WRESTLING

BY BLAKE METCALF-HOLT

 

FROM the age of six, all Ken Dunlop wanted to be was a wrestler.

Seeing his dreams become a reality under the stage name Ken ‘Dazzler’ Dunlop, the kid from Moe can now add an OAM to his title for his service to professional wrestling.

“I wasn’t actually expecting it at all, and I received an email last September to say (that) I was nominated and I actually thought it was a scam,” he told the Express.

“Apparently, I’d been nominated two or three times over the last couple of years and I didn’t even know.”

The lifelong Australian wrestling figure, who was one of the first openly gay men in the industry, had to keep it a secret from his family for weeks after being told of his honour. He will be presented his Order of Australia (OAM) in April alongside other New South Wales recipients.

Jumping from Moe to Melbourne to Sydney over the course of his life, one constant has always been Dunlop’s love for wrestling.

World Championship Wrestling* was a fixation for many kids in the 1960s and 1970s, and Dunlop recalls trotting down to Yallourn’s Kernot Hall (since moved to Morwell) for shows up to six times a year.

“We used to go as kids and we loved it, we were absolutely wrestling mad,” he said.

“Every Sunday, we’d sit around with our roast dinner watching wrestling on the TV. So, from the age of six or seven, if anyone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I’d say a wrestler.”

Dunlop was also a member of the school choir and performed in plays at Moe High School, while also playing for the Moe Colts Junior Football Club.

In 1973, he moved to Melbourne, and was introduced to a world he so desperately sought out.

“I started to go to Festival Hall every Saturday night, which was mind-blowing,” Dunlop said.

Befriending wrestlers John Schneider and Sam Rossi, the two proposed that Dunlop learn the ropes, and he began training at 16-years-old.

He trained out of the wrestling school MB’s Gym in North Melbourne, as well as at international wrestler Mario Milano’s gym (featuring Greek heavyweight star George Gouliovas), due to Dunlop seeking to expand his wrestling repertoire.

Before he knew it, he was making his debut – August 17, 1978 at the Watsonia RSL, Melbourne.

“I was petrified on the day. I’d been learning with another guy called Rob Magri, and so we were both having our first match together,” Dunlop recalled.

“It was only like 10 or 12 minutes, and we were both just so nervous, so focussed.

“When you walk out to the audience, there’s probably two or three thousand people there and just the noise … you try not to concentrate too hard on them because you’re really concentrating on what you want to do.

“But, it went smoothly and we were over the moon, everyone congratulated me afterwards and just went from there.”

Dunlop even wrestled at a show in Pentridge Jail, being partnered with a man imprisoned for double murder.

After a few years, as World Championship Wrestling came to an end in 1978, Dunlop moved to Sydney and began taking on an even greater work load.

He went from 20 to 40 shows a year in Melbourne to all of a sudden getting 10 to 20 shows per month in Sydney.

Dunlop broadened his horizons by taking on promotion duties in 1991 alongside wrestling partner Wayne ‘Lofty’ Pigford and promoter Bob Blassie.

“When we started off in ’91, I pretty much sacked all of the oldies straight away … we (were) going to concentrate on just young guys, all new talent,” Dunlop said.

Bringing up the next generation, Dunlop would then step away from wrestling entirely in 1998 after a life-altering heart attack, but returned for a handful of matches in 2000 alongside his younger brother Alan (known as Red Hot Ricky Diamond).

After a long period of time out of the wrestling scene, Dunlop has returned in recent times with frequent seminar appearances and supporting a range of promotions across Sydney and in Queensland.

Dunlop’s book Dazzler Dunlop: Inside My Squared Circle was released in 2021, is available locally.

*World Championship Wrestling brought many international wrestlers to Australia, including Bruno Sammartino, Dusty Rhodes, Waldo Von Erich (brother of Fritz, patriarch of the Von Erich family, who are depicted in the 2023 film The Iron Claw), and the biggest of all (literally), Andre The Giant