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Story last updated at 7:05 a.m. Sunday, January 18, 2004 
 
'Wrecking Crew' defined tag-team wrestling 

Second of a two-part series 

BY MIKE MOONEYHAM 
Of The Post and Courier Staff 

They were, quite simply, the proverbial "well-oiled" tag team. Today
they are the standard by which other teams are judged.

Gene and Ole Anderson, respectfully known as "The Minnesota Wrecking
Crew," helped define the art of tag-team wrestling during the '60s and
'70s. Working over one part of the body, tagging in and out, and the
blocking technique were all Anderson trademarks. Their timing,
precision and ring psychology were impeccable. And their "working"
ability, according to many of their respected peers, was beyond
reproach.

Ole Anderson, who's not one to throw around compliments, heaps plenty
of praise on his late partner in his new book, "Ole Anderson: How
Corporate America Destroyed Professional Wrestling," co-written with
Scott Teal. One of the more interesting dynamics of the book revolves
around the relationship between Ole, whose real name is Al "Rock"
Rogowski, and pseudo-brother Gene, with whom he teamed from 1968-81.
"I've never known anyone to be as faithful and devoted a friend as
Gene was," says Ole. "He was just one hell of a guy."

They were friends, to be sure, but they didn't necessarily socialize
with other wrestlers, or with each other for that matter. Ole even
admits that he doesn't think Gene's family was ever at his house, or
that Ole was ever at Gene's house. They were, however, together seven
days a week, 24 hours a day, for long stretches during their tag-team
run. "It was almost like being married ... but without sex," Anderson
notes in his book. "Wait a minute," he adds. "That was like being
married."

The Anderson legend started in the mid-'60s when Gene Anderson, who
had wrestled at North Dakota State, joined forces with "brother" Lars,
another ex-college standout and AAU champion by the name of Larry
Heiniemi. They were immediate sensations in the Carolinas and
Virginia, which at the time was a hotbed of tag-team wrestling and
home base for a score of highly touted duos such as George Becker and
Johnny Weaver, George and Sandy Scott, Rip Hawk and Swede Hanson,
Skull Murphy and Brute Bernard, The Kentuckians, The Bolos
(Assassins), The Red Demons, The Infernos, Aldo Bogni and Bronco
Lubich, Mr. Wrestling and Sam Steamboat, and Nelson Royal and Tex
McKenzie.

When former Colorado football player Rogowski came in as Ole Anderson
in 1968 and later replaced Lars, the team didn't miss a beat. Like
Lars and Gene, Ole was a Verne Gagne trainee and a polished amateur.
Eventually adding even more luster to the Anderson team was the
addition of a young Ric Flair, another Gagne product from Minnesota
who Ole brought in as an Anderson "cousin."

Ole, who had attended college with Lars at St. Cloud State University,
had known Gene since his high school days in Minnesota. While Gene was
a grade ahead and three years older than Ole, they competed against
one another in football, wrestling and track.

They were the consummate heel team. There was no canned crowd heat
when the Andersons hit the ring. Whether working as bad guys or in a
very rare babyface role, Gene and Ole commanded respect. There were no
catch phrases. They spoke volumes by working the most believable,
realistic matches this side of Johnny Valentine.

A UNIQUE KINSHIP

The Minnesota Wrecking Crew didn't have to resort to jumping off
ladders and crashing through tables in order to get a pop. They did it
the old-fashioned way -- by wrestling. They twisted necks, wrenched
arms and locked legs with every bit of painful artistry as today's
high-spot stars.

But the Andersons did it practically every night of the week.

"We just did one thing better than anyone else -- we wrestled," says
Anderson, now 61 and one of wrestling's last true, old-school tough
guys. "We tried to make wrestling as real as we could make it. Gene
used to say that we want to shoot, but we don't want to hurt anybody.
Beat the hell out of the guy, but try not to remove any teeth. We
didn't get quite that bad, but in some cases we did. When we did,
there were some guys who said they didn't want to hang around for
this. On a couple of occasions, guys packed their bags and we never
saw them again."

Ole began his career wrestling as many seven times a week, working
sometimes nine times a week in the Carolinas and later as many as 14
times a week in Georgia with several double shots included. He honed
his craft through on-the-job training, learning what the people liked
and what they didn't. Gene proved to be the ideal sounding board for
his younger partner.

"He must have taught me 90 percent of what I knew. He was so loyal to
me," says Ole. "Gene would always tell people that he had the greatest
talker, the greatest worker, as a partner. He would always voluntarily
take second place. He just put me over all the time. It was almost
like competition, since he put me over almost as much as I put myself
over."

Ole would make most of the business decisions, while the more subdued
and low-key Gene would routinely go along with him. "Gene, what do you
think?" Ole would often ask. "Whatever you want to do," Gene would
mumble.

The two would alternate driving the long stretches of road that
connected one wrestling town to another; Gene would drive one week,
Ole the next. Ole, though, preferred being behind the wheel.

"Gene used to sleep almost all the time, all the way up, all the way
back," recalls Anderson. "He used to smoke, but he wouldn't smoke
around me, in the car or in a room I was in. I used to reach over
while he was sleeping and ease his cigarettes out of his shirt pocket
and throw them out the window. We'd get to the next stop, and get gas
or something to eat, and he'd look and had to go back and buy another
pack of cigarettes. Well, a couple of hours later, he'd be sleeping
again and I'd ease that pack of cigarettes he'd just bought back out
of his pocket and throw them out the window. He never said a word. He
knew I didn't like cigarettes, and he wasn't going to argue about.
He'd buy another pack, and that would be it."

To say Gene Anderson was a man of few words would be an understatement
of epic proportions.

"He wasn't emotional in any way that registered so you could see it,"
says Ole. "Once Lars poured soda down his back while he was driving,
and he just said to Lars, 'Don't do it again.' Lars did it again, and
Gene simply grabbed an ice scraper, reached back and swatted him. Lars
grabbed his head, bled a lot and didn't say another word the rest of
the trip. That was Gene. When you talk about emotion, you might get a
little smile on his face on occasion, but that was about it."

There was little time for fraternizing or socializing outside the
ring.

"We never socialized at all, but how would you when there was no time.
We had a unique situation in that we had a town we were going to week
after week after week, and it required a hell of a lot of preparation
and thought to make the thing work. And as a result, there wasn't a
lot of time to wash your car, go to the restaurant, have a beer, shoot
the bull. That's why I didn't have a phone, because I didn't want
anybody interrupting me."

Gene was the mechanic of the team, taking most of the bumps, says Ole.
Damage to his neck caused him to constantly twitch. "He was never in a
frame of mind to get the doggone thing looked at by doctors, so he
suffered with it all of his life," says Ole. "He had a lot of
problems. Like all of us, he had taken a lot of bumps and had done a
lot of damage to himself as a result. Being a heel was tremendously
tough on the body. He just ignored everything; he was just a tough son
of a gun."

Ole recalls listening to a report on the radio listing the three most
harmful things you could put into your body: chocolate, caffeine and
cigarettes. He looked over at Gene, who was eating a box of chocolate
doughnuts, drinking a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette. "What
else could you possibly do to shorten your life any more," he asked.

His health deteriorated over the years, and Gene Anderson died of a
heart attack Oct. 31, 1991, in Huntersville, N.C. He was only 52 years
old.

Although not actually blood relatives, Ole was listed as a surviving
brother in Gene's obituary in the Charlotte Observer. "I just couldn't
go (to the funeral)," says Ole. "It wasn't that I was in denial,
although maybe to some degree I was, but having known him like I did
for so many years and having been together like we were, I just didn't
want to look at the guy dead. I just couldn't. Had someone like Flair,
Wahoo or Paul Jones called me and told me to get up there, I might
have, but I suppose most of them thought I was going to be there
automatically."

Anderson says his sons still keep in touch with Gene's son, Brad, who
wrestled briefly, but he has lost touch with Gene's daughters.

"After we wrestled, Gene went his way and I went mine. After we
wrestled, there was nothing left, except to go wrestle again. So our
families were never close. Gene and I were close, but in a unique kind
of way."

PERFECT WRESTLING MARRIAGE

That the Anderson Brothers didn't headline in numerous territories was
a testament to their drawing power. Most wrestlers went from territory
to territory for one of two reasons -- either they weren't good enough
to stay in any one area, or they didn't want to wear out their
welcome.

"What would be the reason a wrestler would go from territory to
territory?" Anderson asks rhetorically. "Because he wants to incur the
expense needed to make this move back and forth? Or because he wants
to uproot his children and have them go to a different place? Or
because he wants to take his whole family wholesale out of Apartment B
on 182 Elm Street and move to Dallas, Texas, so he can be in another
apartment on Elm Street? Do you think that was voluntary or do you
think that was necessary? Unless they didn't like the place and
weren't making any money, or else they got stuck in Nashville, Tenn.,
or Calgary (Canada), why would anyone want to?"

Anderson vividly remembers what Carolinas mat baron Jim Crockett Sr.
routinely told his performers: "You can buy a house here as long as it
has wheels under it."

"Nobody came into Jim Crockett's territory with the expectation of
staying there more than three to four months," says Anderson. "That
was it. When I first came down in the summer of 1968 to be with Lars
and Gene, I was ready to pack my stuff in a few months. I was going to
leave, they were going to leave and everybody was going to leave. Lars
wanted to go back to Minneapolis, and I wasn't ready to go back since
I had already been through one winter up there that would last me a
lifetime. So when the summer was over, I was ready to go, but I didn't
know where I was going."

Anderson, who had been in the business for less than two years, had an
offer to move to Georgia and form a team there with the talented Paul
DeMarco.

"I liked Paul, and he was a pretty good performer," said Anderson. "He
was cocky, and that fit my criteria."

Before Ole could make a decision, however, Gene gave him an offer that
he couldn't refuse.

"All he had to say was, 'Well, what do you want to do? If you want to
stay and be partners, we can just stay and be partners.' Paul DeMarco
was far flashier, but Gene was going to be the solid guy. He thought
the world of me ... maybe not that first year and not even the second
year, because there were times he wanted to kill me in between. But he
knew that I could do the talking and carry my end of it, he could do
the rest, and we'd make money and everybody would be happy."

Ole was right. It was a perfect wrestling marriage, and that fact
didn't escape the elder Crockett, who knew a good thing when he saw
it. The Andersons realized their real worth when Crockett brought them
into his Charlotte office in 1970 and told them: "You boys can stay
here as long as you want."

"He had never said that, to my knowledge, with the possible exception
of George Becker and Johnny Weaver," says Anderson. "With everybody
else, you had to make a little move somewhere."

The rest was history.


Ole Anderson wrote the self-published "Inside Out" along with Whatever
Happened To ...? magazine editor Scott Teal. The book can be ordered
for $19.95 (plus $3.85 postage) through Teal at P.O. Box 2781,
Hendersonville, Tenn. 37075, or go to the Web site at
www.1wrestlinglegends.com.


--- Internet Rex 2.29