With pro wrestling/sports entertainment playing to empty arenas, anxiously awaiting a green light to reconnect with a live audience, it’s an ideal time to take a look back at some of some of the greats of yesteryear who helped paved the way for those who followed.
Many of pro wrestling’s top “good guys” were multi-layered characters who could adapt to different styles and change from territory to territory. Dick Garza, though, employed a gimmick that was simple yet successful.
A former Mr. Michigan who parlayed his bodybuilding background into a successful career in which he was billed as the world’s strongest grappler, Garza hit wrestling paydirt when he created the beloved character of The Mighty Igor.
Igor, initially known as Igor Vodik, was the ultimate good guy – a symbol of an innocent era in pro wrestling. The name alone conjures up an enduring image of the friendly, bearded, shaggy-haired Polish strongman, wearing cutoffs, a tattered tank top and a black beret, chewing on a kielbasa (Polish sausage) and waiving to fans with a childlike naiveté.
Portraying a kind but simple-minded wrestler whose shoulders resembled oversized grapefruits, Garza knew what it took to connect to his audience, even if it meant dancing the polka, waltz or a rousing Watusi. Sometimes he would bring a stuffed animal or a children’s toy to the ring, and along the way would plant a kiss on the foreheads of fans and ring personnel. And after a few weeks in a territory, he would amaze audiences with his feats of superhuman strength.
A star in every territory he appeared, Igor was best known in the Carolinas for his mid-‘70s feud with The Masked Superstar (Bill Eadie) and manager Boris Maximilianovich Malenko (Larry Simon). A memorable angle in which The Superstar smashed Malenko’s lit cigar into Igor’s eye not only spurred one of the top money-making programs in the territory, but it also led to a long, lucrative run in Japan for Eadie.
“That angle was so successful that I took it to Japan and got a 14-year career out of (Antonio) Inoki from it,” Eadie said. “I was the first guy to ever do anything like that to Inoki. We were supposed to have a blowoff match after about the first six weeks at the Tokyo Dome, and there was so much heat they had to send me home. They finally brought me back, and I rode 14 years out of that thing.” Eadie, as The Superstar, rode the same angle with the late Dino Bravo in the Montreal territory into a five-year run.
Eadie recalls originally coming up with the idea as a rib.
“We needed some kind of victory celebration. Boris didn’t smoke. We got these big, stinky cigars, and every time we got a victory, Boris would have to light up a cigar. Boris would actually almost throw up every time. In this case a rib turned out to be a good thing. Once fans saw him light up that cigar, they thought the match was over. And then when I had the best of Igor at the Park Center in Charlotte, Boris jumped the gun and lit the cigar, stood up on the apron and turned around with a big smile, and there I was. I just grabbed the cigar and stuck it right in Igor’s eye. It did get him a little bit in the eyebrow, but he sold the heck out of it.”
Garza sold it so well that his vision suffered as a result. “Even when it got better, he went and got sandpaper and scarred up his eye,” says Eadie. “He wore this big patch to the extent that it almost cost him his vision. He wore it for almost six months. But people sure remember that angle.”
Garza, who battled heart problems at the end of his life, died of a heart attack at the age of 70 on Jan. 7, 2002, in a Detroit hospital, leaving behind a wife and a son.
The Mighty Igor was frequently billed as the “World’s Strongest Wrestler.” Provided photo/Chris Swisher Collection
Mr. Michigan
The Dearborn native, who was born July 16, 1931, began bodybuilding as a teenager in Detroit and was named Mr. Michigan in 1954. With pro wrestling not on his radar at the time, he went on to try out for the Mr. America and Mr. Universe titles.
“To enter those contests, you have to have a pretty good physical shape to yourself,” said Al Friend (aka longtime wrestling manager Percival A. Friend). “You need to be proportioned to the other athletes on the stage with you, and then you have to satisfy the judges in a multi-faceted display that you were better than the rest. Unfortunately for bodybuilding, but fortunately for wrestling, the judges disqualified Dick in the Mr. America contest due to his huge arms. They measured 21 inches and did not fit proportionately with the rest of his body. He was also below that six-foot mark needed to make his spectacular body equal to other parts that were also hugely muscled.”
Garza would soon after break into the wrestling business after punching out the rugged Brute Bernard (Jim Prudhomme) while the two were working out at a local gym.
“He was working out in George Jacobs’ gym on the incline bench with 120-pound weights when Brute Bernard walked past a couple of times and finally whacks him (for no reason apparently), despite Garza’s warning,” wrestling historian Mike Lano recounted of a 1998 conversation with Garza. “Garza did not like Brute. Brute was a bully who’d spit on a guy’s steak if he wanted to eat it. At any rate, Garza rose and clobbered Bernard on the jaw, laying him out.”
“He’s layin’ there and he don’t get up,” recalled Garza. “I thought I’d killed him.”
“Evidently,” said Lano, “Bernard lay unconscious for five minutes until Jacobs got him to come around. When he did, Brute was furious and demanded Jacobs, ‘Get that ‘SOB to meet me at the Park Avenue Hotel.’ Garza showed; Brute never did.”
Bert Ruby, a wrestler-turned-promoter known as the “Jewish Sensation,” heard about the incident and recruited Garza for the ring. Ruby had seen the bodybuilder at the Mr. America contests during a talent hunt and, while Garza was not impressed with the thought of traveling to make a living, preferring to stay near his Dearborn farm, the lure of making big money was appealing.
“Fans loved him and were constantly running up to him to grab onto those 21-inch arms,” said Friend, who passed away in 2015. “He neither wore fancy outfits into the ring nor was he explosive on the microphone during interviews. Later in his career, when Bert Ruby went on WXYZ-TV in Detroit, Dick’s career really took off. He was exposed to more of an audience than ever before and began making more money than he had ever made.”
Years later Ruby’s son, Rob, would recall just how strong Garza was in recounting an incident that had occurred 40 years earlier. The then-16-year-old was driving Garza to a show and, glancing into the rearview mirror, observed his passenger perform his customary stress-relieving ritual in the back seat: popping the links off a thick, steel chain with his mammoth thumbs. By the time Ruby had driven Garza to his match, the car was littered with busted links.
“They were like worry beads for him,” said Ruby. “The other wrestlers thought he had the strongest hands in the world.”
Ruby also recalled his brother, Allen, driving Garza to a wrestling show. “They got cut off by some people who were taunting them — it was a very bad scene. Dick reached into their car and pulled off the steering wheel, which was pretty effective.”
Dick Garza, better known as The Mighty Igor, was named Mr. Michigan in 1954. Provided photo/Chris Swisher Collection
Feats of strength
Garza, who won a regional title in Michigan in 1957, captured his first major title, the Los Angeles version of the International tag-team championship, with Eric Rommel in 1962. But his career would take off just a couple of years later when he would meet Ivan Kalmikoff (Edward Bojucki), an old veteran who had been part of a successful Soviet heel duo in the ‘50s and early ‘60s with “brother” Karol Kalmikoff (Karol Piwoworczyk). Kalmikoff would help create the “Igor” gimmick along with Garza and AWA champion/promoter Verne Gagne, and would serve as Igor’s spokesman, confidant and “father figure,” taking his protégé from territory to territory where Igor would perform his strongman stunts at matches, television shoots, shopping centers and fairs.
One of his favorite feats of strength involved a car. “Richard would put his back against a wall, and his manager would get in the car and start the car,” recalled wife Donna Garza. “Richard would keep it from crushing him by pushing back with his legs.” Igor also would lift a truck on a pulley, break chains, bend iron bars and have cement blocks broken over his head with a sledgehammer.
A 1967 Wrestling Revue profile on the wrestler reflected just how popular Igor was.
“Who needs Batman and James Bond anymore? We’ve got Igor. He’s a live folk hero, and lively. Wants to give everybody he meets a big bear hug. Can Batman pick up a 1,850-pound Volkswagen by himself? Igor can. He can even lift it when it weighs 2,350 pounds with two men in it. What would happen if somebody tried to break a cement block on Bond’s head with a sledgehammer? Well, 007 might be a little worse for wear. But it doesn’t even faze Igor.”
Garza, 5-9 and nearly 300 pounds of pure muscle, was limited in the ring because of his gimmick, but with his amazing strongman act, it really didn’t matter.
“He would play tug of war with as many as 10 people from the audience and win,” recalled Friend. “He would have Ivan pull their road car up to him as he braced his back against a telephone pole and then put his feet on the front bumper and let the tires smoke as Ivan roared the engine to high speeds. He also did as many as 10 push-ups with huge farmers weighing as much as 350 pounds on his shoulders. Then, he would rise and clap his hands together like a kid that had just been given a present at Christmas time.”
Using the bearhug as his finisher, Igor held the Omaha version of the AWA world heavyweight title for a week during 1965 before dropping the belt back to Maurice “Mad Dog” Vachon. A year later he took the AWA Midwest heavyweight title from Bob Orton Sr.
The Mighty Igor was a star in virtually every territory in which he appeared, including his home area of Detroit where he worked major programs with brawlers such as The Sheik, Bull Curry and Pampero Firpo. He held that area’s version of the NWA tag-team title with Hank James in 1975, winning the belts from Lanny and Angelo Poffo, before losing them shortly thereafter to Afa and Sika. Titles were few and far between, though, since Igor was considered more of an attraction who didn’t need to wear a belt to draw.
He also was a top name for promoter Eddie Einhorn’s IWA in the mid-70s, where he was most noted for his bloody feud with Bulldog Brower, but was recruited by Jim Crockett in 1977 in a raiding of the remnants of the IWA, which by that time had become a small independent in the Carolinas running opposition to Crockett.
The Mighty Igor held the AWA world heavyweight title for one week in 1965. Provided photo/Chris Swisher Collection
‘Lived the gimmick’
Garza’s “Mighty Igor” character was childlike, simple and innocent, and the formula got him over wherever he appeared.
“He lived the gimmick,” says Eadie. “When he was out in public, he was Igor. When he was in the ring, he was no different. I have nothing but good memories of him. He was a very good businessman. We didn’t have that much time to talk, but I know that over the years he made some good purchases in Florida. He made quite a few good investments and bought up a lot of property.”
“Behind the goofy lovable character that Dick Garza brought to the ring as The Mighty Igor was a soft-spoken man with the mind of a Wall Street stockbroker,” echoed Les Thatcher. “For all the craziness displayed in the ring and on camera,” said Thatcher, “the former Mr. Detroit bodybuilder invested in the stock market and worked toward an early retirement. We should all be so crazy!”
Bobby Heenan also noted Garza’s business savvy in the late manager’s book “Chair Shots and Other Obstacles.” “He was strong as a moose and a genius, too,” Heenan said of Garza. “He never spent a dime on anything throughout his career. But he loved that gimmick of being dumb, and you would have never known how smart he was with money.”
“He was a very gentle man,” Garza’s wife told the Detroit Free Press. “Kids just loved him. When he was down in the Carolinas, there was a young boy who had leukemia and was dying, and his big wish was to see my husband. Richard went up to the hospital to see him, and they said it helped make the boy live longer.”
Ivan Putski (Joe Bednarski) later adopted Garza’s gimmick and became a star in his own right during the ‘70s. But it was never as effective as the original.
“He stole it,” claimed Eadie. “It was something good, but Ivan was never as good as Igor. Ivan was a very obnoxious person. He just saw the gimmick. The most important ingredient was liking people, and Igor liked people. I guess it’s flattery if somebody stole it, but he didn’t do well with it.”
Program with Hulk
One of Garza’s last major programs was with an up-and-coming Hulk Hogan in Florida in 1981.
“Mighty Igor could draw money quickly,” said Dory Funk Jr., who along with promoter Eddie Graham brought Igor into the territory for a program with Hogan. “We put him on television sitting in the audience with the wrestling fans. He cheered for the good guys and booed at the bad guys and loved waving at the camera ... Everyone loved Mighty Igor from the start.”
“On the third week, The Mighty Igor performed his feats of strength,” Funk continued. “With great fanfare, he bent a steel bar between his teeth, charged a trash can with six wrestlers bracing against it (naturally they all fell on their rear ends), and stood steadfast in the ring while three men on each side pulled on a rope wrapped around his neck. While pulling with all their might, The Mighty Igor reached out and grabbed the rope and gave it a mighty pull, and all crashed into each other. Now the need was there for someone strong to face The Mighty Igor.”
Funk made the call to Hogan, who lived in Tampa at the time and was in between tours of Japan, but still wanted to have a successful run in the Florida territory where he grew up as an athlete and musician. “Hulk shook my hand and said, ‘Brother, I will work my tail off for you. All I want is the opportunity to work in my home territory and be free to show what I can do.’ What more could a new booker ask for? Hulk and Mighty Igor popped the territory drawing sellout crowds all over Florida and giving us time to establish other wrestlers who could take over later.”
Garza spent the latter years of his career working in the Midwest and the Caribbean. His final stint with a major company was with Puerto Rico’s WWC in 1987 when he feuded with Kareem Muhammad (Randy Candy) and briefly held the Caribbean title. He so influenced a young Puerto Rican fan by the name of Juan Gonzalez that the future Major League Baseball great adopted the nickname of “Igor.”
Gonzales would stomp through his barrio pretending he was his professional wrestling idol Mighty Igor, eager to take on any pre-teen comers, most of whom shied away from the oversized youngster. The nickname stuck, and during Gonzalez’s rapid rise to major league superstardom, the chants of “Igor” multiplied faster than the Texas Rangers slugger’s career homers. Gonzalez rose to become one of the island’s biggest baseball heroes since Roberto Clemente.
‘Big teddy bear’
Michelle Anne Cox Lomas remembered her uncle as “a big, loving teddy bear “with a bright smile and strong arms that would hold her tightly. She fondly recalled visiting Garza and his wife at their modest home in Dearborn.
“Even when he became sick and seemed to shrink in size right before my eyes, he was always the big man that I had come to know and love as a little child. I will always look up to him in every good way. He was always there to listen – and he was an excellent listener – to anything anyone had to say. Not only was he my uncle, but in many ways he was my loving confidant and good friend.”
“He was the most amazing storyteller I’ve ever met,” she added. “My Uncle Ricky was always there, bigger than life, there to give me the biggest hugs and fill my heart with divine love and security.” Her father, Garza’s younger brother, kept that side of the family away from the wrestling game, said Lomas, although she recalled attending a few Cobo Hall shows at an early age.
Family differences, though, never affected her relationship with her uncle.
“I knew, as I got older, that no matter what I could turn to him, talk to him, invite him over to my house, and never did we allow the family politics get in the way of our love for each other. In many ways, so many ways, my Uncle Ricky and I were like two peas in a pod, and we didn’t care what the rest of the family had to say about it.”
To Lomas, Richard J. Garza was a mentor and, in many ways, not at all unlike the lovable, innocent character he portrayed in the ring.
“He had this wonderful way of looking at anything, like a child’s toy, or a stick that had fallen off of a tree after a storm, or anything at all, and his imagination would begin to tell you a story – usually a long and funny story – about what he was looking at. He could talk to you about his past, when he was a child, and how a certain thing was invented, what it was used for, if it’s still a good thing or if it needs to be reinvented. He was actually a very smart man, which many people didn’t give him credit for because of his wrestling personality, but he was very smart in some ways and very childlike at heart. I could listen to his stories for hours and hours and hours.
“He cared deeply about matters of the heart, for his heart, caring and generosity towards others always came first before anything else. He was just a genuinely good person. There’s no doubt why he had so many fans. His wrestling persona was exactly who he was in his daily life ... even the pretend accent crept across into his daily language sometimes. His laugh, his hugs, his sense of true love towards others, was always as big as he was.”
“The unconditional love was always there and will always be,” said Lomas, a professional astrologer and spiritual counselor. “We had a lot of things in common and, unknown to some other family members, we were both very intuitive about many things and spent many quality hours talking about God, life and even astrology.”
“He may have been 70 years old,” she added, “but he sure didn’t act like it. “He was always childlike ... I’m sure that he had the nurses in the hospital happy, smiling and laughing right to the end.”
Al Friend said he would always remember Dick Garza for his great smile and embracing handshake.
“If you were his friend, you were a friend for life.”
Reach Mike Mooneyham at bymikemooneyham@gmail.com, or follow him on Twitter at @ByMikeMooneyham and on Facebook at Facebook.com/MikeMooneyham. His latest book — “Final Bell” — is now available at https://evepostbooks.com and on Amazon.com
