Roger Kirby---Just Plain Mean

Many stories have been written about the former Junior Heavyweight Champion, but few have given him the grandeur that he deserved.

Roger was born in Muncie, Indiana and attended Notre Dame. He excelled in most of the sports the college participated in. He was great in track, weightlifting, and football. He lettered in boxing and wrestling and played some baseball as well.

He began professional wrestling through a cousin that was wresting for an Indianapolis promotion by the name of Dennis Hall. He did not have a pattern set as to what he wanted to do when he graduated from college. He had many avenues that he trained for. Among them were engineering and architecture.

He chose to wrestle for a while in the summer season when he was not in classes. He traveled to many areas the first summer, gaining knowledge of wrestling and putting plenty of lumps and bruises on his body. He had cartilage torn from both knees, broken bones in his feet, a shoulder dislocated, and both ankles broken in the first two years of being a professional wrestler.

His win and loss records were about even, as he knew a lot of bone breaking holds. He developed an arsenal of movements that would gain him the World's title held by Danny Hodge. Among them was the figure-four leglock that Buddy Rogers beat him with in a very heated match in Columbus, Ohio on one of his many summer trips.

Roger also used the devastating move called the Piledriver. He was unaware that some states had barred the move until after he used it. Then, he had to pay some pretty stiff fines. Danny Littlebear had come into Cape Girardeau, Missouri to wrestle and left as a victim of Kirby's Piledriver. Danny had to be carried from the ring and spent nearly two months in traction.

Kirby tried to explain to the commission that he was unaware that the move was not sanctioned in the state, as he did not live there. He went on to say that Littlebear was a constant crybaby whenever he gets the short end of the purse money as a loser. "I had known that Bob Orton from Kansas City used the move in Missouri," said Kirby, "and had not had his license to wrestle taken from him for using it." A friend that was on the commission in Jefferson City, Missouri overturned the decision.

Roger did not just face the junior heavyweights. He wrestled whomever was available, be they big, small, fat, or tall. He changed tactics with each opponent, and that made it very difficult to choose a battle plan against him. His epic battles with Dick the Bruiser were an example of why Roger was a champion. He held the world's most dangerous wrestler to many draws throughout the cities they met at in Mid America.

Roger also faced World's champs in his battles on the road---Gene Kiniski, Lou Thesz, Buddy Rogers, and, of course, Pat O'Connor and Dory Funk Jr. Many of these were in 90-minute time limit bouts that neither man scored a fall in. That takes conditioning and stamina that comes with many years of training to go 90 minutes.

Before coming to the Kansas City territory in 1972, he held many defeats in the Los Angeles-based territory as the Junior Heavyweight Champion. He was no stranger to titles wherever he went. The only thing that ever held him back was his weight, which he kept between 230 to 245 pounds.

Under my guidance, he became a tag team champion with Angus Campbell and later became the Central States Champion. He had a lot of very good men to beat to get to the top, but Roger did it with relative ease alongside my expert knowledge. Men the likes of Ronnie Etchison, The Viking, Danny Littlebear, Rufus R. Jones, Pat O'Connor, Bob Geigel, Billy Howard, and a host of others just became victims of his superior talents and wrestling holds.

Ronnie Etchison once made the statement on Iowa television that facing Kirby was one of the toughest things that he ever had to do in his career. Facing a man with his years of experience and the caliber of wrestling that he does in the ring conditions you to put forth more than you anticipate; it's like grabbing hold of a live rattlesnake and trying to get the head away from you to keep from getting bit too badly.

Away from the ring, Roger enjoyed hobbies like photography and raising tropical fish. He didn't just get the multicolored items from the Pacific---he raised sharks and, at one time, had 13 of them in three large aquariums in his home in St. Joseph, Missouri.

Roger retired from the wrestling business in the mid-80's and is enjoying a newfound life as a member of a carpentry team for a major newspaper. I get an occasional letter in the mail from him and his wife telling me that he is doing well and enjoying life to it's fullest.

Percival A. Friend, Retired
The Epitome of Wrestling Managers