Last weekend my
wife and I were in Charlotte for some shopping. I was
sitting on a bench inside the mall and suddenly I saw a
familiar face. It was Abe Jacobs.
I said aloud,
"Well if it isn't Abe Jacobs."
He stopped,
looked at me and smiled. I knew he had no idea who I was,
but he stepped toward me with his hand extended. I
introduced myself and told him I remembered him from
Greenville Memorial Auditorium. He said it had been a long
time and I said to him, "Abe, you look just like you did 20
plus years ago." He smiled and said, "I still work out, lift
weights and I try to stay in shape."
I
asked if he ever saw any of the guys and he said, no not
very much. He said he saw Renee Goulet at a charity golf
tournament, and Nikita Koloff. He said he now lives in
Shelby.
He talked to me
for probably 15 minutes about the old days and the guys he
worked with. He said that he had both his knees operated on
but otherwise was in good health. I jokingly said to him,
"Abe, I guess you had to have those knees done because of
all those "kiwi rolls" you did all those years." He laughed!
He told me about
making an appearance at a wrestling convention someplace and
a guy was in the autograph line and handed him a big copy of
a newspaper ad for a wrestling show he was on. He said it
was a big card with Johnny Weaver and George Becker against
Rip Hawk and Swede Hanson and a lot of other big matches and
the main event was Gene Kiniski defending the NWA title
against Abe Jacobs! He said he looked at it and showed it to
his wife and said, "Well, I will be the next to go." She
asked, "What do you mean?" Abe said, "I will be the next to
die." His wife asked, "How do you know that for sure?"nd He
replied to her, "Because everyone else on the card is
already dead."
Abe was really a
nice guy and I enjoyed our brief visit.
- Don
Holbrook,
Greenville SC
Posted
04/07/2013
Newspaper
Clippings courtesy Mark Eastridge. Additional Research by
Carroll Hall. |