In the professional wrestling world there are babyfaces and heels. Young, attractive, polite and operating within the rules of their sport, babyfaces represent everything that is good, true and fair. “Killer” Kowalski was a heel.

The son of Polish immigrants who settled in Windsor, Ontario, Edward Walter Spulnik took up weightlifting when advised that it might help him to put some meat on his bones. As a fully grown 6ft 8in, 275-pounder (19st 9lb) working alongside his father at a Ford Motors plant, he followed another piece of advice and wrestled for the first time in 1948.

Billed as Tarzan Kowalski, he was a babyface for the first few years of his 30-year, 6,000-bout career. His size alone made fans sit up and take notice. A chiselled physique, speed and agility made him a crowd favourite, first in Detroit and then further afield.

In an early-1950s bout against Yukon Eric, a missed knee drop from the top rope went slightly awry, resulting in Kowalski’s opponent losing part of a cauliflower ear which, as legend has it, was still pulsating when the referee picked it up. A newspaper reported that Kowalski visited Yukon Eric in hospital and laughed at his injury, and when a fan at his next bout screamed that he was “nothing but a killer”, he inadvertently gave him his nickname.

A heel from that moment on, Kowalski, who legally adopted the surname in the 1960s, became the biggest, baddest villain of them all. Reviled wherever he appeared, he filled the arenas and armouries that hosted North America’s wrestling scene as fans came to jeer.

The rise of television made Kowalski’s flickering image a familiar one for millions who watched as he stomped on, manhandled and mangled adversaries week after week.

No tactic was too underhand for Killer Kowalski, who developed a number of trademark moves to make his brand of mayhem stand out from the rest. The kangaroo hop entertained and inflamed the public during moments when his adversary was hors de combat.

The claw, his trademark finishing move, involved Kowalski’s enormous hand closing over the abdomen or head of his adversary, twisting and squeezing. It was a submission hold, one that opponents endured for varying lengths of time but that made them succumb in the end.

From the US Midwest to both coasts, north to his native Canada and as far south as Texas where, fighting alone, he was for a time the world tag-team champion, Kowalski won and lost title belts and bouts from the 1950s through to the mid-1970s.

Japan and Australia also became lucrative markets. As popular with Pacific Rim wrestling fans as with those in North America, Kowalski toured that part of the world regularly, facing opponents who came along with him and the best that the host countries had to offer. He won most bouts, lost a few, but always sent the customers home feeling that they had got value for their money.

A relentless self-promoter who bristled at any mention that his sport might not be on the level, he once applied the claw to an Australian television personality who repeatedly questioned wrestling’s integrity.

Away from the hype Kowalski was a completely different person— a quieter and more contemplative man. A devout Roman Catholic who attended Mass regularly, he meditated before every performance and also spent many free hours enjoying classical music, admitting a particular fondness for Chopin.

Kowalski ate no meat after the mid-1950s, reasoning that powerful animals such as horses and elephants enjoyed a longer lifespan on their diets than did the fiercer carnivores. He never smoked and gave up what little alcohol he consumed when he abandoned flesh.

An avid photographer who carried his camera around the world with him, Kowalski published an anthology of his work called Killer Pics in 2001.

Retiring from wrestling in the late 1970s, Kowalski opened a gym and trained hundreds of aspiring grapplers, including the present world champion Triple H, and the former women’s wrestling superstar Chyna.

Kowalski married at the age of 79. He is survived by his wife, Theresa.

“Killer” Kowalski (Edward Spulnik), wrestler, was born on October 13, 1926. He died on August 30, 2008, aged 81