“This is no gimmick. His name really is Ringo, and that isn’t a wig flopping atop his head. He beats a mean guitar and man, how he can ‘Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!’” – Boxing Illustrated / Wrestling News, November 1964

Long before Raven embodied the grunge movement with ripped jeans and plaid shirts, Chicago-born wrestler Bob Sabre took a chance on an up-and-coming trend called Beatlemania. Brandishing an acoustic guitar and mop-top hairdo, Sabre gave birth to his new gimmick — George Ringo, the Wrestling Beatle — and toured his way across the United States and Canada from 1964-1967.

Sabre wasn’t in his early 20s like John, Paul, George or Ringo when he created ‘The Wrestling Beatle’ — he was in his late 30s, and clearly so. The wrestler didn’t exude youthful charm like the Fab Four. He looked more like a Silent Generation father dressing up to mock his Baby Boomer kids. But George Ringo was something Bob Sabre could never be in the wrestling business — a winner.

According to CageMatch.net, Bob Sabre was a true jobber, losing every single match throughout his 16-year in-ring career. But George Ringo? He won his debut against Art Michalik at Los Angeles’ Olympic Auditorium, just days after the Beatles had graced the Hollywood Bowl with an iconic performance.

“The big difference between me and these other Beatles is that I’ve got a BODY,” George Ringo told the Los Angeles Times before his first match. “I never hit it big. And I decided to quit to play the guitar and sing. Then, all of a sudden out of England came the mop-heads. It opened a whole new career for me. People started calling me George Ringo, the Wrestling Beatle.”

Fun fact: A British former pro wrestler named Bob Anthony also became known as the ‘Wrestling Beatle‘ after his pub, The Cromwellian, became a favorite hangout for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the ’60s.

The LA Times treated George Ringo like a joke, but the Wrestling Beatle emerged victorious in front of nearly 9,000 fans that night at the Olympic Auditorium. In an interview 13 years later, Sabre recalled the big event with a few embellishments thrown in.

“I came in with this silly little outfit on, and the arena in Los Angeles had been drawing maybe a thousand people before that night. I got up, and there were 15,000 people. I never saw so many little kids in all my life. They were screaming and ripping my jacket off, licking my arm … you wouldn’t believe it. I never knew I could become an overnight sensation.”

The Wrestling Beatle would extend his record by defeating Tiger Longoria and Firpo Zbyszko in successive matches the following month. Ringo was even billed to appear with Playboy Playmate (and attempted John Lennon seductress) Jayne Mansfield as his manager. It was all lining up for George Ringo… he was on a path straight to the World’s Title… unfortunately, he simply wasn’t a very good performer.

Ringo’s manager, Bob Luce, would deliver the hard truth in a 1971 interview with the Chicago Tribune. “It was a clever idea,” Luce said about the Wrestling Beatle. “But George couldn’t mount a convincing win in the ring even if he came armed with a shotgun.”

By the mid-‘60s, Bob Sabre had gone back to jobbing, though his Beatles alter ego did score him some tag team wins with Dick the Bruiser. A 1970 issue of The Wrestler described the team of Dick the Bruiser and George Ringo as a comedy act — with Dick the Bruiser being forced to choose a terrible partner so he could essentially wrestle handicap matches against Bobby Heenan and talent like Blackjack Lanza or Angelo Poffo.

According to Cagematch, Bob Sabre’s final bout was a losing effort against Ernie Ladd at a 1978 WWA event in Indianapolis. The man once known as George Ringo would start his own wrestling school at the Ravenswood YMCA in Chicago, training local talent and taking them on short tours through the midwest.

“I owe everything to Bob,” Kevin Clark, a wrestler known a Zebra Kid recalled shortly before his death in 2020. “He trained me, he was a mentor for me, he was a friend. Later, after I broke into the business, we promoted together. When I got married, Bob was my best man.”

Clark also recalled the death of his mentor. “Bob came down with colon cancer, and he grasped at every straw, he weighed a solid 240, 245 pounds, and in no time, he went down to maybe 90 pounds, laying in a hospital bed in a fetal position. I would go up and visit him almost every day once they put him in the hospital at the final stages.”

Bob Sabre died from colon cancer on June 15, 1989. Sabre didn’t have any children during his life, but his widow would tell Clark that Sabre considered his wrestling students to be his “kids.”

Clark was asked to deliver the eulogy as his mentor’s funeral, but instead shared funny stories about Sabre, inspiring other students of former Wrestling Beatle to do the same.

Special thanks to Defector, who published the definitive article on George Ringo, the Wrestling Beatle.

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