Abe Jacobs

I was born and raised in the Chatham Islands, New Zealand in the 1940’s when there were no cars there, just horse and carts for transport. I used to ride a horse to school. My father ran a 6000 head sheep station. I listened to wrestling matches broadcast on the radio on Monday and Thursday nights. I was tall and skinny so I worked out on weights to put on weight to be as big as the wrestlers whose photos I saw in newspapers. When I moved to Christchurch, New Zealand, I had never seen a train before or ridden in a car.

I won several provincial titles as an amateur wrestler and even had a Try Out for the Olympics. My first pro match on a card of amateur matches was at the age of 20 in Napier 1958 against George Bollas aka the Zebra Kid. I also wrestled against Ricky Waldo, Elephant Boy, Andre Dropp and Jack Bence. I had ten matches in New Zealand before moving to Hawaii and on to New York to work for Vince McMahon.

At one time there were over 30 promotions in Canada and the US. The NWA was like a union among the promoters.

I was six-foot-two and wrestled between 240 and 250 pounds. I remember going to wrestle in Singapore prior to going to South Africa. I got food poisoning from a Chinese restaurant and lost 35 pounds. My weight dropped from 275 pounds to 240 pounds. When I arrived in South Africa my promoter wasn’t happy as you had to be big and heavy in those days to draw a crowd.

During my 30 year career I had well over 8,000 matches. It was a hard schedule wrestling five or six times a week with matches lasting not less than 30 minutes and many lasting over an hour. I wrestled against some of the greats like Lou Thesz, Gene Kiniski and Pat O’Connor. I won several tag team championships and won the World Championship with Don Curtis. I also wrestled with Haystacks Calhoun and Pez Whatley. I wound down my career in the early 1980s having travelled around the world four times and wrestled in 25 different countries including Japan, most of Asia, South Africa, Australia, Europe and South America.