Force One's Phil Varlese on John Kronus
Body: I'm no longer a reporter, so I'll avoid talking about where John trained, when he made his ECW debut, his time down South prior to his ECW debut.
Here's the deal........John Kronus, when his gears were all turning correctly, was one of the best fucking wrestlers I've ever seen in this crazy business. Anyone who knew him, though, knew his gears didn't always turn in the right direction.
Despite that, you had to love the guy. He was often a guest on my radio/internet show, and he always had a funny story. Look, he had a lot of axes to grind if he wanted to. Paul Heyman fucked him over during his last days in ECW (remember the job to Sid Vicious?? Heyman, you were always a piece of shit). He got fucked by Rob Black at XPW........he got fucked over on the indy circuit, AND fucked over by Perry Saturn, but no matter how hard I tried, Kronus would never talk smack about any of those scumbags.
Around 7 years ago, my old partner John House & I "promoted" a show at a venue in Mays Landing, NJ called Uncle Mike's........a biker bar in Atlantic County. The day of the show, we had more wrestlers than we had audience. All of the workers realized it was a bad money show, and House & I had to come up with cash to pay the boys. Kronus, who really needed the money at the time, ended up working for a beer, a meal, and carfare.
Kronus gave us some of his best work at the Tropicana Casino when we ran the "Outlaws of Wrestling" there. He had a CLASSIC dog collar match with Tommy Cairo that was pure violence from beginning to end.
I'm going to admit that I lost touch with him over the past 4 1/2 years. Kronus had a bad habit of calling me a 2 in the morning when he got high, which was very often. I re-married in 2002, and my wife, who had to leave for work early in the morning due to her commute, just couldn't handle the early wake up calls from Kronus. I screamed at him one night, told him to leave me the fuck alone if he couldn't call me during NORMAL hours. He called me the next day to apologize......AT 3 AM!!!!
I talked with him once or twice after that, after he had moved to New Hampshire. He seemed to be doing good, even got a MySpace account for a little while, during the time he had undergone knee surgery. I was happy to message him online, and he seemed kinda optimistic about returning to the business...........he never made it back to us.
I called Tommy Cairo tonight, and we both cried over John Kronus. I'm sure nothing good for wrestling will come from his death. I just want to reflect on what he did for me, personally.....how he made us all laugh, and the big 450 that he did off the top rope......it's burned in my mind.
