This was originally written by someone else, Late Friday, Walter "Killer" Kowalski suffered a heart attack in his nursing home outside Boston. He was admitted to Whidden Memorial Hospital in Everett. Saturday night, his wife and his brother were optimistic.
"I had prayed all night that he would fool everybody and get over it," said Theresa Kowalski. "We have to wait and see, but he was better today, and even the nurses said there was an improvement."
Sounding tired after a full day at the hospital, Theresa shared the roller-coaster ride of an experience. "He was in very bad shape last night after a massive heart attack that they said affected his brain, plus he had pneumonia," she said.
"He wasn't himself all day yesterday and I asked if he was okay and he said he was. When the nurses put him in the chair at around 6:00, after they left I saw his face go slack and white and I screamed for the nurses. They started pounding on his chest and called 9-1-1 and took him to the hospital. The doctor told me it was a matter of hours or days.
"This morning when I went in, he looked better. His eyes were clear, and they said that his problems seemed to have dropped down a little bit"
"It seems like he is improving," said Stan Spulnik, of Ottawa, debating when to leave to go his his brother.
They both explained that Killer is having difficulty trying to speak, and continues to have heart rate problems. Four wrestlers came to visit today -- two from Connecticut and two from New York -- that prompted Kowalski to try to talk, which is a good sign, said Theresa: "That's something that he couldn't do at all yesterday."
The 81-year-old wrestling great had been hospitalized in the Everett Nursing Home in Everett, Mass., for a few months. Confined to to bed because of wonky legs, and problematic knees, doctors refused to conduct surgery of his knees due to Kowalski's age and the pacemaker installed in his heart.
Growing up in Windsor, Ontario, Walter Spulnik -- his birth name -- was a tall, skinny kid, weighing 160 pounds on a 6-foot-4 frame at age 14. He found his way to the local YMCA, where others convinced him that weightlifting would easily add pounds to his frame. It worked, and he grew into a 6-foot-7, 270-pound man.
Kowalski enrolled at Assumption College (now part of the University of Windsor), studying electrical engineering, and found part-time work with the Ford Motor Company in Detroit.
While at the YMCA, someone suggested that professional wrestling was a good career for him. Kowalski hooked up with Detroit promoter Burt Ruby, who saw something in the giant. Over the years Kowalski claimed his first match was against Lou (Klein) Bastien, in 1948.
St. Louis promoter Sam Muchnick saw something in "Tarzan" Kowalski, and matched him up against world champion Lou Thesz. A conflict with getting time off from Ford to wrestle abroad let to Kowalski quitting his "day job."
In those early years, known as Tarzan Kowalski, he fought to get better known. "He was a hell of an attraction," said Lou Thesz in 1998. "He had a great body back then. He was not a sophisticated wrestler, but every promoter wanted him because he made a lot of money."
"Killer Kowalski -- when I first saw him I thought he was the most magnificent specimen of a human being I'd ever seen in my life," Joe Hamilton told Rich Tate of Georgia Wrest
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