Multi-gimmicked Mike Shaw -- Norman, Makhan Singh, Bastion Booger -- dead at
53
By GREG OLIVER - Producer, SLAM! Wrestling
Mike Shaw, who was known in the wrestling world under various names,
including Makhan Singh, Norman the Lunatic and Bastion Booger, and Klondike
Mike, died of a heart attack on Saturday. He was 53.
Over the last number of years, Shaw was only loosely associated with the
wrestling business, making the occasional appearance at fan fests under his
different gimmicks.
Shaw was always lighthearted about his various personas; it's a long way
from the lovable Norman the Trucker, treasuring the teddy bears (after he
was a Lunatic), to the sadistic, plotting Makhan Singh, to the
religiously-inspired Friar Ferguson, to the repugnantly obese Bastion
Booger.
"It's funny, in my home town here in Michigan, people on the street still
call me Norman," Shaw told this writer in 1999.
He ran a wrestling school in the upper Michigan peninsula for a time, and
was a bouncer in a bar in Marquette, Mich., up until 2007.
Born May 9, 1957 in Marquette, Shaw was an amateur star in nearby Skandia
and at Gwinn High School in Gwinn. At high school, he won 11 varsity
letters -- wrestling (Great Lakes conference heavyweight champion in his
senior year), track and field (shot put), football (defensive tackle).
For a time, he played pro softball for the Milwaukee Schlitz, until the
American Professional Softball Association folded before the start of its
second season, while many of the players, including Shaw, were in Florida
for training. It was there that he met an older wrestler (Farmer Brown?
Farmer Bill? Stories varied over the years) who suggested he might have a
future in the grunt and groan business.
So Shaw set off to Walter "Killer" Kowalski's school in Salem, Mass., to
learn pro wrestling.
"Kowalski had a great school. He spent a lot of time with us," Shaw said.
"He took a liking to me. I went in there, I was probably one of his bigger
guys at that time. I was probably about 6'1", 270, 280 (pounds) at the time.
I was training really hard and I had just come out of softball, so I was in
really good shape."
http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Wrestling/2010/09/12/15324721.html
No comments:
Post a Comment