Brian Damage
Grappling with Tragedy is a series of articles that deal with unfortunate, tragic incidents that have occurred throughout the history of professional wrestling. It is unlike the ‘Wrestling with Sin’ series that deals more with the seedier side of wrestling like arrests, murders and suicides. Grappling looks more at particular tragic incidents that have in some instances altered pro wrestling in some way.
Ray Gunkel
Ray Gunkel was born in 1924 in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois to German immigrant parents. Growing up, Gunkel excelled at various sports. He attended Purdue University where he was an All American in both football and amateur wrestling. After graduation, he strived to become a school teacher…but his competitive spirit led him to continue down the path of athletics. He saw the big money professional wrestling was making and began his training eventually debuting in 1948 in the Texas territory.
Gunkel had a tremendous amount of success wrestling in the Lone Star State winning various regional titles including being a three time Texas heavyweight champion. After accomplishing everything there was to accomplish in Texas, Gunkel moved to the NWA’s Georgia territory. After a few years wrestling at the highest level in Georgia, he decided to invest his money and become a business partner in that territory. His creativity and ingenuity helped take the Georgia territory which was practically dead when he arrived there to a thriving money maker as a promoter/wrestler.
It was Gunkel who had the vision to take the promotion and film a wrestling show at the WTCG studios. It was the beginning of a long and very successful partnership. WTCG would later become WTBS after Ted Turner bought the TV station. While Gunkel was wrestling less and less, focusing most of his attention to the business side of things…he was still a very competitive man and remained a semi active wrestler. on August 1, 1972, Gunkel booked himself against the dreaded heel Ox Baker. Just one year prior, Baker was involved in a match where his opponent Alberto Torres died in the ring. It gave Baker the reputation of being this feared monster.
Before the match, Gunkel spent a nice afternoon at the beach with his wife and kids. That evening he had his wrestling match against Baker. At the request of Gunkel, he asked that Baker “lay into him” or work stiff as it looked better to fans. The match went on as planned with both Gunkel and Baker hitting each other hard. After the match ended, Gunkel took a shower and sat down with his business partners to talk about the gate for that evening’s show. While sitting down and chatting with his partners, Gunkel suddenly fell off his chair to the floor. He was pronounced dead at the scene. A later autopsy stated that Gunkel died due to an undiagnosed condition called arteriosclerosis. The hard hitting nature of the earlier match caused heart trauma and a blood clot formed killing him.
At his funeral, several promoters began plotting to take over the very lucrative Georgia territory from Gunkel’s wife Ann. Ann refused to give up the territory, so she was forced out when his business partners started a new booking committee. Ann started her own promotion up to compete against the NWA and initially was successful. The problem was the NWA was too large and too powerful and Ann eventually folded her promotion in 1974. Her husband Ray Gunkel was just 48 years old at the time of his death.