Wrestling legend Mario Milano reflects on the rise and fall of wrestling, and his wish to bring back the good old days.

Do you watch it?
Sometimes I do. My girls, they watch it. Sometimes I look but it's not like it used to be. I won't say it's not real but a lot of things they do I don't believe.

So how seriously do you take it?
I don't like it, I don't like it. I don't think it's nice. It's not like years ago when it was a competition, personal, between one person and the other. What hurt wrestling here in Australia was that someone, say Killer Kowalski, says on television, "Mario, next Saturday I'm gonna break your arms", and people come and don't see that happen. They say, "See, it's all bullshit" . . . The interviews, in those years, were to intimidate the opponent. They weren't for the public. Actually, Muhammad Ali copied from wrestling.

Was there much money in it for you and the other big stars back then?
Look, when I came to Australia in 1967, the average wages of a working, family man were $35-50 a week. I used to make $800 a week and everything paid, hotels, taxis, air fares, whatever. It was very, very good money, yes.

I read that you first fought in Venezuela. How did you get your start?
I first saw professional wrestling as a 16-year-old in Caracas. One of the wrestlers from Peru opened a wrestling school and I went there . . . I was under 18 when I started . . . In that country, in those years, nobody under 18 was allowed by himself on the street after nine o'clock at night. That's why . . . I started with a mask because I was too young. My name at that time was Black Diablo. When I reached 20, they took my mask off and I became Mario Bulfone, my real name. Italians accepted me as an idol, then I went to America and could not speak English at all and my manager took me to an interview with a promoter who said the people wouldn't remember my name. He said: "From Italy? Big city in Italy - Milano." So they called me Mario Milano.

What's your fondest memory?
I still have the Australian tag team heavyweight championship which I won with the late Larry O'Dea. I have good memories of some opponents, too, like Killer Kowalski, for instance. In the ring, he was a very mean, dirty bastard. In real life, out of the ring, he was a gentleman. If you beat him, he'd come to your dressing room and shake hands with you. With some of them, there was professional jealousy. They didn't want to talk to you. They hated you.