In 1983, Captain Lou Albano met pop star Cyndi Lauper on a flight to Puerto Rico. His cowardice seemed almost inexplicable, and so it was all the more infuriating.Īlbano's career continued along this crowd-(dis)pleasing mid-card path until an odd confluence of events landed him in an unlikely cultural spotlight. There were other mangers who can be said to have worked the routine as well as Albano - The Grand Wizard and "Classy" Freddie Blassie were the other two greats of that period, and they, along with Albano, are referred to as the "Holy Trinity" of heel managers - but Albano's act was an inversion of the usual loud-mouthed-stringbean-manager type: He looked like your tough uncle, like he could actually throw his weight around, and yet he remained safely situated behind his various protégés. He was a jerk, but above all he was a weasel, a guy willing to talk big but unwilling to compete, and that made him truly detestable. He was in some ways the same streetwise bully he portrayed in his earlier wrestling days, challenging his rivals' manhood and hurling decidedly un-PC epithets at the gathered crowds. He became Sammartino's principle foil, despite the fact that he hardly set foot in the ring Albano sent fearsome heels at Sammartino like an ornery god lobbing thunderbolts at antiquity's heroes.Įven as a heel - some would say especially as a heel - Albano was a ragtag supernova of charisma: long, frazzled mane Hawaiian shirts unbuttoned to the navel rubber bands tying off his unkempt goatee and dangling from his ears. It was a convenient storyline for pro wrestling's territorial era: Sammartino was a In his new role, Albano bridged the gap. He dubbed himself "Captain Lou" - a direct (albeit imprecise) reference to Albano's pre-wrestling military career. On the advice of the iconic Bruno Sammartino, Albano made the first significant shift of his career, ending his days as a grappler and refashioning himself into a diabolical manager, determined to dethrone Sammartino and end his years-long championship reign. Never the most talented ring technician to begin with, Albano was nonetheless indisputably good at provoking the fans. The Sicilians had a good run - they even briefly held the United States tag titles in Vince McMahon Sr.'s World Wide Wrestling Federation (the progenitor of the WWE) - but by 1969 they had dissolved their union. This basic equation would repeat itself throughout Albano's career. And it's instructive that Albano so straightforwardly and eagerly became someone else for mainstream exposure. I won't claim to have seen the show, but it's interesting nonetheless that Gleason, in bringing the wrestling world in all its oddity to mainstream culture, chose a young Lou Albano as his shepherd. Albano and Altomare also appeared on a 1963 episode of Jackie Gleason and His American Scene Magazine (aka The Jackie Gleason Show), as professional wrestler Sandpaper Sam Staccato and referee Harry Hornet respectively.
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