Wahoo for Wahoo McDaniel!

Yes, we at Travalanche enjoy and approve of professional wrestling. There’s an evening a section devoted to it here. It shouldn’t surprise; after all, as is well known, pro wrestling is in part theatre. Most people oversimplify the field as “fake”, and that’s on account of the admittedly deceptive use of traditional words in describing it. It would be more honest to be called what these athletes do as “exhibitions”, as used to be done when boxing was illegal, rather than bouts or matches. It is not at bottom a fully competitive sport, but you deceive yourself too much if you think the men and women who do this are not athletes full stop in the strict dictionary definition of the term. Would YOU want to fight one of them? They combine the skill sets of bodybuilders and acrobats. And they make amazing, hilarious entertainment. I wouldn’t say it’s near the top of my list of the world’s great wrongs, but they do deserve a lot more respect than they get.

Which all goes to my observation of the fact that June 18 is the birthday of the late Wahoo McDaniel (Edward McDaniel, 1938-2002). Chief Jay Strongbow is better remembered among wrestlers with a “Native” gimmick, but Wahoo had the edge on him by being a genuine member of Choctaw-Chickasaw tribe. His nickname came from his father, himself known as “The Big Wahoo”. The wrestling Wahoo grew up in Louisiana and Midland, Texas, where his boyhood baseball coach was none other than future president George H.W. Bush. He went on to be a college football star at the University of Oklahoma, where he achieved an NCAA record for the longest punt (91 yards). (Longest punt? Isn’t that a contradiction? Anyway–) McDaniel spent most of the ’60s as a pro football star, playing for the Houston Oilers, the Denver Broncos, the New York Jets, and the Miami Dolphins. Wrestling was originally a side-hustle. He switched horses in 1969, wrestling professionally until 1996. Wahoo McDaniel died of kidney failure at age 63.