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James Raschke, a shy former member of the University of Nebraska and later U.S. national wrestling team, makes no bones about the fact he owes his long career as Baron Von Raschke to his friend of 47 years, the late Maurice “Mad Dog” Vachon.

“When I was breaking into the business, Verne Gagne broke me in, and I was working setting up the rings and refereeing, I first met Mad Dog. I didn’t know him. It was at the Director’s booth at the TV station (in Minneapolis in 1966, where AWA All-Star Wrestling was taped). I helped set up the ring and was told to watch the matches like a rookie, which I was at the time. I set up the ring and watched, in a dark room, in the hallway, I heard a voice, I didn’t even know who it was at first, and he said, `You’d make a great German,’ in his Mad Dog voice.”’

The next two or three tapings, whenever Vachon would see Raschke, he’d pause, say the same words, “You’d make a great German,” and walk away. Vachon didn’t even know Raschke was of German heritage, nor that Raschke actually studied German while in college.

Finally, at a show, the two were formally introduced. They got along because of their similar backgrounds. Raschke placed third in the 1963 world championships in Greco-Roman wrestling in the heavyweight division, the best finish any American had ever had in the world championships in Greco-Roman wrestling in any weight class up to that point in time. He was considered as having a shot at being the first Olympic Greco-Roman medalist in U.S. history, but suffered an injury that year, and couldn’t compete. It wouldn’t be until 1984 that an American medaled in Greco-Roman. Raschke got a job as a school teacher, which didn’t pay much. Verne Gagne then tried to recruit him to be a pro wrestler.

“Before I met him (Vachon), Verne took me to my first pro wrestling matches,” he said. “I’d only seen pro wrestling once or twice in my life. I wasn’t interested in pro wrestling growing up. He took me to an outdoor show at the baseball stadium in St. Paul. The main event was Mad Dog Vachon against The Crusher (most likely an August 21, 1965 show at Midway Stadium where Crusher pinned Vachon to win the AWA title). I’d heard both of their names. I’d never met Crusher. They got in the ring. I was in the first couple of rows. I watched them and I was impressed. I was a longtime amateur wrestler, and even boxed a little bit. I was amazed with what I saw, how close they worked. It looked like they were killing each other. And they probably were.”

Then Raschke agreed to break in. Gagne trained him and started him at the bottom, working on the ring crew.

“He was already a big star and we started talking, and got friendly,” said Raschke. “After a while, he asked me if I wanted to be his tag team partner in the Montreal territory. Jack Britton (the father of Gino Brito) and the Rougeaus (Johnny and Jacques Sr.) owned it. I said, `Sure.’ I didn’t know any better. I was only a rookie. He said once again in his Mad Dog voice, `You’d make a good German. We’ll call you Baron Fritz Von Pumpkin.’ I said, `Let me think about that.’”

Raschke, only a few months in the business, talked to Wally Karbo, Gagne’s co-promoter, who told him Vachon probably got the idea from a wrestler who was a major star in Oregon when Vachon became a major star a few years earlier, Kurt Von Poppenheim. Raschke, even with his limited knowledge of wrestling, didn’t think Fritz Von Pumpkin was the greatest heat getting name, thinking he’d come out and people would laugh at him, which was not what he was looking for. He told Vachon that his own last name was a nice German name.

“I had just gotten married and we took everything we owned, which was our two rubber tree plants and all our clothes, and we went to Montreal from Minneapolis,” he said. “When we got there, Mad Dog and I went the first Monday to the Paul Suave Arena in Downtown Montreal. I had a singles match that night with Larry Moquin, an old-timer, a seasoned veteran. Larry made me look really good. This was my first night as Baron Fritz Von Raschke. My wife’s girlfriend had made me a short cape out of red and black material and off I went. The people booed and hissed, so I reacted. I got a lot of heat. Later, Dog and I came out for an interview. I didn’t even know we were going to a place where French was the main language. I said a few things in broken German with an accent, but I wasn’t too sure of myself. Mad Dog was always a great interview.

“The next week, we were a tag team. He got all this heat. Everyone knew him from years gone by. I got it by being associated with him. He was short and handsome. I was tall and handsome,” Raschke joked. “He was teaching me all the time. I learned so much wrestling with him as a partner. He was my friend, my mentor, my guide for my first eight, nine, ten months in the business.”

Raschke quickly learned Vachon’s reputation in Montreal.

“You didn’t want to cross him. He was a very tough man, a tough street guy. We were a tag team. I don’t want to exaggerate. But almost every night he wrestled, especially if we wrestled Carpentier and Johnny Rougeau, our matches seemed to end in a riot. I was so new. I didn’t even know what was happening. He’d let the heat build up. Then it would explode. We had to fight our way back to the dressing room so many times.”

One night, they had a cage match scheduled against the Rougeau Brothers, Jacques Sr. & Johnny. The fans were so rabid that they tore down the cage before the match even started.

“The cage was lying on the floor,” he said. “So this time, we actually had to fight just to get to the ring, and when it was over, we had to fight our way back. He was always the lead guy in the fight.

“He’d clear the way and would tell me, `Don’t go down, because if you go down, you’re done.’ He liked getting that kind of heat.”

The tag team, which was reprised years later in separate runs in the AWA and later the Central States, ended the first time when Vachon suffered a broken pelvis in an auto accident at the time he was International heavyweight champion. Trying to keep the territory strong with Vachon gone as top heel, the promotion brought in The Sheik to carry the title. But Sheik had his own territory and was in demand all over the world, so by November 1967, Von Raschke, barely a year in the business, was champion in one of the strongest wrestling territories in the world at the time.

“I was on my own, but all his heat carried over to me,” Raschke said. “The territory kept blossoming. It made me, to where I could get booked almost anywhere I wanted after that.”

Bobby Heenan noted that working with Vachon were some of the most physical matches of his career. He said Vachon’s fists were like little shovels, and because of the storylines and character portrayals, the times Vachon actually got a hold of Heenan, he had to give him a beating. Heenan said Vachon would take him down in the corner and repeatedly punch him to the body and it felt like he was being hit with a weapon with every blow.

Once, they were in a match that went outside a building that was next to the train tracks. Vachon took him outside, and pinned him down on the tracks and was beating on him, Heenan asked quietly, “When do I get up?”

“When you hear the train,” said Vachon.

Dick “Destroyer” Beyer, who first wrestled Vachon in a main event when it was babyface Dick Beyer against Maurice Vachon in the main event at the Honolulu Civic Auditorium in 1962, remembered late in both men’s career having a battle in Montreal.

“The Mad Dog says to me, `We got to give them a barn burner here,’” Beyer said to In Your Head radio. “They expect that we’re going to knock the hell out of each other.’ So we started out the match wrestling, and then all of a sudden it was kick, stomp, throw out of the ring. Mad Dog came out, he hit me with a chair, and out the aisle we went.”

Vachon took Destroyer into the dressing room and was pounding on him there until Beyer yelled, “Mad Dog, there’s no fans here! It’s just the boys. Let’s get the hell out in the arena.”

Vachon and Raschke remained friends throughout their careers, and long after both had retired. The two spoke just two days before Vachon’s death. They worked as a heel tag team in the mid-70s in the AWA. Vachon a few years later turned cult babyface when he and Verne Gagne went after AWA world tag team champions Pat Patterson & Ray Stevens eventually winning the titles.

The storyline there was that Gagne had tried to win the tag team title with various partners, including Billy Robinson, who had been pushed for years as the area’s best wrestler, and Crusher, its best brawler. Finally, discouraged that no matter who he chose, they could never get the job done, Gagne said he had to fight fire with fire, and get the dirtiest, nastiest wrestler in the business and his biggest career rival, and brought in Vachon as his partner. With Gagne, time always stood still, so even though Vachon was a few months before his 50th birthday, and Gagne was a few years older, in the AWA, they were still portrayed in 1979 as they were in 1966 when they were the big singles stars.

Von Raschke’s babyface turn came after the AWA had shot an injury angle where Jerry Blackwell & John Studd had put Vachon out of action. Von Raschke, while wrestling in Florida, cut his first babyface promo, vowing revenge for his mentor.

“Something happened to Mad Dog, he was gone from the wrestling scene for a while,” said Raschke. “I got this call, Wally (Karbo) called and said, `We want you to come back and be Mad Dog’s avenger. I did an interview for that. It got over. While he was injured, I don’t remember if it was a work or shoot, but he was living in Winnipeg and got a job in the gold mines in the Northern territory. They flew him in and bused him to the mines. It was so cold they had to shuttle him to the mines. It was terribly cold, ice. He called me and said, `Baron, it’s dark, cold, quiet and it’s beautiful.’ He worked in the mines and everyone recognized him. Everyone knew he was Mad Dog, so everyone there thought he was a spy for the company.”

When he returned, he claimed that when he was injured, he got a job working in the gold mines in the Northern territory to get himself back in shape for wrestling. He said it was cold and dark and he suffered, reaching new lows, until he hit rock bottom, and at that point he realized he had to come back and get back at Blackwell and Studd.

Vachon was a wildman when he was young. A lot of wrestlers found him difficult to work with. He mixed in technical wrestling with his brawling into the early 60s. But by the time he got to the AWA and became one of the biggest stars in the business with his world title reigns, he was in pure Mad Dog mode.

Along with The Crusher and Gagne, they built the AWA territory into what many considered to be among the best territories to work. The money was good, as regulars could earn $45,000 to $75,000 per year, which in the 60s was very good money. They worked 15 to 18 shows per month, with the schedule slowing down in the summer so they could enjoy the hunting, fishing or other hobbies. The idea was to run less often because the idea was that the people had other things to do. Also, Crusher, the top star, would frequently get into fights with Verne Gagne on money, some would joke, like clockwork, just before the summer. He’d quit, go home, and then they’d make up in the fall. There were also downsides, like traveling long distances by car in horrible weather. Still, in the late 70s, when Jack Adkisson (Fritz Von Erich) suggested to AWA champion Nick Bockwinkel that he could get him a run with the NWA world title, a position that paid significantly better, Bockwinkel presumed more than double of what he was earning, Bockwinkel still turned it down because he liked the lifestyle he was leading.

Vachon was a regular until 1971, when he and his brother dropped the tag team titles to help open up Grand Prix Wrestling. But he was always used as a special attraction, sometimes as a de facto babyface as the guy being brought into town to face the new top heels, and other times back in his familiar heel role. One major program in 1973 was Crusher calling on his arch enemy, Mad Dog, to face his new big nemesis, Superstar Billy Graham & Ivan Koloff. After Graham, with help from Koloff, did the unthinkable, and beat Crusher in a singles match (Crusher hated to lose and almost never did anywhere in that era, let alone in Milwaukee), a tag team cage match set the city’s all-time gate record, breaking the mark Crusher had set with Mad Dog in their legendary 1970 match.

In 1974, ABC’s Wide World of Sports agreed to televise pro wrestling on network TV for the first time in nearly two decades. The segment on the show that dominated Saturday afternoon television during that era, was built around an early match of 420-pound Chris Taylor, a star off the 1972 Olympics, where he won a bronze medal. Taylor was early in his career. Gagne put Vachon in as Taylor’s opponent. It was something to see the legendary Jim McKay call a pro wrestling match. Taylor was limited and Mad Dog only did his usual act. It wasn’t much of a match. McKay noted that it was real blood coming out of Taylor’s nose as Vachon roughed him up, but that “he’s really not choking him over the ropes,” as Vachon was doing and refused to stop when a DQ was called.

Later, Taylor got his revenge, as he threw out Vachon when he and Ken Patera, both off the Olympic team, were the two survivors in winning a two-ring Battle Royal, which sold out the International Ampitheatre in Chicago. It was one of only two network broadcasts of wrestling in the 70s, the other being in 1976 when Muhammad Ali did matches in Chicago against Kenny Jay and Buddy Wolff, prior to his closed-circuit match with Antonio Inoki.

Once Gagne called him to be his tag team partner against Patterson & Stevens, Vachon was a babyface from that point on. The AWA was doing well, but really exploded from 1981 to 1983 with Hulk Hogan as the top star. Vachon, in his 50s, was kept off wrestling on television, with only clips of his arena matches shown. He did little in the ring. Sometimes it was sad because when doing the piledriver, the move he made famous in the territory in the 60s, he would struggle just to get his opponent up, and nearly lose them.

There was a story from that era that became famous in wrestling lore. Vachon, on Gagne’s small plane that the main event wrestlers would travel in, at one point opened up the door of the plane while flying, which forced an emergency landing.

Raschke believes that somebody slipped Vachon a pill, as he would have never done such a thing on his own. Vachon threw one of the wrestlers’ bags out the door laughing at the idea it was going to crash somewhere in the middle of nowhere.

Raschke said he wasn’t on the plane, but noted that it’s a famous story among wrestlers of that era, and that he’s talked to several who were in the plane, but everyone gave him a different story as to what happened.

“I’ve probably heard the story 50 times, but it’s been told 50 different ways. It’s like Ray Stevens said, `What good is a story like that if you can’t embellish it?’”

Gagne, who was also not on the plane, was furious and read him the riot act. He was screaming at Vachon for what he did, and told Vachon as punishment he was banning him from the plane, which would force him to make long drives in the car to get around the territory. When he was done, Vachon responded, when talking about his next booking “So Verne, what time does the plane leave?”

Perhaps his most memorable promo, which was not the usual market-specific promo, but a one-take job where Vachon was in his workshop with a hammer and other tools, constructing a coffin for Blackwell that he vowed to put him in. The promo played in every AWA city, and in most cities, multiple times. Part of its effectiveness was the way Blackwell sold it on his own interviews afer it would play. The idea was actually something from Vachon’s past, as he did a similar promo building a coffin for Lonnie Mayne when they were feuding in Oregon, and built to drawing what at the time was the biggest crowd ever in Oregon for wrestling in the late 60s at the peak of that feud, where Mayne ended up putting Vachon in the coffin.

“Mad Dog was probably the consummate interview guy,” said Mean Gene Okerlund on In Your Head radio, who handled the interviews for the AWA during the Vachon babyface era. “Whether it was behind the cage or it was in a workshop trying to construct a coffin, or whatever it happened to be, he was a classic in every sense of the word. I think what everybody has said about him is what it is. He was kind of a favorite of mine and I think he was a favorite of the boys in the locker room. Certainly, even though the fans at one time or another probably hated him vehemently, he ended up being kind of the guy they loved to hate.”

Even well into his 50s, in the core AWA cities, Vachon was still over like a major main eventer, and often headlined in front of big crowds when Hogan was wrestling in Japan. In cities like Winnipeg, where he lived for years, Milwaukee, because of the feud with Crusher, and Montreal, he was a name that everyone recognized instantly, whether or not they even watched wrestling.

But when the AWA would go into new markets, where his history wasn’t as strong, people saw him as a short, paunchy, old man who couldn’t do much. The interviews and character were more than main event level, but it was harder for fans in places where he didn’t have history to take him seriously.

Because of that, it was a miscalculation on everyone’s part when Vachon jumped to the WWF at the time they were trying to raid everyone from the AWA. In a land of younger steroid bodies, Vachon’s unique voice talking about it being “A Dog Eat Dog World,” wasn’t enough to make the new generation of fans think they were seeing the Mad Dog Vachon of 20 years earlier. When he did come back to the AWA, by then, the bloom was off the rose for both him and the promotion. He also worked some for International Wrestling out of Montreal, announcing a retirement tour throughout Quebec.

His farewell match was on October 13, 1986, where the 57-year-old Vachon teamed with long-time rival Jos LeDuc to beat Man Mountain Moore & Gilles “The Fish” Poisson, another wrestler that Vachon started out in the 60s, before 3,200 fans.

Maurice Vachon established himself very early as a drawing card. Working in Northern Ontario in a summer 1952 feud with Dory Funk Sr., the babyface pretty-boy Olympian from Quebec against the cowboy from Texas was a big hit, breaking box office records in North Bay, ONT. But in Montreal, promoter Eddie Quinn had no interest in him at first. After doing well in Texas in late 1954 and early 1955, he moved up to the semifinal level in Quebec and Ontario on good nights, although he was still a prelim wrestler in Montreal, one of North America’s strongest wrestling cities.

He captured the Texas junior heavyweight title in late 1956, his first singles title, losing to Luis Martinez on February 6, 1957, in Corpus Christi. Vachon & Joe Christie won a match over Mike DiBiase & Bulldog Danny Plechas for what was called the toughest tag team trophy, which they started to defend, before losing a barbed wire match in Corpus Christi on March 13, 1957, to Martinez & Pepper Gomez. But when he returned to Quebec that summer, he was back in prelims.

His first true run as a headliner would have been in 1959 while working for Stu Hart, forming a tag team with brother Paul. He even got a shot at world champion Pat O’Connor on February 26, 1959, in Regina. On July 14, 1959, also in Regina, before 4,000 fans, he was knocked out in a boxing match against former world heavyweight champion Jersey Joe Walcott who Stu Hart brought in for Stampede week.

He wrestled much of 1960 in Texas, including being in what was billed as the first South American style tag team match, on October 4, 1960, at the Dallas Sportatorium. The rules were that the only way to win was to win three consecutive falls. The heel team of Vachon & Don Leo Jonathan & Danny McShain & Haru Sasaki beat Torbellino Blanco & Ciclon Negro & Mr. Kleem & Silento Rodriguez in a match that went nearly a dozen falls. It drew so well that they brought it back in Dallas two weeks later as Maurice & Paul Vachon teamed with Jonathan & McShain to beat Blanco & Negro & Rodriguez & Jesse Cardenas. While there, he talked Don Owen into giving a job for a fellow Montreal wrestler whose career was struggling named Pierre Clermont, who came in as Pat Patterson. It was Patterson’s success in Oregon as a worker that opened the door for him to go to San Francisco, where he became the tag team partner of Ray Stevens. Patterson always stated, like Von Raschke, that he owed his career to Vachon, and told people that no matter what, he would never fully be able to pay back the debt.

It was Patterson who came up with the spot where Diesel (Kevin Nash) used Vachon’s prosthetic leg on Shawn Michaels, taking it off him, in their April 28, 1996, WWF title match PPV main event, as a way of getting Vachon a payoff at that stage of his life.

On May 31, 1998, in Milwaukee, Patterson got Vachon another PPV payoff. Announcer Michael Cole got in the ring to pay tribute to Vachon and Crusher, sitting together nearly three decades after the most famous match in the history of the city. Cole gave both an appreciation plaque while Jerry Lawler, who was then still doing a heel role, complained about how the segment was a waste of time. Lawler got in the ring and started making cracks about how old and washed up the two were, and once again, took off Vachon’s prosthetic leg. Crusher saved Vachon. Lawler actually went for the leg a second time, and got it off, but Crusher attacked Lawler, got it back, and hit Lawler with it. The segment was far sadder to watch than it read because of how slow moving Crusher, 71 at the time, had gotten by that point in time, and how bad it looked for Lawler to sell for him.

When he heard that Vachon’s memory was fading, Patterson pushed hard to get Vachon inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2010. Seven years earlier, when Vachon was given the Mike Mazurki Award at the Cauliflower Alley banquet in Las Vegas, and accepted it with a speech that may still be the single greatest promo I’ve ever seen. However, the next several years were not kind to Vachon, whose memory had faded badly by the time of this both induction, and his induction in 2009 into the Quebec Sports Hall of Fame.

Vachon’s run in Oregon had a number of highlights, including a big drawing feud with Haystacks Calhoun, and as the top star, business was strong enough that they were running live shows in Portland at the Armory twice a week.

Vachon’s debut in Minneapolis, on July 9, 1963, at the Auditorium, was less than memorable. Before a near sellout crowd that saw Crusher, with help from Dick the Bruiser, beat Gagne, via count out, to win the AWA title, Maurice Vachon worked the second match of the show, losing to Don McClarity. It was just a one-shot deal, driving from Oregon back to Montreal, where he worked the summer of 1963. He was still Maurice Vachon back home, and worked in the middle of the cards.

After returning to Oregon to finish 1963, he moved to Omaha at the start of 1964 for promoter Joe Dusek. On January 3, 1964, he dropped the Pacific Northwest title to The Destroyer at the Portland Armory. The next day, he debuted at the Omaha Civic Auditorium in a prelim match beating Maurice LaPointe, the first place outside of Oregon that he was Mad Dog Vachon.

By May 2, 1964, Vachon beat Gagne in Omaha before 6,025 fans, the largest crowd of the year, to win the AWA title, in a title switch only recognized in Nebraska. Gagne won it back two weeks later before 5,520 fans. Two weeks later, Gagne brought him to Minneapolis, this time as Mad Dog Vachon, beating Billy Goelz in a mid-card match. By October 20, 1964, he beat Gagne for the fully recognized AWA title in Minneapolis before 3,979 fans. Crowds immediately picked up to 5,000 to 7,000 fans for Vachon’s title defenses until he lost to Gagne via DQ before a sellout of 9,109 on Thanksgiving night. The whole territory was up in 1965, particularly when Vachon was matched with Bruiser, Crusher or Gagne, including sellouts on April 17, 1965, and June 26, 1965, for Minneapolis title matches with Gagne.

Vachon regained the title on November 12, 1965, in Denver, before 4,000 fans, setting up a rematch with Crusher on the Thanksgiving show on November 25, 1965, which drew a near sellout 8,116 fans.

Omaha was down, but Vachon came up with an idea. Vachon had worked on top in title matches with Tim Woods. Vachon was always a big fan of guys with legitimate amateur backgrounds, and suggested that Woods remake himself as Mr. Wrestling, with a white mask. In that era, masked men were always heels. But Mr. Wrestling in Omaha and later Georgia, where he became an even bigger star, was there to represent the purest in technical wrestling and skill.

For the January 8, 1966, show in Omaha, Mr. Wrestling promised he would take off his mask and win the AWA title from Vachon. He unmasked before the match, revealing himself as Tim Woods, and then won the title, but his feet were on the ropes for leverage. A week later, the local Omaha World Record reported that AWA President Stanley Blackburn had reviewed the match and evidence showed Woods with his feet on the ropes while scoring the fall, so the result was overturned to a no contest, and a rematch was ordered. Vachon “regained” the title in a match that went 60:00, with Vachon winning the first fall, and going on his bicycle and stalling out the rest of the match.

Vachon’s idea, done on a bigger scale, led to the first sellout of pro wrestling ever at the Omni in Atlanta. On June 1, 1973, new NWA world champion Harley Race came in, a week after winning the title from Dory Funk Jr. Mr. Wrestling vowed to unmask before the match started, reveal his identity, and then win the title. He revealed himself as Tim Woods, and then went 60:00 before 16,500 fans, holding a sleeper hold on as time expired. Race was asleep, but it was ruled the bell rang to end the match before the ref ruled Race went out, in a photo finish.

While he had headlined in other cities in Quebec years earlier, the first record of a Mad Dog Vachon main event in his home town of Montreal wasn’t until December 5, 1966, when Vachon & Hans Schmidt faced Edouard Carpentier & Johnny Rougeau. By 1967 he was the territory’s top heel and champion, regularly teaming with Von Raschke.

After suffering a broken pelvis in August of that year, he was out of action until January, when he returned to the AWA. That summer, he returned to Oregon, and his feud with Mayne was so hot that their biggest match, on July 9, 1968, was moved to the Memorial Coliseum and drew more than 10,000 fans. He went to Southern California before a Japan tour, and was only in the territory a few weeks. After beating Mil Mascaras at the Olympic Auditorium, the September 6, 1968, match where Bobo Brazil retained his WWA title over Vachon, who was disqualified for biting, drew a sellout reported at more than 11,000.

In 1969, after matches where AWA tag team champions Bruiser & Crusher did crowds of 9,512 and 8,708 in Milwaukee against The Vachons, they did the title switch to the Vachons in Chicago before 10,000 fans at the Ampitheatre on August 30, 1969.

The territory picked up, largely because the Vachons could draw as tag champs on a regular basis. Bruiser & Crusher were big draws whenever they teamed. But with Bruiser owning the Indianapolis promotion, it was hard to get a lot of dates on him for the AWA territory. The big program for the rest of 1969 was a successful title program with the Vachons vs. The Flying Redheads, Billy “Red” Lyons & Red Bastien.

The AWA in 1970 was highlighted by The Crusher vs. Mad Dog feud coming off the bloodbath on television. St. Paul, Milwaukee and Winnipeg all sold out within a one week period. Denver did a near sellout, and then sold out for a Gagne & Crusher vs. Vachons match. Milwaukee, Crusher’s home city, was sellout almost every month leading to the famous cage match. Even after the cage match, the return a month later with the Vachons vs. Bruiser & Crusher drew 10,812. Comiskey Park in Chicago with the Vachons vs. Bruiser & Crusher in a cage match did 21,000 fans and set the North American all-time gate record at the time with $148,000. Denver set its record for a Crusher vs. Mad Dog cage match. Minneapolis/St. Paul was only doing average business, but the rest of the major cities were all peaking at record levels.

On May 15, 1971, in Milwaukee, in a no DQ match, Bastien & Hercules Cortez beat the Vachons before 10,271 fans to win the tag team titles. The title changed hands since the Vachons were going back to Montreal to buy into Grand Prix Wrestling.

Montreal wrestling exploded at that time, peaking with the Mad Dog vs. Killer Kowalski match at Jarry Park that set the North American gate record and Canadian attendance record with 29,127 selling the place out.

But they fell quickly. They went back to the ballpark a month later with Vachon vs. Don Leo Jonathan, which drew 12,383. It was a great number under normal circumstances, but they could have put that many in the Forum. The very idea of trying to run two stadium shows in successive months, one after Vachon had promised to tear off Kowalski’s ear, and commit suicide if he lost, was probably not the best decision.

Paul Vachon, the promoter, looked back and said it was the success that started the death of the promotion. Vachon said that the partners were more than happy to let him run things when he and Mad Dog bought into the struggling business. But there were problems with jealousy. Carpentier had been Quebec’s biggest star since the mid-50s. When Johnny Rougeau started getting popular and wanted to feature himself over Carpentier, Carpentier and Yvon Robert left to form Grand Prix. The promotion exploded, but Mad Dog, with the feud with the LeDucs and the match with Kowalski, had clearly become the biggest babyface star.

“Because of his (Carpentier’s) envy and jealously, the two main flaws in his character, he could not stand for anybody else to have success at anything,” said Paul Vachon in his autobiography. “He started a campaign to discredit our success because he had not been at the center of it. Young Yvon Robert Jr., who recently lost his father, was drawn into his influence and together with Awada the lawyer (who years earlier had fallen in love with Carpentier, the wrestling star) formed a clique and proceeded to fight, resist and argue every decision that I made.”

That explains why, two weeks before the stadium show, they ran a show at the Montreal Forum with Vachon losing the Grand Prix world title to Carpentier. The stadium show was originally supposed to be Vachon vs. Kowalski for the singles title, with The Hollywood Blonds defending the tag team titles against Carpentier & Bruno Sammartino, which they won. It made no sense for Carpentier to beat Mad Dog, but Carpentier and those who were with him, insisted on the babyface match where he’d go over to show he was still really the top guy, even if Mad Dog was drawing the bigger crowds.

Paul said that they even tried to turn Mad Dog against him from a business standpoint, and while it didn’t happen, the brothers did start having problems. Lucien Gregorie, the other partner, would go back-and-forth.

He said that at shows that he didn’t attend, Carpentier would tell the arena managers and local media that Paul was no longer in charge. At one point, when he was out of town wrestling in another territory, Carpentier, Robert Jr. and Awada booked a show at the Montreal Forum and told the athletic commission that Robert Jr. was the new promoter in Montreal, and while Paul was a partner, he was not the local promoter.

Due to all the problems, Paul & Maurice decided to get out a few months later, selling their shares to Tony Mule, who paid the brothers $25,000 each, and leaving Grand Prix. Carpentier and Rougeau made peace, and they did joint shows with All-Star Wrestling, which had one blow out show before both companies collapsed and it led to a several year dark period for Montreal wrestling ensued. The Vachons started a new promotion, Celebrity Wrestling, in 1974, but were unable to get a license to promote in Montreal and the promotion didn’t last long.

Mad Dog continued to work AWA shows during that period. The most notable match was Crusher & Mad Dog breaking their Milwaukee gate record, but instead of against each other, it was as a team, beating Superstar Billy Graham & Ivan Koloff in a cage match on September 29, 1973, doing 12,300 fans and $64,571. On the Christmas show in Minneapolis, where Crusher & Mad Dog beat Graham & Larry Heineimi (Lars Anderson), subbing for Koloff, in a cage match, they turned 4,000 fans away. In Winnipeg, they drew more than 11,000 fans. In Milwaukee, Crusher & Mad Dog beating new AWA tag champs Ray Stevens & Nick Bockwinkel in a non-title match, drew a sellout, and they came a few hundred shy in Minneapolis.

Mad Dog worked a few dates in the WWWF, in Madison Square Garden and Boston, as a special attraction, but was never pushed.

He had four more tours of Japan after he and Butcher went in 1971 as the AWA world tag team champions.

He went twice in 1973. The first tour built to an IWA title match on March 16, 1973, in Machida, a cage match where the only way to win was via ten count knockout, where he lost to the group’s top star, Shozo “Strong” Kobayashi. The second tour saw he and Ivan Koloff win the IWA tag team titles from Kobayashi & The Great Kusatsu, only to lose them back a month later to Kusatsu & Rusher Kimura.

In 1975, Vachon was the transition world champion when the decision was made to replace Mighty Inoue with Kimura as the group’s top star. Vachon beat Inoue on April 10, 1975, in Tokyo, only to lose a cage match to Kimura via submission to a Boston crab in 7:25 nine days later in Sapporo.

His final tour was in 1977, in what was billed as the IWA World Series, the group’s major singles tournament. What was best remembered from that tour were the bloody singles and tag matches he had with Gypsy Joe. In the finals, at Sumo Hall, he lost to Kimura.

Vachon returned as a full-timer to Texas in 1975, with his major feuds being with Graham over the Texas Brass Knux title, and with big rival Jos Leduc. But he wasn’t as strong working that territory that he hadn’t been a regular in since before he was a superstar.

He came back to the AWA in 1976, forming a heel tag team with Von Raschke. Nick Bockwinkel was clearly the top heel, although Von Raschke & Vachon vs. Larry Hennig & LeDuc headlined everywhere that summer. But business was nothing special. Bruiser & Crusher were tag champions, but they had the same problem, with Bruiser owning his territory. When they worked together, they were big draws, but they weren’t around very much. Then when they lost the titles, it was to Blackjack Lanza & Bobby Duncum, managed by Bobby Heenan. In the fall, Vachon & Von Raschke mostly feuded with Greg Gagne & Jim Brunzell, who were just starting to rise to the main event level. But their role was to get Gagne & Brunzell credibility before the High Flyers started their program with Lanza & Duncum.

By the end of the year and early 1977, Vachon went back to a singles feud with Crusher, which was a legendary match-up due to their history in the territory. They did cage matches that sold out in Denver, Milwaukee and Winnipeg. Newspaper and fan reports in the latter two cities were that scalper business outside the shows that sold out well in advance was like nothing people had ever seen in those markets.

He returned to Quebec in late 1977 and early 1978, first as a heel, and then becoming a face, before Verne Gagne called him to be his partner to get the tag titles off Stevens & Patterson in late 1978.

Vachon, the cult hero babyface in the AWA started at that point, with business strong. He not only did the tag matches when Gagne was working, but on shows Gagne wasn’t at, Vachon frequently would challenge Bockwinkel for the AWA title.

Vachon returned to Georgia in 1979, with a fairly memorable angle. Dusty Rhodes, who was feuding with Georgia tag team champions Ole Anderson & Ivan Koloff, had a secret partner in a box, for a non-title cage match on the April 27, 1979, show at the Omni. When the box opened, it was Vachon, who ran around going crazy and the sell job by Solie, Anderson and Koloff made it like Vachon really was the Tasmanian devil, and combined with the Vachon promo, the show drew 11,000 fans, one of the city’s best crowds of the year. It was a two-week program, with Rhodes & Vachon winning the first week, there Vachon broke Anderson’s wrist in storyline. The next week was a tag title match won by Anderson & Koloff. Vachon returned the next month to reprise the angle in several other cities on the Georgia circuit, teaming with either Rhodes or Wahoo McDaniel against Ole Anderson & Koloff.

Gagne & Vachon’s title win over Patterson & Stevens on June 6, 1979, in Winnipeg, drew only a little more than 3,000 fans, although in August, a title defense in the same city against Stan Hansen & Bobby Duncum sold out. Business was weak as Gagne & Vachon’s main foes were the masked Super Destroyers (Bob Remus, later to become Sgt. Slaughter & Neil “Hangman” Guay.

In 1980, Adrian Adonis & Jesse Ventura, the East-West Connection, became the prime challengers for the tag title. A non-title cage match with Vachon over AWA champ Bockwinkel did 7,202 fans, in Omaha, one of the few bright spots of that period. A no DQ match with Gagne & Vachon vs. Adonis & Ventura drew more than 11,000 fans with Lord Blears as referee in Minneapolis. They also nearly sold out Denver. The title change was weird, as on July 20, 1980, in Denver, Gagne failed to show up for a tag title match and Adonis & Ventura got the title via forfeit. Gagne evidently wanted to get the titles on the new team, but didn’t want to have he and his legendary partner put them over.

The AWA really caught on fire in 1982 with Hulk Hogan. An August 8, 1982 show at the St. Paul Civic Center where Gagne, who had his retirement match in 1981, came out of retirement for the first of many times, to team with Vachon, to beat Sheik Adnan Al-Kaissie & Blackwell drew 19,000 fans to the St. Paul Civic Center in the main event, of a show that also included Hogan vs. Ken Patera in an arm wrestling match.

The biggest show in AWA’s history, known as “Super Sunday,” was on April 24, 1983, a show so big they sold out the St. Paul Civic Center with 18,000, and had another 5,500 watching via closed circuit, which set the AWA’s all-time attendance and gate record. The main event was Bockwinkel vs. Hogan for the AWA title, the famous match where Hogan won the bout and seemingly won the title, only to have the decision reversed because Hogan had thrown Bockwinkel over the top rope before he pinned him. But pushed just as hard, and the match that actually went on in the main event slot, was Vachon & Gagne vs. Blackwell & Al-Kaissie.

It was set up on the March 13, 1983, show at the Civic Center, a loaded up sold out show where Blackwell, at this point known as Sheik Ayatollah Jerry Blackwell, a talented 400-pound blob who was actually a tremendous worker, whose team with Al-Kaissie, was known as The Sheiks, faced Mad Dog & The Baron. The bloody match saw Blackwell pin Von Raschke, and both men destroyed Vachon after the match. Gagne, who hadn’t been involved in wrestling since the match a year earlier, came running in wearing street clothes. The heels destroyed him as well.

This set up the grudge match, which Gagne & Vachon won when Vachon broke Al-Kaissie’s arm by coming off the top rope on it as Gagne held it outstretched. The match was terrible, but the heat was great, as the aura of Gagne & Vachon as superstar overrode that they were 57 and 53, and Vachon by this point looked and moved like he was a decade older.

Various incarnations of Vachon vs. Blackwell continued to do major business for the next several months. A two-show program in St. Paul with Bockwinkel vs. Vachon, on Thanksgiving night, drew 13,163, even with Hogan booked in Japan. The Christmas night rematch drew a sellout of 18,000. Hogan had actually quit the AWA earlier in the month when he joined the WWF, but Gagne billed him anyway to get the sellout.

Hogan leaving was the beginning of the end for the AWA. Its TV was dated. Its stars had appeal to the older fans, and with Hogan, the newer fans as well. But when Hogan left, Gagne brought back Crusher (who had retired and Gagne hadn’t called him back since he no longer needed him when Hogan became a bigger draw, as Bobby Heenan said, Crusher was the goose that laid the golden eggs, but suddenly he had a new goose laying bigger eggs). Business for the AWA was strong in 1984 even without Hogan. Crusher & Mad Dog & Von Raschke beat Ventura & Masa Saito & Blackwell in cage matches that drew big everywhere but the new AWA markets. But it was inevitable that with Hogan, better television and a far stronger product with more depth, that the AWA’s days as “The Major League of Professional Wrestling” were numbered.

Vachon was a surprising raid. He debuted at the June 15, 1984, TV tapings in St. Louis. But at that point, with all the younger steroided up guys and him going into markets around the country that he wasn’t a legend in, Vachon wasn’t going to get over. He had really been limited for years. Gagne always protected area legends in his booking, although his booking like time stood still caught up to him when competition came in.

Vachon worked regularly through 1984 as a regular on the WWF circuit, but it didn’t work outside the nostalgia reaction he’d get in markets he was a legend in. By 1985, he was only being booked almost only in the old AWA cities and Quebec, and even there he was limited to working prelims. When the WWF cut him loose in September of 1985, and the AWA brought him back and tried to push him, but it no longer worked. The AWA was dying and the older fans were gone. Mad Dog had been shown to be a washed up opening match guy in the WWF. He worked some indies in the Midwest, and did his farewell tour in 1986.

After retirement, perhaps his favorite pastime was playing cribbage. He didn’t have to do anything physical, and it took his mind away from the handicap that plagued his last quarter-century. In recent years, when his mental faculties had started to turn on him, people were amazed that when he’d sit at the cribbage board, he could play and keep score in his head.

“He didn’t finish eighth grade in school, but he read newspapers religiously, cover-to-cover,” said Raschke. “He spoke French and English fluently. He was very intelligent. He was street smart. He knew the wrestling business in and out. He had a great sense of humor and was a great mentor to me.”

In his later years, Vachon and boxer Ron Stander, who once fought Joe Frazier for the world heavyweight title in Omaha in 1972, would get together for long cribbage games and talk about their respective sports.

His farewell drew tremendous media attention, but not much at the box office, because the Montreal territory was also going down the tubes by that point when all the good talent went to WWF.

But through agent Michel Longtin, Vachon was briefly turned into an even bigger media star. While Vachon’s heyday as a wrestler in Quebec was the Grand Prix era, it was impossible to live in Quebec in 1986 and 1987 and to not know Mad Dog Vachon.

He was the face and partial owner of a fast food chain called “Mad Dog Burgers.” There were three locations in Montreal alone, but the restaurants only lasted about a year. The gimmick was that the Mad Dog burgers were square instead of round, shaped like a wrestling ring.

He had a rap record, “Le Rap a Mad Dog.” It wasn’t a big hit, but it got a lot of play. Most would recognize the tune as one of those gimmick songs of an era.

He was a regular on a kids television show called “The Adventures of Mad Dog the Pirate.” He was a restaurant critic, where he was called “Inspector Gourmet,” on a talk show called “Jasmin Centre-Ville.” The idea was that Mad Dog had eaten at the grungiest diners to the fanciest restaurants all over the world for 35 years in his travels as a pro wrestler, so who better to be a food critic. As Mad Dog, he was exactly the opposite of what everyone expects a food critic to be, and he would accept cheap food for what it was, in his role as the food critic voice of the working class instead of upper class.

He had a recurring role in a late night show called Ad Lib.

He also made a memorable appearance on the show Samedi de Rire (Laughing Saturday), a French language version of Saturday Night Live. He did sketches on the show with Montreal’s most famous comedian at the top, Yvon Deschamps, and also did a comedy sketch with a young Celine Dion.

He even worked as a traffic reporter for a radio station in Quebec City. He did television commercials for La Cage aux Sports, which is now the biggest sports themed restaurant chain in Quebec, although then it was just starting.

But he’s probably most remembered as the pitchman for Labatt Light beer, in French language commercials. After explaining it was the best beer out there, he ended the commercial with the line, “You don’t need a dictionary to understand that.” That became his trademark catch phrase, that he would be scripted to deliver on talk shows and in Quebec culture, it’s a phrase that is still used today when talking about something that should be obvious.

But this second and less painful career as a media darling ended quickly.

On October 9, 1987, he was taking his regular early morning walk/jog on a gravel road near his sister-in-law’s home in Des Moines when he was plowed into by a hit-and-run driver.

His wife, Kathie, arrived quickly, and saw the Ford LTD drive away. The car had no hood, whether that was from the accident or it had no hood to begin with was unknown. When he was eventually found, his left leg looked like it had been destroyed, bent and twisted in all kind of directions. He right leg, visually, looked fine, although doctors believed it had been run over. He was rushed by ambulance to Iowa City, because they felt the university doctors were better equipped to take care of him. They were doing surgery on the left leg. When they felt the right leg, it was tight as a drum. They had to cut it open to relieve pressure. They found it was suffering from gangrene and had to amputate it.

The story was not big at all in Iowa City, but was gigantic in Canada. Every day, his wife, Kathie, was constantly on the phone with the Canadian media. He received thousands of letters, phone calls, telegrams, flowers and fruit baskets from the most prominent politicians in Canada, artists, corporate presidents, top Canadian athletes and wrestling fans.

They were doing well at the time, but for all the work Vachon was doing, he was decidedly not rich.

“We live well, but we’re not what you’d call well off,” said Kathie Vachon at the time. “We’re just average. We have a home, a Chevrolet and a Pontiac. Maurice has a manager to pay. And Canadian money doesn’t go real far here in the U.S.”

A 59-year-old man, who had no insurance, was eventually charged with the hit-and-run.

When he could finally get out of the hospital and returned to Quebec, Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who had called Vachon while in the hospital, sent his airplane to bring him in.

Vachon lived 26 more years. He learned to get around with his prosthetic leg.

In 1991, his sister, Diane, who wrestled as Vivian Vachon, then 40, and her nine-year-old daughter, were killed by a drunk driver who had run a stop sign. She was long-since retired from pro wrestling. Vivian Vachon, who worked as a model, and later cut some record singles when she was young, by the early 70s was generally considered the best woman wrestler performing in North America, as the perennial AWA women’s champion. There was a movie, “Wrestling Queen,” done about her. Another niece, Gertrude, known as Luna Vachon, Paul’s adopted daughter, who idolized Diane, became a wrestler. She had many problems, including a major substance abuse problems, and battled depression, She passed away in 2010 of an overdose at the age of 48. Another family member, Maurice’s son Mike, briefly wrestled in the 80s, teaming for a time with his father in Quebec.

In recent years, his health had taken a turn for the worst. His left leg also had to be amputated, and he was relegated to a wheelchair and needed to be taken care of. His memory faded badly. In 2009 in Quebec when he came in for the Hall of Fame, he was able to be Mad Dog when photos needed to be shot and TV cameras were rolling, but it was clearly difficult. He didn’t recognize his sister. By last year, when his brother Paul came to visit for the last time after driving back from Las Vegas and the Cauliflower Alley Club banquet, there were times when he didn’t recognize him. He himself could no longer attend the Cauliflower Alley banquets and play Cribbage with his former ring foes. Still, his wife made sure he got to Waterloo, IA, every year for the George Tragos/Lou Thesz Hall of Fame. Raschke who would see him there, emphasized to please credit his wife for being so tremendous to hm for the last 34 years. She was a wrestling fan from the 60s who saw him as the meanest man in Omaha, who married him in 1979 when Maurice was 49 and she was 30.

“I was in Minneapolis where I was working when I heard about it,” said Raschke. “I found out he was in the hospital in Iowa City. As soon as I could, I drove down and saw him. He whole hotel room was full of cards, letters and flowers, from the prime minister, provincial bigwigs. I could see that my friend had become a national hero in Canada. He was hit from behind and left laying on the road.”

Raschke got to Iowa City a few days and numerous operations later.

Vachon, who later when talking about that time period, said that he expected to die, and at times, wanted to die. Completely fearless up to that point, he admitted it was the only time in his life he was scared. Between the pain and the drugs, he would break down and cry.

“This is the worst pain I’ve been through in all my life,” he said when the Montreal Gazette sent a reporter to visit him in the hospital two weeks later. “Your body can only absorb so much punishment. This is worse than I expected death to be.”

“We got to talking, and he was really depressed,” said Raschke, who had never seen Vachon like that, helpless, and scared. “He told me, `I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go.”

Raschke tried to cheer him up. He would have none of it. Then they started talking about something, what it was doesn’t really matter, but it turned into an argument.

Suddenly, without even thinking, Raschke yelled back at Vachon, “You can’t argue with me on that. You don’t have a leg to stand on.” Suddenly, Vachon started laughing. And then he called for the cribbage board, and they sat down and played.