R.I.P. to the great Ed Wiskoski, alias Col. DeBeers, Mega Maharishi and the Polish Prince

Buddy Rose's long-time tag-team partner was a great heel in Portland Wrestling

Yes, you will have to enlarge the screen to read this but I thought it might be of interest to the old-timers who remember Ed and Buddy —- a couple of great guys I knew pretty well and liked a lot.

Wiskoski died last week at the age of 80. Rose died in 2009 at the age of 56.

The above clip was from an interview published in the Oregon Journal in 1980, as they were headed out of town for a booking in Bend.

I was fortunate in those days to be allowed to do pieces like this on local wrestlers. Most papers at the time wouldn’t go near the subject. And promoter Don Owen was very cooperative in trusting me not to expose the business, which was a great fear at the time because, believe it or not, a lot of people still thought the whole thing was real.

They were wrestlers in those days, not “sports entertainers,” as Vince McMahon would later dub his grapplers in order to get around the regulations of local boxing and wrestling commissions. And they were well known because of all the local TV time they got every week.

At the time, Roddy Piper and Rose created a fuss worthy of a Trail Blazer whenever they went out in public.

The stories about Portland Wrestling always got a huge reaction because people were eager for more information about the people they watched on television or saw in person at the old Portland Sports Arena.

Easy Ed, a former football player at Missouri, didn’t call attention to himself as much as Buddy did. He lived a quiet life in Arizona after retirement, following six years running a local wrestling school with Rose. He was the epitome of the strong, silent type. But in whatever character he was playing, he knew exactly what button to push to inspire vigorous hatred — which paid off in tickets sold.

They were the bad guys in the ring but all who met them knew who they really were.