Gagne left football to enter professional wrestling on the advice of Tony Stecher and debuted to defeat Abe "King Kong" Kashey with Jack Dempsey as the special guest referee. He became the Junior Heavyweight Championship and then became the National Heavyweight Champion from 1952 to 1956. He even got to headline Madison Square Garden during the title reign in February of 1953. 

    Gagne joined the American Wrestling Association in 1960 and became the AWA World Heavyweight Champion, defeating the legendary Gene Kiniski, in August of 1961. Gagne took a managerial job within the company and slowly bought people out to become the sole owner. Gagne negotiated with ESPN and other international sports stations to bring AWA programming through the United States, Canada, Europe, Mexico and the Middle East. He wrestled classic title bouts against Baron von Rascke and Nick Bockwinkel, even taking a reign as the AWA World Tag Team Champions with Mad Dog Vachon as a partner. Gagne finally dropped the AWA World Championship to Nick Bockwinkel and only returned for special bouts during the 1980s, including a tag team feud with his son Greg against the Heenan Family and Sheik Adnan Al-Kaisse. 

    Gagne brought Ric Flair, the Iron Sheik, the future Yokozuna, the Rockers, Sherri Martel, Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Mad Dog Vachon, and a host of others to international fame. Gagne faced his greatest challenge in the mid 1980s when Vince McMahon took the World Wrestling Federation national and began talent raids that drained the AWA of virtually all its top talents including Hogan, Andre, Mean Gene, Bobby Heenan, the Rockers, Sherri Martel and the list went on. Gagne also gave Eric Bischoff his first break in the business as an announcer in the late 1980s. In 1984, Hulk Hogan quit the AWA to join the WWF after Gagne refused to give him a run with the AWA World Title. The Iron Sheik alleges that Gagne offered him a bounty if the Iron Sheik broke Hogan's leg during the WWF Title match. Of course, Vern Gagne denies this rumour and perhaps the truth will never be known. Many talents have said it was quite difficult working for Vern including Bobby Heenan who remarked that the AWA was "All the World's Assholes" during a WWF Hall of Fame ceremony. 

    Gagne held the company together but in 1991, it went out of business and Gagne went into retirement. The wrestling world was shocked in 2006 when the WWE announced Verne Gagne as a member of the WWE Hall of Fame's Class of 2006. Gagne had been a very vocal opponent of McMahon, but at the ceremony congratulated McMahon on creating the WWE as it now was... though the tension was a little higher than usual. Gagne accepted the honours, proving himself to be a class act. 

    Gagne's career as a wrestler is enough to warrant him his placement here in the UWOW Hall of Fame, but then add his exceptional record of producing top talent like Ric Flair, Hulk Hogan, the Iron Sheik, Ricky Steamboat, Sherri Martel, the Rockers, and the list goes on. He was a trend setter and, arguably, created a wrestling organization that laid the groundwork for what would become the WWF Rock-n-Wrestling era with the same talent and the same "feel". Verne Gagne, no doubt, belongs here among his peers, and those he helped make famous, in the UWOW Hall of Fame.