This story is part of a special series featuring older Australians looking back on their lives.
In the 1960s and 70s, wrestling mania had taken hold in Australia.
And one of its local stars, Antonios Kontellis - or Tony - liked to eat big before a match.
"Well, I used to eat chicken with the bones, eat the bones,” he tells SBS News.
At 85, Tony insists he can still eat a whole chicken, bones included.
“The only thing is the drumstick bones, I don't eat them now. All the chicken, the whole chicken, and the bones. I'll go and get a chicken and eat it now."
Simone, his wife of 62 years, confirms he still has a massive appetite.
Tony Kontellis applying a headlock to Les Thornton. Source: Tony Kontellis
"Even now I tell him, 'don't eat too much!'” she says.
During his wrestling days, it was hard for her to keep up with him.
"So he could have strength, he could eat two large steaks; the amount that you would eat, times that by ten."
"Or he could eat two barbeque chooks [and] loads of fruit and vegetables. He loved it. I think he was born to wrestle."
A way out of poverty
One of nine children, Tony was born on the Greek island of Lesbos just before the Second World War. Wrestling offered him and his late brother Charlie a way out of the poverty of post-war Europe.
"Straight after that, we went into a civil war. Things were very difficult, to be honest," Tony says.
"We decided to go to Athens. I started wrestling ... I've done well ... in 1956 I came to Australia. I trained with the Olympic team in Adelaide, then I broke my thumb."
Tony and his brother Charlie in their early 20s. Source: Tony Kontellis
The brothers migrated to Australia when Tony was 20, and Charlie, 23, but with injury ruling him out of the 1956 Olympics, Tony instead started to compete in local matches, mainly in Sydney and Melbourne.
Working by day in his car yard and training at night, Tony would later go professional and travel the world between 1961 and 1963 with a team of wrestlers.
“We went to New Zealand, went to Canada. We went to the United States. I've wrestled in Madison Square Garden, which is a feather in everybody's cap.”
But it was in the East where his career really took off.
“India, Pakistan, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia ... The crowds!" he says.
In India, he says wrestling was like a religion.
"You can't compare the Indian crowds with the Australian or the American. In Calcutta, wrestling in front of 80,000 people, can you imagine 80,000 Indians?”
“And if you could do their own style, you would get more followers, and I did plenty of that, Indian-style."
King Kong Czaja
One of his biggest achievements was being the first to defeat notorious wrestler King Kong Czaja, who got the nickname after playing King Kong in an Indian movie.
Czaja, a star on the sub-continent, regularly attracted more than 100,000 fans in India and Pakistan.
"King Kong was 430 pounds. Imagine? A huge boy he was.”
Tony was the first to defeat King Kong Czaja, a star across the sub-continent. Source: Tony Kontellis
The first time Tony beat him was in Wellington, New Zealand.
“A lot of people said 'if he falls on you, you're going to die'. I said 'no I'm not. I am not going to let him fall on me. I am going to fall on him'. And I did that. I believed that I was going to beat him and I did beat him."
Like other wrestlers, Kontellis had his own signature move.
"For me, the final always was an aeroplane spin which I learned from [American wrestler] Jim Londos back in the very early days or wresting.”
Some years later, he would showcase that move to the masses, as a TV career came calling.
World Champion Wrestling
Every Saturday and Sunday between 1964 and 1978, Channel 9 broadcast World Champion Wrestling - turning wrestlers such as Tony, into household names.
Others such as Killer Karl Kox, Mario Milano, Spiros Arion and Abdullah the Butcher also became celebrities.
Tony says there was nothing like the feeling of getting into the ring.
"It's something out of this world. You get people clapping. You get people swearing at you, you get people throwing stuff on you. If you love the sport you don't care what people say."
The live matches gained widespread popularity and Tony still has a collection of newspaper articles, photographs and posters from the time.
Tony in a 1966 news clipping. Source: Antonios Kontellis
"When the television came in, everybody watched, and everybody was known, some more than others and they followed you and stopped you in the street," he says.
Postwar migrants and wrestling
Many of the wrestlers from his era were migrants from Greece, Italy, Turkey and the Middle East - from countries where wrestling dates back to antiquity.
“There were people from all over the world, from all colours and creeds,” Tony says.
There was one standout star for him, Lebanese-born Sheik Wadi Ayoub, also known as Sheik Ali. He was famous for his headbutts, and a manoeuvre known as 'the Egyptian deadlock'.
Part of Tony's collection of wrestling memorabilia. Source: Tony Kontellis
“Wadi was the best wrestler, amateur and professional. He thought to do good, you have to be good.”
Many of wrestling's spectators were also migrants.
"People just went first of all to be entertained by their heroes, then they started to love wrestling. A lot of the followers were Greeks or Italians, and then came the Australians.”
Tony today
To the people who say wrestling isn’t real, Tony tells them to give it a go themselves.
"Get on top rope and take a bump and see if you can do it," he says.
"Or a body slam when a guy 20-stone jumps on you from the top right on your throat. It's not easy and you can get hurt.”
At 85, Tony is lucky to still be in good shape, having been knocked out three times.
At one time, his career looked like it was over.
"I fell on my head. I went to the doctor and they said to me 'forget wrestling, you don't wrestle anymore, you don't even talk to wrestlers anymore because your spine, it's pretty disturbed'."
For a while, a young Tony followed his doctor's advice, but he kept returning to the ring.
Wrestling also took a toll on family life. Tony was sometimes away for months at a time from his wife and two children. The couple now has five grandchildren.
Tony and Simone on their wedding day in 1957. Source: Antonios Kontellis
Eventually, he turned to selling cars, establishing his own car yard in Arncliffe in Sydney while simultaneously running a wrestling school full-time.
He says you always have to have a plan about what you will do next.
"A lot of the boys, they go off their heads when they stop wrestling. Why is that? It's because you have to get yourself organised.”
“I know I can't jump from the top rope forever and you have to try to wean yourself out of it."
Tony still gets recognised today.
Tony in Sydney. Source: SBS News
Just recently he was stopped in his local shopping centre in Bexley in Sydney’s South.
"He says to me, 'Tony you're still around?' I say, 'yeah'. He says ‘how old are you? ... 85? I beg your pardon?'"
Wrestling has seen a resurgence in popularity in Australia in recent years with women also increasingly participating.
Tony says the fundamentals still apply, and the study of traditional wrestling techniques remains essential.
Just as important, he says, is passion.
"The places that I went and the things that I did, if I had multi-million dollars I could not do it."
"It's not the money that will take you there. It's the ability and the love towards the sport - and I had that."
