “Snoopswoggle” and adds to the embarrassment of the viewing audience. We hope that those who watched this were telling themselves how proud they are to be wrestling fans as they watched.

PHANNIE OF THE MONTH: Hulk Hogan has joined TNA Wrestling. As if things weren’t bad enough for TNA, they now have Hulk and his Ego to deal with. The Huckster has already stated that he will be involved in the creative side (Uh oh).  And worse, his lap dog Eric Bischoff, is coming with him, presumably to enforce the Huckster’s will when he’s not around. Dixie Carter said: “Our goal is to become the world’s biggest professional wrestling company. Hulk defines professional wrestling and we look forward to partnering with him in a variety of ways as we continue to grow.” The irony truly stands alone here, so we won’t comment. We just wonder how long it will take before Carter truly rues those words.

– The Phantom of the Ring

You can write to the Phantom care of Karen Belcher

kabelchr@verizon.net

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