@@jimclark6256 Many versions of the story. In Bruno's book, Rogers was never sick. He told the doctor one night he was having chest pains because the house was only 3k fans. Buddy worked nightly until May 17. Bruno told Rogers to do his best. The ruse to get Bruno the match was that he had been paid $3500 to take a figure 4 & submit. Bruno threw Rogers around like a rag doll before the backbreaker. Bruno could very have very well destroyed Rogers, but he was not that type of guy
Okay now even though it was a quick match great original footage from the first WWWF title change. Thank you for posting. Buddy's health then was not good and had to drop the belt to Bruno Sammartino.
Really?! Wtf is wrong w this generation? Ever think of showing the real one first? Crazy me. What would u know about history. And it wasn't Milan Italy. Ever hear about Abruzzi? Buono notte.
They basically used a present day WWE Stadium. When I was a kid in the 1960s when it was on TV the camera focused on the ring itself unless the action went outside the ring. You see lots of little kids in this CGI version. In real life there was no little kids at those events. I seen a Bruno Sammartino vs. Stan "The Lariat" Hansen match Summer 1976. Not one little kid in the audience of several thousand. It was when Wrestlmania started you started getting kids in the crowds.
@@frankreynolds445 In the 1950s and 1960s, only adults would be seen in the front rows at pro wrestling events, and most likely because families could not afford the high ticket prices for those seats. Families that attended pro wrestling shows usually were located in the upper decks of arenas, where ticket prices were more affordable. In the 1980s, the pro wrestling promotions were trying to attract a new generation of pro wrestling fans, and made a greater effort to put families with children in camera view, to promote the "family-friendly" atmosphere that the pro wrestling promotions wanted to project.
This reinactment was not very accurate. During the 1950s and 1960s, only adults were seen in the front rows. Men wore suits and ties and long beards were not common. Women wore formal or semi-formal dresses, depending upon the season of the year, because most arenas at the time did not have air conditioning, and adults were allowed to smoke in most arenas at the time. If the weather was hot, some men would take off their ties to get cool. The moves were not necessarily accurate, either. For example, the DDT would not be used until Jake "The Snake" Roberts first started executing it in the WWE in the 1980s. In the actual match in 1963, Bruno Sammartino executed an early variation of "The Torture Rack" that later would be used by Lex Luger in the 1980s and 1990s, in order to win the match by submission against "The Original Nature Boy", Buddy Rogers. There was no pinfall during the actual match.
Because no film or video footage of the match exists. Only one photo exists of Bruno Sammartino holding Buddy Rogers over his shoulder in an early "Torture Rack" move that was used to get the submission, and Sammartino won the WWWF Championship. A few months earlier, in 1963, Buddy Rogers had nearly died from a heart attack. He knew very well that he had to retire from professional wrestling. It was arranged that Bruno Sammartino would win the WWWF Championship in a very short match, where Sammartino would make it look like he broke Rogers' back, and that the "injury" would end his career.
The WWWF was founded as a "breakaway" pro wrestling promotion in 1963, when there was a dispute over who should be the NWA World Heavyweight Champion. Some of the promoters wanted Lou Thesz to become the NWA World Heavyweight Champion once again, but other promoters, like Vince McMahon, Sr., wanted "The Original Nature Boy", Buddy Rogers, to remain as champion. Vince McMahon, Sr. decided to leave the NWA, and form his own national organization, known as the World Wide Wrestling Federation, and was based at McMahon, Sr.'s home base of Washington, DC. He chose Buddy Rogers to be the new national promotion's first world heavyweight champion (it was reported to the pro wrestling magazines and newspapers that Rogers won a tournament for the title that took place in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, which did not actually take place). Since the new promotion was "starting from scratch", they did not yet have their own world heavyweight championship belt. The WWWF started out by using an old, modified, NWA National Championship Belt as their first world championship belt. The belt that you see in the video game, is the belt that was used by the WWWF in the late-1960s. It was later replaced in the early-1970s, when Pedro Morales became the WWWF World Heavyweight Champion.
I do not know where this match actually took place, but it most likely took place in Madison Square Garden, in New York City. That venue definitely could hold a crowd of 25,000 fans for a pro wrestling show. Most larger pro wrestling house shows took place in arenas that could anywhere from 5,000 to 10, 000 people during that era.
@@aldonelson5757 I knew that it was a short match, but I did not realize how short it was until recently, when I watched a video here on RU-vid about the early history of the WWE Championship, which showed pages from a pro wrestling magazine from 1963, which stated the exact amount of time the match lasted in the headline of the article. The article also included photos from the match that I had never seen before until then.
@@LaptopLarry330 my Father took me to see Bruno vs Gorilla Monsoon when I was 12 years old we both watched Wrestling on TV Bruno was our favorite!I remember the crowd was huge Bruno sold out the Garden more than any other!