Chris Taylor to HOF

[longtimeclone]

I love to hear stories about the man and I wish I would have been able to see him compete.

 

[isukendall]

To correct an earlier poster, Chris was actually the Bronze Medalist in 72. The pic I posted is how he lost in the Olympics. The legend goes that when walking through the Olympic village the German wrestler that is throwing Chris walked up and gave him a huge hug and none of the American wrestlers knew why. After the match the German told reporters he wanted to see if he could get his arms around him and knew that if he couldn't he wouldn't have been able to beat him!

My uncle was at ISU at the time of Taylor and Gable and talks about how Nichols used to match the two of them up because they beat up everyone else they wrestled. The matches would last forever without any points scored.

Great story, regardless if true or not. Loving people's posts in this thread.

 

[dtISU]

Granddaddys did not exist when Chris was at ISU, at the time it was The Store (Country), do not recall him being a bouncer there. But he was a bouncer at a bar on mainstreet called That Place.
Chris was a fantastic gentlemen, lot of stories, Chris and his wife played volleyball in the city league as well.

You are correct in that Granddaddy's wasn't there when Chris was in school. However, it was there when I was in school and I remember Chris being a bouncer at the front door. Must have been around '77. (BTW - they also had dime draws on Monday nights. Could walk in with a buck and get a pretty good buzz on.)

 

[2ndCyCE]

Granddaddys did not exist when Chris was at ISU, at the time it was The Store (Country), do not recall him being a bouncer there. But he was a bouncer at a bar on mainstreet called That Place.
Chris was a fantastic gentlemen, lot of stories, Chris and his wife played volleyball in the city league as well.

I remember my parents telling me stories about hanging out with Chris at That Place. They swear that a pitcher of beer fit his hands like a mug did for most people. Said he was one of the nicest guys they knew, a gentle giant.

 

[Steve]

He was a bouncer at Granddaddy's when I was in school. The man was a mountain!

Granddaddys did not exist when Chris was at ISU, at the time it was The Store (Country), do not recall him being a bouncer there. But he was a bouncer at a bar on mainstreet called That Place.
Chris was a fantastic gentlemen, lot of stories, Chris and his wife played volleyball in the city league as well.

You are correct in that Granddaddy's wasn't there when Chris was in school. However, it was there when I was in school and I remember Chris being a bouncer at the front door. Must have been around '77. (BTW - they also had dime draws on Monday nights. Could walk in with a buck and get a pretty good buzz on.)

Chris started bouncing at a bar named the Peanut Gallery shortly after he finished competing at ISU.

 

[Clone83]

Here is an article from a pro-affiliated site, but with an excellent bio, everyone should click. There are some nice words and outlook concerning Chris's death, from his mother at the end. I copied the ISU and Olympic parts and the end:

Chris Taylor: The giant Olympian

Coming out of the Olympics with a bronze medal, he seemed a natural fit for pro wrestling and hooked up with another former Olympian, Verne Gagne, for training. It was a remarkable contract at the time, in excess of $100,000.

But it wasn't to be for Taylor, who had numerous health problems and died in 1979 at age 29.

"He was okay for a big guy, he weighed 450 pounds. He got to 500 after a while," Gagne recalled to SLAM! Wrestling. "He just had too many things wrong with him. He couldn't sustain a steady diet of travelling and wrestling. When he finally died, there were five different things wrong with him."

Taylor was from Dowagiac, Michigan and really first made a name for himself as an amateur at Iowa State University, after two years at a junior college. At ISU, he became a crowd favourite, going undefeated and winning two national titles, and being named All American twice.

Dot Curtis did the pairing and scoring for many of Taylor's amateur matches, and her husband Don refereed some of his bouts.

"He was a very capable athlete. Once he got you down, it was hard to ever recover. For someone as big as he was, he made some awesome takedowns," Dot Curtis said.

One match in particular stood out in her memory. "He took an opponent down with a suplex and the whole crowd just gasped in amazement at the throw, and then at the thundering sound when his opponent his the mat, flat on his back. PIN!"

He seemed destined to win gold at the Olympic Games in Munich.

Two of his bouts at the Games stand out and help explain how the behemoth ended up on with a bronze medal in freestyle.

In only the first round of freestyle, Taylor took on two-time gold medalist Aleksandr Medved of Minsk, Ukraine. Medved had beated Taylor at three other meets, but on this occasion, they fought to a draw. The 231-pound Medved was awarded a controversial decision by referee Umit Demirag of Turkey, who had penalized Taylor for passivity. It was the last time Demirag refereed an Olympic bout, as the ruling body dismissed him from his position, yet allowed the Medved-Taylor decision to stand. Both men won the rest of their bouts, with the Ukrainian taking gold.

In Greco-Roman, Taylor faced off against Wilfried Dietrich, a West German wrestler whom he had beaten in freestyle. Gagne recalled that Dietrich had a strategy where he kept trying to push Taylor out of the ring. Then Taylor got riled up and rushed Dietrich, who grabbed him up in a bear hug and suplexed the 412-pound monster and "turned him on his back before he hit the mat and that was it. It was a phenomenal move."

Gagne explained some of the difficulties that amateur wrestlers go through when becoming pro wrestlers. ...

Taylor's body gave out at his home in Iowa on June 30, 1979 and he died at age 29.

"I called his parents and said, 'I imagine that you are pretty shocked at Chris's early demise here at 29 years old,'" remembered Gagne. "I talked to his mother, and she said, 'Well, we're just grateful we had Chris around that long. He had a lot of problems."

Professionally, Taylor wrestled Mad Dog Vachon some (as mentioned quite a bit in the above link), including on ABC's Wide World of Sports. For people accustomed to 24-hour a day cable, understand that this was mainstream big-time, back when there were just 3 network channels and few had cable. This was also before the popularization of professional wrestling (and know that Verne Gagne, mentioned in the article above, was its biggest name). Wide World of Sports was on every Saturday for 37 years, from 1961-1998.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_World_of_Sports_(U.S._TV_series)

From link up top:

Taylor's move to pro wrestling did attract mainstream media attention, which was rare at the time. One of his bouts against Mad Dog Vachon was aired on ABC's Wide World of Sports. ...

I bring this up because I saw a little update on Mad Dog recently in an Omaha World-Herald article on Ron Stander, the Bluffs Butcher, who fought Joe Frazier for the world heavyweight title in 1972. I could go on about that fight, but I won't (a student at Iowa Western in Council Bluffs did an award winning documentary maybe a decade ago, later broadcast on IPTV's Living in Iowa). This thread is about Chris. Mad Dog is one of Stander's buddies in Omaha, and is in a wheelchair, if I recall correctly, probably because he was in a bad automobile accident (quite awhile go) in Des Moines.

Anyway here is the extent of that Mad Dog bit from that WH article May 24:

Butcher and Mad Dog
Former professional wrestler Maurice Vachon is napping in his wheelchair as Stander and Toddy walk up Mad Dog's South Omaha driveway. The Butcher wants to share stories.
He begins a remember-the-time tale about Vachon's career, to which Mad Dog replies, “I don't remember that.” He then moves on to a story about Vachon's brother, Paul, who, like Stander, was known as Butcher. As the yarn ends, Vachon responds, “I don't remember that, either.”
The routine continues until it's time to depart. Vachon expresses appreciation for the visit.
“God bless you both,” he tells the Standers as they leave.
Encounters like this, not the fight with Frazier, are what define the Bluffs Butcher to those closest to him. ...

‘Bluffs Butcher' still a cut-up 40 years after big night at Civic - Omaha.com

 

[Royalclone]

I love to hear stories about the man and I wish I would have been able to see him compete.

I did have the honor of watching him both years at ISU. Two things I remember the most. He was extremely quick for a guy so big. He could take you down with quickness, then if he was on top of you all you could hope for was the period would end before he could turn you. A lot of guys spent the match trying to hide, but he'd eventually get you. The other memory was him on that motor scooter. At least it looked like a motor scooter with him riding it

 

[Go2Guy]

I remember a picture of Chris on the Front Page Sports Register. It was a pic of him getting weighed by a Cattle Hanger at a Meat Locker because there wasn't a scale that went up to 400 lbs.

Does anybody remember Chris Bounced at the Cave Inn - was that there during his time?