It is a very sad day with the loss of Shorty and my best wishes go out to Linda and family. I knew him for 51 years and we talked most weeks. It only seems yesterday I was at Shorty’s 70th birthday party in this building and he said to me recently “I want you to be at my 80th birthday next year.”
Two famous wrestlers came from Waiheke. Lofty Blomfield lived at Oneroa in the 1940’s and had The Holiday Inn there from 1948. He used to run kids around in his jeep on the beach and was very popular.
Shorty Hansen was the other famous wrestler from the Island. He started off as a jockey, but always had trouble making the weight, so he decided wrestling was the better option.
He won many titles, for the New Zealand Wrestling Union, and Ernie Pinches South Pacific Wrestling Association. He won ten consecutive Auckland wrestling titles. It must be remembered that amateur wrestling in those days was a huge sport and the NZ union had 8,000 on their books alone. He went to Japan in 1960 with the New Zealand team and was selected to tour India but he told me recently he had bad flu and couldn’t travel. Only small in size Shorty was a straight shooter–never took any nonsense from anyone, and he lived his life the same way.
We saw him at his best a few weeks back on our return from Napier for Steve Rickard’s funeral. Johnny Garcia took us down by car and we discussed every wrestler in history on that trip. We dropped Shorty off at the wharf in Auckland the following evening. We parked near the airport busses to let Shorty off and a security guard came running up. “You can’t park there, I will have to give you a ticket” Shorty replied “Piss off, You can’t give us a ticket. You are only a jumped up security guard, I’m not scared of you.” Anyway we took off and left Shorty arguing with the guard. Not sure if Johnny Garcia got a ticket or not.
Some years back when John DaSilva was running the Youth Programme on the Great Barrier, Shorty, Eddie Batt and his brother Merv who most of us knew as Steve Rickard, and I planned a trip to the Barrier, stay a few nights and speak with the boys in the camp. We took off from Auckland airport early one morning and it was a shocking day. Real stormy weather and the rain was coming in through the pop rivets on the small plane and we all got wet. We all thought our number was up. We got to the Barrier and the pilot said “We can’t land as the airport is clouded over and we need to go back to Auckland” The trip back was pretty unpleasant and we all said a few prayers. We headed back to Auckland and high winds, heavy rain, grey outside and you could not see sky or sea. Shorty has told me many times since “I thought we were gonna’s. We got off the plane and the pilot said, “that was my worst ever trip to the Barrier.” Then he said “Go and get your money back”. We went to the ticket office and the young gentleman said. The Barrier is clear now “Do you want to go back on the next plane.” Piss off said Shorty, I am never going on another aeroplane.” So we all took the refund, headed to a Chinese restaurant in Dominion Road and then back to Birkdale to check out my wrestling history. During the 1980’s Shorty was doing some refereeing for Steve Rickard and others, and in 1990 he had a call from Steve to see if he would referee Steve’s “On the Mat” programme which was shown on TV3.
As it turned out Shorty stole the limelight and became the star of the show. John Dybvig in his book wrote the following piece. “We had this great new ref: Shorty Hansen. Shorty was an entertainment all by himself. At five foot nothing around sixty years of age , he added just the right amount of inspired absurdity to lift the thing into the realms of the truly bizarre.
He tugged on bulldog’s sad old arms and invited him into a chase sequence. Bulldog quit sucking on Laki’s forehead and wobbled after Shorty with both arms outstretched like Frankenstein’s monster. Shorty outstretched his own arms and looked back over his shoulder — the classic cartoon chase posture–and shot off round the ring. He was way too fast for Bulldog of course, and had to slow down to glacial speed to keep things interesting and to clear some space for Laki. Then Bulldog caught Laki’s legs and fell over backwards. Close enough. Shorty dived to the canvas and whacked out a highly dramatic three count.
Thank you very much.
