George Zaharias

Infobox Wrestler
name=Theodore Vetoyanis

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img_capt=
names=George Zaharias
height=
weight= convert|300|lb|kg|abbr=on|lk=on
birth_date = 1908
death_date = death date and age|1984|5|22|1908|1|1
birth_place = Pueblo, Colorado, United States
death_place = Tampa, Florida
resides=
billed=
trainer=
debut=c. 1930
retired=1938
website=|

Theodore Vetoyanis (1908 - 1984) was an American professional wrestler and sports promoter, known by his ring name George Zaharias, popularly known as "The Crying Greek from Cripple Creek" or "The Greek Hyena" during the 1930s. Often cast as a villain or sore loser, one of his most celebrated bouts was a 1932 match with Jim Londos at a sold-out Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, which Londos won. [cite web|url=http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Wrestling/2003/11/10/252609.html|title=The Inside Cradle|publisher=Canoe.ca|date=November 10 2003|accessdate=2007-08-15] The 14,500 audience was the highest attendance for any North American wrestling match that year. [cite web|url=http://www.garywill.com/toronto/yearly.htm|title= Top drawing matches, year-by-year, 1929-1974 |publisher=Toronto Wrestling History|accessdate=2007-08-15]

In 1938 Zaharias met Babe Didrikson, a talented female athlete best known as a golfer, at a charity golf event; the promoter had matched the wrestler, the golfer, and a minister in a threesome as a gag. Zaharias and Didrikson married later that year, and Zaharias quit wrestling in order to manage his wife's career. He promoted wrestlers and ran a cigar store in Denver. [cite news|url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,886420,00.html|title="Whatta Woman"|date=March 10 1947|publisher=TIME magazine|accessdate=2007-08-15] As Babe's career soared, he managed a tailoring shop, a women's sports clothier in Beverly Hills, California, and a golf course in Florida, where the couple retired.

In 1975, Alex Karras portrayed George Zaharias in the TV movie "Babe", (opposite his eventual wife, actress Susan Clark), which told the story of Didrikson, who won two gold medals in track and field at the 1932 Olympics and returned to become a champion golfer, her battles to be accepted as a woman in a man's sports world, and her fight against cancer.

References

External links

* [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980CE4DC173BF937A15756C0A962948260 New York Times: George Zaharias, Husband Of Babe Didrikson, Is Dead]
* [http://biblos.lamar.edu:8000/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/BabeD&CISOPTR=881&REC=3 Special Collections and Lamar University Archives: Husband of athlete Babe Zaharias dies]
* " [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072677/ Babe] ", a 1975 TV movie biography, at The Internet Movie Database