http://www.wwe.com/article/bruno-sammartino-passes-away?sf187243454=1

 

 

Wow. That's a big one.

 

RIP.

This one hurts. RIP to the Living Legend

Very unexpected. He seemed to be in great health. RIP.

Bruno Sammartino was probably one of the more admirable people wrestling ever had. He'll be missed.

Would the WWE even exist at the level they are without the incredible success that Bruno had in not just New York but throughout the entire east coast in the WWWF for at least 2 decades.

 

Sad day for losing this legend

Glad he was able to reconcile with WWE and get some of the love he deserved. A star of a sort that can't be matched.

RIP, a true legend.

A shocker and so sad to hear about. R.I.P. to the living legend.

Would the WWE even exist at the level they are without the incredible success that Bruno had in not just New York but throughout the entire east coast in the WWWF for at least 2 decades.

 

Sad day for losing this legend

I dont think it does.

 

I feel like his passing deserves a full episode tribute because of that fact.

I don't know what to think, I guess I thought the living legend could never die.

 

You were the greatest champion Wrestling has ever seen.

 

Molte grazie e arrivederci

Glad he was able to reconcile with WWE and get some of the love he deserved. A star of a sort that can't be matched.

 

My feelings exactly.

Glad he was able to reconcile with WWE and get some of the love he deserved. A star of a sort that can't be matched.

 

Absolutely

 

RIP

Shocked and saddened. Considering all the trauma he went through as a child, he seemed indestructible. I agree it's fortunate there was a reconciliation with the WWE before his passing so that he took his rightful place in the HOF and was featured prominently on the Network.

I don't know why I thought he was already dead, so this was shocking to me too, but for different reasons. Either way, R.I.P. Bruno.

Don McLean in the song "American Pie" wrote about "the day the music died", after the deaths of Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper & Richie Valens. This news today about Bruno kind of feels like the day wrestling died. I feel like it will be for a lot of fans that came from the generation before me in the pre-cable wrestling territory days.

 

Everything I have ever heard or read about the man speaks volumes about how great of a person he was and how strong his character was. Being a memorable & dominant main event pro-wrestler is just the icing on the cake of him being a tremendous person. Reading through Twitter & seeing all of the touching tributes from other professional wrestlers really puts into perspective how much Bruno Sammartino was respected by his peers & how big of an impact he had on the wrestling world. Truly a big loss to the the industry.

Goodbye to the epitome of the American Dream, an immigrant refugee who spoke no english, who came here after surviving the Nazis and became the greatest Champion of all time. He was my mothers hero, and mine as well.

You guys need to watch some of the 79 All-Star Wrestling on the Network that I've come to love almost entirely because of the Vince/Bruno commentary team. They're shockingly awesome together, they can take the most boring squash match and break it down into something interesting, it's actually made me have even more respect for Vince as a wrestling guy to know he does have this totally old-school part of him that he tries to hide with the sports entertainment stuff and verbiage.

Watch the 7/14/79 episode, it's actually a really good one. Patterson does a miracle carry job with SD Jones and there's also a Dibiase-Jimmy Valiant match.

That's a big loss. The ammount of star power he had is just unparalleled, and his own life story is very inspirational.

 

May he rest in peace.

He had that rare quality -- in the way Daniel Bryan does now though Bruno was obviously a bigger star -- of feeling absolutely real. Whenever I talk to Baltimore wrestling fans a little older than me, Bruno is the first name to come up, and the feeling for him is not cartoony, it's genuine.

 

I interviewed him a while back, maybe a year or two after the Benoit thing, and he seemed like exactly the guy you'd want him to be -- righteous and concerned about the younger wrestlers without giving in to sanctimony.

 

It would be hard to find a guy with a higher approval rating in this screwy world.

Damn, that one comes unexpected, just because Bruno living felt like such a given thing, something you just take for granted as the status quo.

 

RIP Bruno.

The cliché is "The House that X built". Well, the WWE truly is the House that Bruno built. With Vince & Hogan, they are the triumvirat of the promotion. I really am not familiar at all with his work (seen a few matches back then for the GWE 2006), but I loved hearing his interviews on the WOL, he was fascinating to listen to (what a life story !) and had that gentle voice too. What can be said ? One of the all-time giants of pro-wrestling.

What a very sad and unexpected loss to log on to, even though he was getting up there in years.

 

I'm glad he got reconcile with WWE and enter the HOF, though I suspect he did that more for the fans than himself.

 

I hope we're still getting a loaded DVD (or at least Network Special) and that a documentary retrospective was filmed in time.

 

Bruno deserves to have Raw and Smackdown next week dedicated to his memory, with tributes from current stars and any old-timers they can find, but I'm not sure how many people on the roster today have realistically ever seen any of his matches.

Such a hero of a man all his accomplishments in the wrestling business aside. Bruno was as many have said about him a cut above and we will likely never see a story like his again in our lifetime. I am sad that the living legend is gone but very thankful that he gave so many interviews and documentaries on his life so his history and stories are not lost to time. He was a great man and his contributions as an inspiration and a hero will never be forgotten. RIP to Bruno Sammartino.

Count me among those who are in shock. I was under the impression that he was in fantastic shape for his age, so I expected him to go well into his nineties. The remarkable thing to me is that as far as I know, he had no true enemies in the business nor are there any anecdotes that reflect poorly on him. That's an incredible feat in a business as scummy as professional wrestling.