Hans Schmidt (wrestler)
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|
| Born |
February 7, 1925 Joliette, Quebec |
|---|---|
| Died | May 26, 2012 (aged 87) |
| Professional wrestling career | |
| Ring name(s) | Hans Schmidt Guy Rose Roy Asselin |
| Billed height | 6 ft 4 in (1.93 m) |
| Billed weight | 250 lb (110 kg) |
| Billed from | Munich, Germany |
| Debut | 1949 |
| Retired | 1976 |
Guy Larose (February 7, 1925 – May 26, 2012), better known by his ring name of Hans Schmidt, was a Canadian professional wrestler famous in the 1950s and 1960s.
Larose used a background in amateur wrestling to break into the pro business after World War II, wrestling as a babyface under his own name with modest success early on. Then in 1951 the Boston-area promoter Paul Bowser, who thought the tall, naturally balding Franco-Québécois looked like a German, rechristened him Hans Schmidt. Playing the character of an 'evil German', Schmidt became one of the first great heels of televised wrestling in the 1950s, drawing the hatred of fans as he battled their American babyface heroes of the squared circle. In the 1998 A&E documentary The Unreal Story of Professional Wrestling, Hans Schmidt was labeled "the classic foreign villain" - tapping into lingering anti-German sentiment in America following World War II, Schmidt was a forerunner of many other wrestling characters that successfully used the "anti-American foreigner" gimmick to enrage the crowd, such as Nikolai Volkoff and The Iron Sheik.
Nicknamed The Teuton Terror, Schmidt wrestled a rough, aggressive rule-breaker's style. He often finished his opponents off with a backbreaker, and was also known to use the piledriver as well. Fellow wrestlers recalled that he liked to work stiff on them, particularly with his boots, a practice for which he earned the nickname of "Footsie".
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