“Living Legend” is a phrase you don’t want to throw around too willy-nilly…especially when it comes to wrestlers. But I think that we can safely classify Bruno Sammartino as one without too much hesitation. Ironically, I can’t say that I’ve actually never seen him wrestle. But when I was in my glory days of being a wrestling fan back in the early to mid-1980’s, I saw his face time and time again within the pages of the stacks of wrestling magazines (including back issues) that I purchased. Even though he had just retired from full-time wrestling in 1981, I already considered him a wrestler from the ‘old days’ long before my time.
The stories of his classic battles with the likes of Larry Zbyszko, Billy Graham, and Stan Hansen echoed years later…but like I said, I never really anything of him outside those magazine pages. Sammartino did return to wrestling during the mid-1980’s and appeared at the first WrestleMania event in the corner of his son David, but by that time, wrestling had pretty much dropped off my radar.
After all those years of thinking of Bruno Sammartino as an untouchable lession, it was a little bit surreal to actually get to meet him. He was one of two reasons that I traveled with my Dad to Pittsburhg and the Steel City Con. I had never heard of him doing any personal appearances at other shows, so I figured this might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Later I found out that Bruno had actually called Pittsburgh his home since he had moved there at the age of fifteen.
He was only charging $20 for an autograph, and it included a free photo op, which is becoming more and more rare. I considered this encounter the deal of the show, especially considering the fact that he also agreed to pose for a photo with my Dad.
It was an exceptionally cool encounter, and meeting him in itself made it worth the trip to Pittsburgh. But fortunately, there was one other wrestler there that I had always been dying to meet and was perhaps even a bit more exciting that the Living Legend himself.
Celebrities of the Spring 2013 Steel City Con will continue…
I couldn’t find an e-mail address for you, but I wanted you to know I used your pic to make https://scontent-b-lga.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/t1.0-9/10320508_727980433905831_1127330697324717316_n.jpg . The search goes on for a reason why I did it.
Mc
May 16th, 2014