| Bulldog
Bob Brown: A Really Nice Tribute By Joe Popper The recent death of former pro wrestler Bulldog Bob Brown produced an unusual outpouring of affection in these parts, and there's no doubt, say his former colleagues, that Brown would have enjoyed the attention. For one thing, he was more used to outpourings of another sort. ``There was a fan who hated Bulldog so much that she poured a cup of Coke on his head each time she saw him,'' said Brown's tag-team partner Bob Geigel. That soggy event occurred every Thursday night in Kansas City, Kan. As Brown was announced and began his walk from the dressing room to the ring in Memorial Hall, a howling woman in the stands always stalked him, armed with a large, ice-filled cup of Coca-Cola. ``You dirty, no good, stinking s.o.b.,'' she shouted as she bombed Brown's noggin. ``I hope you get killed tonight. '' ``Bob always knew it was coming,'' said Harley Race, a former world wrestling champion, ``and he'd slow down to give her the thrill of doing it. '' And so each week Brown received the woman's odd benediction, and each week he responded in the gentlemanly fashion that marked his every move. ``You fat, toothless, ugly old ... ,'' he'd shout, wiping softdrink from his eyes. ``You smell so bad you probably don't use soap. '' And then, amid the screaming, gyrating, honking and hooting bedlam that was Thursday night at Memorial Hall, he'd nod farewell to his tormentor. ``The Bulldog and I were not exactly crowd favorites,'' Geigel said recently. They were tag-team partners for seven years, friends for much longer. Brown grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, where he played high school hockey and began to wrestle. When Geigel first met him there in 1958, Brown was 5 feet 11 inches, weighed 295 pounds and already was feisty. ``He was a tough kid but a real butterball,'' Geigel said. ``We called him the little fat kid. '' Geigel, who also was a promoter, liked Brown and thought he had promise. He asked about him when other wrestlers returned from Canadian tours. They told him that the butterball was slimming down fast, becoming a good athlete. ``So I encouraged him to come to this region and give it a try,'' Geigel said. Brown arrived just as regional wrestling entered its golden age, which ran from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. The weekly matches had become a top-rated favorite on television, and Kansas City was the hub of a wrestling circuit that included much of Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas. The wrestlers put on a first-class show. Most, like Geigel, were trained athletes, former collegiate wrestlers or football linemen. And despite playing roles in a sport that Kansas City Star columnist Joe McGuff once labeled an athletic ``Theater of the Absurd,'' many were tough customers. ``Sometimes the best matches were in the dressing rooms,'' Geigel said. ``We always had a few ... who liked to get it on right there. If the other guys liked 'em they'd step in. If not they'd just watch and hope somebody got hurt. '' Every wrestler knew, however, that a far more serious threat of injury lurked outside the dressing rooms among the 3,000 wrought-up fans who packed Memorial Hall every week. ``From first-row ringside to the top of the balcony you could see the fans grimacing and jumping, just screaming their lungs out,'' said Bill Kersten, the longtime ring announcer whose trademark ``Helooo Wrestliing Faaans'' made him a celebrity. ``Things got pretty wild. Sometimes the noise was so deafening that I couldn't hear the bell. A wrestler had to have eyes in the back of his head to stay in one piece, because anything you can think of happened down there. '' Folding chairs were a particular menace on all the wrestling circuits. Some sort of world record was set during a match featuring Race in Winnipeg when 103 chairs landed in the ring. ``People were dropping all around me,'' Race recalled. At Memorial Hall, chairs flew toward the ring with alarming regularity, as did canes, heavy coats, cups, utensils and an occasional fan. ``Fans who entered the ring were usually carried out,'' said Kersten. ``The wrestlers didn't take kindly to being attacked.'' Television captured it all. Some regular ringside fans appeared so often on the tube that they became semi- celebrities. Undoubtedly the most recognizable were Mertie and Gertie Hite, known as ``the twins. '' The twins occupied ringside seats at Memorial Hall for as long as anyone could remember, dressed exactly alike, and were usually the very soul of rectitude. But when the mysterious force of wrestling moved inside them, they leaped to their feet, raced screaming to the edge of the ring, pounded wildly on the canvas and cursed like drunken sailors. And that was when they were in their 70s. ``They were certainly two of the most unusual ladies I ever met,'' said Race. ``At one point they hated me worse than death. One of them even stabbed me in the butt with a hat pin. '' When another loyal fan, a somewhat more somber type, didn't show up at Memorial Hall for a few weeks, Kersten became concerned. ``It was like a family down there, and I was worried about the guy,'' said Kersten, now the mayor of Liberty. ``So I went by his place of business, and I found him with his arm in a cast. '' The man said, ``Remember that last match you saw me at, Bill? Well, that night I put a headlock on my bedpost and broke my arm. My doctor told me not to watch wrestling for a while. '' Loss lamented ``Cable TV killed it, made it all national,'' Geigel said. ``It used to be a real hometown thing. The fans knew all the wrestlers. It was a social event for thousands of people. That's all gone now. '' Geigel was sitting in Winslow's City Market Smokehouse Barbecue, and most people who passed his table nodded, waved or said hello. ``Hey, Bobby, ain't seen you in a while,'' said a man dressed in overalls and a ball cap. Geigel greeted the man warmly, though he barely knew him. ``I read about old Bulldog,'' the man said. ``I sure didn't want to believe that. '' ``Me either,'' Geigel said. ``I always loved to see you come into the ring,'' the man continued. ``You had one of those proud walks, one of those 'I'm kicking everybody's butt' kind of walks. '' Geigel smiled. He is 72 now and works in the security department at The Woodlands. So did Bob Brown. ``You know we took up a collection for Bulldog out at the track,'' Geigel said. ``We were going to send flowers. But we got enough to pay for his gravestone up in Winnipeg. '' ``That's good,'' said the other man. ``That's real good. '' ``Yeah,'' said Geigel. ``I thought it was nice that people remembered him so kindly after all these years. ''
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