9 Old School Wrestling Champs That Could Make It In Today’s WWE

5. Bruno Sammartino

As a child in Italy, Bruno Sammartino€™s saw his small village raided by German soldiers. World War Two had cast a long, dark shadow across Europe at the time and the marauding Nazi troops killed anybody that was too slow to escape. The surviving villagers retreated to the mountains in secret, eking out a living from edible flowers, snow and whatever supplies the braver refugees could steal from the village whilst the German invaders slept. Tragically, Bruno€™s father, Alfonso, had been working in the US and sending regular correspondence to his family, but after the outbreak of war, he had been unable to contact them. In Italy, times were indescribably tough. The trek down the mountain and back to the occupied village took 24 solid hours and Bruno€™s mother, Emilia was forced to regularly undertake this dangerous journey in order to feed her sickly son. During one such mission, she was shot in the shoulder and then had to escape the troops and somehow climb the mountain whilst dealing with a combination of shock and blood loss. From that story, it is easy to see where Bruno got his legendary toughness. Although he wasn€™t generally considered a big enough star to hoist the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, Bruno Sammartino was (and, to a great extent, still is) a wrestling God to fans throughout the New York area. Whilst his detractors felt that his appeal was too €˜ethnic€™ for Middle America and his loyalty to Vince McMahon Sr. never saw him given serious contention by any of the WWWF€™s traditional rivals, (not counting a proposed WWWF/NWA unification match against Lou Thesz that Sammartino might well have been booked to win), Sammartino has definitely enjoyed the last laugh. He now experiences a far greater degree of fame than any of his 60€™s or 70€™s contemporaries. Today, WWE is the only game in town and the company is, in many ways, the house that Bruno built. For the WWE, it is wholly historically accurate to promote Bruno as the company€™s biggest Pre-Hogan star. Sammartino was certainly not the most popular wrestler of his era, but he was the star around which the WWE was built €“ and that shall forever be the great man€™s legacy. Although he was only a 2 time World Champion, Sammartino wore the WWWF Championship for an astonishing 11 years, including one Championship run that was 7 years in length, the longest in the company€™s history. In the ring, Bruno was a crowd-pleasing mixture of solid, steady groundwork and big, powerhouse moves. He was charismatic, larger than life and effortlessly likeable. Outside the ring, Sammartino was known as a true gentleman and a man of deep conviction and principles, things that were incorporated into his wrestling character. Would Bruno be a star in today€™s WWE? Yes, a thousand times over. His timeless brand of charm, ability, superhuman work rate and innate charisma will never go out of fashion. Bruno, with his granite jaw, dark hair, tree trunk thighs and barrel chest always had the look of a star. In the 80€™s, he could have been a Hogan, in the 2000€™s a Rock and today, well; John Cena wouldn€™t even get a look in. Bruno would be a top performer in any era of professional wrestling. A true legend.