Blood, Sweat & Cheers : Woodland Hills’ John Tolos Can Look to a Large Collection of Scars to Document His Long, Rowdy Career as a Pro Wrestler

Real men have scars. And the scars of real men come complete with stories brimming with machismo. The stories, however, are not always true.

A scar on a knee, for example, often will be introduced as “an old football injury.” Truth serum, however, would reveal that it was the result of arthroscopic surgery after the man wrenched his leg during an awkward tumble from a bar stool while watching a Raider game--which is, technically, still a football-related injury, but, well. . . .

A jagged scar on a hand might be explained in hushed tones as “the train accident.” And it might be, sort of. The truth is that it was the result of the man’s wife accidentally slamming the car door on the hand in an Amtrak parking lot.

John Tolos, 60, has many scars. Some beauties cross the top of his forehead. And Tolos, a big and burly man’s man if ever there was one, has one of those dazzling explanations as to how he received those scars.

Seems Freddie Blassie, the great pro wrestler, used to regularly mistake Tolos’ head for a snack.

“He used to bite me all the time. That was his thing,” Tolos said. “And man, does your head bleed when someone bites it.”

The difference, however, between Tolos’ explanation and those of most guys’ is that Tolos had witnesses to his scar-producing moments. Hundreds of witnesses. Thousands of witnesses. Once, nearly 25,000 happened to be sitting in the Coliseum when Blassie, right in front of everybody, began gnawing on Tolos’ forehead.

Tolos, you see, was also a pro wrestler. At 250 pounds, the heavily muscled Tolos was known as The Golden Greek until he retired in 1982 after a 32-year career in the wacky world of head butts and eye gouges.

But lest you think Tolos spent 32 years just accumulating scar tissue, he wants it known right up front that for every scar he received, he put dozens on his opponents.

“I never learned how to take it,” Tolos said. “But I did learn to dish it out.”

His main course was a flying knee-drop from the top rope.

“Right on their stomach. Or throat,” Tolos said. “Man, some of those guys didn’t do a lot of eating for a few days after I caught them with the knee-drop.”

Now, let’s analyze this for a moment, from a medical standpoint. You, or perhaps someone you dislike, are lying on your back on a wrestling mat, apparently defenseless. Or really stupid. A 250-pound man climbs to the top of the five-foot-high turnbuckle. He then leaps off the rope, his body rising another several feet above the rope, and crashes down onto your throat with his knee, the equivalent of a 250-pound anvil being dropped from nearly the height of a basketball rim onto your windpipe.

OK. That would be a minor irritant. Actually, it would kill you. Your head likely would roll across the ring like a bowling ball with ears. Yet pro wrestlers never seem to die from these attacks. So maybe, just perhaps--and this is just a wild, unfounded accusation--pro wrestling might be phon . . . well, let’s come back to that later.

Tolos, who has lived in Woodland Hills for more than a decade, rolled out of the wilds of Canada at the age of 21, having engaged mostly in hard work around the steel mills of Hamilton, Ontario, and hard play inside the taverns of Hamilton. It was during one of these many after-work encounters with fellow steelworkers that the idea of becoming a pro wrestler somehow occurred to him.

He headed south, to El Paso, Tex., where his brother Chris had settled and begun his own pro wrestling career a few years earlier. The Tolos brothers became a team, the Canadian Wrecking Crew, and toured the United States and Canada. For months they took turns jumping on opponent’s stomachs and throats, occasionally even doing it in unison, mostly during those rare moments when the referee was distracted.

The brothers split about a year later, and, in 1952, John landed in Los Angeles, one of the nation’s pro wrestling hotbeds. From his home base he traveled extensively, from San Francisco to San Diego for quick bouts, and off to Chicago and even New York as part of multi-bout tours. The money? Oh, it was awful. At first.

“I’d fight for $25 a night sometimes,” Tolos said.

But quickly, as he began attracting fans with his menacing style and killer physique, the purses rose. Often, however, other purses were being clutched in the hands of women at ringside, who would strike Tolos with a thud on his head.

“I was always more afraid of the fans than my opponents,” he said. “Crazy people in most places. I really worried about some of them. They’d hit me with everything, including chairs.”

Tolos said that at the peak of his career he was earning as much as $75,000 a year by battering other giants into alleged submission. He was famous among wrestling fans, many of whom stared in wonder and amazement at The Golden Greek.

Then again, a few pro wrestling fans would also stare in wonder and amazement at a brick.

In the 1970s, Tolos was a legitimate star in this world of blood and sweat. The March, 1971, edition of Wrestling Revue, which was the world’s largest wrestling magazine (we know this because on the cover it said The World’s Largest Wrestling Magazine ) featured Tolos and Blassie engaged in tooth-to-skull combat, with Freddie having put a vicious molar-lock on Tolos’ forehead and Tolos responding by trying to drown Freddie in blood.

A program from the Olympic Auditorium, one of the real L. A. meccas for the sport in the ‘70s, featured a picture of Tolos bellowing and the caption, “Maniac Tolos Screams ‘I’ll Get Even.’ ” It did not explain what Tolos wanted to get even about, but likely it had something to do with Freddie Blassie and some missing forehead skin.

Another match at the Olympic, in 1972, pitted Tolos against Puerto Rican star Victor Rivera with legendary ex-boxing champion Joe Louis serving as the referee.

OK, OK. But why, you might be wondering, did Freddie Blassie keep biting him?

Well, it might have something to do with one of their early matches, when Tolos angered Blassie a bit by lobbing a 15-foot-long, very-alive python onto his head. That, as you know, is no way to make friends.

“He went nuts,” Tolos said. “Screaming and trying to get this snake off his neck. Just went crazy.”

Now, about these charges you occasionally hear about pro wrestling being, well, something that even Pete Rose wouldn’t bet on.

“I’ve heard it for three decades,” Tolos said. “I’ve heard the word phony a million times. Let me tell you something: If wrestling was phony when I was wrestling, if people decided before a match who was going to win, well, no one ever told me about it.”

As further proof, Tolos points to the scars. They are, he points out, very real. As is the chronic back pain, as are the creaky knees and the aching shoulders and elbows. Not to mention the dozens of concussions he said he sustained and the 20 teeth in his mouth that are made of hard plastic, teeth he was forced to purchase as replacements for the ones he left scattered about dirty wrestling arenas from Los Angeles to El Paso to New York.

And if you would like to discuss this any further with the handsome Tolos, who recently turned 60 but still possesses a rock-hard body and massive arms with rippling muscles, he’d be glad to have a little chat with you.

Just lie down and give him a few seconds to get onto the top rope.