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When Johnny Powers was still just Dennis Waters, he grew up on Adeline Avenue, beside Mahoney Park. His father ran Arnold’s Electronics on Barton Street East, and was also an avid ham radio operator in his spare time, talking to others all over the world.

Early in his wrestling career, Johnny went with a gimmick of the Abominable Snowman, bleached his hair white, wore furry boots and claimed he was from the Far North. Then a promoter named Bert Ruby met him, said the young man had an arrogant tone to his voice, and suggested he fight under the name Lord Anthony Landsdowne.

“OK,” he replied, “but can my nickname be Tony? Because I don’t think anyone named Anthony, who is also a lord, is going to get any women.”

Soon after that he legally changed his name to Johnny Powers, choosing the first name after his hero, actor John Wayne. Much better for getting women, he figured. At 22, tall and muscular, he had his hair regularly coloured by a woman named Anna. Wrestling magazines called him the blond bomber and “the golden-haired Adonis of the ring.”

One mag called Wrestling Confidential featured him on the cover: “Johnny Powers loves women, wine and song,” the headline read. Inside was a black-and-white spread showing Johnny out on the town in Philadelphia at the Gaslight Club, in suit and narrow dark tie, with a pretty, beehive-hairdoed girl on each arm, a serious look on his face: “A stoic Powers has his arms full with Mary-Lou and Sweet Sam ... Mary-Lou and Sam show Johnny some holds they’ve learned.”

The photo op was a put-on, but the women weren’t — he dated both girls, among others.

Powers played a bad guy, bringing his arrogant blond muscleman act to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, where he was matched against popular fighters with Italian heritage, such as Bruno Sammartino. Trainer Jack Wentworth had taught him the importance of finishing holds on opponents. Powers’s version of the “figure-four” leg lock became his trademark; he christened it the Power Lock, carried around suitcases of cash, offering $25,000 to anyone who could get free from it. (The actual move is real, and when carried to its extreme — which Powers and others were careful to avoid — a leg-breaker.)

While wrestling in Ohio, Powers met his wife. He first met Karen when she was just a teenager among the girls who stood on chairs as he strode to the ring, leaving lipstick marks on his face as he entered. She was 17 when they wed, and they had two sons. (Powers kept it all a secret to secure his female fan base.) But life on the road and his exposure to women was not good for the marriage; they divorced after eight years. Later in Japan, during one of his many tours, he dated a blond who had been with an up-and-coming wrestler named Terry Bollea — who had not yet changed his name to Hulk Hogan.

“Too bad, Hulk, I took one of your girls.”

Very early in his career, at just 22, Powers started promoting matches, always a deal in the works, feeding a hyperactive imagination and ambition that he’d had ever since he was a boy. And he was among the first wrestlers to take wrestling tougher, and bloodier, staging many violent matches with American Johnny Valentine.

Blood in the ring had traditionally come via “blading” — which meant covertly cutting your own forehead, or your opponent’s, with a tiny razor blade. Wrestlers still used that method, but also produced “hardway” blood, meaning blood shed as a real consequence of the fighting.

In that spirit, Powers promoted a barbed-wire match in Cleveland after getting the idea watching a movie where British POWs had to escape through barbed wire. Powers was fined for the stunt by the Ohio wrestling commission but it still went off in the ring, the combatants bleeding after crawling through the wire.

Powers did his share of bleeding over the years, scores of stitches etched in his forehead, but never allowed himself to cross paths with the barbed wire.

“My mom didn’t raise a fool.”

One of the wrestlers Johnny Powers helped train was Angelo Mosca, the huge Hamilton Ticat defensive lineman. Born near Boston, the son of a stonemason, Mosca discovered late in his CFL career that he had a knack for the physical demands of wrestling, but also the showman shtick, one that he had honed as one of the most quotable players in football, and one of its nastiest trash talkers before anyone used the phrase “trash talk.”

Mosca would glower into the camera doing wrestling interviews and snarl: “I’m gonna give you so many lefts, you’ll be beggin’ for the right!”

His parents never did see him perform in the ring. They didn’t like it — the staged nature of the sport, and also, their son playing the part of an Italian bad guy.

Mosca made it big wrestling in a “territory” (as they were called in wrestling) in Western Canada, and then also in the southern states and around the world: Fiji, Tahiti, the Caribbean, and he made about 70 trips to Japan. He always tried to appreciate the ride: when he took the bullet train in Japan, the other guys would fall asleep, but Mosca made sure he didn’t miss seeing Mount Fuji.

In his prime, Mosca wrestled at 6-foot-4, 315 pounds. He had a size 17 ring, size 16 shoe, and was one of the few wrestlers big and athletic enough to physically work with Andre the Giant one-on-one in the ring — he fought the Giant 300 times. Andre would usually decide who would win the match.

“Andre could make money with you, and he was one of the finest men I ever met.”

The moment Mosca knew he had arrived was one night in New York. He stood outside Madison Square Garden, looked up at the marquee, and it said the main event was Angelo Mosca versus Bob Backlund. His name in lights.

“Wow. I’ve finally made it,” he thought.

He also remembered one great week, where he picked up a cheque for $3,000 for one week’s work, and had also just bought a brand new Cadillac.

In the early 1970s and beyond, he always played the heavy, and loved it. In Puerto Rico, he appeared on TV and baited the fans.

Once, he held up a few one-dollar bills on camera.

“See these? This is the gross national product of Puerto Rico!”

After one match there, he left his championship belt on the bed in his room and snuck from his hotel to the airport for fear he would get attacked; he already knew what it was like back home to get the tires on his car slashed by fans in the parking lot.

Mosca was among the modern wrestlers who took the sport away from the more gymnastic holds and throws of the early days, to bigger and nastier matches. In one infamous battle, Mosca took the fight against nemesis Blackjack Mulligan beyond the ring and into the parking lot outside, as other wrestlers from the dressing room rushed to the scene, watching in supposed disbelief as Mosca and Mulligan continued to go toe-to-toe, even slugging it out on top of a flatbed truck, before the others broke it up.

Mosca loved the business and, belying his menacing image, he was a prankster. He drove promoters crazy; in the dressing room before matches he would announce, “Well, I’m going to go out and fake it in 15 minutes.”

He offered to drive guys lower down on the card to matches, which also didn’t endear him to promoters.

“They didn’t like that; I didn’t care. I wanted to help guys who weren’t making my money. We were in the whore business and I was a whore. Some of the promoters hated me for talking like that.”

He had his moments on the road. One night, drunk, in Omaha, Neb., he tore a door off its hinges and held it over his head. Manager Bobby Heenan said, “You look like King Kong.” Mosca took the nickname and kept it. King Kong Mosca.

Mosca had his wild days, but one thing he said he never did was steroids. He hit the weights and was naturally huge; he playfully taunted the others in the locker room, kissed his own bicep.

“See this?” he’d say, pointing to his massive arm. “This is NS.”

Like all career wrestlers, Mosca’s body broke down over time. There were all the usual injuries, and he also wrecked his shoulder when he slipped off another wrestler and didn’t tuck enough. That led to a shoulder replacement.

He witnessed others inject themselves with steroids, in the chest, arm, leg, trying to stay big. Saw a guy jump from 156 pounds to 230 on the juice, when his heart gave out. Died.

“It was sad. Some of the guys thought it would last forever.”

For some wrestlers the story did not end well, their lives ruined by too much drinking, womanizing, steroids and financial ruin. But others knew how to take care of themselves, and some got out of the business early.

Marty Valenti, who wrestled in the ‘50s, had the physical and mental strength to stay in the game, certainly. He went 5-8, 210, and enjoyed the physical contact.

“When all the other fellas were out dancing at the Alexander, guys like Chris Tolos and I were going to the YMCA, training, got serious about it. Although Chris was in a class by himself; very modest. I was a loudmouth.”

But Valenti quit the ring after just four years. He loved it, but also figured if he endured the pounding much longer, he’d end up crippled. Didn’t like the travel, either, living out of a car. Instead he left the business, worked as a stonemason and got married — best thing he ever did.

Murray Cummings played football for the Hamilton Hurricanes before making it as a pro wrestler, but always part-time, never leaving his job at Dofasco.

“I didn’t trust the promoters; they told you anything to commit to a match, then you’re booked off to Tennessee. Their line always was, ‘You should have been here last week, it was a great payoff.’”

Others stayed in the game, never wanted to leave, even while paying a price for it. Matt Gilmore figured he performed in 7,800 matches. With his Scottish accent, a promoter figured he could capitalize on those of Scottish heritage in the crowd, billing him as Duncan McTavish; bagpipe music played when he entered the ring.

He worked what he figured was the longest Texas Death Match ever, lasting two hours and 40 minutes against Ronnie Garvin, in North Bay one night. He also wrestled a bear and an alligator in the ring, and a tiger in Portland.

“There was a German who used to fight the tiger, but he got sick so they asked me to do it. I said, ‘Why not? It’s just a big cat.’”

Gilmore suffered for his longevity — constant injuries but also a wounded personal life, always on the road and away from his wife and kids. When he got home from a trip all he wanted to do was heal; water on the knees, chipped elbows. She wanted to go out for dinner, and all he had been doing was eating out.

“It broke up my marriage. ... It was a lonely life — I’d wrestle in Maple Leaf Gardens on Sunday, then home that night, Tuesday in Chicoutimi, then on to Montreal, Boston, fly to Puerto Rico on Friday. Then do it all over again. Car, hotel, airport — and you hoped the promoter paid you.”

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