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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
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
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
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
“He would bite guys, make them bleed real bad," recalled Paul Cuellar, a long-
time 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
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
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
“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.
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
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
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.
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
“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
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
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
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
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
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
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.