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Pavvo Katonan


Last updated by Sean Sweeny on April 28, 2014

Title History

 

  • NWA World Junior Heavyweight title ();

 

Career Highlights

 

  • Paavo Ketonen trained wrestlers and boxers for many years at his Top Level Gym at 16th Street & Oak in Phoenix..
  • 1940s: As a wrestling promoter, Paavo Ketonen was sued in Washington State by an irate married couple for $5,000..
  • ~~~~~~~~~~~~This incident saw one of the wrestlers on his card kicked him and his wife. The fans won the lawsuit.
  • 1999: Paavo Ketonen died in Phoenix, Arizona..

    Dale Pierce wrote: In 1985, Paavo Ketonen made his final attempt at promoting in Arizona and Nevada utilizing Maniac Mike Gordon,. Billy Anderson, Ken Lucas, Reggie Parks, The Lumberjacks, Tony Hernandez, Tom Ramirez, Eddie Sullivan and others. His “restrictive, old fashioned BEYOND old fashioned way of doing things” as one wrestler put it, doomed the promotion t fialure within a couple months. At the 1996, Arizona oldtimer reunion, Eddie Sullivan noted he still had IOU promisary notes from Paavo going back to the days of Big Bear Promotions in the 1960s. Paavo died in Phoenix in 1999. At the time of his death he was being looked after by School Boy Jerry Chetum, one of the boxers he had helped train..