Memories of Wrestling at the Fairgrounds Coliseum

Memories of Wrestling at the Fairgrounds Coliseum

BY L. V. MCNEELY

I STARTED WORKING FOR THE DESERET NEWS in January 1945. During the next twenty-four years I photographed LDS church leaders, visiting dignitaries, accidents, thousands of babies for my Baby Talk column, and all the other subjects in a typical daily newspaper. In my off hours I often went out to the Fairgrounds Coliseum to watch the professional wrestlers. I got to know Phil Olafsson, the promoter, and he asked me to photograph the matches on Friday nights for $25, an assignment I happily accepted.

Phil was, himself, perhaps the most interesting of all the wrestlers I met at the Coliseum. He was a native of Sweden and had been on the way to a great career as a champion skier when he developed the terrible disease that enlarged and disfigured his skull. He came to America and was working as a lumberjack, he told me, when he and another man both claimed to have shot the same deer. The other man, a professional wrestler, was startled by Phil's appearance and told him he could have a great career as a wrestler. Phil took the idea seriously and became the Swedish Angel. He looked awesome in the ring, but he was the gentlest of giants outside and beloved by his wife and daughter.

Of the hundreds of wrestlers who came and went during those years, a handful remain unforgettable to me—guys like the Blimp whose career was cut short by a heart attack; Chief Little Wolf, a Navajo Indian who was once married to a beautiful Powers' model; and Gorgeous George, the wrestlers' answer to Liberace. The photographs that follow are some of my personal favorites of these men and of other men and women who appeared on the Friday night cards at the old Coliseum.

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