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DAYS OF MIDWEST GRAPPLING, HE SAYS By Rich Sambol Those were the glory days of Midwest wrestling ... The mid-1960s through the late-1970s ... "Bulldog" Bob Brown, Rufus R. Jones, Bob Geigel, "Handsome" Harley Race, "Cowboy" Bob Ellis, Pat O’Connor, Dick the Bruiser, The Viking, to name a few ... Bill Kersten at ringside ... Thursday nights at Memorial Hall in Kansas City, Kan. ... Yes, those were the days. "Hel-l-lo, wrestling fans," Kersten would say. Television audiences loved them, too. "All-Star Wrestling" ran on area television stations from 1965 into early 1982. The people who enjoyed those wrestling shows were saddened Thursday morning when they heard that "Bulldog" Bob Brown suffered a fatal heart attack late Wednesday."He was a great guy, my friend for many years," Geigel said. They wrestled together, sometimes as tag-team partners. They even were security guards together at The Woodlands racetracks. "He was a pleasant man," said Allan Meyers, the head of security/operations at The Woodlands and former Kansas City, Kan., police chief. "He was recognized by all the patrons. He’s would talk to them, sign autographs. He hadn’t changed from the days when he was in the ring. And he did a good job for us. " Brown, 58, worked at The Woodlands for about three years before moving over to the Hilton Flamingo Casino. He went over as a security guard, but Missouri law wouldn’t allow him to work in security because he was a Canadian citizen. He had a heart attack in July, before the casino opened. But he was working regularly and was on the job when he had the fatal attack. Brown began his wrestling career in Canada, starting out as a ring official in Winnipeg. Geigel first met him in 1958 and saw Brown nearly meet his match in about 1961. Geigel was in one of those cage matches and Brown was the referee, Geigel recalled. The match didn’t go the way some people expected and Brown was stuck in the cage because a couple of angry Hungarian wrestlers wanted his hide."It took some of the wrestlers (Geigel among them) and about six policemen to get him out of there," Geigel said. Kersten, now the mayor of Liberty, said he received several calls Thursday concerning Brown. "It brought back
memories of the good times," Kersten said. "He
was a classic guy, full of life, always good to be around. He was one
of the real memorable figures of our time. " A SUNDAY FAREWELL
TO BULLDOG BOB BROWN By Hearne Christopher Jr. The "no spitting" crowd was out in force. The occasion: A Sunday farewell at Memorial Hall in KCK to Bulldog Bob Brown, who died Feb. 5, from a collection of the professional wrestler’s closest friends and former grapplers. Some highlights: Sir Soggy. Liberty Mayor Bill Kersten, ringside announcer from the 1960s, ‘70s and early ‘80s, remembers Brown fondly. Not to mention moistly. "The funniest story is that nobody has spit on me since the last time I interviewed him," says Kersten, referring to Brown’s tendency to shower saliva through his missing front teeth and/or dentures. "Seems like every time I’d look at him, out’d come that saliva. " The ref. That would be Richard "Dick" Moody, who left the ring in 1974. "I went to work in the sheriff’s department down in Texas," he says. So who’s rougher, wrestling bad guys or criminals? "Well, you had a lot more control over the bad guys on the street than you did those big lummoxes. " Team spirit. Eight-time world wrestling champ Harley Race described tag partners Brown and Texas Bob Geigel as "probably one of the best-known tag teams throughout the Midwest. And there probably wasn’t a more obstinate team ever put together. " Resilient. That’s how Tom Andrews, formerly of the masked Interns, remembers Brown. "Brown and Geigel were on their way to Wichita to a match once, and all of a sudden Brown started having a heart attack—I mean he was dying. When they got to Topeka they pulled in to a hospital and all of a sudden he passed a kidney stone. Then they went on to the match and wrestled." Shower power. Woodlands security officer Judy Pope, who worked with Brown at the KCK racetrack, says she had lunch with him every week, right until a week before he died. "He was so excited about getting his new teeth," Pope says. "He said, ‘Now I don’t have to spit on everybody anymore. Everybody always made a joke about it, as you talked to him you got a shower. " Valentine past. Brown’s ex-wife, Anne Tunnell, was there to pay her final respects. They married during Brown’s golden era, between 1967 and 1977. "A friend of mine was dating The Viking," she says. "And I started going to the matches and he started picking on me - that’s just the way he was—he’d pick on people he liked. " Area wrestling fans,
for instance. "The wrestling fans of Kansas City are just so full
of love. I mean, they’d love to kill him, but they still loved him.
And he loved his fans—he loved to aggravate them. "
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