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G.O.A.T. 100 #78 | Killer Kowalski
- Peter Edge
- Jul 2
- 21 min read
Welcome to the G.O.A.T. 100 where we will count down with PWM wrestling historian Peter Edge the 100 greatest wrestlers of all time, based on many different stats and criteria. A new wrestler will be added on Mondays and Thursdays every week. Here is a link to an introduction essay with Peter explaining his GOAT100 concept. At the bottom of the article you can find the GOAT 100 Portal with links to all profiles so far published, as well as a visual key... Enjoy learning more about the history of our great hobby!
The concept of heels in wrestling was still developing as the 1950s were starting. Bill Longson has been acknowledged as the first to go beyond getting boos because of just cheating or cowardice, but evoking visceral hate from the crowd with sheer brutality. But that was after “Wild” Bill was already done as a main-eventer in wrestling. But then came Killer Kowalski.
Born in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, Władysław Spulnik, the son of Polish immigrants, grew up fast – literally. By the age of 14, Spulnik was already 6’ 4", but due to his low BMI began working out in his local YMCA to try to add some bulk. But after starting college in Detroit, working towards a degree in electrical engineering, he took the logical next step for someone on such a path – wrestling!
Out of the many varying stories of how Edward became a wrestler, the most common one is that on recommendation from a friend, he went to a wrestling school upon learning that the pay he would receive would be an increase from the $50 a week he got from his part-time job at the Ford Motor Company at the motor city.
Before he became the "Killer", he was billed as Wladek Kowalski and that was after he was Tarzan Kowalski, when he was an instant main eventer. On December 11, 1950, in Fort Worth, he became the one-man Texas tag team champion when he beat the champs Duke Keomuka & Danny Savich in a handicap match, at a time when that type of booking was a rarity.
The transition to "Wladek" was an attempt to play on Cold War tensions and maybe incite Senator Joe McCarthy to do something perhaps.
Yukon Eric was an early main rival of Kowalski. The two had wrestled several times around North America and it was a natural match-up. Eric was a 280-pound babyface with the gimmick of being the strongest man in the world. While the matches were hardly classics, the powerful lumberjack gimmick and the strongman spots associated with Eric helped the pair's matches draw.
They first crossed paths in 1949, and headlined in Montreal for an early 1950 match. They had wrestled each other a few more times in Canada, as well as Boston before their famous match in Montreal. It was on October 15, 1952, at the Montreal Forum. Kowalski’s version of what happened is that he tied Eric’s legs up in the ropes and prepared to give him a kneedrop off the top rope to the chest. Eric rolled out of the way but Kowalski’s shinbone hit Eric’s heavily cauliflowered ear and sliced it off. Blood was squirting out of the wound. There are reports there was so much blood squirting out it was getting on the ringsiders. Kowalski said a towel was quickly brought out and put over Eric’s ear… but it was drenched red in seconds.
Kowalski also said that two days later, when he went to the promotion’s offices at the Forum to get his weekly paycheck, Eddie Quinn, the territory's promoter, asked him if he’d gone to the hospital to see Eric, which was a block away. Kowalski said he hadn’t, but Quinn told him it would be a good idea to apologize to him.
Quinn told his assistant to make sure Kowalski went to the hospital. But when he got there, by coincidence, there was a reporter from the local newspaper as well as a crew from the biggest television station in the city. Kowalski, still not fully grasping why he was there, saw the reporters, and went to leave.
An employee at the hospital then screamed to the reporters, “Kowalski’s out there.” Kowalski never actually entered the room, but he looked in and Eric smiled at him. He smiled back and soon both started laughing.
The next day in the local newspaper, there was a big story about how Wladek Kowalski, as he was now known in Montreal at the time, went to the hospital to laugh at what he had done to Yukon Eric. Kowalski himself had no idea about all this publicity as he had already flown out of town. He came back to Montreal six days later for a match where he defended his title against Tarzan Zorra.
Amidst all the publicity during the week after the hospital visit, a reporter had called him Killer Kowalski. Fans yelled “You’re a killer,” at Kowalski during the match the next week and the name began to stick.
When Eric returned, he challenged Kowalski for the title in their first match since the incident took place, on Jan 14, 1953, at the Montreal Forum. It was the first wrestling match that aired on national television in Canada. The match finished as a DQ win for Kowalski with Eric getting disqualified for going berserk, to set up a rematch. Something that was a repeat recipe for their feud all over the country.
Kowalski went to North California and – as with any top heel working the area in the 50s – his big rival was the local football star, Leo Nomellini of the San Francisco 49ers, who wrestled during the off-season. Imagine if George Kittle worked for WWE instead of doing OTA’s during the spring time! (God, imagine how many times he would do the Zero Miedo thing.) Leo would be a Pro Football Hall of Famer in 1969 and picked for the All-Time team at the 50th Anniversary celebrations of the NFL that same year. At 6 ft 2, Nomellini was the average height of a player at his position of defensive tackle.
Kowalski was 6 ft 7 as a grown adult. The previous great heel, Bill Longson – the most hated man in wrestling in the 40s – was 6’ 2” for comparison.
After Roger Bannister ran the first under-four-minute mile on May 6, 1954, Kowalski found out that Bannister was a vegetarian and decided to follow suit.
“From that time on, nothing that walked, crawled, swam, flew or slithered have I eaten.”
He learned to believe that meat hurt his stamina. Up to 1954 he had been an avid weightlifter. He started as a teenager to build himself up for high school swimming. But now he believed that lifting weights made you slow and stiff, and just stopped cold turkey. Kowalski would now concentrate on push-ups, squats and jumping jacks. (Citing health reasons, he also refused to blade, which was a rarity among headliners of his era.)
The training must have worked, since Kowalski gained the reputation as the best-conditioned big man in the industry. He was never caught out of breath in a match no matter how fast the pace was, or how long the match went. Some of his peers thought that sometimes he worked too fast for the fans to react to everything that he did and a lot of faces didn’t enjoy working with Killer because it was far from a night off working with him.
He then evidently decided to retire as a wrestler, because on February 4, 1955, he did a world title vs. career match with Thesz that drew 14,000 fans in St. Louis. Since Sam Muchnick wasn’t one for doing fake stipulations, and Kowalski did leave wrestling five weeks later, (at least for a time) there must have been a feeling he was serious.
At the time of his departure, he held the main heavyweight title for Eddie Quinn’s Montreal based promotion. He gave Quinn his notice, and come March dropped the belt to Pat O’Connor by losing via DQ. They did a rematch a week later where O’Connor pinned him clean, and then Kowalski disappeared from that circuit.
He would join a religious group called the Church of “I Am,” based in Denver. The church became the biggest thing in his life, and every year he’d donate 20% of his wrestling earnings to the religion (actually this sounds like a cult). It was one of the reasons after the decades of main events and a lot of money made, that he ended up in bad shape financially.
In “I Am”, the color purple and a flame, called the flame of violet, represented the light of God in each person. Because of that, Kowalski usually wore purple trunks or would have trunks with violet lightning bolts when he returned to the art of wrestling.
He would refuse to see a doctor to stick to the rules of the religion. It led to painful arthritis as he got older due to all his untreated ring injuries. In his final years, the once towering man had shrunk greatly.
But he was rejected in trying to become a priest, leading to his return to the ring. I guess “Killers” aren’t welcome but people who like younger people are. (Let’s see if Sergei edits this observation out…) [ed: lol no.]
After his rejection from his new sect's priesthood he returned to the ring in December, 1955, beginning the second stage of Kowalski’s wrestling career. Showing how much Quinn thought of him, he was only back for one week in Montreal before he defeated Don Leo Jonathan to regain the title. He was also back for Muchnick in St. Louis by January.
When he came back from his religious break, he worked mostly in major cities with New York, St. Louis, Montreal, Boston and Toronto his favorites, doing some dates in between in smaller cities near the major markets. He now owned his own small airplane and got a pilot's license while away, allowing him to travel more extensively while still remaining a loner.
He worked the top of most cards with the biggest names in the business in 1956 and 1957, working with O’Connor, (his most frequent opponent in the United States at this time) NWA champ Lou Thesz, Montreal legend Yvon Robert and Buddy Rogers in rare heel vs heel matches.
On July 17, 1957, when he beat Gene Kiniski to win the Montreal title for the eighth time, via count out, the show was held outdoors at Delorimier Stadium and drew 21,851 fans.
By 1958, he moved his base to Philadelphia, working the New York territory for the first few months of the year before returning to Montreal as his base in the spring. He held the title in Montreal all year, since the Kiniski win at Delorimier and then won the Boston version of the World title in Paul Bowser’s circuit from Ed Carpentier.
Kowalski’s reputation further grew from an incident on June 2, 1958, in a Boston title defense against Pat O’Connor, with Jack Dempsey (one of the greatest boxers ever) as referee. Kowalski accidentally kicked Dempsey in the wrong place when it was time for a ref bump and Dempsey was hospitalized that night. That got national attention and served to enhance Killer’s reputation for evil.
He remained champion in both Boston and Montreal, going back-and-forth, picking up a major new rival in Pepper Gomez where they put on an angle that might be already familiar to you, the reader. (Assuming you are reading the GOAT 100 in publication order.)
Before Ray Stevens hit his Bombs Away Knee Drop on Gomez’s throat to ignite business in San Francisco, Kowalski came off the top of the ladder, with a knee drop to the throat to injure Gomez where he started to cough up blood. In Boston, where it aired on WBZ-TV, viewers actually called the police and the cops came down to the studio before being told it was just part of the show. The Gomez vs. Kolawski match when Pepper was back sold out Boston Gardens well ahead of time.
Kowalski traded the Montreal title that year with Rogers, had another short New York run in late 1959 and early 1960, but mostly worked in Boston, Montreal and Chicago.
In October, he moved his base of operations to working for Jim Barnett in the Midwest in the cities that weren’t AWA strongholds and feuded with Dick the Bruiser. He lost his Boston AAC Title to Bearcat Wright on April 4, 1961, at the Boston Garden after a three year hold of the Boston belt. By August, he was splitting time between the Midwest and Vancouver, and then at the end of the year, he also became a regular for Stampede Wrestling in Calgary.
He was billed as World champion at Stampede. To separate it from the NWA, Stu Hart called him the NAWA world champion, which, to further confuse the marketplace, was called the National American Wrestling Alliance after a split in the promoter base of North American wrestling after Buddy Rogers became NWA World Champ and his promoter Vince McMahon Sr. made Buddy’s booking fee too high.
After leaving Calgary in the summer of 1962, it was back to working the major markets, concentrating on Montreal, Boston, St. Louis and Chicago.
While Kowalski was billed as “world champion” for 11 years for Quinn in Montreal, having 14 reigns with the MAC World Heavyweight belt and those three straight years as the AAC Champ in Boston, he never held any of the the "Big Four" World Titles of that time – the NWA, AWA, WWA (Los Angeles) and WWWF titles.
In New York, he challenged Bruno Sammartino during both of Sammartino’s title reigns. But as a heel in the babyface-focused WWWF, he was always going to chase the beloved Bruno but never catch him.
On 21/11/62, just eight days before NWA Champ Rogers was allegedly scheduled to drop the title to Lou Thesz in Toronto, he defended the NWA title against Kowalski in Montreal in a match that was most likely scheduled to end up as a draw. But early in the match, Kowalski dropkicked Rogers, who took a bump to the floor, and in doing so, broke his ankle.
Rogers got back in the ring, and submitted the first fall in a two of three fall match, but couldn’t answer the bell for the second fall. Since there was no authorization for a title switch, Kowalski wasn’t given the NWA title, even though that ruling made absolutely no sense from a logic standpoint.
The NWA/Rogers relationship was strained already – this being the the second time they had tried to book the Thesz/Rogers title change where Rogers came up with an injury right before the title change – after this night, it was on the verge of breaking.
During Rogers’ saga with the NWA Title and while they were trying to get him to drop it to Thesz, Kowalski was brought in to Japan for two months for his debut in the country as the top foreign star of the fifth annual World League tournament for the JWA.
This tournament was the return of Giant Baba after a 20-month excursion in the U.S. and on his way to finishing top of the 15-man round robin stage, he beat Baba in the league. But his series against Baba was depicted as such a struggle as to "make" Baba (who Rikidozan had chosen as the guy who would eventually replace him as the country’s biggest star) as a legitimate threat.
In all, Baba and Kowalski had four matches on the tour. Two of these were time-limit draws with the latter airing live on television, a 45-minute draw on the 24th March which is remembered as Baba’s first great match as a headliner and the single match that made Baba a superstar in Japan. The other two saw Kowalski win the third and go to a double count-out in the final match.
The 2-out-of-3 fall World League final between Kowalski and Rikidozan, which Rikidozan won, would take place on the same day as Bruno Sammartino’s WWWF Title victory over Buddy Rogers and Kowalski became one of the first challengers for Bruno’s belt at the monthly MSG shows
Sammartino pinned Kowalski on August 23, 1963, before a sellout of 19,712 fans. Kowalski was just there as a place setter to put over Sammartino as they built up a Sammartino vs. Rogers match in Roosevelt Stadium in New Jersey that never took place as Rogers retired from wrestling due to ongoing health issues. Sammartino and Kowalski would be regular opponents in arenas both big and small in the Northeast for the next year.
This run was also notable for the tag team of Kowalski & Gorilla Monsoon, who was brought to New York as the replacement for Rogers. Monsoon's gimmick was that manager Wild Red Berry had found a 400-pound beast swimming nude in a pond in his native Manchuria. They won the U.S. tag team titles, the forerunner to today’s WWE World tag team titles, holding the belts for a month.
It was in October of 1964 that Jim Barnett opened up World Championship Wrestling in Australia after leaving America due to the University of Kentucky sex scandal. Kowalski was the first world champion in the promotion. With a primetime slot on the Nine Network run by the Packer family and running weekly shows in the major cities in the country, it became a hot spot for pro wrestling.
Barnett was offering more money, more exposure and better amenities and lifestyle than could be had anywhere in pro wrestling at that time and he could have picked any top heel at the time to build around. (Maybe with the exception of The Sheik and Dick the Bruiser, who had both bought their territories in the Midwest off Barnett in a fire sale as he was fleeing to Australia.) He picked Kowalski.
For the first four years of the promotion, Kowalski went back and forth from Australia during that period and was the top heel. He was the go-to guy whenever Barnett wanted to make a new top babyface. The three men generally considered the biggest stars in the history of Australian territorial wrestling – Dominic DeNucci, Spyros Arion and Mario Milano – all were made by beating Kowalski for the world title.
On an appearance on the Don Lane show – Australia’s Johnny Carson – Barnett was able to get Lane to work a big angle to put Kowalski over. The angle started with Lane insisting Kowalski put the stomach claw on him. Kowalski played the role of a guy there to have fun on a talk show but then suddenly lost it. The staff had to pull the crazed Kowalski off Lane, who was carried out on a stretcher and had a substitute host finish the show.
It was so big the story got front page headlines in the newspapers the next day, with the Daily Mirror cover reading, “Killer Mauls Lane.” This led to Kowalski beating Billy White Wolf for the title before losing to Spyros Arion.
He returned to the Land Down Under in early 1966 with the IWA belt with it being announced in Australia that he had beaten Arion in Honolulu in December 1965. Truth was, no match had taken place. Arion had jumped to a rival promotion Down Under, headed by George Gardiner, so Killer was the break in-case-of-emergency guy.
When back, they copied the original formula, with him coming in as champion and losing the belt to DeNucci, who was Arion’s replacement as the top babyface. In April 1966, Barnett brought Sammartino in for a three-week tour as WWWF champion, and he worked many times with Kowalski.
Kowalski would win the IWA World title five times in all with the final loss being against Milano in September 1967. He would also do tours in Hawaii until April 1968, and also Japan for the 1968 World League tournament which also included HOFers such as Baba, Antonio Inoki, Fred Blassie and Pat Patterson – with Baba and Kowalski being the big draws, calling back to their matches five years before.
Baba and Kowalski had a 30:00 draw on April 6 at Sumo Hall. Then, in the tournament final on May 17, in Osaka, Baba scored his first win ever over Kowalski.
Killer returned to the Northeast after Thanksgiving of 1968 for a run of matches with Sammartino. He and Monsoon often teamed, claiming that they were the U.S. tag team champions even though those belts had been dropped in 1967, and were replaced by the International tag team titles until the summer of 1969.
They faced the two top babyfaces in the territory, Sammartino & Victor Rivera in MSG on 27/1/1969. After Monsoon and Rivera traded falls, Kowalski scored a rare pin on Sammartino in the third fall before 11,568 fans.
This was during a down period for MSG wrestling as they had no local television and were promoting the shows based only off newspaper ads. Sammartino and Kowalski did a double disqualification on Feb 17 before Sammartino won the rematch via count out three weeks later. The feud was also huge in Boston. After two sellouts at the Boston Gardens with the third and blow-off match, a stretcher match on June 28, 1969, being moved to Fenway Park such was the demand after the first two contests.
Living in Philadelphia again, he worked the territory exclusively until March of 1970, and was no longer the globetrotting star he had been after finishing up in Australia.
Texas was a hot territory going cold – with Fritz Von Erich, Gomez, Wahoo McDaniel, Johnny Valentine, Mil Mascaras and Thunderbolt Patterson as the headliners, but running out of heels for the babyfaces above to face. They brought in Killer Kowalski to fill that role, but he seemed to be losing his luster and he didn’t pop business.
His name was still one of the strongest in wrestling, but he was years past what was his box office peak. Still, he was brought in for a television taping in St. Louis and worked an angle out of a tag team match with old rival O’Connor. In what was likely their last meeting, with nothing strong underneath, a Texas death match won by O’Connor, drew a near sellout of 10,580 fans to Kiel Auditorium, Killer's last great box office achievement.
He returned to Australia and was a babyface as the tag team partner of Mark Lewin, one of Australia’s all-time most popular wrestlers. The pair feuded with young heels The Texas Outlaws: Dick Murdoch & Dusty Rhodes.
As a babyface for the first time in decades, Kowalski began to wrestle a completely different style, revolving around arm drags and dropkicks. The matches would see the heels continue to cheat on Kowalski, who would blow his cool, and revert back to the old Kowalski, while Lewin would have to calm him down.
In April, Kowalski finally turned on Lewin in a television match, leading to a feud between the pair which led to one of the best drawing periods ever in Australia… but it was a last hurrah in the country. Afterward, the line went down and never came back up. Shortly after, Barnett sold up and returned to the United States, acquiring the Georgia territory.
Kowalski returned home to work for The Sheik in Detroit for a couple of months, feuding with the territory’s biggest star, The Sheik, with Kowalski working as a face in the program. Then he went to Southern California, his first time as a regular in the state since his 1951 feud with Nomenelli. But this wasn’t the Kowalski of the 1950s. Not by a long shot.
His hair having thinned, Kowalski started wrestling with a toupee, and started developing a trademark bump where he'd both take the bump and grab his hair to make sure it didn’t come loose. That probably led to his idea of wrestling with a mask a few years later.
He worked with Rocky Johnson and Kowalski destroyed him. Next was Fred Blassie in a live Saturday night television match on KCOP television, which ran a 90 minute show in those days that drew big ratings.
Kowalski delivered a kneedrop off the top rope onto Freddie’s knee and it was announced Blassie was injured and would need surgery. It was an attempt to reprise the hugely successful angle from the previous year where John Tolos, in the same studio, took Blassie out with Monsel’s powder. Like the year before, it was a cover reason for Blassie to have knee surgery. Even Sammartino, in between runs as WWWF champion, was brought to SoCal, and they did a DQ finish – but Sammartino left Kowalski with heat.
But Kowalski’s style didn’t get over in the area and wasn’t drawing well. The crowd was heavily Mexican-American and Kowalski’s style didn’t mesh well with the lucha background of so many of the babyfaces. His facials and selling were almost comical because of the style clash. He was put in a program with Tolos, now a babyface after his famous Blassie feud. But it didn’t click.
Kowalski did stick around, working lower on the card, even winning the tag team title with Kinji Shibuya, waiting for the final match with Blassie. There was no time for a long run, as Blassie was getting back just before Kowalski was next scheduled for Japan. Kowalski put Blassie over on June 16, 1972, at the Olympic Auditorium, worked another week in the territory and headed back to Japan.
After a quick two-week tour in the JWA, (which was on its last legs with Baba on the verge of leaving to found AJPW) Montreal – in the middle of North America’s biggest promotional war – was the next stop.
Eddie Quinn had closed his promotion in 1964 due to poor health, and in 1965, Johnny Rougeau & Bob “Legs” Langevin started running in the town. In late 1971, Paul Vachon, Gary Legault and Lucien Gregorie started Grand Prix Wrestling in opposition, pulling some of the city's legendary stars (like the Vachon Brothers, Carpentier, Don Leo Jonathan, Jos & Paul LeDuc and Jean Ferre – the future Andre the Giant) away from Rougeau. Kowalski worked for Grand Prix, too (along with dates in Pittsburgh, where he renewed his rivalry with Sammartino.)
At first, business for both sides was huge and the city was on fire. The Kowalski vs. Carpentier feud that started in the 50s was still packing them in as they battled over the Grand Prix world championship. It was as champion when Kowalski scored at least one pinfall win over Ferre.
Kowalski finished in Montreal for the final time as a star in a major promotion just before Grand Prix went down. The Rougeaus booked dream matches galore but with no foundation to business, it was short-lived. The city’s entire wrestling economy would end up collapsing in 1975 and both sides went out of business.
Kowalski debuted in All Japan Pro Wrestling in late 1973 where he was the No. 3 foreigner behind Sammartino and Fritz Von Erich. Sammartino & Kowalski, the legendary Madison Square Garden rivals, would form a tag team in the main event on several of the big shows.
The two teamed up with no fictional tension (an early seed of AJPW being insular to the global wrestling canon of its time) with Kowalski always losing the key falls as they did 2/3 fall losses to Baba & Jumbo Tsuruta three times. Kowalski & Von Erich would team up in losing efforts to Baba & Thunder Sugiyama and to Baba & The Destroyer with Kowalski again being the one to drop the key fall.
Sammartino and Kowalski feuded again in New York with Bruno in his second run as WWWF champion with a double count out on April 29, 1974 in Madison Square Garden leading to a Texas death match a month later which drew 17,103.
Kowalski came back to St. Louis for one last show as a favor to Sam Muchnick to bail out a bad card, challenging Dory Funk Jr. for the Missouri State title. But the move didn’t shift tickets with only 4,750 fans at the Keil.
His last major tour of Japan was right back where he started. The JWA World League had become the AJPW Champion Carnival, and in 1975, Baba and Kowalski were still two of the big names. In the tournament, Kowalski beat everyone but Destroyer (two draws), Tsuruta (drew and lost) and Baba (double count out and a draw). He failed to make the final four, consisting of Baba, Destroyer, Gene Kiniski and Mr. Wrestling (Tim Woods).
Kowalski stayed out of wrestling after one last tour of Japan until late in 1975. He showed up in Florida as The Masked Destroyer where he was immediately given the Southern championship but every fan knew it was Kowalski. In a feud with Billy Robinson, Billy won the Southern title from him and then beat him in a title vs. mask match. While in Florida, Kowalski met Frank “The Hammer” Goodish, at that point a 320-pound powerlifter and ex-football player, and recommended him to Vince McMahon Sr. as an opponent for Sammartino. McMahon renamed him Bruiser Frank Brody.
In April of 1976, Kowalski & Minton showed up in the WWWF as The Masked Executioners. In those days, just as the WWWF title was kept on babyfaces long-term, McMahon Sr.’s tag title had its own pattern. Every nine months or so, a new heel team would be brought in to win the titles, usually on television, have their run, lose, and then depart a few months later. Kowalski’s voice and ring style were so unmistakable that everyone knew Kowalski was Executioner #1 and to be fair the promotion played along and it worked because it gave the team more credibility and heat than most of the heel tag team champions.
Chuck O’Connor was in the other mask (and also recognizable). They quickly won the WWWF tag team titles from Tony Parisi & Louis Cerdan on May 11, 1976, at the TV tapings in Philadelphia, defending the belts against White Wolf and Jay Strongbow at the June 25, 1976, Shea Stadium show that was the Northeast show underneath the Muhammad Ali vs. Antonio Inoki match that played on CCTV at the NY Mets home stadium.
Everyone thought they would lose the belts to Strongbow & White Wolf on October 26 at the TV tapings in Hamburg, PA, but a third Executioner did a switch (Nikolai Volkoff was under the mask) which saw the titles vacated, which led to a tournament where the Iraqi and Italian playing Native Americans ended up as champions. (Don’t ask.)
The Executioners stayed around until finishing up on April 23, 1977, in Providence but then Kowalski had only a couple of major league matches after that night.
The Killer Kowalski School of Wrestling at that point was just getting ready to open for business. Opening its doors for the next 26 years, the most famous graduate is Triple H, (5 place deduction for Killer Kowalski) but Chyna, Perry Saturn, John Kronus, John Studd, Frankie Kazarian, Tommaso Ciampa and Fandango were all trainees of Kowalski. Five years after he stopped training wrestlers, Kowalski suffered a heart attack on August 8th, one that was so strong that his family were told he would never recover from it.
He was taken off life support on August 18th, 2008. Erroneous reports that day said he had died, but for 12 more days Killer somehow stayed alive, only passing away on the 30th.
Killer Kowalski might have come after Wild Bill Longson but he was the first heel to be used to promote others. Many a promoter used Killer Kowalski as his position as a feared heel to get over whoever the promoter of a territory wanted to be their big star.
It didn’t matter if it was Montreal, Melbourne or Madison Square Garden, you could rely on Kolwalski to put in a performance and get people to fall in love with the guy on the opposite side of the ring.
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