Dazzlers Corner, Mario Marino
By Ken Dunlop
In Australian Wrestling there weren’t a lot of big guys. I suppose the most known one is Les Roberts, there was Dominic Bianco and Sailor (Frank) Black. There is another one Mario Marino, Mario is my feature in this story. Mario started wrestling back in 1965 he mainly worked the club scene in Sydney but in the mid 70s worked for WCW. Mario was 1.96 meters in height and weighed around 130 kilos so he was a big man.
When I first moved to Sydney in December 1980 l met Mario probably 6 weeks later at my first show here, he was very nice to me, came up and spoke with me and offered some advice. In the July of 81 Roy Heffernan teamed me up with Wayne Lofty Pickford and our tag team opponents were Mario Marino and Andy Harpas who were Roy’s main team, we must have done close to 30 tag team matches against the pair and though they went over in all of them, due to their size and experience over us, they made us look like a million bucks. I also wrestled Mario in quite a few singles matches.
One night at the Marrickville Olympic Soccer Club l was in a match against Dennis Lykouris and a huge guy from the audience jumped up on the ring apron and king hit me on the side of my head, of course the gutless mongrel did it from behind, luckily I didn’t go down and he tried to get into the ring, from nowhere Mario Marino ran from the dressing room and grabbed the guy hitting him a few times and threw him out of the club, after the show was finished l was about to leave to go to my car, that guy was there with 2 of his mates and he had a knife in his hand, l went back in to the club and asked Mario and Andy if they would help me and they walked me safely to my car, the guys didn’t say a word. Another night l was wrestling Mario Marino in a singles match and he gave me a running power slam but a board had popped up in the ring and it caught Mario’s feet so he slipped and his whole weight landed on me, l felt something pop and I was in immense pain, l tried to tell the referee to finish the match as I was hurt but Mario picked me up not knowing my pain and gave me another power slam, thank god we finished the match then. I told him that I was hurt and he apologized. I drove home but I had trouble breathing, l lived in Randwick at the time, so I drove home, parked the car and walked up to the Prince of Wales Hospital, it turned out l had one broken rib and two fractured ribs and I had punctured my lung. The hospital contacted Steve Rackman who was the promoter of the show and Steve came to see me the next day and he rang Mario and told him and he came down to the hospital to see me and he was so upset and was in tears and kept saying l’m sorry little Kenny, l kept telling him not to worry I didn’t blame him at all, it was just an accident. That would have been mid 1983. I had to take a few months off from wrestling to let it all heal, Mario kept in touch the whole time.
In 1985 when World Class Wrestling started up all the wrestlers had to be based in Melbourne, Mario and myself were chosen to be apart of it, Mario had lost about 20 kilos in weight and was looking fantastic and he came up with the gimmick Zorro Italiano. Again on that tour our friendship grew even stronger, we also shared hotel rooms when on tour. We spent so much time together, Mario was such a funny guy with a great personality. As the tour was getting close to finishing, l went with Mario to Centrelink to help him apply for the dole and what was so funny he was pretending that he couldn’t speak much English and was playing dumb and I was trying to translate, we had this poor wonderful lady so confused and we both had to try to stop laughing, but she was so helpful and she set it all up pretty quickly, l think just to get rid of us, when we walked out we both broke out in fits of laughter.
Another time we were walking around St Kilda and he told me that he had never been in to a sex shop before and everyone knows there are plenty in St Kilda, so I took him in to one and you should have seen his face, he was in a shock, in a cabinet there was a range of sex toys and one rotated around in circles so I asked the store person to show us the product and I got Mario to hold it and then turned it on, he broke out in fits of laughter and was crying as he was laughing so much. Great memories.
When I moved back to Sydney, Mario stayed in Melbourne and we kept touch, when I visited Melbourne Mario came over to parents house in Glen Iris for a family BBQ a couple of times. Mario had a dream of opening his own restaurant and he did so but so sad that within a week of opening it Mario suffered a major heart attack and passed away on the 01/05/96. It was heartbreaking, l couldn’t attend his funeral as l only had knee surgery 2 days before he passed and I couldn’t travel. Mario Marino should never be forgotten, he had a great 20 year career in the ring. And he was definitely one of the nicest people you could meet.
I would like to thank his daughter Diana for help with the photos and some of the dates. Respect
