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I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling. If you have one of those queries searing a hole in your brain, feel free to send it along to me at [email protected]. Don’t be shy about shooting those over – the more, the merrier.
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Tyler from Winnipeg is whistling dixie:
Bret Hart versus Mr. Perfect for the Intercontinental Title. Can you give me the details on Perfect’s manager “Coach”?
The man’s name was John Tolos, and he lived the sort of life that could easily be the subject of a full-length biography, so almost anything that I write here will be the short shrift.
Tolos was born in 1931 in Ontario and was of Greek ancestry. He became a wrestler at the age of 20 and spent his early years wrestling in upstate New York but before long moved out to California, where he would have probably his most career success. In 1953, he teamed regularly with his brother Chris, known alternately as the Golden Greeks and the Greek Wrecking Crew, winning the NWA Pacific Coast Tag Team Titles from another brother team, Enrique and Ramon Torres. The brothers also took their act to St. Louis in 1955, even reviving their rivalry with Enrique Torres there, though Ramon was elsewhere at the time.
It did not take long for John to earn a reputation as one of the stronger promos in wrestling, using the catch phrase, “There’s only one way to spell wrestling: T-O-L-O-S.”
In the summer of 1956, John Tolos moved from California to Texas, where he worked for the Amarillo territory that was owned and operated by Dory Funk, Sr. In the first part of 1957, Chris joined him there for a brief tag run, after which the brothers returned to their native Canada, wrestling in the Tunney family’s Toronto territory and feuding with yet another brother team, Bill and Ed Miller. That summer, it was back to Amarillo for a while, and then in the fall it was off to New York and the Capitol Wrestling Federation, a precursor to the WWWF/WWF/WWE. They had a variety of opponents in Capitol, most notably Antonino Rocca, who was perhaps the promotion’s single biggest star at the time. The Tolos brothers even main evented Madison Square Garden as part of this run, losing a Tag Team Title match to Rocca and Miguel Perez.
John’s next stop was the Houston, Texas territory, without Chris. Instead, John formed a tag team with Japanese American wrestler Duke Keomuka (who in a sad piece of trivia was held in American internment camps during World War II). Tolos and Keomuka became the NWA Texas Tag Team Champions, though the run was relatively brief as shortly Tolos was in Calgary’s Big Time Wrestling – which eventually became Stampede – and again teaming with Chris. The Golden Greeks went to war with the Lisowski Brothers, Reggie and Stan, who were not actual brothers. (Reggie would go on to bigger fame later in his career as the Crusher.) The Flying Scotts, George and Sandy, were also regular opponents of the Greeks at this time.
At the end of ’58, John had a brief run as a single back in Texas, which I mention because it includes his first career encounter with Lou Thesz, with the two men wrestling to a sixty minute time limit draw in the Dallas Sportatorium on December 16.
1959 saw the return of the Greek Wrecking Crew to Capitol Wrestling, resuming their feud with Rocca and Perez and continuing to headline MSG with them. They were there for most of the year, and then in 1960 they headed to NWA Upstate, which controlled the parts of New York that Capitol Wrestling did not. While in Upstate, John Tolos would also make periodic appearances in the Detroit territory – when it was still being run by Jim Barnett and not yet the Sheik. During one of those appearances, Tolos received his first documented shot at the NWA World Heavyweight Title, going down in defeat to champion Pat O’Connor.
Though they would continue to show up in other territories on occasion, NWA Upstate really continued to be the home promotion of the Tolos bros. Up until the end of 1961, and they had a lengthy run with that promotion’s version of the NWA World Tag Team Titles. (Rather than there being a touring set of NWA Tag Champs as was the case with the NWA World Champions, different regional groups had their own NWA World Tag Titles.)
In December of ’61, the Toloses headed home to Canada once more, specifically back to Toronto where they immediately won the NWA International Tag Team Titles. Interestingly, in just about eight months in promotion, they won and lost the titles four times. They originally won the belts from brothers Cyclone and Hurricane Smith and then primarily feuded with Whipper Billy Watson who brought a variety of partners to the fore against the brothers, including Yukon Eric, Lord Athol Layton, and Bill Soloweyko – later known as Klondike Bill in other promotions that didn’t want to bother spelling his last name.
Capitol Wrestling again beckoned to the Tolos Brothers in the fall of 1962. In addition to reigniting their feud with Rocca and Perez, they also did battle with the Scufflin’ Hillbillies and Bobo Brazil & Dory Dixon. It should be noted that, during this Tolos run, Capitol Wrestling changed its name and became the World Wide Wrestling Federation in 1963.
From May of ’63 through early November of the same year, Chris and John left the WWWF for a relatively brief swing through the Carolinas with Jim Crockett Promotions. While with JCP, the Golden Greeks traded the NWA Mid-Atlantic Southern Tag Team Titles with the team of Eric Pomeroy & Ray Andrews and also feuded with a couple more brother teams, namely Karl & Kurt Von Brauner and Alberto & Ramon Torres.
Upon finishing up with JCP, Chris and John were right back to the WWWF, and it was during this run that they finally captured a championship in that territory when on December 28, 1963, they upended Gorilla Monsoon & Killer Kowalski in Teaneck, New Jersey to become the WWWF United States Tag Team Champions. Title histories show the Greeks losing those titles to Don McClarity & Vittorio Apollo in February 1964 in New Haven, Connecticut. However, an exact date does not appear to be known and this happened at the same time the Toloses left the territory, which makes yours truly wonder if this was actually a phantom title change, i.e. one that never really happened.
After this, Chris and John entered a period where they really bounced around. They were in Florida for two months and held the NWA Florida Tag Titles for about two weeks. They had a couple of matches in NWA Upstate, then a couple in Toronto, then a couple in Detroit – and they cycled through like this for a while.
That period of restlessness for the tag team came to an end in April 1965, when the brothers separated for a while. After the split, John returned to the Amarillo territory for the first time in almost ten years. While there, he initiated a rivalry with Jose Lothario, the man most of our readers will know as Shawn Michaels’ original trainer and manager in the 1990s WWF. The two men also recruited tag team partners for their feud, with Lothario selecting Dory Funk Sr. and Tolos pairing up with a “Japanese” wrestler Tetsuro Sato, though in reality he was South Korean and would go on to great fame years later as Kintaro Oki. Tolos & Sato picked up a reign as NWA Amarillo North American Tag Team Champions during this time.
John finished up in Amarillo in June of 1965 and went back to Jim Crockett Promotions. He also went back to teaming with his brother. While there, they were regular opponents of George & Sandy Scott (who they previously feuded with in Texas in the 1950s) and Haystacks Calhoun & Johnny Weaver. John even got another singles match against Pat O’Connor on November 24, 1965 in Asheville, North Carolina, though O’Connor was no longer NWA Champion at that time.
John’s next stop was on the opposite side of the continent, as he (once more without Chris) started wrestling for NWA Vancouver in British Columbia. During this period, he would also make periodic appearances for Don Owen’s Pacific Northwest Wrestling in Washington and Oregon. Tolos again became an NWA Title contender at this point, facing champion Gene Kiniski for the biggest prize in the game on July 18, 1966 in Vancouver and, when that bout went to a draw, a Texas Death Match for the belt was scheduled for the very next week. Needless to say, Kiniski prevailed. The two would rematch again on October 8 in Seattle, wrestling a 60-minute Broadway and again on November 28 in Vancouver with Kiniski retaining via count out. John remained a tag team specialist in the Pacific Northwest, winning and challenging for championships alongside partners such as The Black Terror (Florida wrestler Bobby Graham under a mask), “Tough” Tony Borne, and Dutch Savage – though Savage would go on to become a rival as well.
In 1967, John remained in Vancouver, but there was a big change in that Chris showed up in the territory at this point after the two were apart for a year-and-a-half. They almost immediately won the NWA Vancouver World Tag Team Titles from Dominic DeNucci & Don Leo Jonathan. Their challengers for those belts included, in various combinations, Jonathan, Savage, Don McClarity, Rocky Johnson, and Gene Kiniski. In September of 1967, the Tolos Brothers also had a one-off match for the AWA, facing the imposing team of Harley Race & Larry Hennig in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Eventually, though, the Greeks were sent packing from the Pacific Northwest by a perhaps even more intimidating team – Abdullah the Butcher & Dr. Jerry Graham, who took away those Vancouver Tag Team Titles on October 2, 1967.
Now we have another transition, as John Tolos returned to California for the first time in over a decade, specifically hitting the Los Angeles territory without Chris. He was aligned with The Alaskan (a.k.a. Jay York) and Freddie Blassie early on, with their rivals being the Medics and Bobo Brazil. In June 1968, while still with the L.A. territory, John went to Japan for the first time that I’m aware of. He was there with the JWA, and he faced Antonio Inoki in a tag team match as well as his old partner Kintaro Oki in singles action.
In August of ’68, Tolos was defeated in a big singles match in Los Angeles, being pinned by Mil Mascaras in a match for Mil’s WWA Americas Heavyweight Title. That was a wrap for him in the promotion for the time being, with John then returning to Vancouver. This time, he worked mostly as a singles wrestler and had three more NWA World Title matches against Gene Kiniski, so I’m guessing Gene considered him a favorite opponent. Aside from those bouts with Kiniski and a couple of singles encounters with Lou Thesz, this run in the PNW was fairly uneventful and, when it came to an end, Tolos was right back to southern California in May 1970.
John started this Cali run as a tag team wrestler again, pairing with the Great Kojika. In a side note, Kojika is a Japanese wrestler who has spent most of his career in that country. He is currently 82 years old and somehow STILL WRESTLING, having two matches so far this year, both of them explosion death matches. That said, Tolos and Kojika quickly became the NWA Americas Tag Team Champions.
After the team with Kojika ran its course, John Tolos became more of a singles wrestler, facing the biggest stars of the SoCal territory, including Pedro Morales, Fred Blassie, and Rocky Johnson. He briefly left the territory in December of 1970 after losing a cage match to Blassie for Blassie’s NWA Americas Title and then had a pretty uneventful run in St. Louis for a few months before returning to Los Angeles in the spring of 1971 . . . and this is where Tolos had the peak of his career.
On May 7, 1971, Tolos defeated Blassie for the NWA Americas Title, though it was a flukey finish designed to protect the babyface Blassie, as Tolos only won because the (gimmicked) ring broke, catching Blassie off guard. The next day at the promotion’s television taping, the promotion was set to announce its wrestler of the year award. To nobody’s surprise, Blassie was the winner, though he was immediately attacked by a jealous Tolos, who took things beyond a standard wrestling beatdown when he found the ringside doctor’s bag and produced Monsel’s powder, a substance used to stop bleeding which can be dangerous if applied elsewhere.
Tolos threw the (worked) Monsel’s powder into Blassie’s eyes, and Blassie immediately went down, selling that he had been blinded. To really get the angle over as legitimate, Blassie immediately had a knee surgery that he needed, and he was hospitalized for a time recovering. However, the promotion told fans that Blassie was in the hospital due to damage to his eyes caused by the Monsel’s powder, and they even told fans what hospital he was in so that they could go visit. When fans did visit, Blassie had his eyes bandaged and was selling the angle.
With Blassie laid up, Tolos went on a tear, downing all the top faces in the territory. He beat Earl Maynard. He beat Peter Maivia. He beat Don Carson. He even beat Mil Mascaras in a two straight falls in a two-of-three falls match, which is near unbelievable to me when I think of Mascaras’s reputation for never wanting to put anybody over.
On July 30, 1971, Tolos beat Carson in a Roman Gladiator Death Match, an unusual match in which winning required that you beat your opponent so badly that he couldn’t answer a ten count, after which you needed to drag his body around to fall four corners of the ring. As soon as Tolos won, Freddie Blassie made his return with a bandage still over his eye, wielding a chain. However, security intervened before Blassie could reach Tolos, though everybody in attendance knew that the the Golden Greek’s days were numbered.
The two rivals locked horns on August 27 in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. It was a two out of three falls match, and the men split the first two falls in a bloody war. In the third, Blassie clobbered Tolos with a brutal chairshot and he was ruled unable to continue by the referee, making Blassie the winner. According to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, over 25,000 fans were in the Coliseum, making this the largest crowd to ever watch a live wrestling show in the state of California up to that point in time. The record stood until WWE began running major stadium shows in the state, decades later.
The two rematched two weeks later, but attendance dropped sharply and that was the end of the feud for the time being. Instead, Tolos went back to wrestling Mil Mascaras in the fall of ’71 and Rick Hunter in the winter. Things got a bit odd in 1972, as Tolos was actually turned face because Blassie had to take time off for another knee surgery. In fact, they ran an angle in which Blassie and Tolos reconciled off camera as an excuse for Tolos to start facing some of Blassie’s rivals. In that role, he went to war with Killer Kowalski, Ernie Ladd, and The Sheik.
In 1973, Tolos formed a babyface tag team with Victor Rivera at a time that Rivera was the NWA Americas Champion. Ultimately, the two partners decided that Rivera would defend the title against Tolos in a face-face match. However, after Rivera successfully retained in the bout, Tolos snapped and turned heel again. He eventually won the championship in their rematch.
In September of ’73, the powers that be in L.A. decided that they were going to go back to the Tolos-Blassie feud, despite their apparent reconciliation earlier on. The two men did a three-match series culminating in a loser leaves town affair, and Blassie, the babyface . . . actually lost and left town. He was 55 years old at the time and wrapping up his tenure as a full-time wrestler. This loss is what set up his departure for the WWWF, where he was slotted into the managerial role that most readers of this column will know him for.
After banishing Blassie, Tolos spent the first couple of weeks in 1974 in New Japan Pro Wrestling, which was celebrating the second anniversary of its founding by Antonio Inoki. In fact, Tolos was brought in to be an opponent for Inoki, with the two having singles matches in Tokyo and Hokkaido. With that brief tour done, it was right back to work in Los Angeles including more matches with Victor Rivera and one 90 minute draw against him. Tolos also did a swing back through the WWWF over the summer, challenging Bruno Sammartino for the territory’s championship. Then it was back to NJPW for another bout with Inoki in October. Needless to say, John Tolos was in demand.
Believe it or not, this was the point at which Tolos’s time in Los Angeles finally started to wind down. He had some final feuds in late 1974 and early 1975 with the likes of Pampero Firpo, Edouard Carpentier, and even a young Greg Valentine, who not only beat Tolos for the NWA Americas Title but also sent him packing in a loser leaves town match.
With L.A. in the rear view mirror, Tolos decided he would return to Texas, competing in both the Houston and Dallas territories. Coincidentally, one of his first big matches was on May 31, 1975 for the NWA Texas Heavyweight Title against Johnny Valentine . . . the father of the man who kicked him out of Southern California. Tolos had a run with that championship and defended it against the likes of El Gran Markus and Terry Funk. Though he would occasionally drop it, he remained in the mix for that championship for the remainder of the year, ultimately losing it for the last time to Peter Maivia on Halloween night and then losing a championship rematch on November 14.
Hey, ya know how wrestling promotions these days get criticized for not honoring stipulations? Well, that’s not a new phenomenon. On the day after Thanksgiving in 1975, John Tolos was back in the Los Angeles territory. This time, he formed a tag team with Mexican wrestler Mando Lopez and feuded with two more legendary Mexican wrestlers, Black Gordman and Great Goliath. After that program came to an end, Tolos teamed with Tony Rocco for a hot minute, though by the summer of ’76 he was back up in the Pacific Northwest. From July through the end of the year, Tolos chased and briefly held the NWA Pacific Coast Heavyweight Title, which belonged to the Vancouver territory. He also went to battle with Jimmy Snuka in Don Owen’s promotion.
At the beginning of 1977, Tolos went to work for promoter Leroy McGuirk, who was running the territory at the time known as NWA Tri-State, though a couple of years later it would be taken over by Bill Watts and rechristened Mid-South Wrestling. In Tri-State, Tolos met several men in the ring who matched his wild style, including Grizzly Smith and Dick Murdoch. He also became a regular tag team partner of Stan Hansen for the first time.
Halfway through ’77, Tolos decided that he’d had enough of the mid-south area and pulled up stakes, heading to a much more desirable environment: Hawaii. The Golden Greek made the islands his home base for the second half of the year, where he worked quite a bit with brothers Bill and Russ Francis – sons of Canadian promoter Ed Francis. If the name Russ Francis sounds familiar to you, it’s probably not from his brief wrestling career but rather from his playing twelve years in the NFL. (And, yes, appearing in the NFL vs. WWF battle royale at Wrestlemania II.) Tolos continued on in Hawaii for most of 1978, though he moved east and started working out of Sacramento for the last quarter of the year.
1979 saw the return of John Tolos to Japan, this time competing for the IWE promotion, which was just a couple of years away from its demise. He spent the entire month of March there, being built up for a championship match against Rusher Kimura at the end of the tour. Kimura made short work of Tolos in their bout in Fukushima, and that sent our man back to the states.
Tolos’s career was winding down at this point, as he had quick swings through Amarillo and Tri-State before finding himself back in Los Angeles for his final tenure in that territory. This time, Tolos was in L.A. from May 1980 through March 1981. While prior tours of Los Angeles saw Tolos wrestling a veritable “who’s who” of pro wrestling, at this point the promotion was on its last legs, and the other big names of the past were gone. Mando Guerrero was probably Tolos’s biggest “name” opponent of this time, though they did haul Freddie Blassie out of mothballs for another series of matches between the old rivals in November and December of ’80. Freddie was 62 years old by this point, and the two just couldn’t recapture their prior magic.
In 1982 and 1983, Tolos went to the Midwest and wrestled for the AWA, where his most frequent opponents were Jerry Lawler, Brad Rheingans, and Rick Martel. This was the last time he would be anything approaching a full-time wrestler. The WWF did use him as a special attraction in a few matches when they came to Los Angeles in 1984, but those bouts were nothing noteworthy.
In 1990, Tolos resurfaced in wrestling with Herb Abrams’ UWF of all promotions. He was a heel manager there, at least until the WWF came calling in 1991 and put him into the role of Coach, which is what inspired this question. His time in the Fed was almost universally panned, and he returned to the UWF not long thereafter.
Interestingly, Tolos did have one last match after he was the Coach in WWF. For reasons that I fail to totally understand, Atsushi Onita’s FMW promotion flew Tolos and Killer Kowalski in to Yokohama, Japan to have a legends match as part of the company’s third anniversary show on September 19, 1992. Tolos was 61 years old at the time, and Kowalski was just shy of turning 66. They wrestled for ten minutes when the match was thrown out for excessive brawling at ringside. Though it was not a good match, from the clips that exist online, I would say it did fall short of being a total embarrassment.
And that is how the career of one of the great regional stars of the 1960s and 1970s died – not with a bang but with a whimper. Despite how it ended, 99% of wrestlers would commit heinous crimes for the opportunity to accomplish half of what John Tolos did. Hopefully, this write up will help people remember him for something other than blowing that stupid whistle at Summerslam.
(Thanks to everybody who stuck with this column to the end. Normally I avoid having one question dominate the entire run of the column, but once I started digging in to Tolos, I had a hard time stopping. We should be back to something more conventional next time around.)
We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.
