Classy Freddy Blassie

Classy Freddy Blassie The Barometer for Three Generations of Mexican-Americans By Christopher J. Garcia My earliest memories are three: The Village People making their debut on American Bandstand, Nick Bockwinkle and Verne Gagne wrestling on Saturday morning TV, and my Dad putting on Freddie Blassie’s 1975 record Pencil Necked Geek whenever he wanted me to fall asleep. Dad had been a fan of wrestling dating back to the days when his father would let him stay up late enough to watch the end of the main events on the tiny black-and-white that still lives in the Garcia house. I had fallen into the pattern as well. Grandpa got wrestling on four channels in the early days, and we’d watch them together, booing the hell out of the cocky bastards who played the villainous heels for the crowds. He loved the Mexicans who would wrestle con mascaras under names like Dr. Wagner, El Santo, and Mil Mascaras. My Dad liked the luchadors, but he always held Blassie, the King of Men, in highest standing. Not surprisingly, Grandpa hated Freddie. This was nothing unusual: the way Chicano wrestling fans view Freddie Blassie may be the greatest divide between the generations. Freddie Blassie began his wrestling career in the St. Louis territory in the late 1930s. St. Louis was a tough city to headline -- all the stars moved through the territory and it took a lot to catch the attention of the fans. Blassie went through the South looking for more suitable territories, eventually ending up in Georgia. During World War II Blassie enlisted in the Navy, but he was allowed to continue wrestling through the early portion of the war. He took to calling himself Sailor Fred Blassie, a gimmick which could have easily taken off if he had not been sent to Port Huneme, CA. He began working the LA wrestling scene, and there remains some debate over whether he won the

Pacific Coast Championship. At that time, wrestling records featured more conjecture than fact, with claims of ten-hour matches with one hundred thousand fans in attendance. After the war ended, Blassie returned to wrestling full-time and toured the Mid-West and Northeast before eventually heading back to become a huge star in Georgia. The war years were tough for the Chicano population living in Southern California. Following the call for enlistment, nearly half-a-million Chicanos reported to the Armed Forces. Many Chicanas also participated in the war effort by working in the shipyards and related industries that needed a replenish workforce. In1942, the US enacted the Bracero Program which allowed Mexicans to enter the US to work in various areas, most notably agriculture. This was done in part because the American-born Chicanos who used to be the most reliable source for agricultural work were now off at war. By the early 1950s, Braceros made up a quarter of the total agricultural workforce. A large number of these would eventually make the US their full-time home, settling into the barrios of cities like Los Angeles, San Jose, and San Diego. As the GIs returned, a major shift in the occupational patterns became obvious. The number of American-born Chicanos involved in the agriculture and unskilled labor areas declined as the numbers involved in manufacturing and the skilled and semi-skilled trades grew steadily. This group was the first to intermarry with Anglos on a broad scale – their mixed marriages gave rise to a generation of middle-class half-Mexicans who grew up watching TV and speaking mostly English. And these kids loved wrestling. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, wrestling was a prime-time TV standard, featuring wrestlers like Lou Thesz, Gorgeous George and Buddy Rodgers. Out of this bunch, Blassie's violent, often bloody, style made him perhaps the

most hated wrestler in the world. After more than a decade in Georgia, Blassie headed back out to California to work for wrestling promoter Jules Strongbow, who ruled the territory which stretched from San Diego to LA and Santa Barbara. Once in Los Angeles, Blassie began a reign of terror that led to several championships and the nickname The Vampire for his propensity to bite his opponents' foreheads until they bled profusely. Blassie was hated especially by the Mexican community that made up a large section of the audience for LA wrestling. “He would bite guys, make them bleed real bad," recalled Paul Cuellar, a longtime wrestling fan, shortly before his death in 1999. “I remember he used to fight Billy Varga, the Torres brothers, Hercules Cortez, Pepper Martin, he’d bite the hell out of them. I used to get so mad that I’d throw my beer at the TV. Virginia made me sleep in the car after I did that one night.” Blassie seemed to feed off the hatred of the Mexican fans, often baiting them explicitly. “He was wrestling a Mexican bodybuilder and he wore a sombrero to the ring," Cuellar said. "He did a dance around it, then he kicked it and stomped it. It looked like a riot broke out in the arena. There were bottles flying at the ring and at [Blassie].” “Blassie definitely played toward enraging Mexicans in the early 60s," adds Wrestling Observer Newsletter publisher Dave Meltzer. The hatred was so strong that Freddie would receive death threats and was supposedly stabbed several times. The front row of the Olympic Auditorium, where many of the biggest matches in LA took place, was populated by a large number of older Mexican women who would shake their fists and scream obscenities at the King of Men.

Blassie would play to these women the most, making sure that the violence he perpetrated at ringside was right in front of them so the cameras would pick up their incredible reactions. The social relations between middle-class Anglo and Chicano workers increased following the war. Many families led an exodus from the traditional barrios of Southern California. Traditionally Anglo areas such as Pasadena, Irvine and the Penninsula in the Bay Area saw an influx of Latino families. More and more Chicanos were marrying Anglo women and starting families. While there was growing unrest in the Chicano communities living in the barrios, mixed race families were becoming more common in the quickly-growing suburbs. This new crop of half-Mexicans were very different from the traditional Mexican family. “We weren’t a part of the Mexican kids at school," said wrestling fan David Cuellar. "My dad would go to the Lodge with all the other Mexican kids’ dads and they wouldn’t’ve told me if I was on fire. There were a lot of fights between them and us. They’d fight each other, but they’d take it to us harder.” This alienation from mainstream Chicano culture left the half-Mexicans to chose one of two courses: hang with the white kids or to strike out on their own. “We were a small herd of light brown punks.” Cueller remembered. As these bands of half-breeds began to form, they took up the familiar methods of wasting time: notably listening to rock ‘n roll, starting garage bands, and watching TV. With powerful TV throughout the LA basin, they were exposed to a variety of wrestling options, including from the Olympic where Blassie ruled the roost. While wrestling today is best known for attracting a young demographic, prior to Vince McMahon’s

expansion in the 1980s, the audience was much older, with teenagers actually being somewhat rare audience members at live events. In the late 1960s, more and more teens found the events at the Olympic and started attending in greater numbers. At this same time, Freddie Blassie began to change his affiliation. The Sheik may have been only wrestler in the world more hated than Freddie when he came to Los Angeles in 1969 to feud with him. They met in a great many violent bloodbaths throughout the territory; although both men wrestled in the same savage style, Blassie was the one who finally won the hearts of fans. Groups of Mexican teens, mostly born during the mid-1950s, were cheering Blassie wildly, especially those of mixed decent. “My boys used to cheer him all the time, even before the Sheik,” Cuellar said in 2001. “When he took [The Sheik] on at the Olympic, everybody else started to catch on. Better the devil you know, I guess.” Blassie became a fan favorite, facing dreaded villains in matches that resembled the ones he had fought against good guys just a year before. Blassie was one of the most popular heroes that Los Angeles had ever seen. His feud with John Tolos drew the largest crowd ever for California and what was the all-time gate record at the time. While the old ladies in the front row took to el Rubio del Oro, not every Mexican accepted Blassie as the babyface. So he tried to win them over with a sombrero and a serape. “He started teaming with Mexicans, the guys my Dad liked, and he’d wear a sombrero and a poncho to the ring. My Dad hated it, couldn’t get over the fact that he used to wear it to make fun of Mexicans. ‘Gringo prick’ he used to call him. All of us

were screaming for him all the time, even when he was on TV. I never really watched wrestling with Dad much after that.” The younger Cuellar noted. During Blassie's reign in Los Angeles, the Spanish International Network (SIN) began carrying LA wrestling. This gave fans around the country, like my dad John Garcia of San Jose, a chance to experience Blassie. “I can remember my dad telling me how evil Blassie was and how he hated us Chicanos,” says Garcia. “He’d turn off the TV if he was on and not fighting someone like Pepper Gomez. I started cheering for him when he was fighting The Sheik, I even joined his fan club. Dad was pissed.” Younger Mexican fans were drawn to him, but the mixed-race baby boomer generation fell hardest for his new shtick. Blassie was a bridge between the two worlds of their parents: wearing the trappings of their fathers’ culture, but maintaining the attitude and language they shared with their mothers. Blassie, a Missouri-born Anglo gentleman, managed to bridge these gaps by giving respect to the Mexican culture, something that almost never happened in the popular culture of the 1960s. Blassie did English promos on the SIN, the only touchstone that the non-Spanish speakers would have had with the show that was otherwise puro español. “I could catch a few words from guys like Mil [Mascaras], but I was always waiting for Blassie to come on.” Garcia said. The generation that grew up cheering Blassie eventually left LA wrestling. Some fans transitioned to Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation once they expanded nationally in 1984. Others stopped watching wrestling altogether. Losing that once-rabid audience was the beginning of the end for So Cal wrasslin’, leading to its demise in the

early 1980s. Blassie had left in 1973 for the then-World Wide Wrestling Federation, run by Vince McMahon Sr. He served as a manager for a number of different wrestlers, including a young Hulk Hogan. A third generation of hybrid Chicanos came to Freddie Blassie through various means, most of which involved tragicomic song-and-dance man Andy Kaufman and the rockabilly performer known as Johnny Legend. Kaufman had been a wrestling fan for his whole life and Buddy Rogers was his hero. But as time went on, he got to know Blassie rather well. The two made a cult movie directed by Johnny Legend, an LA wrestling fan during the 1960s (today he's a well-respected filmmaker and film historian specializing in masked wrestler films and schlock horror). Their film, My Breakfast with Blassie, was a take-off on Louis Malle’s My Dinner with Andre, only it took place in an LA area diner called Sambo’s and featured the two of them talking about Blassie’s injuries, making fun of their fellow diners, and discussing re-making Sons of the Desert. Mostly ignored when first released, the film was rediscovered by irony-loving Generation X. The re-release of the video of My Breakfast with Blassie and the release of his autobiography came together with the Dr. Demento favorite Pencil-Necked Geek to make Blassie a legend to another generation. Freddie kept working in the WWF’s front office for years after he was no longer able to keep touring. He would make appearances on talk shows, including many with long-time friend Regis Philbin. He became a favorite of radio call-in shows, often claiming to be the WWF’s Official Prognosticator, making predictions for up-coming arena shows in the area.

Freddie maintained a strong fan base, especially among punk rock fans. 1970s and 80s bands The Blassies, Pencil-Necked Geeks, and the 1990s surf group El Rudio del Oro all took their names from Freddie. Several bands covered Pencil-Necked Geek, including the ska band Mr. Microphone. While Blassie seldom performed the song live, he was a part of the WWF’s first record The Wrestling Album. Freddie Blassie died in 2003, but his legend continues to draw young Mexicans and those of mixed heritage. Starting in San Jose and spreading quickly to Los Angeles and Las Vegas, many young fans have taken to wearing shirts or making signs that read "I’m with Blassie." Akin to the "Andre The Giant has a Posse" phenomena of the early 1990s, the signs and shirts tend to feature a photo of an early 1970s Blassie wearing his serape and sombrero, smiling and swimming in the love of his fans. “I love Freddie,” says twenty-three year old filmmaker and wrestling enthusiast Manual Santillana. “He was a tough fucker and he knew exactly how to make guys bleed. He was way more hard core than anyone wrestling today.” Classy Freddie Blassie’s memory is secure. Though little footage of his glory days exists, Freddy is still hated by some, adored by others, and remembered by most Chicano wrestling fans. While it is easy to say that Freddie made his name by playing on the tension between Anglo and Mexican wrestling fans, no other Anglo wrestler at that point in the wrestling culture would have ever made so many advances towards the Mexicans. By appealing to young half-Mexicans and Anglos at the same time, Blassie inadvertently became the only person that could be used to measure the differences between the half-breeds and their parents and their children that view Freddie as a God of a gone-by era.