The Zebra Kid

By guest columnist Will Morrisey

This week, I am taking a break from everything and featuring a guest writer from Hillsdale, Michigan ... Will Morrisey. He is a very talented journalist who needs to be congratulated for stepping forth with his efforts concerning the life of George Bollas. Comments about the column may be directed to him at will.morrisey@hillsdale.edu ...... Thank you Will.--Percival

In the years of prosperity following the Second World War, professional wrestling and television entered into lucrative alliance. With the Zebra Kid, promoters found a performer perfectly adapted to the new medium. With its bold black and white stripes, the Kid's mask showed up unforgettably on early televisions. And George Bollas, the original Zebra Kid, was no mere performer. A massive and powerful athlete with quick reflexes, Bollas could really wrestle.

He was born in 1923 to Greek immigrant parents in Warren, Ohio. His father owned a restaurant. The youngest of four children, George played football at Warren G. Harding High School before the war. In 1945 he enrolled at Ohio State University, hoping to play football. As a center and guard, he never got beyond the junior varsity squad. But, on the wrestling mat, he became a standout in the history of the OSU athletic program.

In his freshman year, he won the NCAA Big Ten Heavyweight Championship, then finished second in his division at the AAU tournament. As a sophomore, he repeated as Big Ten champ, was named to the All-American Team, and, on March 23, 1946, defeated Morris Chitwood of Indiana University to win the NCAA Heavyweight Championship in Stillwater, Oklahoma. The sportswriters nicknamed him "Dreadnaught." He stood 5' 10" and weighed some 300 pounds. A photo taken for the OSU alumni magazine shows a man who must have been almost impossible to knock off his feet.

Columbus, Ohio promoter Al Haft was in the habit of hiring OSU athletes to perform at his shows, usually under a mask in order to evade any unpleasant questions about amateur standing. Bollas had worked for Haft as "The Mystery Man" several times, picking up extra money for college. He was older than the average undergraduate -- 22 -- by the time he won the NCAA title, and, like so many of his generation, he wanted to get started in life. He left college and, in 1947, made his official pro debut for Haft, who hoped to capitalize on the young man's local fame.

Bollas wrestled for Haft for several months and then moved on to upstate New York. There, promoters alert to ethnic audiences billed him as "The Greek Hercules." But, his career in New York skidded in 1948 when he was banned after touching off a riot in a match with Mattie Mario. Retreating to the Charlotte, North Carolina territory, he wrestled for a few months as "The Intercollegiate Dark Secret" before finding the gimmick that would help to make him a main eventer on five continents.

Who invented "The Zebra Kid"? Bollas himself said that his severe weight fluctuations caused stretch marks on his skin, and the other wrestlers started calling him "Zebra." He said he thought of the gimmick while wrestling in the Los Angeles area in 1948. There is another possibility. In September of that year, he signed a contract with the eccentric, unscrupulous, but undeniably imaginative Jack Pfeffer. He loved freakish wrestlers and outlandish gimmicks. Bollas was no circus sideshow act. But his career had gone nowhere as George Bollas. Did Pfeffer come up with "The Zebra Kid"?

In the late 1940s, Pfeffer ran a small promotion centered in Toledo, Ohio. He had an eye for talent. Buddy Rogers, Len Montana, and "Butcher" Dave Levin worked for him, there. On July 7, 1949, the Zebra Kid defeated Rogers for the "World Heavyweight Title" of Pfeffer-land. Next month, he lost the title by disqualification in a match with Levin.

Although he enjoyed success in the promotion, Bollas did not like Pfeffer. George Bollas had the bad habit of running late, often appearing at the arena just before the card began. Pfeffer ragged him about this repeatedly, and tensions reached their comic height when Pfeffer, accompanied by one of his alleged imports from Mongolia, Ivan Bulba, decided to hitchhike after the car they were riding in lost power on the way to a match. Bollas saw them -- surely one of the least likely pairs that anyone would pick up on the side of a road -- and gave them a ride to the next stop. Pfeffer rewarded him with a rant about how late he was.

A year or so afterwards, Bollas met another young college-star-turned-pro, Verne Gagne, and moved to the Minneapolis territory where Gagne had established himself. Successful immediately, the Zebra Kid performed in main event matches, feuding with Gagne and Bronko Nagurski. He also teamed with celebrated heel Hans Hermann; they defeated the team of future NWA champ Pat O'Connor and Leo Nomellini, among others.

(Meanwhile, Jack Pfeffer evidently decided that it was the gimmick, not the man, that sold tickets. He continued to use "Zebra Kids" at his shows. In northern New Jersey in 1951 he had Len Montana and Karol Kowalski as the "Super Zebra Kids," and later used Billy Sandow in the role. Montana worked as the Zebra Kid for Capital Wrestling, owned by Toots Mondt and Vince McMahon Sr., until 1954, then in a brief stint in Florida for Eddie Graham in 1961. But there is little question that Bollas was the original Zebra Kid, as well as the man who wrestled by far the most matches under the striped hood.)

By this time, Lou Thesz was in the midst of a long run as champion of the National Wrestling Alliance, then the dominant consortium of wrestling promoters. On November 8, 1951 the Zebra Kid lost a title match to Thesz in Toledo, Ohio. Later that month he wrestled a curfew draw with former champ Whipper Billy Watson for Frank Tunney's Toronto promotion. He had established himself as a main eventer.

In 1952, the Kid moved to the San Francisco territory, wrestling to a draw with the man who would go on to put American-style pro wrestling on the map in Japan, Rikidozan. This began a mutually profitable association, as the two men fought each other in Hawaii and Japan in subsequent years.

The Kid won his first California championship in September, teaming with Hans Schnabel to defeat Gino Garibaldi and Leo Nomellini for the Pacific Coast Tag Team Title in San Francisco. They dropped the belts to Garibaldi and Enrique Torres shortly afterwards, but in December the Kid won the "Beat the Champ International Television Title" from the legendary former Olympic champion Sandor Szabo in Los Angeles. He held the title until March of the following year, when he returned it to Szabo.

The next couple of years proved less noteworthy. Bollas abandoned his Zebra Kid persona for a time, back in Minneapolis and Toronto, but was no more successful than he had been as a "rookie." Without the mask, George Bollas looked more or less like an average guy -- admittedly, a very large average guy. The mask freed him from being George Bollas, immigrants' son from Ohio. Paradoxically, the mask made the fans see him, the great athlete and showman.

So the Zebra Kid returned, needing a territory where no one knew his ordinary identity. He signed with Honolulu promoter Al Karasick in October 1954 and began what may have been the happiest tour of his life. In Hawaii, Bollas was at his physical peak. Now in his early thirties, he had brought his weight down to about 270, losing none of his strength but gaining in agility. Honolulu was the meeting place for American and Japanese wrestlers. By April 1955, he had won the Hawaiian Heavyweight Championship from Lucky Simunovich. In the following months, he worked a feud with Rikidozan, culminating in a match in which Riki "went berserk" and was disqualified, unmasked Bollas, and was "suspended" in Hawaii-- just in time for a tour of California. Meanwhile, Bollas stayed on as the Hawaiian champ until December, when local hero Al Lolotai took the strap.

After programs in Atlanta (where he beat the young Eddie Gossett, later Eddie Graham) and in Evansville, Indiana, the Zebra Kid returned to Columbus in 1957, with side trips to Memphis, Tennessee, where he defeated former world champ Bill Longson and future NWA champ Buddy Rogers. His Ohio program that year was vintage. He defeated Bob McCune for the Ohio State Title in Columbus on March 23, the anniversary of his NCAA title victory. He then feuded with Bearcat Wright, Leon Graham, Frankie Talaber, and Billy Darnell. In Columbus on July 13, after beating Wright, he was attacked by a mob in the parking lot, returning to action of couple of weeks later. At the end of the month, Buddy Rogers unmasked him in Mansfield, and the boys repeated the match with the same ending in Columbus on the following night. (Years later, Bollas named Rogers as one of his favorite co-workers). Bollas then proceeded to "job his way out of the territory," as the saying goes, for the final three months of his contract, then ended the year with a successful program in Memphis and Nashville.

Also in Nashville that December was a young ex-college football and wrestling standout named Dick Beyer. As "The Destroyer" a few years later, Beyer would become arguably the greatest masked wrestler of all. Did he see the veteran Bollas and pick up a trick or two? One thing Beyer did not learn was the willingness to be unmasked. Bollas had to wrestle in so many places during his career in part because his programs often ended in a dramatic unmasking (or two!). This made money for the promoters, but it also made it impossible for him to work the same territory again. Beyer refused to be unmasked, ever, and, as a result, The Destroyer enjoyed a very long reign of terror, and with much longer programs in each territory he worked.

The Zebra Kid had traveled throughout North America. 1958 saw him on his first extended tour overseas. Destinations included Australia and New Zealand. Upon returning to the States, he signed with Capital Wrestling, where Len Montana had worked as The Zebra Kid a few years earlier. The original Kid excelled there both in singles and tag-team matches. In singles competition, the highlight may have been a draw against the great Johnny Valentine in Washington, D.C. in February 1959.

His tag partner was veteran worker Jim Austeri, who had held a world light-heavyweight belt from 1938 to 1950. Billed as "The Zebra Kids" -- Bollas was "Zebra Kid No. 1" or "Big Zebra" to Austeri's "No. 2" or "Little Zebra" -- they met many of the top teams in the northeast, including Antonino Rocca and Miguel Perez, who headlined at Madison Square Garden for years. The Kids were not allowed to wrestle in the Garden, however, as the state athletic commission refused to license masked wrestlers at that time. There is no evidence that Bollas ever had the opportunity to work the Garden.

By mid-1959, Bollas moved on to Texas, while Austeri continued to work with Mondt-McMahon territory as "The Zebra Kid" into 1960. In June, the original Kid defeated a wrestler billed as The Golden Giant, taking the Texas Brass Knucks Title in Dallas. He held the belt until October, when he relinquished it to Danny McShane in Houston.

In 1960, the Kid toured Europe, including Paris and Athens (where he defeated the Greek hero Lambrakis before a crowd of 43,000). While in England, George and Angela Bollas became parents; they named their only child George Jr., who now works as an engineer for Daimler-Chrysler in Twinsburg, Ohio.

Although in a few years the Zebra Kid would become a legendary figure in British wrestling, this time he returned quickly to the States, working a program in southern California. He teamed with Mike Sharpe to win the "International TV Tag Team Title" from Nick Bockwinkel and Edouard Carpentier in Los Angeles on January 4, 1961. They held the belts for six months, before losing to Alberto and Ramon Torres. But it was in singles matches that the Kid worked one of his most memorable feuds. Lou Thesz was less than two years away from his sixth run as NWA champion. The Kid defeated Thesz in Long Beach in June then lost the return match there. On August 9, in a main event match at the Olympic Auditorium in L.A., Thesz pinned the (now) 350-pound Kid following an airplane spin and body slam, then unmasked him.

Four days later, the Zebra Kid arrived in Japan to work for his old friend Rikidozan. Together with veteran heels Tosh Togo, Aldo Bogni, and Don Manoukian, he wrestled in every major city in the country, often in two and three-man tag matches against various combinations of Riki, Toyonobori, Michiaki Yoshimura, and Kokichi Endo. The tour last two months, and near the end of it the Zebra Kid suffered a count-out-of-ring defeat and unmasking by Rikidozan in Osaka on November 7. Wrestling Revue reprinted a Japanese newspaper article Bollas sent to them, complete with a photo of an exhausted Bollas leaning on the ring ropes, after the unmasking.

In 1962, he returned to the Texas territory -- one of the few in which he had not been unmasked -- and to his native Ohio. By now, his identity had become so well known to fans in the States that his opportunities were limited. He and his family settled in England in 1964.

English wrestlers of that time were noticeably smaller than the Americans, so the Kid was a giant there. In addition to his matches, Bollas helped to train the British Olympic wrestler Dennis McNamara, a London bobbie who appeared in the 1964 Games. The compact English wrestling circuit allowed Bollas to spend more time with his family than he had been able to do in the States, but he also found time to tour the continent for a second time, as well as South Africa and Rhodesia.

Now in his early forties, Bollas wanted to get into the promotional end of the business. In 1965, he promoted matches in Greece with a cousin, and he defeated George Gordienko before a crowd of 15,000 in Athens. But the Greek expedition ended in disaster, his cousin absconding with the money, leaving Bollas broke and stranded. He picked up some cash for matches in Beirut, Lebanon and French Cameroon before returning to England, betrayed by his relative and frustrated by his failure to reshape his career.

The Zebra Kid retired to Akron, Ohio in 1968, after suffering a serious eye injury in Germany the previous year. His knees shot after years on the mat, he suffered from weight and heart problems, passing away in 1977.

In September 1998, Angela Bollas and George Bollas Jr. were introduced on the field during halftime at an Ohio State University football game. More than four decades after bringing the NCAA heavyweight championship to the school, George Bollas Sr. had been inducted into the OSU Athletic Hall of Fame. Fans of pro wrestling remember him very differently, though, as the definitive masked wrestler of his generation, the Zebra Kid.

Will Morrisey

Percival A. Friend, Retired
The Epitome of Wrestling Managers