Bill McCormack

The late Bill McCormack was a longtime contributor to Evan Ginzburg’s "Wrestling- Then & Now" newsletter. Bill lived in New Jersey until July 1998, when he moved to Florida. He attended Seton Hall Prep School and followed his stint there by attending Montclair State University, where he pursued his Bachelor’s Degree. After attaining that goal, he received his Master’s at Farleigh Dickinson and ultimately his Doctorate in Education at Seton Hall University. According to McCormack, “I wanted to teach (history) and coach….” And he ultimately coached track, baseball, football, cross-country, and wrestling. He also worked for the Milburn Item as a reporter/columnist. In 1973, McCormack won the New Jersey Press Association’s “Best Sports Columnist for a Weekly Newspaper.” Despite his universal love of sports, McCormack’s passion was professional wrestling. He had been a fan for over a half-century. According to him, “It went back before I owned a television. I used to go to my uncle’s, where they put the chairs up in rows. They turned all the lights off. It was like a movie theater. They had an old Dumont television with a green dial. The matches were coming out of Marigold in Chicago. Jack Burkhouse was announcing, and Gypsy Joe, Karl Schmidt, and gosh knows who else was on those cards. I was a little boy and couldn’t wait for Sunday nights to go down and watch the wrestling. If I was good all week, I was allowed to watch.” And watch he did, and he wrote about his pro wrestling memories in dozens of beautifully written articles, like the one written above. Evan Ginzburg and prolific author Jeff Archer (of "Theatre in a Squared Circle") agreed in describing McCormack as “wrestling’s finest writer.” And while Bill may be sadly gone, his memories and gorgeous prose now have a chance to reach a vast new audience through Pro Wrestling Stories.