Wahoo McDaniel


Edward McDaniel was a Choctaw-Chickasaw Native American who achieved fame as a professional American football player and later as a professional wrestler. He is notable for having held the NWA United States Heavyweight Championship five times. McDaniel was a major star in prominent National Wrestling Alliance affiliated promotions such as Championship Wrestling from Florida, Georgia Championship Wrestling, NWA Big Time Wrestling and Jim Crockett Promotions.

Early life

Wahoo was born in the small town of Bernice, Oklahoma in 1938. His father worked in oil and he moved to several towns before settling down in Midland, Texas while Wahoo was in middle school. One of his baseball coaches was George H. W. Bush. The name "Wahoo" actually came from his father who was known as "Big Wahoo". He was a problematic teenager but he was accepted to the University of Oklahoma. There he became a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity and he was also a part of Bud Wilkinson's Sooners football program.

Professional football career

After he started playing as a linebacker for the New York Jets in 1964, McDaniel started wearing a custom jersey which had the name "Wahoo" sewn on the back above jersey 54. Whenever he made a tackle as a Jet, the public address announcer would ask the crowd WHO made that tackle, and the crowd would shout, "Wahoo! Wahoo! Wahoo!"

Professional wrestling career

In 1974, Wahoo came to Mid-Atlantic to wrestle for Jim Crockett Promotions and help build up the territory as a singles territory in a feud with a rival from Texas, Johnny Valentine. The feud evolved into a tag feud with Wahoo and Paul Jones taking on Johnny Valentine and Ric Flair, who Wahoo met in the AWA. His performance was heavily disliked and criticized.
McDaniel and John Valentine went on to have a feud remembered to this day for the sheer force of their punch/chop exchanges, both men widely known for their hard-hitting style. Wahoo won the Mid-Atlantic title from Valentine on June 29, 1975, in Asheville, North Carolina.
In 1977, Johnny Valentine's son Greg Valentine attacked Wahoo and broke his leg in an angle to establish Greg as Johnny's successor. Greg Valentine originally won the title on June 11, 1977, with Wahoo regaining it in Raleigh, NC two months later. On September 7, 1977, Greg Valentine regained the title at the WRAL-TV studio tapings, breaking Wahoo's leg in the process. This angle is particularly remembered for a follow-up interview weeks later with Flair and Valentine throwing change at Wahoo, and Valentine asking Wahoo if he needed a custom-made wheelchair for his fat body. Valentine then infuriated fans by parading around in T-shirts which read "I Broke Wahoo's Leg" and "No More Wahoo."
Wahoo is often compared to Chief Jay Strongbow, who played a Native American wrestler at the time. Wahoo was respected by other wrestlers and football players for his toughness, physical style and his crazy antics outside of the ring. The respect as a legitimate athlete made it easy for him to go to different territories and be successful when many babyfaces had trouble doing so. Joe Namath and Larry Csonka, who played with him early in their careers, wrote stories about him in their autobiographies. Along that same line, Len Dawson has been quoted as saying "The hardest hit I ever received on a football field was by Wahoo McDaniel."
In 2019, he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.

Personal life

McDaniel was married five times to four different women. With his first wife, Monta Rae, he had two daughters, Nikki, born in June 1963 and living in Houston and Cindi, born in October 1965 and living in Rowlett, Texas. He has four grandchildren, Dustin and Brittany through Nikki and twins, Morgan and Taylor, through Cindi. He also had a son, Zac, from a later marriage to Karen Reeves.
McDaniel's health started to deteriorate in the mid-1990s, which led to his retirement in 1996, and he eventually lost both kidneys. He was awaiting a kidney transplant when he died of complications from diabetes and kidney failure on April 18, 2002.

Championships and accomplishments