More than 15 years ago, an aging Mario Milano, the most well-known pro wrestling star to a generation in Australia, wrote a letter to God that ended up being read this past week at his funeral.
“Hello Lord. I thought I might make my reservation now for the big main event in your arena. I hear from your promoters that it will be two out of three with an everlasting time limit.
I hear that some of the old-time greats are up there with you now, people like Roy Heffernan, Haystacks Calhoun, Chief Little Wolf, Gorgeous George, Andre the Giant, Skull Murphy, Brute Bernard, Bobby Shane, Larry O’Dea and all the other great champions. I know that throughout eternity these men will make a big hit with you, just like they did here on Earth.
A lot of my friends are here with me, Lord, so please take care of them because some day they will appear in that golden ring of yours, men like Spyros Arion, King Curtis (who passed away in 2010) and Tex McKenzie (who passed away in 2001). I expect my friends and I will be there too, to watch men like Hulk Hogan, Lou Thesz (who passed away in 2002), Domenic DeNucci, Killer Kowalski (who passed away in 2008) and many, many more in the most beautiful arena of them all, your heaven.
So, you see, Lord, we all know that someday we will receive your call and–oh yes please, one more request: When the champ Mark Lewin comes by, please treat him with respect because if every man follows his footsteps, the world will be a better place. After all Lord, he knows that you are the greatest champion of all.
This is Mario Milano here, Lord. In closing, I would like to say, if I may, please save a dressing room of heavenly splendour for me.”
In 1964, Jim Barnett and Johnny Doyle, two of the most successful American wrestling promoters, who were running a vast territory throughout places from Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, with a powerful affiliate in San Francisco (Roy Shire’s group), put together a deal to get television in Australia. In doing so, they were able to accomplish something they were unable to do in the United States--run a national promotion.
When they came to Australia to open World Championship Wrestling, they met with Dick Lean Sr., who had managed Stadiums Limited for 40 years and controlled the major arenas in the country that they were looking at running weekly, Sydney Stadium, Festival Hall in Melbourne and Festival Hall in Brisbane.
Lean told them to build their wrestling company around a good-looking legitimate Italian to cater to the huge Italian community in Sydney and Melbourne, the two largest cities in the country.
Another key, which Barnett was always criticized for by the local wrestlers, is that he never let the native Australians have the top spots and always built around the stars who in almost all cases had first made their names as main eventers in the U.S. That may have been protection. Barnett had turned Indianapolis into a hotbed in the late 50s, and his biggest star, Indianapolis native Dick the Bruiser, was pushed as the headliner and world’s most dangerous man. A few years later, Bruiser and the other top babyface, Wilbur Snyder, broke off and started a promotional war. Barnett left for Australia and he always noted that unlike The Sheik (Ed Farhat), who purchased the Michigan & Ohio end from him, or Roy Shire, who paid him a percentage for using Barnett’s talent and connections to open up and win a war in Northern California, that he never got a dime from Bruiser & Snyder after creating the Indianapolis boom.
The foreign stars were all, at some point, going to return home, and if they tried to fight for a percentage, Barnett could simply stop booking them and they’d be gone. If the top stars were all local, and he and Doyle being American outsiders, there was more of a risk of opposition (which did happen from time-to-time but Barnett’s television advantage kept him strongly on top) formed by the top stars making power plays for either a percentage of control. Roy Heffernan, who had achieved great fame in the U.S. as part of the original Fabulous Kangaroos with Al Costello, was the one Australian kept strong, but a number of locals who ended up being legitimate U.S. stars, like John Boyd, Norman Fredrich Charles III, Bill Dundee and George Barnes, were kept in prelims, as were Ron Miller & Larry O’Day, who ended up in control of the promotion years later and became top babyface stars.
Barnett & Doyle’s choice as their top star was 33-year-old Domenic DeNucci, who at the time was a major star babyface in the U.S., having just come off a big drawing run with Ray Stevens, which included a trade of the U.S. title in early 1964. Barnett offered both men more than double what they were earning as headliners in the hot San Francisco territory, to reprise their angle to a new country.
DeNucci’s battles with the likes of Killer Kowalski and Stevens caused the territory to catch fire immediately. In the first year the weekly shows in Sydney averaged 9,000 paid and they had similar success in Melbourne. The three top stars were possibly the highest paid wrestlers in the world except for possibly the NWA and WWWF world champions, Lou Thesz and Bruno Sammartino.
Very quickly, due to the success across the country, Australia became the place to be. It was the highest paying territory. Unlike in most of the U.S. where wrestling often had a bad reputation, Barnett had strong sponsorship deals, and a strict dress and conduct code for his wrestlers. The wrestlers stayed at the nicest hotels, flew first class from city-to-city, and were treated like major league sports stars. It was an operation like no other in the world at the time.
DeNucci was the top babyface in the promotion from 1964 to 1966. Barnett even brought in Bruno Sammartino, the WWWF champion, who he said was the best short-term attraction ever to come to the country, responsible for the best month of business they ever had. But he had to pay through the nose to get Sammartino, who had issues with Barnett refusing to use him after he had a startdate during a period when Sammartino had problems with Vince McMahon Sr. and was blacklisted. In 1967, DeNucci was unavailable for a long period of time. In his absence, Barnett brought in Mario Milano.
Milano, was 6-foot-5 and 265 pounds, big, tanned, good-looking and muscular. Always billed as being from Trieste, Italy, his family moved to Venezuela after World War II, when he was ten years old. His father was an upholsterer, but both of his parents were also stage actors and he looked to follow in their footsteps. Due to his notoriety from wrestling, he later appeared in several movies and soap operas.
He had started pro wrestling at the age of 17 as a masked wrestler in Venezuela, the Black Diablo. At the time, there was a local curfew for teenagers being outside after 9 p.m., so he’d wear his mask to conceal his face and hide his age until he turned 18 and started wrestling under his birth name.
He migrated to wrestling in Mexico, as Mario La Pantera, and then Cyclone Negro, a major U.S. star, who also came from Caracas, Venezuela, got him booked in Texas in 1961, where he first used the name Mario Milano. Where things get confusing is there was another wrestler who used the same name in Canada, and both Mario Milano’s were wrestling in California in 1962. On March 28, 1962, at the Olympic Auditorium, Mario La Pantera defeated Mario Milano on the undercard of the Rikidozan WWA world title win over Freddie Blassie.
After leaving California, and entrenched as Mario Milano, he became one of the top stars for promoter Nick Gulas, as part of the top babyface main event tag team in the territory, first with Jackie Fargo, and later with Len Rossi.
Barnett brought the 32-year-old Milano in for $800 a week for a three month tour. A good athlete, Milano was still young, but already had 15 years of experience when he arrived. While it wouldn’t be accurate to say he never left, as he worked all over the world over the next decade, he settled in Australia and spent most of the rest of his career there.
Milano was a great drawing card in Australia from 1967 to 1972, and a consistently good draw through 1978, when the promotion closed up after losing television.
Milano was physically huge and well put together for the era, allowing him to believably brawl with the monsters, but his selling was also strong. English was actually Milano’s third language, after Italian, which he spoke as a young child, and Spanish, which he learned while growing up in Venezuela.
Milano would first do his interviews in English, and then would fire up and talk to the Italians in Australia in their native language.
Barnett wanted to get him over right out of the gate. His first night in, on April 21, 1967, at Sydney Stadium, he first defeated Frank Shields (who later became Bull Bullinski in the AWA as the street fighting truck driver cousin of The Crusher) and then won a Battle Royal that included major names like Chief Billy White Wolf (Adnan Al-Kaissie), Pat Patterson, Hercules Cortez, Don Jardine and Roy Heffernan.
Battle Royals were considered special events, done infrequently, so winning made Milano an instant star. Milano was pushed with wins over stars like Jardine and Patterson, for a shot at world champion Kowalski. He also formed a tag team with Eric Froelich, feuding with Patterson & Art Nelson before losing in a program with their world tag team champions, Kurt & Karl Von Stroheim.
His key angle was during an IWA title match with Kowalski defending against Pat O’Connor, O’Connor was hung in the ropes during the first fall and ruled unable to continue due to a neck injury. Milano was brought out to replace him since world title matches were supposed to be two out of three falls. Milano then beat the huge Kowalski, the greatest heel Australia had ever had, in two straight falls. Because he wasn’t the contracted opponent that night, he didn’t win the world title. This led to a series of title matches that Kowalski won.
On July 28, 1967, at Sydney Stadium, Milano & Red Bastien beat the Von Stroheims to win the world tag team title.
In the storyline, Milano was the master of the abdominal stretch. Bastien went on to coach Milano for another run with Kowalski, teaching him the atomic drop.
On September 8, 1967, Milano defeated Kowalski to win the IWA title at Sydney Stadium. He only held it for three weeks, dropping it to King Curtis Iaukea at a TV studio match in Sydney. At the same time, Milano & Bastien vs. Kowalski & Skull Murphy were battling all over the country for the tag team titles.
When 1967 ended, Milano held both the IWA world title (which he had won a second time, this time from Ripper Collins) and the tag team titles with Bastien, which they had held three times.
By the close of the promotion in 1978, Milano’s 23 different singles and tag team title reigns were more than anyone in the history of major league Australian wrestling.
His biggest program in 1968 was with Gorilla Monsoon. Monsoon arrived for his only tour of Australia in January, billed as being 6-foot-5 and 425 pounds, and issued a $2,000 bodyslam challenge.
A number of wrestlers failed in the challenge. But on January 20, at the TV tapings in Sydney, Milano slammed him, but later lost his world title that night in Melbourne to Killer Karl Kox.
Milano’s biggest singles wins that year were against Monsoon, Thunderbolt Patterson, Kox, Patterson, Nelson, Brute Bernard, Negro, Dr. Bill Miller, Kowalski, Heffernan and Professor Toru Tanaka.
The next year, in a move that shocked fans and that he hated so much he nearly quit the promotion, he was booked for a heel turn in an infamous angle where heel manager Gary Hart hypnotized him.
The angle was so far-fetched that it never got over.
Milano & Antonio Pugliese (Tony Parisi) had lost a match with IWA tag team champions Murphy & Bernard on February 14, 1969, in Sydney. Milano turned on Pugliese. The next day, Milano defeated Bastien by sucker punching him on a rope break. A few days later, in Brisbane, Milano & Pugliese faced Hart’s team of The Spoiler & Kox. Pugliese was in trouble and Milano refused to tag in. Then, as Pugliese came to bounce off the ropes for a tackle, Milano pulled down the top rope and Pugliese took a bump to the floor and was counted out. Milano then shook hands with Hart.
Milano’s ring work was strong as a heel, but it just didn’t work. Milano & Spoiler captured the tag titles from Don Leo Jonathan & Pugliese on March 22, 1969, in Melbourne.
But between the hypnosis angle and the Milano turn, business was hurt significantly.
“Fans either like you or they don’t,” Milano said about the turn. “I was always nice to the people. It wasn’t just because I respected the people, especially the older ones. I loved kids and children. I like to be nice. It’s my nature.”
A lot of fans stopped coming. And the majority of fans who stayed still wanted to cheer him.
On April 10, 1969, in Brisbane, during a match with Milano vs. White Wolf, Milano collided with Hart, on the apron and lost. Hart slapped him in the face. Milano then “came to his senses.” In the next match on the show, Pugliese was beaten bloody by Spoiler & Hat, and Milano made the save.
Milano beat The Spoiler to win the IWA world title on May 9, 1969, in Sydney. The two continued to feud until Milano beat him in a title vs. mask match, and Spoiler was revealed as Jardine. Milano also defeated Hart all over the country. Among others he defeated in singles matches that year were Kox, Bernard, Larry O’Day, Roy Heffernan, Waldo Von Erich, Fred Blassie and Billy Robinson.
Milano spent much of 1970 as a major star in the WWWF, where he tagged with the top babyfaces like Sammartino, Victor Rivera, DeNucci and Monsoon, against the heel stars of the era like Tanaka, Waldo Von Erich, Kowalski, Ivan Koloff, George Steele and The Mongols.
His Madison Square Garden debut was January 19, 1970, beating prelim wrestler The Wolfman (Willie Farkas). On March 9, he and Monsoon beat Ernie Ladd & Tanaka. On June 15, he defeated prelim wrestler Mike Conrad. On July 10, he drew with George Steele. On August 1, he defeated Steele. On September 14, while on his way out, he lost to Crusher Verdu in the semi-main underneath Sammartino’s title defense against Bepo Mongol (who later became Nikolai Volkoff). His biggest match that run was a Boston main event where he and Sammartino went to a 60 minute draw with The Mongols for the International tag team titles, and a number of matches all over the Northeast teaming with Monsoon to challenge The Mongols.
Sammartino wanted to drop the WWWF title at this point, and Milano was under consideration for the spot. But since Milano was based in Australia and had a family there, Pedro Morales was picked to be champion.
Milano & Mark Lewin formed a championship babyface tag team in 1971, dropping the titles to Dick Murdoch & Dusty Rhodes, the Texas Outlaws, on January 22, 1971, in Sydney. Milano remained strong during the year with singles wins over Kowalski, Rhodes, Murdoch, Jerry Brisco, Karl Von Steiger and Beautiful Brutus (who later became Bugsy McGraw).
Milano split time in 1972 between Australia, although he didn’t main event consistently, but worked with the top stars, beating heels like The Stomper (Archie Gouldie), Tiger Jeet Singh and Kox, and teaming with Lewin, Spyros Arion (who was pushed as the top star at this point), Haystacks Calhoun and Wahoo McDaniel. In Japan, he had a few cage matches, which were rare at that time, losing to Great Kusatsu.
In 1973, the final year Barnett was in charge of Australia (he returned to the U.S. that year, there were a lot of reasons including a change in tax laws, a law that at least 51 percent of the employees in a company had to be Australians, and the opportunity to run Georgia Championship Wrestling, the NWA promotion in a war with Ann Gunkel’s All South Wrestling–Barnett quickly became one of the most powerful figures on the U.S. scene and by late 1975, was booking the world champion). Milano headlined early in the year but dropped from main event status as the year went on. Business was on fire with the babyface people’s army, led by Lewin, and featuring Milano, against Big Bad John’s heel group, which was a forerunner in many ways to the NWO angle that the other WCW did nearly 23 years later.
Barnett had gotten his television show into other markets, notably Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore, and Milano was one of the key stars on big drawing events in those countries as well.
Everything changed when Barnett returned to the U.S. Attendance dropped. The pay wasn’t as good, so the quality of headliners dropped greatly. Wrestling existed and was on television, but it was no longer a hot product. Japan got strong with the wars between All Japan and New Japan for talent. Milano was really the one star from the Barnett era that remained as the constant headliner and link to the glory days.
In January, 1974, Arion, the top babyface, walked out on WCW as the Austra Asian champion. WCW was not a member of the NWA at first. Even though Barnett was a promotional powerhouse, he was also gay and at the time the NWA leaders did not want him in a power position in the alliance. By the late 1960s, when Sam Muchnick had more power, in an attempt to solidify the NWA as a worldwide group with as many of the top promotions as possible, he brought promoters like Mike LeBell, Roy Shire, Vince McMahon Sr. (in 1971) and Barnett in.
This led to the IWA world title being dropped in 1971 and replaced by the Austra Asian title in 1972 as the company’s major belt. The NWA world champion started touring Australia at that time, usually battling the Austra Asian champion.
Promoters Miller and O’Dea went with Milano as the company’s top star once again. Tony Kolonie, who was the man who was the promoter to the public (to hide that active wrestlers Miller & O’Day, as his wrestling name was spelled were really running things) claimed that Waldo Von Erich had beaten Arion in Fiji to win the title, and on May 18, 1974, Milano pinned Von Erich to take the title at the TV tapings in Sydney.
Milano had beaten Negro to win the World Brass Knux title on March 2, 1974, in Melbourne. Since he was going to win the main singles title, they set up a match on the May 17 house show in Sydney with Milano & Tony Parisi (who used that name instead of Pugliese by this point) against Bernard & Von Erich, where Milano put up his Brass Knux title and Von Erich put up his Austra Asian belt, in what would now be called a tornado match, all four in the ring, but was called a cyclone match back then. Milano had Von Erich in the abdominal stretch, but a split second before Von Erich submitted, Bernard pinned Parisi so the heels won.
The promotion went to protect Milano as the top star that year. When it came time to drop the Austra Asian title, they did something somewhat similar.
On July 19, 1974 in Sydney, Milano & George Gouliovas faced Negro & Bernard in a match where both Milano’s Austra Asian title and Bernard’s World Brass Knux titles were at stake. Gouliovas suffered a leg injury, leaving Milano having to face two men. Even so, Milano got Negro in his abdominal stretch, but Bobby Shane hit Milano with his shoe and Negro then came off Bernard’s shoulders with a kneedrop for the pin, giving Negro the title. Later that year, as Milano was Brass Knux champion again, on September 27, 1974, in Sydney, Milano & Gouliovas faced Negro & Lorenzo Parente in a no DQ match with both Milano’s Brass Knux title and Negro’s Austra Asian belts at stake. Negro hit Milano with an illegal Bombs Away off the top rope and Parente scored the pin to get the Brass Knux title. Milano later regained the title.
There was also a major angle where Shane and Bernard broke Milano’s arm, which put him out of action.
Milano remained a main eventer as top babyface until the close of the promotion in 1978. The level of talent was well beneath the glory years under Barnett, but Milano defeated almost everyone brought in on the heel side, including Bull Ramos Great Mephisto, Ernie Ladd, Killer Karl Krupp, Ox Baker and a young Bruiser Brody.
There was a 1976 angle where Negro injured his elbow, causing him to work with an elbow protector for some time, and another big one in 1978, when J.J. Dillon rubbed a lit cigar into his eye and temporarily blinded him.
He also toured Japan regularly for All Japan. He was pushed as a star, but not a superstar. His most noted run was in 1975 as The Masked Barracuda, feuding with The Destroyer over the U.S. title and the designation as the world’s best masked man. He also had a huge match in Seoul, South Korea, facing that country’s all-time biggest star, Kintaro Oki, for the International heavyweight title.
Milano continued to wrestle on small shows for nearly three decades after the end of WCW. The local Today show did a feature on him working small shows and training in 1996. His last match was in 2006, at the age of 71.
After wrestling he worked for an office supply company in Melbourne and ran a few pizza restaurants. He would joke that he lived a clean life, never gambled and wasn’t a drug addict, and few excesses, except for marriage (he had three) and joked that without those mistakes he could have been a millionaire.
In recent years, he had been battling Alzheimer’s.
Because of the power and reach of the WCW television show, Milano was a household name throughout Australia, known far beyond the wrestling or sports audience, from shortly after his debut in 1967 and throughout the 70s.
His death has brought up questions regarding the Hall of Fame and Australia, particularly during the Barnett era.
In the current Hall of Fame, WCW legends like Kowalski, Iaukea and Ray Stevens are in. In the case of Stevens and Kowalski, they were no-brainers and would be in without WCW. With Iaukea, it certainly helped, but Iaukea was also the biggest foreign star ever in New Zealand, the biggest drawing card ever in his native Hawaii, and a two-decade long main eventer throughout North America and Japan. Australia was a key part of his career, but he was a worldwide star.
Other key stars of the WCW era, like Arion, Milano and DeNucci have gotten minimal support. Kox, Lewin and most recently Bearcat Wright have gotten more support, but Lewin was a worldwide headliner for decades and Kox had great respect as a worker among his contemporaries. Wright was a huge U.S. star in the 60s, and first African-American world champion, who held the Boston and WWA world titles and held the IWA belt twice.
There is the feeling that with WCW as the hottest promotion in the world, and the drawing power of all of the above names were strong, DeNucci the strongest at peak and Milano impressive both at peak and for longevity and name value, that they belong. The argument, and it’s valid, is that Australia should be a separate category and voted on by Australians, in which case probably all would get in. Australia has in the past been lumped in with Hawaii, Puerto Rico, South Africa and of late, with the rest of the world including Europe.
Thanks to Australian historian Kirk Beattie for all the historical research on Milano’s WCW career.
