Frederick Kenneth Blassie was an American professional wrestler and manager, known by the ring name "Classy" Freddie Blassie. Renowned as "The Hollywood Fashion Plate", he was a one-time NWA World Junior Heavyweight Champion, and was inducted into the WWF Hall of Fame in 1994. He is regarded as one of the greatest wrestling heels, or villains, of all time.
Leo Joseph Nomellini was an Italian-American professional football player and professional wrestler. He played college football for the Minnesota Gophers and was selected by the San Francisco 49ers in the first round of the 1950 NFL draft. He played 14 seasons as a defensive tackle in the National Football League (NFL), all of them with the 49ers, playing his first three years as an offensive tackle as well.
Mitsuhiro Momota, better known as Rikidōzan (力道山), was a Korean-born Japanese wrestler who competed in sumo and professional wrestling. He was known as The Father of Puroresu, and one of the most influential persons in professional wrestling history. Initially, he had moved from his native country Korea to Japan to become a rikishi. He was credited with bringing the sport of professional wrestling to Japan at a time when the Japanese needed a local hero to emulate and was lauded as a national hero. He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2017, becoming the first Korean inductee and the third puroresu star to be inducted after Antonio Inoki and Tatsumi Fujinami. He was killed in a street fight with a member of the Sumiyoshi-ikka in 1963.
Shohei Baba, best known by his ring name Giant Baba, was a Japanese professional wrestler, promoter, and professional baseball player. He is best known as a co-founder of All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW), a promotion he founded in 1972 along with Mitsuo Momota and Yoshihiro Momota, the sons of his mentor Rikidōzan. For the first 10 years of its existence, Baba was the top star of All-Japan, while also serving as the booker, promoter, head trainer and president of the promotion from its inception in 1972 till his death in 1999. Baba was also responsible for recruiting much of the talent for All Japan, and was the public face of the promotion for much of his lifetime.
Yasuhiro Kojima, best known by his ring name Hiro Matsuda, was a Japanese professional wrestler and trainer.
Larry Heiniemi is an American retired professional wrestler, better known by his ring name, Lars Anderson. His career spans over a decade of performing in National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) territories as well as the American Wrestling Association (AWA).
Jack Barton Adkisson Sr., better known by his ring name Fritz Von Erich, was an American professional wrestler, wrestling promoter, and the patriarch of the Von Erich family. He was a 3-time world champion and a 6-time NWA United States Champion. He was the owner of World Class Championship Wrestling.
Nicholas Warren Francis Bockwinkel was an American professional wrestler. He is best known for his appearances with the American Wrestling Association (AWA) in the 1970s and 1980s.
Fanene Leifi Pita Maivia, better known as Peter Maivia, was a Samoan-American professional wrestler, actor and stunt coordinator. Maivia was the grandfather of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson via adoption, and was also part of the famous Anoaʻi family via blood brother pact. He was also the promoter of the National Wrestling Alliance member Polynesian Pro Wrestling in Hawaii.
Houston Harris was an American professional wrestler, better known by his ring name Bobo Brazil. Credited with breaking down barriers of racial segregation in professional wrestling, Harris is considered one of the first black professional wrestlers.
Curtis Piehau Iaukea III was an American professional wrestler better known as King Curtis Iaukea. Iaukea won championships in several of the major regional U.S. promotions, both as a single and in various tag team combinations, during the 1960s. He then competed in the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) where he won the WWF Tag Team Championship with Baron Scicluna. He was also later The Master of the Dungeon of Doom in World Championship Wrestling (WCW). Under the name "Iau Kea" he appeared in the film The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze with Moe Howard declaring "That's not a man! That's a committee!".
Michael Sharpe was a Canadian professional wrestler better known as "Iron" Mike Sharpe. A second-generation wrestler whose father and uncle also competed in the profession, Sharpe was a mainstay for various territories throughout the United States and became a regular for both the World Wrestling Federation and New Japan Pro-Wrestling.
Richard John "Dick" Beyer was an American professional wrestler is best known by his ring names, The Destroyer and Doctor X. Among other places, he worked extensively in Japan and in 2017 he was awarded one of the country's highest honors, the Order of the Rising Sun.
Kim Il was a South Korean professional wrestler and ssireum player, better known by the ring names Kintarō Ōki. His professional wrestling career spanned from the late-1950s to the early-1980s. He is the forgotten 3rd student of Rikidozan.
Enrique Torres was an American professional wrestler, the oldest three Torres brothers in wrestling. One of the biggest stars in Southern California in the 1940s and 1950s, Torres held the Los Angeles version of the World Title almost nonstop between 1946 and 1950. During that time he had two of the biggest feuds of the era with Gorgeous George and Baron Michele Leone.
Edward M. Wright better known by his ring name "Bearcat" Wright was an American professional wrestler who became popular in the late 1950s and 1960s. Despite racial tension in the United States, he became wildly popular as a babyface. Wrestling in either singles competition or in tag team competition, thousands of fans would pack arenas to see him. He was the son of boxer Ed "Bearcat" Wright, and had an 8–0 record as a professional boxer himself in the early 1950s, boxing as "Bearcat Wright Jr."
The Dusek family was a professional wrestling family. Its real surname was Hason. It started with four brothers, Ernie, Emil, Joe and Rudy, often billed as the Dusek Riot Squad and well known in the Omaha, Nebraska territory.
Bobby Eugene Nutt, better known by his ring name Ron Starr, was an American professional wrestler. Starr was a mainstay for numerous wrestling territories throughout the 1970s and 80s, capturing almost three dozen championships throughout his career including two reigns as NWA World Junior Heavyweight Champion and several reigns as NWA World Tag Team Champion. He was also notable for his involvement with Stampede Wrestling in Canada and his tenure with the World Wrestling Council (WWC) in Puerto Rico. Starr has been called "one of the unsung heroes of the territory days of professional wrestling" and "one of the most effective heels that territorial professional wrestling had ever seen.
NWA San Francisco was a professional wrestling promotion headquartered in San Francisco, California in the United States. Founded in 1935 by "The Utica Panther" Joe Malcewicz (1897–1962), the promotion joined the National Wrestling Alliance in 1949. It traded until 1961, when it folded due to competition from the upstart Big Time Wrestling promotion. The promotion's heartland was San Francisco, with the San Francisco Civic Auditorium as its core venue, but it also ran shows in other Northern Californian cities including Fresno, Oakland, Richmond, Sacramento, San Jose, Santa Rosa, Stockton, and Vallejo.
Ramón S. Torres was an American professional wrestler. Primarily a babyface throughout his career, he was a part of 'The Famous Torres Brothers' with Alberto & Enrique Torres and was a major star in the 1950s and 60s as a both a tag team and singles competitor. He wrestled primarily within the National Wrestling Alliance, where he was a multi-time NWA World Tag Team Champion and NWA World Junior Heavyweight Champion and also wrestled in the American Wrestling Association and Worldwide Wrestling Associates.
