This Minnesota City High School Forged Wrestling's Biggest Legends

When one thinks of the "hubs" of professional wrestling, the first places that come to mind in the United States are the New York Citys and Chicagos of the world; big cities with deep wrestling roots that usually drew the biggest and loudest crowds for shows. One place that most wouldn't associate with cities like that is the great state of Minnesota, and any of its major cities. While there have been notable wrestling events in the state over the last decade, including AEW Full Gear in 2021, where "Hangman" Adam Page defeated Kenny Omega to become AEW World Champion, Minnesota isn't exactly thought of as a great wrestling state. This is funny because back in the territory days, it was considered exactly that.

In fact, long before the days of national touring wrestling companies, Minnesota, along with Texas, Florida,  and the Carolinas, was not just a wrestling hub; it was among THE wrestling hubs. Credit for that can be placed on Verne Gagne, the Minnesota-born wrestling legend who, after a successful run in the 1950s, founded his own promotion in his native Minnesota, the American Wrestling Association, in 1960. For over 30 years, the AWA was one of the cornerstone promotions of the NWA, eventually even securing a TV deal with ESPN, while also platforming some of the biggest names in wrestling history, including Hulk Hogan earlier in his career. As with most successful ventures, AWA inspired many within Minnesota to one day put the wrestling boots on and pursue a career in the squared circle. But even in that case, one would never expect it to inspire those career goals for so many in one specific case. But that's exactly what it did for those who attended Robbinsdale High School in Robbinsdale, Minnesota, during the 70s.

For a long time, Robbinsdale's most notable connection to wrestling was with Gagne himself; the AWA founder graduated from the high school in 1943, after winning two consecutive high school wrestling state championships. His son, Greg Gagne, would later attend the school himself in the 1960s, before going on to have his own successful career with the AWA. The Gagnes attending Robbinsdale would've been enough to make the high school a wrestling landmark, which means the fact that seven future wrestling stars attended it all at the same time in the mid-1970s pretty much makes it a wrestling institution. Among some of the names who walked the Robbinsdale halls during that fans will recognize are former WWE stars Tom Zenk, Brady Boone, John Nord, and Barry Darsow, best known as Smash, one half of the legendary WWE tag team Demolition.

Then there's three more names who, at certain points, were among the biggest and most respected stars of the industry. The first is Nikita Koloff. Though history has been less kind to his reputation, given he retired from wrestling in his early 30s, Koloff's run for Jim Crockett Promotions in the 1980s saw him rub shoulders with Sting, Lex Luger, and the Four Horsemen, while winning several major titles. Then there's Curt Hennig and "Ravishing" Rick Rude. Friends from childhood all the way to the end of their lives, Hennig and Rude both went on to become World Champions and WWE Hall of Famers during their legendary careers, and towards the end of Rude's life were even joined at the hip in WCW, where Rude managed Hennig. If the other names on the list didn't already prove it, Hennig and Rude show that Robbinsdale High School in Minnesota forged some of the best the wrestling world ever saw.