Blackjack Lanza
American professional wrestler
John Mortl Lanzo (October 14, 1935 – December 8, 2021) was an American professional wrestler, better known by his ring name, Blackjack Lanza. Along with his long-term tag team partner, Blackjack Mulligan, Lanza was one-half of The Blackjacks: "black cowboy hat-wearing, cowboy boot-stomping, rugged hombres who drew money wherever they went".
From the 1960s to 1980s, Lanza wrestled for promotions such as the American Wrestling Association, World Wrestling Association, and the World Wide Wrestling Federation, winning the AWA World Tag Team Championship, WWA World Tag Team Championship, and WWWF World Tag Team Championship alongside Mulligan. He is a member of the WWE Hall of Fame and the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame.
Early life
Lanza was born on October 14, 1935, to William Lanza and Louise Mortl, and attended the University of Minnesota and worked as a sociology teacher.
Professional wrestling career
Early career (1961–1962)
Lanza, from Minneapolis, Minnesota, was trained by local promoter Verne Gagne and started his wrestling career in 1961. He wrestled a few matches for NWA Mid-America in Birmingham, Alabama, under the name "Joe Lanza". In 1962, he briefly held the NWA Southern Junior Heavyweight Championship.
St. Louis Wrestling Club (1962–1963, 1966–1978)
Lanza had a sporadic wrestling career with the St.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Blackjack Lanza” is american professional wrestler. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Blackjack, Lanza and American, not as a finished interpretation.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q713067. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1935, 2021, 1961 and 1962.
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This entry incorporates text from “Blackjack Lanza” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.