Herb Gerwig to Killer Karl Kox. In 1961, The Sheik pulled my dad aside and told him, “You’re a local guy. You started out around here, and that’s why you’re having trouble getting over.” For the previous four or five years, my dad had been wrestling mostly under his real name, Herb Gerwig, doing jobs on TV in places like Cleveland, Detroit, Indiana and Buffalo. The Sheik believed he needed to get away and establish himself somewhere new. He gave my dad the money to move to Nebraska and go to work for the Duseks. When my dad got there, Joe Dusek told him, “Nobody is going to pay to see a guy named Herb Gerwig. Think of something else.” Later, Joe came back and asked what he had come up with and my dad hadn’t thought of anything. So Joe did it for him. Killer Carl Cox. Later that same year, when my dad moved to Texas to wrestle for Western States, he changed the spelling. Killer Karl Kox was born. My old man always had a tremendous amount of respect for The Sheik and gave him a lot of credit for giving him his first real break in the wrestling business. And he never forgot it. Look back through Dad’s career during the 1960s and into the early ’70s and you’ll see something interesting: no matter where he was working regularly, he continued going back to Detroit to work for The Sheik—even if it was only for an occasional one-night shot. The Sheik gave Herb Gerwig the opportunity. Joe Dusek gave him the name. Without those two men, there may never have been a Killer Karl Kox.