He came out of Montreal, teeth first. Joseph Maurice Régis Vachon, a boy baptized in sweat and noise on September 14, 1929. Second of thirteen kids. That’s right, thirteen. Noisy house, full of elbows, fists, and screams. His father was a cop named Ferdinand, built like a brick shithouse. His mother, Marguerite, probably the only softness he knew. They lived in Ville-Émard, a place where the sidewalks cracked and the boys cracked back harder.
He wasn’t a prodigy. He was a brawler in short pants. At twelve, he was already tangling on the mats at the YMCA with a grown man named Frank Saxton yelling in his ear. Signed up for some mail-order wrestling course at the back of a comic book like it was a golden ticket to somewhere better. Got his ass kicked. Got up. Did it again. That was Mad Dog before the name: just a kid with too much anger and no plan B.
By fourteen he was damn near Canada’s best amateur. By eighteen he was in London, wrestling in the 1948 Olympics, pinning Indian champions in under a minute. He lost later to a Turk named Candemir and finished seventh. No parade. No pats on the back. But he caught the eye of Verne Gagne, an American with a square jaw and Olympic dreams of his own. That meeting would come back around.
Two years later, he won gold in New Zealand at the British Empire Games. Came back with a medal and rage to spare. Montreal didn’t care. So he worked nightclub doors, bouncing drunks and breaking noses until someone said, “Why don’t you try this pro wrestling shit?”
He did. In 1950, he put on the tights for Larry Kasaboski. Won a tournament his first year. But Montreal promoter Eddie Quinn wouldn’t touch him. Too dangerous. Too hungry. Might knock off Yvon Robert, the city’s golden boy. So Vachon hit the road, fists first.
By 1955, he was in Texas with Pierre LaSalle, grabbing tag titles and punching his way into the NWA. But he was just another face in the meat grinder. Junior heavyweights with names like wallpaper. He needed a gimmick. So he bulked up to 225. Shaved his head. Grew a goatee that made him look like Satan’s underfed cousin. He started buying TV time, screaming at the camera like it owed him money.
And it worked.
He became a heel so filthy and violent you could smell him through the screen. He bit. He gouged. He stomped and piledrove until the crowd wanted his head on a stick and a ringside seat to the execution. Portland promoter Don Owen gave him the name: Mad Dog. After a match where Vachon turned the arena upside down and punched a cop for good measure. “You looked like a mad dog out there,” Owen said. The name stuck like blood to canvas.
His brother Paul came in next, called himself The Butcher. Of course he did. The two tore through tag divisions like rabid animals. They won titles. Got banned in three states. Fans loved to hate them. He met his future wife when he spit a shoelace at her. She laughed. Married him. That was Mad Dog love.
Then came the AWA. Verne Gagne was in charge now, and he remembered the short bastard from London. Brought him in. The fans booed, Gagne smiled, and Vachon bit into the territory like it was raw meat. In 1964, he beat Gagne for the title. Lost it. Got it back. Five reigns between ’64 and ’67. Took on Crusher, Dick the Bruiser, and anyone stupid enough to step in front of him. He was a walking bar fight with a belt.
Later he went back to Montreal, beat Johnny Rougeau and Hans Schmidt for the IWA crown, and still had enough political savvy to get a license to promote at the Forum. Even with the city against him, he made it happen. He was a shark that bit through the cage.
Back to the AWA. Teamed with The Butcher again. Beat Crusher and Bruiser in ’69. Did it again in a steel cage at Comiskey Park, 1970. These weren’t matches. They were knife fights with a referee.
In 1973, he told Quebec he’d kill himself if he lost to Killer Kowalski at Jarry Park. Thirty thousand people showed up. He won. Montreal let out a sigh. The newspaper headline the next day? “Vachon Triumphs… Gives Up on Suicide!”
That was Mad Dog.
The Dog Bites Back (1960s–1973)
You could hear the chains rattle when he walked into the goddamn ring. That wasn’t part of the show. That was just Mad Dog.
Verne Gagne brought him into the AWA like you bring a loaded pistol to a chess match — because sometimes the game needs to get messy. And Vachon was mess incarnate. The perfect heel, a bloodhound with cauliflower ears and eyes like shot glasses full of rage. The fans loved to hate him, and he hated them right back. That was his thing.
Then he beat Gagne for the belt in ‘64, and suddenly he wasn’t just the dog barking outside the house — he was the bastard who owned it.
He held that belt five times between 1964 and 1967. Guys came and went, bleeding and broken. Crusher Lisowski. Dick the Bruiser. Mighty Igor. They all walked into the ring thinking they were tough, but the Dog was tougher, meaner, hungrier. He wasn’t wrestling. He was waging war.
When the Dog got bored of being king in Minnesota, he went back to Montreal, like some old outlaw returning home to see if the saloon still remembered his name. They did. He took the IWA title there too, made enemies out of Johnny Rougeau and Hans Schmidt, and pushed local promoters around like a man who knew the crowd belonged to him. Because they did.
He even talked the Montreal Forum into giving him a license to promote — just another hustle in a long list of hustles. Nobody could stop him, not the commission, not Rougeau, not the damn police.
He came back to the AWA in the late ’60s and turned tag team wrestling into a brawl that smelled like blood, sweat, and cheap beer. He and his brother Paul — “The Butcher” — tore through Crusher and Bruiser, won the belts, lost them, and then tore through them again inside a steel cage at Comiskey Park in front of a mob that came for violence and got it, served raw with a side of shrieking.
Then came July 14, 1973 — Jarry Park in Montreal. Thirty thousand people, nearly all of them French-Canadian and half-drunk on Labatt and fury, showed up to watch Vachon go toe-to-toe with Killer Kowalski. The Dog, always the showman, promised suicide if he didn’t win. He won. Headlines read: “Mad Dog Triumphs in Front of 30,000 People and Gives Up on Suicide!”
Christ. Only Mad Dog could make death a promotional gimmick.
The Final Curtain Call (1970s–1986)
Somewhere between the knife fights in the ring and the blood on his teeth, the Dog turned face. The villain became the hero. People love a bastard more when he’s on their side.
By the late ’70s, he was tagging with Verne Gagne, the same choirboy he used to stomp into the mat. They took the AWA tag titles in ’79. Held them for over a year. It was like watching an old wolf and a sheepdog run the farm together.
But wrestling was changing. The Hulkamania era was coming. Neon muscles and steroid smiles. Mad Dog didn’t fit that mold. He was too real. Too broken. Too much like the guy your mother warned you about.
So in ’83 he went to the WWF. They tossed him into midcard hell, but he didn’t care. He still had Canada. He still had the fans. And he still had the snarl.
When he wasn’t wrestling, he was doing a French-language interview segment called Le Brunch à Mad Dog. Sundays, coffee, croissants, and the barking lunatic who used to scare children at house shows.
In ’85, he helped Rick Martel in his AWA title defenses, fighting off guys like Boris Zhukov and Chris Markoff. He was older, slower, missing a step — but his fists still worked fine. Always had.
By ’86, he took his bow. A retirement show in Montreal. And for once, the man who’d spent decades as the devil left the ring like a saint.
Broken Body, Unbroken Soul
Then the world kicked him in the teeth.
In 1987, he went for a jog and never came back the same. A hit-and-run — a disabled man looking for cans on the side of a road mowed him down. The Dog lost a leg. The bastard had no insurance. No charges. No justice. Just pain.
But hell, Mad Dog didn’t whimper. He barked. Laughed. Kept showing up at shows, getting his fake leg stolen and used as a weapon by Shawn Michaels. Got mocked by Jerry Lawler and knocked the son of a bitch out. That was Mad Dog. One leg, still biting.
He got a Hall of Fame induction in 2010, finally recognized by the same circus that once thought he was too wild to tame.
Death and Legacy
November 21, 2013 — the Dog died in his sleep at 84. Diabetes. Wheelchair. But in the end, peaceful. That almost doesn’t fit.
He had six kids, seven grandkids, and two great-grandkids. The bloodline ran deep and nasty, with Luna Vachon picking up the torch and lighting it with gasoline.
He was a pioneer. A madman. A bastard and a brother. A guy who bit cops and kissed babies. Who bled for the business before the business learned how to market blood.
And he didn’t just wrestle.
He was wrestling.