Vern Gagne: Smackdown in the Nursing Home

I'm on Spring Break this week, blogging from "my native village" of Minneapolis, and noticed the front page headline stories today in both the Minneapolis paper and the St. Paul papers, about the local legend Vern Gagne:

St. Paul Pioneer Press: Wrestling legend Verne Gagne, who climbed to fame as a likeable giant of the ring and helped launch Hulk Hogan and former Gov. Jesse "The Body" Ventura to stardom, is under police investigation in the death of a fellow resident at a Bloomington care facility.

Gagne, 82, threw Helmut R. Gutmann, 97, to the floor Jan. 26, breaking his hip and injuring his head, according to Gutmann's family. Gutmann, an accomplished cancer researcher and violinist who fled Nazi Germany in 1936, was treated for his injuries but later was hospitalized again. He died Saturday.


Minneapolis Star Tribune: If you grew up in Minnesota in the 1950s and '60s, you remember Verne Gagne as the king of old-school professional wrestlers -- burly guys in little shorts and big boots who tossed each other around in the ring and into the turnbuckles.

For decades beginning in the 1940s, Gagne's feats in football and pro wrestling made him seem larger than life.

But now, at 82, with his mind ravaged by Alzheimer's disease, he is the focus of inquiry into an altercation with a fellow resident of a Bloomington health care facility that led to the other man's death.