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Ernie The Cat Ladd passed away last night wat the age of 68. Below is an article from the News Star out of Monroe, Louisiana
I had the honor and pleasure of meeting Mr. Ladd at the Legends Convention in Maryland last year. While he seemed fraile, he was in great spirits and was a thrill to meet. My thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of Ernie the Cat Ladd.
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Ernie Ladd, hall of fame football player and wrestler,
has died
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
(c) COPYRIGHT, THE NEWS-STAR 2007
Ernie Ladd, a talented football player who made his name nationally as
a wrestler, died overnight, according to family members.
Ladd, 68, had battled cancer — first in his colon, then later in
his stomach and bones — since 2004. Born Nov. 28, 1938, in Rayville,
but raised in Orange, Texas, he worked through his final years as a pastor
in the Louisiana town of Franklin.
Funeral arrangements were still pending today, according to Roslyn Ladd,
his wife of more than 45 years.
Selected 15th in the American Football League draft by San Diego out of Grambling College, Ladd appeared in three of that now-defunct league's championship games, winning the 1963 title.
"We were like a family," Ladd told The News-Star in May 2005. "We were one of the first integrated teams, with black players and white players as roommates."
He had entered professional football as a heralded 1960 first-team all-league defensive college lineman under former Grambling coach Eddie Robinson. There, Ladd helped GSU to its first-ever Southwestern Athletic Conference championship.
At 6-9 and 315 pounds, he was arguably the biggest GSU star to ever play for Robinson, who remains the all-time winningest football coach in Division I history.
"The first year he was here, he taught me a lesson," Robinson
once said. "He told me how good he was. Sure, I'd say. Then he hurt
somebody. I'd feel sorry for the people he was tackling."
Elected to four straight AFL All-Star Games from 1962-1965, he later played
with the Houston Oilers and the National Football League's Kansas City
Chiefs. While with the Chiefs, he reunited with future Pro Football Hall
of Famer Junious "Buck" Buchanan, another Grambling product,
and was on the roster for both of Kansas City's Super Bowl appearances.
Ladd began wrestling as a sideline during his rookie AFL season, and found the payday and fame so alluring that eventually he gave up pro football. It was there that he picked up a nickname that would remain with him for life: "Big Cat."
Ladd's storylines resonated during wrestling's earliest flowering as a national attraction, not to mention signature moves that included the "guillotine drop" and a boot to the face. Rivalries with Andre the Giant and Dusty Rhodes helped shape wrestling's 1970s persona.
Today, he's the only person in both the American Football League and World Wrestling Federation halls of fame. Ladd is also a 1994 inductee into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, and joined the San Diego Hall of Champions in 2004.
Ladd's knees were so damaged — his first surgery came while still in college — that he was eventually forced to walk backward down long staircases. But Ladd's boundless spirit was unbowed by his body's failures, as he displayed a touch of humor even after that cancer diagnosis.
"The doctor told me I had three-to-six months to live," Ladd said in 2005, then at the mid-way point in his nearly four year battle with the disease. "I told him Dr. Jesus has the verdict on me."
Ladd was a father of four and grandfather to over a dozen more.
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I must admit that I have been thinking a lot of "The Big Cat" lately...
Over the period of the last few years, I've had an opportunity to meet and get to know some of wrestling's greatest heroes and villains. In my childhood, one of the biggest, meanest wrestling heels was Ernie Ladd. I loved his intimidating promos, and he was just so huge, a real giant of a man.
I had never met or spoken with Ernie Ladd until about this time last year, as I was preparing for our Capitol Wrestling Legends Fanfest near Washington, DC. "The Big Cat" answered my first phone call with "Jesus Loves You," which was his standard telephone greeting instead of "Hello." In my phone conversations that followed, I would have never known that he was losing his battle with cancer. He was always very positive and upbeat.
On a weekend with mass chaos at the airports and some folks looking for any excuse possible not to travel, Mr. Ladd made it his mission to make his way to Rockville, Maryland. Travelling alone, his mobility impaired, through all the havoc at the airports, Mr. Ladd made it to fanfest and, like most of the others signed autographs for nearly five hours on Sunday afternoon. We had dinner that evening and breakfast the next morning. Me, my friend Roy, Ernie Ladd and Tony Atlas all went together to the Baltimore airport the next morning. Those are times creating memories I will treasure for a lifetime.
In retrospect, I knew this had been a tremendous challenge for "The Big Cat." I have no doubt that if I were in a similar physical condition, I would've likely found an excuse to stay at home. But, Ernie Ladd didn't. He came to fanfest and, I believe, enjoyed every minute of it. I did too.
I hadn't spoken to Mr. Ladd since last Fall, but one of the main reasons I was looking forward to next month's fan convention in New Jersey was the opportunity to see Mr. Ladd again. And buy his dinner. He liked to eat. And eat a lot. I'll miss Ernie Ladd.
And I'll always remember our phone conversations. Ernie Ladd, Jesus loves you!
By Greg Price
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Big Cat's heart was as big as his body
Grambling State legend Ernie Ladd passes away from cancer at age 68
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@ thenewsstar.com
GRAMBLING — Ernie “Big Cat” Ladd, remembered as both literally and figuratively larger than life, died Saturday night after a long bout with cancer. The former football and wrestling star was 68.
“It’s a personal loss not just to our family, but to the whole community,” said Eddie Robinson Jr., whose ailing father coached Ladd at Grambling State. “I was fortunate enough to be in high school when he was here, so my football heroes growing up were people like Ernie Ladd.”
A talented 6-9 3/4 defender both at GSU and then with the San Diego Chargers, Ladd left the gridiron at age 30 to mount a second career as a well-known villain during wrestling’s earliest days as a national attraction.
Born Nov. 28, 1938, in Rayville, but raised in Orange, Texas, he had battled cancer — first in his colon, then later in his stomach and bones — since 2004. Funeral arrangements were still pending on Sunday, according to Roslyn, his wife of more than 45 years.
“I always thought he would beat that thing,” said former Grambling teammate A. Lane Howell, a Monroe native and resident. “He was always the ultimate optimist, a true warrior. He will certainly be missed.”
Ladd, a father of four and grandfather to over a dozen more, remains the only person in both the American Football League and World Wrestling Federation halls of fame. He was also a 1994 inductee into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, recognition for a college career that included 1960 first-team all-conference honors under GSU legend Eddie Robinson.
It was for those local exploits that Ladd was honored over the public-address system during Sunday afternoon’s Grambling baseball game.
“It just brought a shock over the crowd,” said longtime former GSU baseball coach Wilbert “Dean” Ellis. “He loved Grambling. It’s so sad to lose one of our own, one of our greats.”
Ladd once said he never met his biological father until he was 18, and that was during visiting hours at Angola. But Ladd was happily raised, he said, by a loving mother and stepfather in Orange.
Ladd actually played tight end at Wallace High, but that position was never considered once he arrived at GSU — even then, weighing a robust 218. He’d gained 80 pounds by the time he finished school.
“I got too heavy,” Ladd liked to say. “It would look funny, a 300-pound tight end.”
Ladd would become a defensive stalwart on GSU’s first-ever Southwestern Athletic Conference championship football squad.
He then helped form the nucleus of the 1963 AFL championship team at San Diego, which selected him in the 15th round of the ’61 draft.
“We were like a family,” Ladd said in May 2005. “We were one of the first integrated teams, with black players and white players as roommates.”
Ladd — who played pro football at 317 pounds and, in his late 60s, set his “normal weight” at 380 — needed a lot of fuel to keep going. The legend of his appetite casts a shadow almost as long as his own.
“When Ernie was drafted by San Diego, there used to be a place the players passed by each day to go to camp and eat breakfast,” late former GSU sports information director Collie J. Nicholson once told The News-Star. “It was $3 all you can eat. Ladd stopped by a couple of times, and one day the guy who owned the place was standing outside waiting for Ladd. He gave him $5 to go eat somewhere else.”
At one legendary AFL press junket, Ladd consumed — in order — two shrimp cocktails, three dishes of cole slaw, three servings of spinach, three baked potatoes, eight rolls and a half pound of butter, four 16-ounce steaks, three desserts and washed it down with a half gallon of milk.
Later asked if there was any food he didn’t like, Ladd thought for nearly five minutes before answering: “Squash.”
The Chargers said at the time that it cost the club $50 a day — big money in the early 1960s — to keep Ladd sated while on the road.
The expense, in the end, was worth it: San Diego eventually advanced to four AFL title games in five years with Ladd, and won that ’63 crown by crushing the Boston (later New England) Patriots 51-10. Ladd would play in four straight AFL All-Star games, as well.
Ladd, one of more than 200 of Robinson’s former players to play professional football, was named to the San Diego Hall of Champions in 2004.
He never forgot Grambling, friends say.
“Ladd had such a varied career after he left Grambling, but yet Grambling was always foremost in his thoughts and actions,” said former GSU football assistant Doug Porter. “When I worked there, he always came back every year to work (as a volunteer coach) with the team. 'Mr. Grambling' was a way to describe him.”
Contract disputes eventually led Ladd to sign with Houston, where he played for two seasons, and then with Kansas City — where he reunited with future Pro Football Hall of Famer Junious “Buck” Buchanan, a former Grambling teammate on that 1960 SWAC title team.
When Ladd completed his eight-year pro career, he had played in 112 consecutive AFL games, and appeared on the roster for both Super Bowl I and IV with the Chiefs.
As big as he was, Ladd was known for his cat-like quickness, something that later inspired his lifelong nickname.
Ladd began wrestling as a sideline during his rookie pro season, and found the payday and fame so alluring that he eventually gave up football.
“In what other sport can you pick up a $14 pair of boots, 59-cent socks — spend maybe a total of $50 — and convert it into $100,000 a year, if you are sharp and train?” Ladd would rhetorically ask. “My intention was to go back to football, but pro wrestling was so good to me.”
Ladd’s bad-guy storylines, not to mention signature moves that included the “guillotine drop” and a boot to the face, resonated with the next generation of sports fans. Rivalries with Andre the Giant and Dusty Rhodes helped shape wrestling’s 1970s persona.
Eventually, the battering he took on the field and in the ring began to take its toll.
Ladd’s knees were so damaged — his first surgery came while still in college — that he was eventually forced to walk backward down long staircases.
“He was just some kind of athlete,” Robinson once said of Ladd, noting that he actually came to Grambling to play basketball. “Then he got hurt and had to have a knee operation.”
But Ladd’s boundless spirit was unbowed by his body’s failures. He even displayed a distinctive flair for humor after his cancer diagnosis.
“The doctor told me I had three-to-six months to live,” Ladd said in 2005, then at the mid-way point in his nearly four-year battle with the disease. “I told him Dr. Jesus has the verdict on me.”
Ladd put that faith to work through his final illness, serving as a pastor in the Louisiana town of Franklin. For years, he was also involved in prison ministry work and community service projects, as well as local and national political campaigns.
Ladd even briefly owned a New Orleans restaurant — it was named, memorably, Ernie Ladd’s Big Cat Throw-Down BBQ — and followed that commitment to Houston where, in 2005, he ministered to Katrina evacuees at the Astrodome.
“He had gotten involved in developing communities,” Ellis said.
“He represented us well. He made an outstanding contribution to society
after his sports exploits.”
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Services for 'Big Cat' are set for Saturday
Ladd, a former Grambling, AFL and wrestling star, died Sunday after bout
with cancer
By Nick Deriso
nderiso@thenewsstar.com
Services have been set for hall of fame football player and wrestler Ernie Ladd.
Ladd, 68, died Saturday after a long bout with cancer. His funeral will be held at 11 Saturday morning at the West St. Mary Civic Center in Baldwin, near the small Louisiana town of Franklin where Ladd spent his retirement.
Born Nov. 28, 1938, in Rayville, and raised in Orange, Texas, Ladd helped former Coach Eddie Robinson to his first-ever Southwestern Athletic Conference championship at Grambling then keyed San Diego's run to the 1963 American Football League title.
Later, Ladd moved into professional wrestling, where he became known
as "The Big Cat," and emerged as one of the sport's first signature
African-American stars.
Ladd remains the only person in both the American Football League and
former World Wrestling Federation halls of fame. He was also a 1994 inductee
into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, and joined the San Diego Hall
of Champions in 2004.
Ladd, married to wife Roslyn for more than 45 years, was a father of four and grandfather to over a dozen more.
