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Les Thatcher Bio
Les had always been involved in
athletics from an early age. He played baseball, football, and basketball
through out elementary and high school. At
age 12 he added wrestling at the local YMCA, and at 15 years of age and one year
before he was of legal age to drive in his home state of Ohio, he won his first
of many drag racing trophies at an outlaw track in Kentucky. His nature was
competitive, and although he did not know it at the time, the dye was cast for
his future in the grunt and groan sport. Leslie Alan Malady was born to an
Irish father, and a French/English mother on October 28,1940 in Cincinnati,
Ohio. The beginning of his life in pro wrestling began at what may have been the
first Pro Wrestling School in America. Les read about Tony Santos, a promoter in
New England, and his wrestling school based in Boston, Massachusetts in a 1959
issue of Wrestling Revue, then the top magazine in the industry, and after
writing back and forth he climbed on a Greyhound Bus in February 1960 and
traveled to Boston to begin what has been a 44 year love affair with
professional wrestling. When you bring up Les’ name in
a conversation with wrestling fans, you at first may think they are all talking
about different people. Why? Well one may speak of Thatcher the wrestler, Tag
Team Champion, and World Junior Heavyweight contender.
A second could talk of Les the television commentator, innovator, and
producer. A third could mention Les
Thatcher the writer/Editor, and still a fourth will bring up the
trainer/teacher. The bottom line is that all of them are right.
Les Thatcher is one of the renaissance men of pro wrestling. As a wrestler his career spanned
20 years from July 4 1960 when he stepped into the ring as a pro for the first
time against “Cowboy” Ronnie Hill in Blue Hills, Maine.
During that twenty-year period he shared over a dozen different tag team
titles multiable times with several tag partners. You will hear him joke that he
helped prepare wrestlers for runs as NWA World Junior Heavyweight Champions as
he partnered both Roger Kirby, and Nelson Royal as tag champs before either held
the Jr. singles belt. As a Junior
Heavyweight he held the Southern Jr. Title and in his prime was always ranked in
the top 15 Junior Heavyweights in the world.
Although he was considered a high flyer for the time because of his drop
kicks, and flying head scissors, his sound technical in ring skills were his
strong suit. As a broadcaster, Les shared the
microphone over the years with hall of famers such as Gordon Solie, Bob Caudle,
Lance Russell, and Jim Ross. In 1974 he began hosting and producing Southeastern
Championship Wrestling and introduced such new concepts to the pro mat world as
a low-key mid-show interview segment called “Personality Profile” and other
technical features that are common place today.
He had runs with such great companies of that time as Mid-Atlantic
Championship Wrestling, and Georgia Championship Wrestling in the role as
Host/Color man and also involved in production. Les Thatcher the writer/Editor
saw his byline in several of the nations top newsstand magazines such as
Wrestling Revue, and The Wrestling News during the seventies.
His “Wrestler’s Eye View” column along with his editors skills were
seen in The Mid-Atlantic, Georgia, and Southeastern territories as he
photographed, wrote, edited, laided out and designed both photo albums, weekly
programs, and magazines. The very first ever four color
WWWF magazine was designed and edited by Thatcher for Vince McMahon Jr. in 1978. As a trainer/teacher for the last
ten years Les opened Les Thatcher’s Main Event Pro Wrestling Camp in
Cincinnati in 1995 and an “off shoot” of that is the Heartland Wrestling
Association which during that period was considered one of the top independent
promotions in the country. From
1998 through 2001 HWA promoted the famous “Brian Pillman Memorial Shows”
bringing WWF, WCW, and ECW together under the same roof on the same night for
the first time in wrestling history. As
a trainer, Thatcher is considered one of the tops in North America.
Having been a developmental trainer for both WCW, and WWF/E.
Before selling The Main Event Camp and HWA this past year, he trained,
touched, and sharpened the careers of such pro grapplers as Matt Stryker, Shark
Boy, B.J. Whitmer, Chad Collyer, Rory Fox, Charlie Haas, Shannon Moore, Johnny
“The Bull” Stamboli, Jimmy Yang. Kaz Hyashi, Cody Hawk, Nigel McGuinness,
Jamie Noble, Elix Skipper, Rosie & Jamal of Three Minute Warning, Chet
Jablonski, Garrison Cade, and Steve Bradley to name a few. To wrap it all up, EPWT was the
vision of Les Thatcher as well. Adding this background with that of Harley Race,
Ricky Steamboat, and Leilani Kai, the reader can see why we think EPWT can give
the most complete training offered today. Les’ dream for the future is to share the over one hundred
years of experience within this company along with the trainers love and passion
for pro wrestling to help secure the future of the professional wrestling
industry.
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