Remembering The Slammer’s pro wrestling column, blog

Whatever happened to The Slammer?

For those who don’t know who he is, The Slammer wrote about professional wrestling first in a weekly column for the (New York) Daily News and then in a blog.

And then he disappeared.

I used to enjoy reading his column every Friday in the News, and he’d have a special one the day after WrestleMania. He’d also have a special Christmas column where he’d predict what people in the wrestling industry would want to get — and in some cases not want to get — under their trees.

His column largely dealt with reviews of cards and industry rumors and gossip, and his information usually came from his “gremlins.” I remember him writing a few pieces on the Mickey Rourke movie The Wrestler, and he’d regularly write about his two fictional aunts and his fictional Uncle Tonoose for comic relief.

His column would always be paired with Alex Kenney’s fishing column — which I now read — and unlike the paper’s other columnists, you never saw what he really looked like. That’s because he always wore a mask. I guess it was supposed to be a luchador mask, but for some reason it always reminded me of a hockey mask.

But then his column stopped running without any explanation. I searched online for an answer and found that he left the paper to try his hand at blogging. His blog posts were basically the same as his column, and I followed his blog as I did his News column.

And then he stopped posting. I hate to say it, but I gave up on the blog after a while, and when I returned to it, it was taken down.

To visit the Web address where his blog used to be, click here.

Slammer, thanks for writing about a subject that deserves more coverage and respect in the mainstream media. If anybody knows what The Slammer is doing now — especially if he’s writing somewhere else — please sound off in the comments section below.

Follow me on Twitter at @JosephFGargiulo.

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Tags: blog, column, daily news, inside story, new york daily news, newspaper column, pro wrestling, star wars insider, the slammer