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Giacomo Costa (14 December 1919 – 22 January 2000) was an Italian Australian professional wrestler best known by his ring name, Al Costello. Costello was the first professional wrestler to be nicknamed "The Man of a Thousand Holds" because of his innovative and very technical style.〔 Costello was the creator and original member of the tag team The Fabulous Kangaroos, whose "Ultra Australian" gimmick complete with boomerangs, bush hats and the song "Waltzing Matilda" as their entrance music, existed in various forms from 1957 until 1983. Costello was either an active wrestler, or a manager in all versions of The Fabulous Kangaroos.〔 He and Roy Heffernan are arguably the most famous version of The Kangaroos, regarded as one of the top tag teams to ever compete in professional wrestling,〔 and are often credited with popularizing tag team wrestling in the late 1950s and 1960s.〔 Costello later formed other versions of The Fabulous Kangaroos with Ray St. Clair, Don Kent and Tony Charles. He also managed the team of Don Kent & Bruno Bekkar and later on "Johnny Heffernan" under The Fabulous Kangaroos name.〔 Costello officially retired from wrestling in 1983 but still made a few brief returns to the ring after that. In 1993, he managed The New Fabulous Kangaroos (Denny Kass and Al Snow) before retiring completely from the wrestling business.〔 Both Costello and his tag team partner Heffernan died before Kangaroos were honored as the first tag team to ever be inducted into the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2003, which started a tradition of inducting a new team every year. ==Growing up== Costa was born in Lingua di Salina, Italy, near Sicily, and lived there until his family immigrated to Australia when he was six years old.〔 The family settled in Rockdale, New South Wales, where Costa helped out in his father’s fruit store. He excelled at school sports, and became interested in weightlifting at an early age. At age 16, Costa took up amateur boxing despite his father’s wishes that he should become an opera singer.〔 Costa was approached by Australian middleweight wrestling champion "Basher Bonas", who convinced him to try wrestling. Costa made his debut under an assumed name; his father still had hopes of him becoming an opera singer, and he did not want his parents to find out that he was wrestling. He came up with the name "Al Costello", thinking it sounded tough like a portmanteau of Al Capone and Frank Costello.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Al Costello」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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