‘He’s such a nice guy’: New film shares two sides of pro wrestling’s legendary villain Jim ‘The Baron’ Raschke

CATHY WURZER: Say, can I tell y'all something? When I was a young kid, I'd watch the All-Star Wrestling TV show with my grandparents Saturday nights on WTCN-TV Channel 11 in the Twin Cities. My immigrant German grandparents had wrestlers they really liked, including a gruff-voiced, goose-stepping, bald-headed guy who went by the name Baron Von Raschke.

Now, the Baron was a villain known as a heel, in the wrestling business, but fans loved him. In the early days of his career, he had something called a Prussian sleeper hold he'd put on opponents before pinning them to win, but not before beating up that opponent and taunting fans who were at ringside. The incredible story of Baron Von Raschke, real name Jim Raschke, is the subject of a documentary film that's due to be streamed on Amazon called The Claw.

[MUSIC PLAYING] Pay attention, all you snot-nosed punks

We're gonna go for it

SUBJECT 1: Such a sneaky, mean, evil, no good-for-nothing guy.

SUBJECT 2: Baron Von Raschke, listen to me!

SUBJECT 3: He'll try anything to win.

[SHOUTING]

KARL RASCHKE: As soon as I was watching TV, he was being a bad guy. But he was my dad, and I thought he was a superhero.

CATHY WURZER: That's Jim Raschke's son Karl, who thought his dad was a superhero. Karl wrote and co-produced the film. And joining Karl is the legendary Hall of Fame pro wrestler, former substitute teacher, Jim "The Baron" Raschke, who hails not from Germany, rather, Hastings, Minnesota.

Both are on the line. I am so excited. Thank you both for joining us.

KARL RASCHKE: Thanks for having us.

JIM RASCHKE: And I'm glad to be here.

CATHY WURZER: Thank you. Now, in the interest of transparency, I have an autographed photo of you, Baron, at my desk here at MPR, thanks to your daughter my colleague, Heidi. So I come by my fandom honestly. Thank you so much for that.

JIM RASCHKE: You're very welcome. I hope it keeps the bugs away.

CATHY WURZER: It does. You wrestled for a long time in what were originally called territories. The Minnesota-based AWA covered not only the Midwest but a number of other states. I can't imagine it was an easy way to make a living with the travel, and the punishment, the physical punishment in the ring. What was it like, just generally speaking?

JIM RASCHKE: It was mayhem. We traveled almost every day. And we didn't have too many days off during the year. We put on a lot of miles in cars, and trains, and boats-- however it took to get to a particular town. And so it was coming and going.

And when we lived in Toledo, Ohio, one of our neighbors we got to meet-- my wife and I rented a trailer in Toledo, Ohio. Anyway, the neighbor, after a few weeks of us being there, she asked my wife what I did for a living.

And the lady said, I thought he was a burglar, because I'd leave with my little black bag and come back with my little bag. But anyway.

CATHY WURZER: Quite a life.

JIM RASCHKE: Life went on.

CATHY WURZER: Quite a life. Say, Karl, it took you years to get this film to the screen. What led you to want to tell your dad's story?

KARL RASCHKE: I think it was just this life-shaping thing for me. And I always thought the contrast between who he was in life and who he was in the ring was just so stark and so interesting in terms of we met lots of wrestlers. I met tons of wrestlers over the years, and their in-ring persona often was not too far off from who they were outside of the ring.

And with my dad, it was like just this vast difference. And so I thought that would be an interesting thing to explore, and a story to tell, and kind of an antidote to some of, he's such a nice guy, it's an antidote to some of the dark side of the ring kind of documentary stuff that's out there, you know?

CATHY WURZER: Well, your dad certainly was a super-villain-- I think probably one of the first super-villains in pro wrestling is what I guess I would say. And so can I call you Jim, by the way? I want to call you Baron, but I don't think I should call you Baron. I should call you Jim. Is that OK?

JIM RASCHKE: I've been called many things in my lifetime. But Jim, Baron, they all work.

CATHY WURZER: OK. I have to ask-- I mentioned--

JIM RASCHKE: One time, I was called "Blondie."

CATHY WURZER: Blondie? Now, how did that happen? Because you're bald as a billiard ball.

JIM RASCHKE: Well, I was much younger, and I was working construction. And the foreman-- I was working at a lumber yard at this time during the summers, and the foreman, we called him Shorty, and that was his nickname, and he started calling me blondie-- I was a big lumbering--

CATHY WURZER: And that's where it came from. I have to ask you, of course, where the heck did the claw come from, your finishing move? Was it done somewhere before, and did you just kind of make it your own?

JIM RASCHKE: Actually, yeah, it's been around for a long, long time. And I didn't think about as much of a hold. I didn't know anything about it as a hold. I was a longtime amateur wrestler, and I knew most of the holds in amateur wrestling.

Anyway, after several years after I broke into wrestling-- I broke into wrestling here in Minnesota, and I'm from Omaha. And at the time, the AWA was in Omaha with Verne Gagne and Wally Karbo.

And anyway, the local promoter's name was Joe Dusek. And he and his brothers wrestled early on, and Joe was retired, of course. And he was the promoter for Omaha and the Nebraska area, dipping into Iowa a little bit.

Anyway, they had a local show. They came down to do a local show for the Omaha area, the whole territory. Omaha was a separate entity, which was part of the AWA. And anyway, I had been drafted into the army prior to that. And I'm getting too long with my story.

CATHY WURZER: It's OK.

JIM RASCHKE: Sorry, Karl.

KARL RASCHKE: I was going to say. That's OK. In the movie, that's not the story you tell. You talked about somebody who actually was up in the movie lights recently with "The Iron Claw," and that's the originator-- the originator of the claw.

JIM RASCHKE: I was getting to that point. There's a little history behind it. Anyway.

KARL RASCHKE: Yeah, long history.

JIM RASCHKE: Anyway, after I'd been in the wrestling business for several years, we'd moved several times.

CATHY WURZER: I'm sure-- you moved around so much, I'm sure, as a wrestler. And I all wrestlers have their famous finishing moves. The claw seemed to be yours, obviously. And you did a heck of a job with it.

I'm wondering here-- you mentioned Verne Gagne, I had the chance to talk with Verne several times in his life. And he didn't think too much of today's wrestlers. And I remember he said, see if I get it right now-- there's no wrestlers in wrestling anymore. So what do you make of the business nowadays?

JIM RASCHKE: Well, that was the point I was going to make. I was in the Army, and the Army was still letting me wrestle amateur. And so I got to work out at the New York AC. But working out at the AC in New York, I'd get there early, and then the people that worked in New York that were interested that wrestled, they trickled in after their jobs were over around 3 or 4 o'clock, whatever it was.

And I was up in the wrestling room, and one of the smaller guys came in, and he wanted to roll around, so I was rolling around with him and doing stuff. And I got my foot stuck in the mat and popped my ACL. And I had to go get it operated on.

And they took me to the Queens Naval Hospital in Queens, New York. And I was stationed in at Fort Hamilton in Brooklyn, New York. Anyway, they took me there, and they operated on it, and they got me back to my bed.

And next to me in the next bed was another guy, and he had just had a knee operation. And he and I were recuperating at the same time. And I hadn't paid too much attention to pro wrestling at all.

I played football, and I wrestled-- but I hadn't paid much attention to pro wrestling. But he was a fanatic wrestling fan, and every Saturday, the New York Wrestling Show would be on, and he would go down to the TV room and watch it.

And so we got to be buddies, and he would have me go down there with him. And I'd go down there, and I'd see all the pro wrestlers doing their thing, and screaming, and shouting, and jumping up and down. And it was interesting, you know, and I thought, well, that might be something I can do when I get out of the Army. So I was recuperating.

I knew who Joe Dusek was that promoted it. And anyway, I wrote a letter to Joe Dusek and used the TV station's address. He got the letter, and he wrote back, and he says, well I don't really have any facilities for training you here, but Verne Gagne trains people up in Minnesota.

So when you get out of the Army, contact me again, and I'll introduce you to Vernon, blah, blah, blah, blah. So that was probably a year before I got out of the Army.

CATHY WURZER: Wow. And that's how you started?

JIM RASCHKE: So when I got-- yeah, so when I got out, I got out because I had gotten to my first job as a teacher. I had majored in zoology, so I was hired as a science teacher in Omaha, my hometown. And I got out of the Army, and I was teaching school, and time went by--

KARL RASCHKE: You're going to tell them the whole movie, dad.

[CATHY LAUGHS]

CATHY WURZER: I know, that wouldn't be fair, because people have to actually watch the movie, right, Karl?

KARL RASCHKE: Exactly.

CATHY WURZER: We're going to put a pin in this just because I don't want to give away the film, Baron. That would be really bad of us to do that. Can I ask Karl just a quick question here.

KARL RASCHKE: Sure.

CATHY WURZER: When you dive deep into someone's life, even if you think you know that person, you're going to learn something new, right? So as you were writing and creating the film, did you learn new things about your dad in the process?

KARL RASCHKE: A ton of new things, because as you probably know, he came into the business in an era when the wrestling business was very secretive. And he did not talk to us about the wrestling business at all.

So we probably did the first interview about this. And I sat down and talked to him about his wrestling past, pro wrestling past, in 2006 or 2007.

And that was the first time that he divulged some of the secrets of his wrestling past. 2007, how old was I? 27, 37.

CATHY WURZER: Yeah.

KARL RASCHKE: Much younger than I am today. But that was the beginnings. And yeah, so it's been an amazing sort of thing to learn and just go through the archives and discover new and interesting things about this incredible journey he's been on.

CATHY WURZER: Oh, my gosh, the journey has been amazing. I wish I had more time. But I need to run off and do something completely different. I am so honored that, Jim Raschke, you've been with us, and, Karl, thank you for your time too. I'm excited to watch this. It's going to be on Amazon soon. It's called The Claw. Thank you so much.