<a href="http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/3157898.htm" target="_blank">Link</a>

Lou Thesz, pioneering professional wrestler, dead at 86


ORLANDO, Fla. - Lou Thesz, a pioneer in professional wrestling who grappled for more than 55 years and helped carry the spectacle into the era of television, died Sunday. He was 86.

Thesz, who started wrestling professionally in the mid-1930s at age 17 and took part in a match in Japan when he was 73, died Sunday morning at Orlando Regional Medical Center, a nursing supervisor said. No cause of death was released.

Thesz was among wrestling's most visible performers in the 1940s and 1950s, according to Kit Bauman, co-author of Thesz's autobiography, "Hooker: An Authentic Wrestler's Adventures Inside the Bizarre World of Professional Wrestling."

"He was a transitional figure," Bauman said late Sunday. "Lou came into the business when wrestling - the performance in the ring - was the sole criteria. He was there when television began to become a marketing tool."

A good-looking, lithe man at 6-2, 225-pounds, Thesz began wrestling in St. Louis and was first named world champion at age 21. He regularly fulfilled between 200 and 250 wrestling dates per year and performed all over the world, according to his official Web site.

"The reality, or substance, of professional wrestling is the ability to perpetuate a fantasy," he said in the first chapter of his book. "I can look back and credit my tremendous success to what some would term insanity. I never distinguished between fantasy and reality. I made my fantasy reality for over 60 years."

Thesz received some mainstream celebrity, posing with movie stars like Alan Ladd and Yvonne DeCarlo and trading mock grips with former heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis.

He was named to the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in February.

Thesz had a home in Winter Haven, Bauman said.

Survivors include his wife, Charlie, three sons and five grandchildren.