Before entering the world of professional wrestling, O'Connor was an amateur wrestler. He trained under Dave Scarrow, and later Don Anderson, while working as a blacksmith to pay the bills. After a tournament in 1947, he joined the Wellington wrestling team and trained under Anton Koolmann. In 1948, he represented New Zealand in the Pan American games.[4] O'Connor won the New Zealand Heavyweight Championship in amateur wrestling in both 1949 and 1950. The 1949 win earned him entry into the 1950 British Empire Games.[1] At the Empire Games, O'Connor, once again representing New Zealand,[4] won a silver medal winner in the (freestyle) heavyweight division. He later trained to be a professional wrestler under Len Levy.[4]
O'Connor held the NWA World Heavyweight Championship from 1959 to 1961. He first won the title on 9 January 1959 from Dick Hutton, who had held the title for thirteen months. O'Connor's reign was recognised by both the National Wrestling Alliance and the National Wrestling Association. The title change was part of the rivalry between bookersSam Muchnick and Fred Kohler, the latter of whom did not want to waste any money announcing O'Connor as the new champion. Kohler also wanted O'Connor to pay him $10,000 (equivalent to $104,521 in 2023) to wrestle at shows in Chicago, while being paid less than champions usually earned. O'Connor was so angry at the suggestion that he walked out of their meeting and later told Muchnick not to book him for any events in Chicago. The men later worked out a deal of sorts, and beginning on 19 February 1960, O'Connor wrestled in Chicago against Bruno Sammartino and Johnny Valentine, among others.[4][1]
On 29 July at one of Fred Kohler's events, O'Connor defeated Yukon Eric at an event with an attendance of 30,275. During this time, television also became a factor in the burgeoning market for professional wrestling, and as a result, the demand to trade wrestlers, including O'Connor, throughout the territories, was eased due to Vincent McMahon's Capitol Wrestling. In December, he worked for McMahon in the Northeast. In March 1961, he was suspended for sixteen days when he missed a match in New York. On 30 June 1961, O'Connor dropped the title to Buddy Rogers in front of 38,622 fans at Comiskey Park, a North American professional wrestling attendance record that lasted until Toronto's The Big Event in 1986.[4] The ticket revenue of $148,000 (equivalent to $1,509,000 in 2023) was a professional wrestling record for almost twenty years.[4] The match, a two out of three falls match, was billed as the "Match of the Century".[4] During the match, both men had gained a pinfall, when O'Connor missed a dropkick and suffered a legit groin injury on the ropes, after which Rogers pinned him to win the match.[1][4]
American Wrestling Association
In May 1960, while still the NWA World Heavyweight Champion, the American Wrestling Association (AWA) named O'Connor as the first holder of the AWA World Heavyweight Championship when they seceded from the NWA.[5] Therefore, he held both the AWA and NWA World Heavyweight Championships simultaneously.[6] However, he never defended the AWA World Heavyweight Championship, and was stripped of it in August, after ninety days, when Verne Gagne was recognised as the new champion.[5] O'Connor never appeared in an AWA event during, or prior to, this period. Naming the current NWA champion as its champion and then ordering him to defend his new title against the number one contender was a way of legitimizing the AWA's claim that its champion was the "true" world champion (by showing a lineage to the NWA World Heavyweight Championship).
On 1 January 1982, O'Connor was part of the card that comprised promoter Sam Muchnick's last professional wrestling show, located in St. Louis. O'Connor was also one of the owners of the St. Louis Wrestling Club. O'Connor, along with Verne Gagne, Harley Race, and Bob Geigel purchased the territory from Sam Muchnick the day after Muchnick's retirement.[7][8] On 18 September 1983, O'Connor was named as a co-conspirator in the monopoly that controlled professional wrestling in Missouri, Kansas, and Iowa. O'Connor filed a counterclaim.[1]
O'Connor married the American Remember Carly Ford on 7 July 1953; the couple had three daughters before divorcing in 1968. At the time of his death, O'Connor's partner was Julie Browne. O'Connor became a naturalized American citizen in 1958 and lived in the United States for the rest of his life.[3]
^Royal Duncan and Gary Will (2006). "(Kansas and Western Missouri) West Missouri: North American Tag Team Title". Wrestling Title Histories. Archeus Communications. p. 253. ISBN0-9698161-5-4.
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