"Canadian Crusher" Chris Coleman
Out of Hamilton by way of the Maritimes, Chris Coleman took the Canadian Championship three times before he was twenty-six. Then he spent nine years as the Frontier Justice League’s enforcer, the man they sent when something needed stopping.
Chris "Canadian Crusher" Coleman wrestled in the Great Western Alliance, the American territory promotion chronicled across this site. He worked the Canada, Rocky Mountain, and Frontier territories from 1967 to 1988. Other promotions have used the same ring name; this profile covers the GWA wrestler.
AT A GLANCE
- Name: Chris Coleman
- Ring name: "Canadian Crusher"
- Born: 1947, Hamilton, Ontario
- Billed from: Calgary, Alberta
- Height: 6'1"
- Weight: 268 lbs
- Active: 1965 to 1988, in the GWA from 1967
- Territories: Canada, Rocky Mountain, Frontier
- Finishing move: the bearhug
- Championships: GWA Canadian Championship (3)
EARLY LIFE
Chris Coleman was born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1947. He took his first bookings in the Maritimes at eighteen and spent two years working Nova Scotia halls before the GWA picked him up in 1967.
CAREER
The first Canadian Championship (1968)
The GWA opened its Canada territory out of Calgary in 1968 and crowned a Canadian Champion that January. Coleman was in the match at twenty. Thomas Reed beat him for the belt. Coleman took it off Reed in the spring.
Canada (1968 to 1972)
Coleman held the Canadian Championship three times inside five years. The territory ran a mat-based house style built on submission holds and worked as much like a school as a circuit. Coleman got his falls a plainer way, by getting hold of a man and squeezing until he gave.
Rocky Mountain and the Frontier (1973 to 1988)
From 1973 he took his dates in Rocky Mountain, mixed with Frontier. He held no championship after Canada.
Silver Creek (1973)
Paul Johnson had been his tag partner. In September 1973 Johnson was in Silver Creek, Montana, standing with a local promoter whose building B. Beauregard Blackthorn's people were pressing him to sell. Coleman was working the door at a Calgary hall when Johnson came for him. He turned up at the Miners' Hall unannounced.
He and Johnson took the main event that night, Coleman forcing Eddie "The Enforcer" King to give. He was in the main event again a week later beside Johnson and Jake Hipp. Through the week that followed he ran the building's security while Blackthorn's men worked the town: cease-and-desist papers, an attempt to have the hall condemned, cash offers to every wrestler in the group. When they cut the town's supply routes, Coleman and Hipp brought goods in through Canada and across reservation land.
The matter settled at the Stampede Showdown on the outdoor grounds, seven against seven under Sundown Rules. Coleman put Luchador X out. Brad Boone caught him with a foreign object and put him out in turn, and Coleman watched the finish from the floor while Johnson and A Man Named Sioux closed it.
The Frontier Justice League (1973 to 1982)
Coleman was Johnson's second for the run of the group, the man who kept order inside it and stood between the members and anything coming at them from outside. He spoke little in front of a camera. He got harder and shorter-tempered as the years went on. He stayed to the end in 1982.
After the League (1983 to 1988)
He took the head of security job at Silver Creek, which by then was running as a community trust, and kept taking dates into 1988.
CHAMPIONSHIPS AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS
- GWA Canadian Championship, three reigns, 1968 to 1972
- Runner-up in the first Canadian Championship match, January 1968
RIVALRIES
Thomas Reed. The first Canadian Champion, and the man who beat Coleman for the belt and then lost it back to him three months later. Reed worked precise and cold. Coleman worked heavy and loud. The territory ran them against each other on that contrast for years.
IN THE RING
Burly and barrel-chested, built low and thick, in black trunks and black boots with no gown. He wore the seven-pointed star on his gear once the Frontier Justice League formed. He wrestled close, took hold early, and worked from clinches and body locks. He finished with a bearhug he ground down into the ribs until the other man gave.
He was cheerful going in, shaking hands down the aisle and grinning at the front row, and he turned wildman at the bell.
What set him off was bullying. Two men on one, a manager grabbing a woman at ringside, a big man working over somebody who could not answer: Coleman came over the ropes for that, on his own card or somebody else's, and the promoters learned to make room for it. It is the reason Johnson wanted him at Silver Creek.
Johnson talked. Coleman stood behind him with his arms folded and made the point that way.
LEGACY
Three reigns in Canada before he turned twenty-six, and none after. The rest of it is the League: the enforcer who arrived without being asked, held the doors at Silver Creek for a week, and stayed with the group for nine years. The record carries him as the second name on the Frontier Justice League and the first one they sent when something needed stopping.
