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The G.O.A.T. 100 #70 | Verne Gagne
- Peter Edge
- 1 day ago
- 16 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!
Verne Gagne might be known by “the winners who write history” as a man who fell so out of touch that the AWA Team Challenge Series was a thing… As a man who had a golden goose in Hulk Hogan but never made him the man in the Midwest, and as a man so unlikeable that people were gleeful at his downfall in the late 80s.
But there were two sides to Verne. While many in his locker room hated him with a passion – some because they felt he should have paid better (although wrestlers in the AWA were usually among the best paid in the country, he just didn’t pay the same percentage of the gate that Sam Muchnick or Jim Crockett Jr. did) and others because they felt he’d never step aside as the top star of his promotion – he was loved by the fans and he was charitable to the local community, supporting activity clubs for the youth of Minnesota.
Pro wrestling’s reputation in Minneapolis is better than in most places in the USA, and much of that is due to Gagne. A legit sports star in his youth, his reputation in the state was such that in January 2000, when Sports Illustrated did a feature ranking the 50 greatest athletes from all 50 states during the 20th century, they listed Gagne as No. 24 from Minnesota. While the general public mostly realized that wrestling wasn’t real, Gagne and his wrestlers were respected as athletes and genuine tough guys. He was also a member of the country club set in Minneapolis and was well respected in that world, meaning that financial backing was always available .
On episodes of Pardon The Interruption, Mike Wilbon has spoken glowingly about the days of The Crusher and Dick the Bruiser in the AWA in the Midwest. The WWE state media has claimed that legendary sports television personality Bob Costas hated wrestling based on comments he has made in the past about the Fed, but he actually doesn't. It's just Vince he hated. There's clips of him talking with David Letterman about the glory days of the AWA in the 60s. And that fondly remembered promotion was Verne Gagne’s legacy.
Verne was THE champion of the Midwest region for decades. Rarely did you see Verne without the AWA World Championship belt – something being the owner would give you: the ability to make yourself the king of your city.
Verne would book himself as the perennial world champion of the territory, most notably a seven-year uninterrupted reign as champion between the age of 42 and 49, at a time when he had worthy contenders like Nick Bockwinkel, Superstar Billy Graham, Ray Stevens, The Crusher, Dick The Bruiser and Billy Robinson working for him. It wasn’t even the old cliché of the promoter trusting himself the most to stay in his own territory – considering Nick, Crusher and Dick all stayed loyal to the AWA through the mid-80s. Even after losing the title to Bockwinkel in 1975, he always positioned himself as the top contender and top babyface – even if he didn’t work a full-time schedule.
Verne won the title for a final time at the age of 54, from career nemesis Bockwinkel, and in their rematch pinned him again to retain the title just to give it up to “Vacant” – because this match on May 19, 1981, before 17,000 fans at the St. Paul Civic Center was billed as his retirement match.
Though at 54 Gagne was finally done monopolizing the AWA Heavyweight championship, he would still come back out of retirement for a number of special matches. His first comeback match was on April 24, 1983, for “Super Sunday,” a double main event with Gagne & Mad Dog Vachon vs. Sheik Adnan Al-Kaissie & “Sheik Ayatollah” Jerry Blackwell sharing the head of the bill with Hulk Hogan challenging Nick Bockwinkel for the AWA title. This massive card not only sold out the St. Paul Civic Center with 19,000 fans, but drew another 5,000 for the closed-circuit overflow at the St. Paul Auditorium. But after what appeared to be a great ending to his career, and a big coming out of retirement match, he just kept coming back until the public no longer cared as his AWA limped into oblivion. By the end, wrestling into his 60s, he would suffer rib and foot injuries trying to do what he did in his youth.
Before he got into the crazy world of pro wrestling, Verne served in the US Navy’s Underwater Demolition Team in World War II. The UDT were the predecessors to the Navy Seals. His time drafted to the Navy came after a year at the University of Minnesota where he wrestled for the Gophers amateur wrestling team and played Tight End and Defensive End for the school’s football team.
When he returned home from war, he went back to college and won two NCAA wrestling titles, one at 191 lbs and the other in heavyweight in 1948 and 1949. The final for the heavyweight division was against future NWA Worlds Champion Dick Hutton in a match that wasn't just a preview of the future of pro graps – even amateur wrestling historians consider this an all-time classic match up of NCAA wrestling. Verne’s Olympic ambitions didn’t come true as he lost to Henry Wittenberg in the final of the qualifying tournament competing for a freestyle Heavyweight slot for the US team going to London 1948 – Henry would go on to win the gold. That year, the Greco-Roman team was selected based on the runners-up for the freestyle team, so Gagne made that team, but upon their arrival in London, the US coaching staff realized that their Greco-Roman team lacked competitiveness on the international level and made the call to withdraw the whole team.
Verne went into the NFL draft the year before and was selected by the Chicago Bears with the 145th pick but according to Greg, Verne’s son, George Halas, the Chicago owner, asked Verne to pick a side between wrestling and football and Gagne picked the better paying job, wrestling. (Some things actually do change sometimes.)
Pro wrestling exploded in popularity when television started taking off in late 1947 and Gorgeous George became a gigantic star. A number of top amateur stars in that era went into pro wrestling but none of the others had the level of success that Verne Gagne would.
Recruited by Tony Stecher (brother of the legendary wrestler Joe Stecher, and one of the key power brokers in wrestling at the time) barely five weeks after his win over Hutton, Gagne debuted as a pro wrestler to great fanfare on May 3, 1949. Tony believed that he had a future superstar in Gagne, to the point that to get even more attention for this debut, he brought in Jack Dempsey (one of the greatest heavyweight boxers ever) to referee the match.
Within a few months, Gagne was a top star in Texas. On November 13, 1950, he defeated Sonny Myers in a tournament final for the NWA World Junior Heavyweight Title. Gagne was also a major star on the Dumont Network out of Chicago as the lighter weight champion and immediately became a top rival of NWA Worlds Heavyweight Champion Lou Thesz. Gagne was tipped by many to be the successor to Thesz as NWA Heavyweight Champion.
What happened instead was that the NWA allowed their World Heavyweight champ to be booked on a show with a rival promoter in Chicago. Fred Kohler – the promoter with the NWA commission in Chi-Town – was enraged by this perceived betrayal and decided to no longer use Thesz. So to build an alternate draw, he created a new title (the United States TV championship) to put on Gagne. Because of NWA rules, Kohler couldn't call this a “World” championship… But with the power of his national television exposure, he was able to book Gagne on the level of a world champion.
For a promoter to get Gagne, they had to pay Gagne 10 percent of the gross, and pay Kohler’s office three percent. This was the same deal that the NWA had with Thesz. While Thesz had the aura of being the world champion, Gagne was the champ featured on national television. After the title was established in late 1953, and until wrestling lost its national coverage with the falling of the Dumont Network, Gagne with his U.S. TV title was up there as much a top draw as Thesz with his NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship.
The NWA power-brokers were not happy with the creation of the US Title that they believed was in competition with their own title, and costing the NWA money. Still, even though Gagne and Thesz were one of the top stars in the wrestling world, he and Thesz didn’t cross paths for years. Stories that Thesz refused to drop the title to Gagne aren’t true, and both men respected the other greatly as athletes. The NWA just liked having Thesz as champion and even though he could be tough on promoters, there was never a movement to take the title from him.
Thesz wanted to pass the torch to someone legit, and at that time, Gagne would have been the best bet given Thesz’s parameters. But despite their mutual respect, neither Thesz nor the NWA even considered going with Verne. Thesz’s choices were George Gordienko, who wasn’t a name in the States but was considered the toughest guy in wrestling at that time, or Dick Hutton, who Thesz believed was the best actual wrestler in the business at the time. They were unable to get Gordienko into the country because of the remnants of McCarthyism, with Gordienko being labeled a communist sympathizer. So it went to Hutton.
There’s a reason why Dick Hutton isn’t in this Top 100.
Promoters used Eduaord Carpentier to create their own world titles since he had beaten Thesz during Thesz’s run on top, and Thesz didn’t get a win back (Thesz did beat Carpentier via DQ on one occasion) Carpentier’s supposed lineal legacy led to the creation of the WWA World Title in California – and according some tellings of wrestling history, the AWA has claimed its inception from this legacy.
On August 9, 1958, Gagne beat Carpentier in Omaha to win that version of the World Title. It should be noted that Gagne lost that title to Wilbur Snyder three months later, so he was not that version of world champion (Bill Miller was) when the AWA title was created.
His creation of the American Wrestling Association came in 1960. In May of that year, on Minneapolis television, it was announced that Gagne, the No. 1 contender, was issuing a challenge to NWA champion, now Pat O’Connor. The storyline was that it had been years since Gagne had gotten an NWA title shot and they were giving O’Connor 90 days to defend the title against Gagne or be stripped of the title.
As you can imagine, since Gagne had already withdrawn from the NWA, O’Connor was never scheduled to come to Minneapolis – this “challenge” to O’Connor never expected to lead to a match, just a justification to create a new World title. So Gagne made himself World Champion of the newly-founded American Wrestling Association.
During that period he expanded the AWA throughout the Midwest, with its key cities being Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Denver, Winnipeg, Green Bay, Chicago and all points in between. Later, they went into Omaha, Salt Lake City, the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix and Las Vegas, and for a time worked with Ed Francis on regular major shows in Honolulu. While Gagne didn’t actually wrestle much in the Midwest, he seemed to work Honolulu all the time. (I wonder why.)
Gagne, as promoter, booked a more manageable schedule for the wrestlers than most. While the road trips were long and the winters were horrible, there were more days off than most promotions. While criticized as far as the percentages he paid, wrestlers made more working less dates than almost any area. The AWA had a slower turnaround than most places, with talent staying longer and being famous for being in the Midwest.
Gagne himself liked to promote less frequently in the summer so he could take vacations. Most of his wrestlers were big enough names that they could easily get work in other territories if they wanted to on their more frequent off days, and others would use the time off to take their families on vacations.
The AWA business was steady. In 1970, business boomed after an angle went awry in which The Vachon Brothers were battling Edouard Carpentier & a dark-haired prelim wrestler named Buddy Smith (later to become Buddy Roberts). The Vachons had taken out Smith and were double-teaming Carpentier, Crusher made the save. As Mad Dog was blading himself, Crusher stomped on his head, driving his head into the blade and cutting an artery. Mad Dog nearly bled to death. Blood was everywhere. It looked like a scene from a torture horror scene. The Minneapolis station where they taped, with Mad Dog’s blood all over their curtains, nearly canceled the AWA TV show. But the Crusher vs. Mad Dog matches that followed, particularly cage matches, broke gate records in almost every city.
The emergence of Bockwinkel & Ray Stevens as the AWA World Tag Team Champions helped the company even more. Also, Billy Robinson (the top technical wrestler in the world in many opinions) was an AWA guy. Superstar Billy Graham as the top singles heel along with Russian heel Ivan Koloff bolstered the roster. During that period, Gagne was more a promoter than a wrestler. As world champion, he only worked a show or two per month, not appearing regularly in any city.
He made himself a special attraction in the process, as when Gagne would be on the show as champion, they’d raise ticket prices $1 across the board. They didn’t need him to draw on the monthly shows in the big markets because the tag champions, Graham and Crusher were doing great. But he positioned himself as being at a level above all of them.
Gagne usually worked with heels like Stevens, Koloff and Bockwinkel (some of the best workers of that era) as his opponents. He worked with Graham, too, since he was money. He always wanted to look strong and have time to stand still. The 48 year-old Gagne wanted people to see him as the same Gagne whose best years were 20 years gone. But as good as he was in getting the AWA fans to cheer him, he did understand how to work a program against a babyface too, playing a subtly heel champion against Robinson.
Robinson was the full-timer of the two and Gagne had pushed him (credibly) as the greatest technical wrestler in the world on his television output, so he did what he could in their match to make Robinson look good despite a losing effort. Gagne was still unwilling to pass the torch completely, even to someone he respected as much as Billy Robinson.
In the early years, Gagne would only wrestle Robinson on rare occasions, building up matches between the pair as the ultimate battle. With Robinson as his lead trainer, Gagne started doing annual wrestling camps to bring in new stars. Gagne would train these wrestlers, and they would not only pay him for the course, but it was also part of the deal that he would act as their booking agent and would get ten percent of their future earnings – if they survived.
Among the names Gagne and Robinson trained were legends like Ric Flair, Ricky Steamboat, The Iron Sheik, Sgt. Slaughter and Curt Hennig. And even before the wrestling camps with Robinson, Gagne also broke in names like Baron Von Raschke, Blackjack Mulligan and all three of Gene, Ole & Lars Anderson. Really, if you think about it, Verne is the patriarch of wrestling’s most famous faction – The Four Horsemen.
The Gagne camps were ridiculously gruelling, and described by many as torture, particularly when Robinson was involved.
Things slowed down in the late 70s with an aging crew, but they still pushed through some younger talent, including The High Flyers team with Verne’s son Greg, partnering Jim Brunzell, and their arch-rivals, The East-West Connection of Adrian Adonis & Jesse Ventura.
In 1981, things would start to change. In the short term, this meant the line went up big-time, but the changes also ultimately led to the beginning of the end.
Hulk Hogan was brought in as a heel, managed by Johnny Valiant. But the crowd loved Hogan. Gagne quickly sensed what was happening, got rid of Valiant, and shot an angle where Hogan bodyslammed Jerry Blackwell, who may have been the most hated heel at the time for putting Crusher out of action.
Hogan and the crew from that era destroyed all the records set by the 70s roster. While WWE today claims Hulkamania was born in 1984, the term Hulkamania started being used on AWA TV in 1981. Gagne specifically taught Hogan how to play babyface on a major league level, as well as helping him refine his interview style. As mentioned in that abominable Hogan docuseries on Netflix, Hogan was somewhat green and stiff in interviews when he started in the AWA. But within a year, he had his character completely dialed in, between the Rocky music, the tearing of his T-shirts, and the phrase “Hulkamania,” Verne found the face of all faces in Hogan.
The AWA expanded its touring schedule but the pace of its television was slower, and the in-ring quality lower, than rival promotions of that era such as Mid Atlantic, Georgia and World Class. In the places they flourished, most fans weren’t seeing anything else, so that was what wrestling was to them, and Gagne always presented a wide variety of unique and colorful characters. The interviews with Ventura, Bockwinkel and Bobby Heenan as his manager, Mad Dog and others which were handled by Gene Okerlund were as good as anywhere in the country. It’s very arguable to say the weekly AWA television show was the template for what WWF put out from 1984-86.
Hogan's run in AWA would end in acrimony, however. Hogan never got a run with the AWA World Title in spite of being the obvious choice – he would pin longtime champion Nick Bockwinkel in the ring, but through various means Hogan would always end up with the win thrown out after the fact. The reasons for Verne never giving Hulk any opportunity to hold the World Title of his promotion were down to politics and Verne's greed.
Hogan was starting to make a name for himself in New Japan with his IWGP win in 1983 and Verne, seeing all the money Hogan was making in Japan and the merch numbers he was pulling with the birth of Hulkamania, wanted a cut of the money Hulk was making – with 50% being talked about as the cut he demanded.
Verne also being aligned to the All Japan side of the Baba vs Inoki war while Hogan was world champ for New Japan – it would have meant chaos had Hulk had also won the AWA World belt. But chaos would have been preferable to what the younger Vince McMahon had in store for Gagne… and for the long-term well being of wrestling in the USA.
After taking the reins of the WWF from his father, Vincent Kennedy would lure away from the AWA not just Hulk but Okerlund, Heenan, Ventura, Adrian Adonis, Wendi Ritcher, Tito Santana, Jim Brunzell, Ken Patera and David Schultz.
The AWA were the main casualty of the WWF’s national expansion, but many other promotions across the country were also hard hit. In response to Vince’s poaching the AWA, JCP, and the Memphis and Georgia territories pooled their top remaining stars to form Pro Wrestling USA. It was under this name that the first Superclash was promoted in 1985. But within months, the idea was finished. Trying to get Verne, Jim Crockett, Jerry Jarrett, Jerry Lawler and Ole Anderson to all agree on anything would be a bigger achievement than getting Armenia and Azerbaijan to get along, so even getting Pro Wrestling USA to go for more than a year was a surprise.
While the AWA in 1986 was actually a fun product in the ring – with the Rockers vs Buddy Rose & Doug Somers feud and Curt Henning and Nick Bockwinkel putting on a classic against each other in an hour time-limit draw – the numbers were getting worse in attendance and ratings. While Verne brought young guys in and developed them such as Scott Hall, The Nasty Boys and Vader, (under the name of Bull Power) the Fed came poaching again, taking The Rockers and Curt Hennig (who was their lynchpin, being AWA Champion in 1987 and 88.)
Gagne tried again to form an alliance with other promoters, joining forces with Jerry Jarrett. Jerry Lawler would win the AWA Title off Hennig as Curt left the territory. The original plan was for Greg, his son, to win the belt and be the long-term champ knowing that his son (who was also in the office by this time) wouldn't leave like everyone else, even doing “Dusty finishes” at non-televised events to gauge interest in such a move. But fans were not buying it.
Texas promotion World Class Championship Wrestling came into the new alliance with Lawler and the World Class World Champion Kerry Von Erich main-eventing SuperClash III in a unification match which Lawler would win.
The PPV bombed at the box office with only 45,000 buys and 1,300 tickets sold in a 9,500 capacity building. The collaborative effort was over soon after. Lawler was stripped of the AWA portion of his prize. Lawler just kept the AWA World Title and took it with him on the road calling himself the Unified World Champion. Verne did make a new belt. But all of this was the final cut – a knife into the heart of the AWA.
In a last ditch effort, the AWA tried something different called the Team Challenge Series, which saw the roster divided into 3 teams. But this ended up being one of the most Wrestlecrap of Wrestlecrap moments in wrestling history, and the AWA would close its doors by the time 1990 ended.
Verne would be diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in the mid 00’s but in an era when CTE wasn’t known as well as it is now, there is a very good chance that CTE may have been a better diagnosis. He moved into the memory-loss wing of a health care facility in Bloomington, Minnesota.
In 2009, Verne got into an altercation with a fellow resident of the Bloomington facility. Helmut Gutmann, who was 97 years-old at the time was picked up and thrown to the ground by Gagne. Gutmann was admitted to hospital and died 18 days after the incident due to complications from the impact he took.
Helmut’s death was ruled as a homicide by the medical examiner at Hennepin County. But the following month the prosecutor from the county ruled that Verne wouldn’t be criminally charged for causing Gutmann’s death on account of his lack of mental capacity due to the dementia he was suffering from.
Six years later, Verne passed away at the medical facility where he spent the last decade of his life.
Verne inclusion in this list can be seen as controversial. His way of business, keeping himself as The Man in a promotion where many had a greater claim to the crown, is everything that I don’t like in wrestling. A lot of people deserved that slot at the top more than Verne but the power of the pencil and who owns it added a lot of weight at the time.
But in his prime, in an era where technique was the name of the game, there weren’t many better than Verne Gagne.
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