Straight from the Hart Read Online Free PDF

promotion. Years later, I would work with Rocky in Hawaii, where I made the acquaintance of his son Dwayne, who went on to star in the WWF as the Rock and has subsequently become an ever bigger star in the movies.

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    ♥ STRAIGHT FROM THE HART ♥
    Not to digress, but one of the things I don’t think my dad was ever really given much credit for were his efforts in breaking down the color barrier in wrestling.
    Back then, very few of the mainstream promoters in the States — several of whom I heard were thinly veiled racists — would use black wrestlers. Even if they did, all too often they tended to place them in demeaning, stereotypical, Amos and Andy type roles. My dad, however, for want of a better term, tended to be “color blind.” If a guy was a decent performer and capable of drawing, his color, race or creed was never an impediment to getting pushed in Calgary.
    When my dad had opened the promotion in 1948, one of his top babyfaces was Woody Strode — then a star with the Calgary Stampeders. Strode, along with Kenny Washington, had been the first black players in the NFL in 1945, two years before Jackie Robinson’s celebrated entrance into major league baseball.
    Over the years, my dad was responsible for launching the careers of countless awesome black workers, including Siki, Johnson, Luther Lindsey, Abdullah the Butcher, Junkyard Dog, George Wells, Sailor Art Thomas, “Bad News” Allen and Lethal Larry Cameron — all of whom would become major attractions in the United States, Japan and elsewhere.
    If you do a little further research, you’ll also find that my dad was one of the first promoters in North America to employ Japanese wrestlers. I’m not sure why they weren’t welcomed in the United States — perhaps due to some lingering animosity after the Second World War, but for some reason, back in the day, very few promoters in the States seemed to want anything to do with them. My dad, however, saw the potential in using them and, over the years, helped launch a myriad of great Japanese stars, including the likes of Kinji Shibuya, Mitsu Arakawa, Mr. Hito, Kim Sakurada, Chatti Yokouchi, Junji Hirata, George Takano, Hiroshi Hase and Jushin Liger.
    He also would break in several of the biggest Samoan stars, including Neff Maiava, Afa and Sika Anoia, Reno Tuufuli, Siva Afi and Alo Leilani — none of whom seemed to be able to find work before he gave them their proverbial break.
    As far as the launch of the promotion goes, in addition to Siki and Johnson, my dad was able to secure the services of a few other decent hands for the January start, among them: Alexander the Great (Al Ward), Stan Stasiak, Gil 25
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    ♥ BRUCE HART ♥
    Hayes, Leo Burke, his brother Yvon (the Beast), Newton Tattrie, Joe Peruzovic (later Nikolai Volkoff) and Johnny Kostas — all of whom were instrumental in helping to get the new promotion off the ground.
    Necessity, as they say, is the mother of invention and that proved to be the case for us that January. Because money was so tight, my dad decided that rather than shooting a studio TV show, which was the norm back then, he’d shoot his show live at the house show in the Stampede Pavilion instead. Most other promoters of the day figured he was out of his mind, giving fans something they were accustomed to paying for for free. His peers predicted he’d be out of business in no time. That didn’t prove to be the case; the show became one of the highest-rated shows in Western Canada. Nearly thirty years later, when Vince McMahon opted to do the same with Monday Night RAW , people in the United States hailed him as an innovative visionary — and conveniently forgot my dad had come up with the concept decades before.
    As the commentator for the new show, my dad turned to a guy named Ed Whalen, who was the news director of the TV station but had done ring announcing for my dad in