thick ass thighs: March 2007

3.31.2007

Abe Coleman, 101, a Polish-born professional wrestler promoted as the "Hebrew Hercules" and "Jewish Tarzan" and credited in the 1930s with popularizing the dropkick move, likened to a flying kick in the jaw, died Wednesday of kidney failure at a nursing home in Queens, N.Y.

Starting in the late 1920s, Coleman had more than 2,000 fights during a 25-year career. He was among the oldest living professional wrestlers.

He was a strikingly broad but diminutive man whose 5-foot, 3-inch frame prompted jokes that he appeared to be standing in a ditch.

However, at 200 pounds — not to mention his 18-inch biceps and 18 1/2 -inch neck — he stood his ground in the ring like an immovable fireplug.

And he was amazingly agile. His signature move was the dropkick, in which the wrestler jumps up and boots his opponent with the soles of his feet. He claimed to have introduced the maneuver in 1930 after having toured Australia and seeing kangaroos attack the same way.

Coleman, who later spelled his name Colman, became a promoter and wrestling referee in the late 1950s and inspected license plates for the New York Department of Motor Vehicles.

He was born Abba Kelmer on Sept. 20, 1905, in Zychlin, Poland, one of 15 children. Much of his extended family died during the Holocaust of World War II. He moved to Winnipeg, Canada, in 1923 before settling in New York.