“The year is around 1952, the dead of winter in Chicago. I’m 18 years old, bucking the fierce winds off Lake Michigan and the below-zero temperature as I head across the parking lot to attend classes at the University of Illinois at Navy Pier. I wait freezing while a Cadillac approaches, a yellow convertible with the top down. The driver is immense with a lion’s mane of hair blowing in the wind. He wears no coat, jacket, or sweater. Just a loud Hawaiian print, short sleeve shirt. His massive forearms almost obscure the steering wheel. I immediately recognize Yukon Eric. He is out for a spin along Chicago’s Outer Drive. His car passes. Somehow it does not seem as cold as before.” George Jerz
Memory of Wrestler (E-Mail)
My father tried sending the above reminiscence to a Yukon Eric memorial page, but the e-mail got bounced back. I’m happy to publish it here instead.
Hi Yukon beat up Hepburn after that.
How did Yukon beat up Hepburn and where?
I thought Hepburn defeated Yukon with a reverse bearhug?
My father, George Jerz, says this: “I don’t know for sure that Yukon ever wrestled a Hepburn. There was a Doug Hepburn, a Canadian, weighed about 270 pounds, and was a strong-man champion. That’s all I know about a wrestling Hepburn.”
How did Yukon beat Hepburn, by pinning him or getting him to submit. I thought Huburn used an upside down bear hug to defeat Yukon???
I too followed Yukon in the fifties and he was my favorite. The only man to rival Eric in size and strength was Doug Hepburn of Canada who wrestled Eric several times and defeated Eric in Hamilton with an upside down bear hug.
I saw him as a young boy in the Boston Garden with my dad,never ever will I see his equal. He was a giant man among a lot of phonies….I don’t follow wrestling much because it will be an awful long time before a guy like Yukon Eric appears again….
strongest man in wrestling,that i ever saw
It still hurts after all these years , he left some BIG shoes to fill and so for no one has shown me anything .
Went to the ring in the sky to soon !! If we only had him now , he would be unstopable . Truely one of the GREATS !!