By Earl McRae -1977
from The Canadian - Toronto Star Jan 7 1978 - photos by Ken Elliot

The midget is standing alone in the rain outside the arena, a large black Stetson low on his forehead, his hands jammed into the pockets of his winter coat. Behind his thick glasses, his eyes are excited. He's just bought his ticket for the evening wrestling card and the ticket's a good one-ringside. In the I dusk, car headlights sweep quickly across the midget's form and, like a bat. he cringes in the doorway, his arm shielding his face. "The cops," he curses beneath his breath. "The cops could screw up everything." Screw up what. he's asked. "King Kong," he says, touching a bulge under his coat. "Tonight's the night I kill King Kong:' He laughs maniacally through a web of saliva. It's just after 5 p.m. and the doors don't open until 8. But the midget will wait in the rain.

Angelo Mosca lives out near the Minneapolis airport. He lives in a small, gloomy apartment with the curtains drawn to help keep out the cold. The apartment is in a drab brick building next to a field of weeds and, beyond that. shrouded in mist, is the expressway where the traffic never stops.

Angelo Mosca's apartment is reached by a night of rotting wooden steps at the back of the two-storey building and the steps are slick from the rain that has been falling most of the night and all of the day. Angelo Mosca is standing at a table near the door. It is 20 minutes to 7 in the evening and a stillness fills the apartment. In the amber shaft of light from a corner lamp, dust is held suspended. Darkness creeps into the apartment and slowly envelops the shaft of light. There's a leather overnight bag on the table and Angelo Mosca is carefully putting things into it: His black boots. His black socks. His black knee pad. His black trunks. And, finally, his black windbreaker with the words stitched in white: King Kong.

Angelo Mosca is King Kong. In less than three hours, he will drive through the rain to the arena, change into his King Kong outfit, step into the ring, foam at the mouth, beat his hairy chest and unleash a blood-curdling roar of defiance at the world. He will kick, scratch, bite and spit at his opponent. He will sneer and leer and pull his hair. If there's one available, he will throw a chair into the dark and smoky tumult.

The fans will boo and jeer and taunt him with names. They will tremble with hate. (if he has a good night, several will try to attack him). He's been punched in the stomach, kicked in the groin, doused with beer and scalded by hot coffee. He's been stabbed with a knife. His car tires have been slashed. His car has been scratched with nails. Lunatic voices in the night have threatened him over the telephone with dismemberment or death.

At the end of the match, he will collect his cheque for the night's work and go home to his apartment. The next day or maybe the next week, he will get into his car and drive, sometimes hundreds of miles, to another town, another match, another payday. He'll drive through the long nights, eat at roadside diners, sleep in cheap hotels. He will suffer the humiliation and abuse all over again, feel the cold, fleeting fear of an assassin, feel the numbness of exhaustion, but he will keep going because, for Angelo Mosca, there is nothing else. There was a time he thought it might be different.

He'd been a football player, an Italian immigrant's son who came to Canada from the United States in 1958 to tryout for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. He'd been kicked out of two universities, once for bookmaking, once for theft, but Hamilton was willing to take a chance; they saw promise in his quickness and size.

He was a baleful, brooding defensive tackle, 6-foot-5, 285 pounds, who could run 40 yards in 4.6 seconds, football's traditional test of speed. Not only did he make the team, the only rookie to do so, he went on to play in the Canadian Football League for 15 years, 13 of them with Hamilton. During his career, he achieved everlasting infamy as the league's meanest and dirtiest player, labels he never disputed. '"I have nothing against clean play," he once said in a typical quote, "but what's a clean shoestring tackle got that an elbow smash to the head hasn't?" Or: "In football, it's kill or be killed." It was more than mere cliché for Mosca, it was a catechism for combat. Along with his rough, brutal play, he was known on occasion to poke an eye, bite a calf, knee a stomach, and the fact that he never did kill anyone is no tribute to his lack of ferocity.

Some thought kill was definitely on his mind when he seriously injured Willie Fleming, the star halfback for the B.C. Lions, in the 1963 Grey Cup game. If Hamilton was to win, said coach Ralph Sazio before the game, they had to stop Fleming. Early in the game, Mosca did. He jumped on Fleming with his knees in what looked like a late hit. Fleming was helped from the field and didn't come back.

Hamilton won. Mosca was vilified by fans in Western Canada and by most of the national media. A front-page headline in a Vancouver paper called him "the dirtiest player in Canada." He denied it was deliberate, but few believed him. Then and there, the legend I was struck. Fleming was never the same I player after that. The incident would I haunt Mosca the rest of his playing days.

From the Fleming episode on, he was the arch-villain of the CFL. For much of his career he reveled in the role, stoked the image. Mr. Nasty, they called him. Mr. Mean. Mean Man Mosca. Dirty Mosca. Banners flew in enemy ball parks: Mosca Eats Bananas. Throw the Animal a Bone. The press played it for all it was worth; each year in the Toronto Globe and Moil Mosca willingly selected his AII-Meanie Team. One player was always on it: Angelo Mosca.

His violence wasn't confined to the playing field. Once, during a Hamilton practice, he flattened teammate Milt Campbell for blocking too hard. There was the Grey Cup game of 1967 in Ottawa. Hamilton against Saskatchewan. The Hamilton team held a practice and were coming off the field. Jerry Selinger was watching the players cross the parking lot. He was a centre for Ottawa, big and surly. He and Mosca disliked one another. Selinger saw Mosca and called him a name. Mosca turned, walked over and knocked him cold with one punch. He then stepped over him and walked away.

His barroom brawls were more exciting. He once drove his 1958 Oldsmobile through the front window of a Hamilton nightclub. He was drunk. A fight ensued and he decked all comers. A man confronted him in a Hamilton parking lot once, accusing him of failing to yield the right-of-way. The man ripped his shirt. Mosca grabbed him in a headlock and only let go when he was crying for mercy and turning blue. Mosca was charged with assault, the story hit the papers, his notoriety flourished.

In the late Sixties, he took up wrestling in the off-season. He needed the talked for the list time about his place 4n the history of the CFL. He wondered how he'd be remembered. He hoped, he said, that it would not be for his dark deeds, but for his true abilities as a player.

And he was a line player, sometimes even a great player. Five times he was an Eastern Conference All-Star, twice an All-Canadian and twice the runner-up for the nation's Most Outstanding Lineman award. He appeared in nine Grey Cups and savored victory in live of them. When he stood in the dressing room after his lineal Grey Cup win in 1972 and announced his retirement over national television, he broke down and wept, not caring anymore who saw it, not caring what they might think. The days of villainy had served a purpose, but now it was time to move on to different and gentler passions.

That's what he told himself and thought he believed and, indeed, he did make an effort. When it didn't work out, his past loomed up before him like a mirror and he suddenly understood what he should have known all along: his head had deceived his heart. He was, is and always will be Mr. Mean, Mr. Nasty, Mean Man Mosca. His head tells him he's too old for it, that he should change his ways, but his heart won't let him, the inclinations of man are rooted in birth.

Football gave Angelo Mosca an outlet for his frustrations. He could commit violence on the field and be celebrated or condemned, yet survive .to repeat it. Without football, he was left with the streets. Commit violence in the streets and you go to jail. For an unreformed villain like Angelo Mosca, there was only one answer: wrestling. It's the closest he can get to being mean and violent without going to jail. It's a grand sham and a fool's delight, but millions believe in it. Best of all, it will perpetuate the myth and, to Angelo Mosca, that's still important.

"Football," snaps Angelo Mosca distastefully, "is getting to be a sissy game." He's chewing on a toothpick, the heel of one hand steering his burgundy 1976 Cadillac Coupe de Ville in and out of the traffic on the expressway leading to downtown Minneapolis. The rain continues to fall, diffusing the glare of lights up ahead, making driving dangerous. Mosca pays no heed, gunning the car on the open stretches. It has gone more than 65,000 miles since Mosca bought it a year ago; he wrestles about 250 times a year, mostly in the Midwestern states, and uses his car much of the time.

"Used to be you were respected if you were the kind of player I was, but now, hell, we're considered some kind of freaks or morons. What gets me is that they don't even seem to care that it's becoming a sissy game. Look at all the cut blocks you see today, guys falling in front of you, taking out your legs, instead of standing up man to man. It's a coward's way out. When they did that to me, I stepped on their goddam legs."

He chews morosely on the toothpick, quiet for several seconds. "They just kiss you off. If you're a guy like me who plays the game the way it's supposed to be played, they just kiss you off. Hamilton didn't even have a 'day' for me, you know that? I busted my ass for them all those years and they don't even give me a day. I thought I deserved one. My sweater, Number 68, they didn't retire it either. I see Tommy-Joe Coffey got elected to the Hall of Fame this year, right? He hasn't even been out as long as me and he gets elected. I think I gave as much to that team as Tommy did, but I bet I don't get elected. "They talk about how tough and dirty I was. Well, you don't get to play more than 300 games by being tough and dirty only. You have to have ability. Flattening a guy with a head slap, that's ability. Now, they've even banned that. They called me a show-off because I was flamboyant, because I had natural charisma. Well, that's too bad, I ain't taking a back seat to nobody."

Angelo Mosca has always harbored a deep-seated fear of being bested physically, whether it's on the street or on the football field, and he traces it back to earliest childhood. He was born in Waltham, Massachusetts, an industrial town near Boston. His father, Angelo Sr. was a stonemason and his mother, Rosa stayed home and raised the children; seven girls and four boys. Angelo was the second-oldest boy and by far the biggest of the children. The family lived in an old grey clapboard house on Francis Street in the Italian neighborhood and young Angelo, because of his size, was called on often to settle disputes and protect the small.

"Being big is no fun when you're just a kid," says Mosca. I was big outside, but inside, I was still little, know what I mean? Yet when I acted like the child I was, people were always telling me to grow up, don't act silly, act your age. Thing is, I was acting my age. I was always supposed to set an example, be more mature than all the other guys. If we played sports, I was always expected to be the best because I was the biggest, even bigger than kids a lot older than me. I could never allow anyone to beat me. If I came home from school crying, my father would give me hell. He was a tough one. 'You come home crying,' he'd say, 'and I'll give you a black eye to cry over.'

Of all the Mosca children, Angelo was the only one with a gift and enthusiasm for sports. He starred in high school football, basketball and baseball, and thrived on adulation. "He always had to be in the limelight, he always had to be the centre of attention or he'd be unhappy," says his mother, 73, who still lives in the house on Francis Street. "Even if it was something that got him in trouble." In his final year of high school, he and a friend were kicked off the basketball team for triggering the school fire alarm. They cost the team the state championship. Mosca enjoyed his celebrity status in Waltham, but it would one day cause him great personal anguish: he's convinced it caused his brother Mike, three years younger, to fall into recurrent trouble with the law.

"I was the big star," says Mosca. "I could do it all. Mike was my closest brother, but he was just average. He wanted to be like me, but he couldn't. I got all the praise, he got none and I know it affected him. He didn't have a sense of worth and he eventually went astray:' Mosca clears his throat. "Mike called me just yesterday. He's going to be released from this drug rehabilitation place in Seattle. He was there a long time, 18 months. I hope to God he's gonna make it this time."

Mosca was not unfamiliar with crime himself and paid heavily for it. He went to Notre Dame on a football scholarship, but was kicked out for bookmaking. "I was the organizer on campus, taking bets on the pro games." He transferred to the University of Wyoming and was kicked out again, this time for stealing type- writers and cameras from stores and selling them on campus. He was con- convicted and sentenced to a year's probation. He was allowed back into Notre Dame but was prohibited from playing football. He did earn his degree in business administration the year he sat out. Despite the ban, he was drafted fourth by the Philadelphia Eagles in 1958. But Hamilton offered more, $9,500 for one year plus a $1,500 signing bonus.

Mosca's troublesome ways got him traded to Ottawa in 1960. And Ottawa traded him to Montreal in 1962. Montreal put him on waivers after six games when he threw a tackling dummy at coach Perry Moss. "I did something illegal. I called Jake Gaudaur who was general manager of Hamilton, told him I was going on waivers and would he pick me up. I promised to be good. Jake said to sit tight. I did and they picked me up."

The next year was the Fleming incident dent. Mosca smiles and says: "I really didn't mean to hit him, you know. But I did and that's football. I always pushed things right to the legal limit. If I saw a guy picking his nose and he wasn't in the play and I thought I could get away with flattening him, I would. He has no right to pick his nose in a football game."

In 1964, Mosca's world hit rock bottom his wife, Darlene, divorced him. "She was a wonderful girl, the mother of my children, and I didn't appreciate what I had. I should never have got married. I was only 19, too young and irresponsible. I wanted a mother figure, someone to baby me, spoil me. I threw it all away." To fight his depression, Mosca threw himself into football with new intensity. And to cope with the franticness of his football, took to drugs. "At one time, I was gobbling them like candy. Uppers, downers. They were always available. But in my last few years I quit. I was I getting headaches and stomach cramps. They were making me gag and vomit. One moment I'd be talking a mile a minute, the next I'd be totally de- pressed."

When Mosca retired from football in 1972, he dreamed of going to work in a suit and tie and smelling nice. He applied for the job of public relations director of the CFL. The job was open but not for him. It hurt. "I would have been a natural. I had the name, the charisma. I had great ideas for the league, but as soon as Jake Gaudaur [the commissioner asked me for letters of recommendation , I knew they didn't want me. If Gaudaur didn't know who the hell I was and what I was all about, they could shove it. It was an insult. They were afraid of me. I guess I wasn't sophisticated enough."

Two years ago, he tried to get back into football. He phoned Russ Jackson, then the new head coach of the Toronto Argonauts, and applied for an assistant coaching job. "Jackson asked for a resume," he says sarcastically. "Can you believe it? The same Jackson I dumped on his ass a hundred times. He doesn't know about me? I sent the resume and didn't hear a word."

Mosca pulls off the expressway and, moments later, turns the car down a darkened side street at the back of the arena. "Sometimes I get lonely as hell," he says. "It's a very lonely life. It's not like football where you have lots of friends. Here, you're on your own. You travel alone, you eat alone. My second wife', Gwen, she's in Toronto, she's a stewardess for Air Canada and I don't see her a lot. I work out of Minneapolis." He falls silent for a moment. "I'm only in wrestling for the money. I'm 40 now, I don't want to be doing this when I'm 50. In a couple of years, I should have about $200,000 in savings bonds and then I'm quitting. Maybe go to Hollywood, try acting. It's gotta be better than this. There's no real satisfaction in this. How can there be? There's no real competition. These guys with their pretty bodies and big egos thinking they're athletes. It makes me sick. They're not athletes. I'm an athlete, but they're not. They don't know what it's like to put your guts on the line, to compete for real."

Surrounded by four policemen armed with revolvers, Mace, clubs and hand- cuffs, King Kong, his head held high and proud, is pushed through a howling gauntlet of wrestling fans lining the corridor from his dressing room. They're life's losers; the retarded, the crippled, the unwashed and downtrodden. H. L. Mencken once said no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the- American people. Mencken must have been talking about wrestling matches in Minneapolis.

King Kong climbs into the ring, lifts his arms to the lights and the arena explodes in hysteria. He turns slowly, his arms still high, acknowledging the hatred, his face impassive. Seconds later, the match begins, the best two falls out of three, and the noise becomes deafen- deafening. King Kong spits at his opponent, Larry Hennig, slaps his face and the crowd jeers. King Kong gets Hennig in a corner, pulls his hair and the crowd goes into a frenzy. They start chanting: "Ping Pong! Ping Pong! Ping Pong!" , King Kong snaps bolt upright at the sound; his eyes full of fright, his mouth twisted It's the dreaded curse, the chant that turns him into a raving lunatic. Why, nobody knows, but, suddenly, King Kong is screaming at the crowd to stop, stop yelling Ping Pong! "Ping Pong! Ping Pong! Ping Pong!" the crowd shrieks even louder. King Kong slaps his hands to his ears, closes his eyes and shakes his head. "No!" he roars with wounded voice. "No, please! No Ping Pong! No yell Ping Pong!" He drops to his knees, clasps his hands in prayer and begs for mercy. Saliva foams at his mouth, sweat pours off his body as he pleads to be spared from the terrible chant. But there's no mercy tonight and, three minutes later, King Kong is de- defeated. He lies on his back in the ring, his huge chest rising and falling, his eyes closed, his mouth half open. "Ping Pong! Ping Pong!" the crowd chants ecstatically.

Hours later, the crowd gone, the arena silent, Angelo Mosca, his $750 cheque for the night's work in his wallet, is walking across the parking lot to his car when he hears a voice behind him. "King Kong." He spins and is looking down at a midget in a black Stetson, his winter coat open, a bulging net bag hanging around his neck. "Take this King Kong," the midget shouts, reaching into the bag. He grabs a handful of Ping-Pong balls and throws them in Mosca's face. Mosca lets out a long, anguished cry, covers his face and staggers. The midget turns and runs until he's lost in the night. Mosca collapses against his car, doubled over, his mouth open in silent laughter.

From the book Requiem for Reggie and Other Great Sports Stories
by Earl McRae. Copyright@ 1977 by Climo Publishing, Toronto.

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