His name really was BLASSIE...the obits got it all wrong.
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http://www.news.independent.co.uk/pe...p?story=414397
Freddie Blassie
Wrestler who relished his reputation as a ring villain
11 June 2003
Fred Blassman (Freddie Kenneth Blassie), wrestler: born St Louis, Missouri 8 February 1918; three times married (two sons, one daughter); died Hartsdale, New York 2 June 2003.
Last month the 85-year-old professional wrestler "Classy" Freddie Blassie appeared in a wheelchair on Monday Night Raw to promote his newly published autobiography Listen, You Pencil-Neck Geeks. Taunted by the younger wrestlers Eric Bischoff and 3-Minute Warning, he drew a huge pop from the crowd as he yelled for his temporary protectors, the Dudley Boyz, to "get the tables" to smash his tormentors.
Throughout a 65-year career, Blassie specialised in giving crowds what they wanted, especially when what they wanted was someone to hate. The legendary sportswriter Jim Murray once dubbed Blassie "the worst villain since Hitler".
He was one of the biggest-drawing, and certainly the most influential, "heel" wrestlers of all time. His frenetic combination of egotistical self-promotion (as "The King of Men") and verbal insult, delivered in a gravelly voice that refused to allow for interruption and accompanied by flamboyant gestures, was copied by generations of wrestlers. Jesse "the Body" Ventura, whom Blassie at one point managed, took his imitation of Blassie's style all the way to the governorship of Minnesota.
Blassie also "managed" Muhammad Ali, when the latter fought the Japanese wrestler Antonio Inoki in 1976. Though Ali acknowledged being influenced by the style of the wrestler Gorgeous George, Blassie was a star in television syndication in Louisville when Ali was young. Blassie's value to Ali in Japan came from his 1962 series of matches with Rikidozan, the founder of Japanese wrestling. Television close-ups of Blassie drawing blood by biting the head of Rikidozan's tag-team partner, Great Togo, were so graphic they allegedly gave six viewers fatal heart attacks. In interviews, Blassie would claim to have killed 92 spectators in his career, then act disappointed, before screaming that his "goal was to get 100".
Freddie Blassie is generally acknowledged to have been born Fred Blassman in St Louis, though he claimed Blassie as his given name, and it was as Blassie he joined the US Navy during the Second World War. He began wrestling, often billed as Butcher Blassie, after the trade of his family, immigrants from Austria. In one such carnival Blassie watched a skinny "geek" biting the heads off chickens, and his term of universal derision "pencil-neck geek" was born.
He wrestled as Sailor Fred Blassie during the war, and as Fred McDaniel, without great success until reaching Atlanta in 1953, where he became Southern champion. His career took off in 1956, when he bleached his hair and turned heel (villain). Sharpening his teeth with a file while being interviewed, he became the South's biggest draw, feuding with, among others, Haystacks Calhoun, the model for Britain's Giant Haystacks.
His success in Japan stemmed his domination of the Los Angeles market, where in 1960 he won the WWA title, then the second biggest in America, from Edouard Carpentier. He peaked with a 1971 match with "The Golden Greek", John Tolos, which invented a much-copied angle when Tolos "blinded" Blassie by throwing monsel powder (used for staunching cuts) into his eyes. Blassie's ultimate revenge drew 25,847 to the Los Angeles Coliseum, still a record. His mainstream popularity was such that he appeared on Dick Van Dyke's television show, cut a record for the DJ Dr Demento, and frequently guested for Regis Philbin (currently host of the American version of Millionaire).
As the West Coast Champion, Blassie's 1964 series of sell-outs in New York's Madison Square Garden against Bruno Sammartino began his long relationship with the McMahon family, whose promotional organisation became today's WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment). When he stopped wrestling, the McMahons made him a manager, carrying a cane as befitting the Hollywood Fashion Plate. When Hulk Hogan arrived, it was Blassie who managed him.
In 1983, Blassie starred with the comedian Andy Kaufman, a lifelong wrestling fan, in the film My Breakfast With Blassie, a parody of the art-house hit My Dinner With André. With Kaufman, the quintessential pencil-neck geek, as starry-eyed as Wallace Shawn, Blassie expounded a philosophy of life considerably earthier than André Gregory's.
He had retired briefly in 1965, after losing a kidney. Selling cars in Decatur, Georgia, didn't agree with him, and he resumed wrestling 18 months later. The following year, in Japan, he was contacted by a Japanese woman he had met in 1965. Miyako, 28 years his junior, became his third wife. His final wrestling match was in 1985, against his fellow manager Lou Albano. He was 67, but still billed as "The King of Men".
Michael Carlson