One,... Two,..., Three! Reggie Lisowski Down for the Count.

Famous Wisconsonite, Reggie Lisowski, died this weekend of a brain stem tumor. He was 79 years old. Although he did win 3 AWA championships, he was most famous competing with his partner in mayhem, William Afflis. (Afflis, by the way, played both ways in the Green Bay Packer line from 1951 to 1954.) Reggie, 'Da Crusher', and William, 'Dick Da Bruiser' won 5 AWA Tag Team Championships, followed by 6 WWA Tag Team Championships. This was back in the days when men were men and metrosexuals were not yet invented, but well off the drawing board. It is often said that Da Crusher made Milwaukee famous.

In our household we will be lowering the top rope to half turnbuckle for the count of three weeks.

And this, surprise, surprise, reminds me of a story...

I attended a professional wrestling match once. I was living in Marietta, GA, (pronounced by the locals as May-redda), just north of Atlanta, and was part of a volunteer organization that matched up its volunteers with one disadvantaged member of the community. My match was named Sammy. He was about my age, but was confined to a wheelchair by his cerebral palsy.We usually just hung out, but he also liked to party, and at one of ours he had a little too much to drink at tipped his chair over backwards.

He wanted to go to a pro wrestling match so I got tickets to one at the civic center. Since he was in a wheelchair, the ushers placed us up on a catwalk above the crowd. It was a great vantage point, not only to see the matches, but also to watch the crowd.

The time frame was the late '70's. Georgia's own Jimmy Carter was president and, in Iran, the whole embassy staff were still hostages to the Ayatollah's Islamofascists.

One of the bouts was a tag team match. As the first team entered the ring, the crowd erupted. They were a team of 'Iranians' carrying an Iranian flag taunting the American crowd. It was intense. I thought the crowd was going to explode and attack those guys themselves. Of course, the American team eventually won after the usual close calls. That was one of the most interesting social situations that I have ever witnessed. That part of the event lasted about a half an hour and I was really expecting a couple of guns to come out and start blasting. Of course, I was a Wisconsin Liberal Yankee in King Redneck's Court and had my view of Southerners as inferior from all the horror stories that I had heard and believed.

I just wish it had been Milwaukee's 'Da Crusher' and 'Dick Da Bruiser' teaming up to body slam those two rabble-rousers around the around the ring.

I expect Reggie will be placed in his coffin face down so that, even there, he will not be pinned.

By the way, Professional Wrestling is real. If you disagree, I have a patented Double Flip, Flying Head Scissors off the top rope for you, girlie-man!