Why David Sammartino's Wrestling Career Was Doomed From The Start

Given that professional wrestling has so many second, third, or even fourth generation wrestling stars walking its halls, it would be easy to mistake it as a sign that every wrestler's kid has a future in the wrestling business. While some have had careers that were respectable, equaled, or even surpassed their more famous parents, there's been plenty of wrestlers who followed their mother or father into the ring, only to then completely and totally flop. The most often cited example of this is David Flair, the oldest child of wrestling legend Ric Flair. Debuting in 1999, the younger Flair wrestled for several years and even won the WCW United States Championship, but was largely considered a failure who failed to get over and was rushed onto TV without proper training. In other words, he never had a chance. It's a similar argument one could make about another David, in this case David Sammartino. 

As one could surmise from taking a glance at his last name, David was the son of Bruno Sammartino, who was in many ways the Ric Flair of the 1960s and 70s, known for his two lengthy WWE Championship reigns (still among the longest in history), his legendary feuds with the likes of former protege Larry Zbyszko, and his drawing power, all which combined to give him the reputation of one of the greatest wrestlers of all time. That reputation would be hard for any son to follow, and the elder Sammartino appeared to be aware of that, as he favored David pursuing another career in order to avoid comparison and the dark side of wrestling Sammartino himself experienced coming up. Alas, David ignored these pleas, debuting in 1980 and going on to wrestle on and off for the next 16 years, later ending a 14 year hiatus in 2010 to wrestle a handful of matches. While his career went better than David Flair's did, that's not saying a ton

In fairness to the younger Sammartino, he made a noble effort, working as many promotions and territories as he could at the start of his career before joining WWE in 1984. And with his father managing him, David initially was poised for a push. The problem was that WWE later proved to have no interest in him unless his father was at ringside, resulting in David's momentum starting and stopping repeatedly during his tenure. The other issue is that while David wasn't a bad wrestler, he was light years away from his father, or any of the top workers in WWE at the time. As a result, he was gone only a year after he started in WWE, oddly enough taping out in his last match to a Bearhug, his father's signature move, again Ron Shaw, in a moment some thought was off script.

David would journey to the AWA afterward, and even returned to WWE a few years later for another short stint. Regardless of whether it was the AWA and UWF, where he was treated somewhat as a decent name, or in WWE, where he was a preliminary guy, David never was able to escape the shadow of his father. In some ways, he may not have wanted to, as the younger Sammartino is said to have proposed teaming with his father during the 80s; Bruno's reluctance to do so was believed to be the catalyst of their strained relationship later in life. In any event, after two matches with WCW in 1996, David distanced himself from wrestling, save for those aforementioned one off matches, and decided to pursue a career as a personal trainer, which he continues to this day. It seems to have been for the best, as no matter what David Sammartino did in wrestling, it was destined to never be enough, in the eyes of the fans, to measure up to his more famous father.