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Last updated 21 April 2015
Calgary's Kroffat climbs back in ring for a rematch of the ageless
The 'rasslers' boot-stomp into a 'rasslin' news conference at the Hard Rock Cafe in sweat pants, muscle shirts and head bands. And one of them arrives in a shiny Jaguar, double-breasted grey suit and with a cellular phone that never stops ringing.
It is Dan Kroffat, who refuses to grunt and groan with the rest.
"You should have gotten more than $35,000," the silver-haired Calgary auto broker tells an employee/ex-wrestler on the cell phone.
The disguise is good, but closer inspection reveals a former pro wrestler. Kroffat's forehead, for instance, looks like a road map to the Victoria Pavilion.
Twenty-one years ago at the corral, Kroffat tangled with Archie (The Stomper) Gouldie. If you don't believe him, he will show you the souvenir of the donnybrook stopped "in a pool of blood." He places your hand on a loonie-sized lump on the left side of his forehead. [note to non-Canadians, the loonie is our one-dollar coin - about an inch across]
"Feel that and you'll know it wasn't chicken-capsule blood, as they say it is. That's where Archie stomped on me when I was down. He split my head wide open. I was dizzy as hell for days."
So, tonight, like Superman, the man with the cell phone will shed the tailored suit for casual wear - trunks - for the rematch of rematches.
Kroffat, the classic good guy, will renew acquaintances with Gouldie, the classic villain, in the feature nostalgic bout of tonight's Stu Hart tribute card at the Corral.
At 50, Kroffat doesn't need a last dance in his trunks. A successful businessman, who resides in a $500,000 mansion at Bearspaw Country Club, is not driven back to the stage for one last curtain call by an inferiority complex.
So why has he been running five miles a day around the golf course for three months, feverishly training for one last gasp amid rumors that Gouldie, 58, has been running 15 miles a day in Tennessee?
"Three reasons," says the one-time popular headliner of Hart's Stampede Wrestling. "All the money goes to the Calgary Quest Children's Society, it's my birthday gift to Stu Hart, my life's mentor, and we have to finish the match to end all matches... now it's the geriatric match of the century.
"We were both bleeding like crazy when Rabbi Ginsberg (of the Calgary Boxing and Wrestling Commission) rang the bell to stop it. Gouldie went his way, I went mine. We haven't seen each other since."
Although Kroffat hasn't been in the ring in 10 years, he says he's fit, at six feet, 220 pounds, except for a disc being cranky from being stomped on and a finger being shorter from being bitten off by Abdullah The Butcher.
A former baseball player in the Pittsburgh Pirates' farm system who continues to play world-class slo-pitch, Kroffat was one of the top prospects to emerge from "The Dungeon," Hart's basement gym.
"Stu taught me that wrestling can be the foundation of one's life. The same values I learned in wrestling opened doors for me and made me a successful businessman. In wrestling and in life, you have to be adaptable, you have to be like a chameleon."
Now at the Hard Rock, a dubious character named Dr. Zhivago comes over to yell in the auto broker's cauliflower ear.
"Archie'll toast this man in less than a minute!" bawls Dr. Zhivago, spokesman for The Stomper. "One boot to your head, and it'll be lights out, Bubba. You shoulda stayed retired."
The one with the cell phone, who never was one to engage in trash talk, smiles.
"I'll be nervous as hell," says Kroffat, whose wife and two daughters will be in the crowd. "There's a fear, a fear of having a heart attack, a fear of looking bad. Too many athletes stay too long. It's very important to me to walk out with my pride.
"If you listen when we make contact, you'll hear it through the building. We'll be doing it right. It'll be just like the old times. I'll get him off guard by asking what kind of deodorant he's using and I'll power-slam him and..."
And he is rudely interrupted by the cell phone.