Bruno Sammartino: Wrestling Legend or Bitter, Old Man?

[Providence Peep]

I don't know how many of you here are "old school" wrestling fans, or how many of you are ignorant about anything that happened in wrestling before 1997, but if possible I'd like to get a discussion going about Bruno Sammartino.

He gets very little mention in these forums, but for those who aren't that familiar with him he was a 2 time WWWF champ who held the belt for 8 years, from 1963-1971, and again from 73-76. He is the original "Living Legend," and was the face of pro wrestling at a time when the business/kayfabed "sport" was given very little TV exposure. He also became the first wrestler to hold the title twice.

Unfortunately, he's also been highly critical of Vince McMahon and the WWE for years, and has refused to accept McMahon's invitation to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, choosing instead to make the following statement in a shoot interview:

Today I get a lot of mail that comes here. I would say that maybe two out of twenty letters that I get, they tell me stuff like, “You know Bruno you are being stubborn, you aren’t being fair to the fans who supported you, you should go into the WWE Hall of Fame regardless of your feelings towards Vince McMahon because you owe it to the fans to go to the Hall of Fame and by not going you are being disrespectful to the fans.” But then I get the majority of letters I kid you not the others say, “Bruno, we respect you for standing by what you believe and we’re behind you,” very, very supportive. The people that feel that I am doing an injustice to the fans, in a way I feel bad that they think that way, but if they only thought about it, in all honesty what is the WWE Hall of Fame? Is there a building that they can go and take their kids or whatever to the Hall of Fame to show them this or that? You know what I’m saying? All it is, is that when they have their WrestleMania the Hall of Fame is the day before and they make DVDs and McMahon sells them. I’m not knocking them for this it’s business, and then he sells those DVDs all over the world and they make a lot of money from it but that’s what it is. How do you get picked for the Hall of Fame? Well they decide. They say, “Well who do we want this year? Let’s pick so and so and so and so.” Look at some of the people in it. Refrigerator Perry and than you have Pete Rose, he’s in the Hall of Fame. I mean if people thought about it, what kind of a Hall of Fame is that?

For you older fans, like myself: where do you think Bruno ranks in the history of pro wrestling greatness, and what do you think of the resentment that he's been carrying around for years?