A hard-punching star of the 1970s and ’80s, he was known as much for his kindness outside the ring as for his ferocity within it.
Pedro Morales, a Hall of Fame professional wrestler who in the 1970s and ’80s became the first to win all three of what were then wrestling’s premier championships, died on Monday in Perth Amboy, N. J. He was 76.
His wife, Karen Morales, said the cause was complications of Parkinson’s disease.
Morales, who wrestled professionally for nearly three decades, became a star in the early 1970s. He was known as a vigorous puncher and a master of the Boston crab, a debilitating hold in which he grabbed his opponent’s legs, turned him facedown to the mat and pulled the legs back toward his opponent’s head.
Morales tangled with wrestlers like Mr. Fuji, Bruno Sammartino and Ivan Koloff, whom he beat in Madison Square Garden to win the World Wide Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment) title in 1970.
Fans were enthusiastic about the new champion. According to an article in The New York Times in 1972 about one of Morales’s matches, “The biggest problem is not how or if he will win, but how he will get past his adoring fans to his dressing room after the victory.
