From Mat to Mike

About three times a week, Hungarian-born Sandor Szabo heaves his 225-lb. frame into a Los Angeles wrestling ring and there, under the eyes of a ring and TV crowd, grunts and grimaces for half an hour. From Hungary to California, he has been specializing in step-over toe holds, ankle-drop takedowns, flying mares and other bone crushers for some 30 years. But last week 42-year-old Wrestler Szabo was wistfully eying a new career as a popular singer.

"I'ma very good," he says in his professional goulash-English. So last Christmas he announced that he would make his first public appearance as a crooner on his wrestling show. But on the big night he wrestled first--and "this bum gets me in a hammerlock, and he breaks my thumb. I was in such pain that I couldn't sing."

A local music promoter weighed Szabo's audience appeal, and decided that there might be a market for the Szabo voice. He dreamed up a new record label (Hammerlock), and recorded Szabo in two appropriate songs: Take Me in Your Arms and It's All in the Game. To the accompaniment of gypsy strings, Sandor exudes Danubian charm:

One moment's medness (he coaxes) Al-dough it be de last . . .

Sandor sings in a surprisingly pleasant baritone, and his style is as good as that of most popular balladeers. In the cut-throat music world, nobody but Szabo expects his record to be a Patti Page-style bestseller. But he carries a satchelful wherever he goes, has personally sold 500 copies.

A man of many parts, Szabo has done some hitches in the movies, but always (following the script) came out on the losing end of battles with smaller men, finally quit ("Who wants to get thrown around by little punks?"). Wrestling has its own hazards--Szabo has had his nose broken six times--but it pays him some $50,000 a year, and he plans to keep at it for a while. After that? "I'm the idol of all women from 45 up to 80," says Sandor, and a singing career is "much easier." "I think I'll be like Bing Crosby."

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