The professional wrestler fought alongside Arn Anderson, Ric Flair and Tully Blanchard. He later spoke out against the commercialization of the sport.
Ole Anderson, a professional wrestler who starred as an original member of the Four Horsemen team in the 1980s and was later critical of the sport’s corporate greed, died on Monday. He was 81.
The Carter Funeral Home in Winder, Ga., said that Mr. Anderson had died at his home in Monroe, Ga., and that he had “passed away peacefully.” The funeral home did not share a cause of death.
World Wrestling Entertainment, known as the World Wrestling Federation when Mr. Anderson wrestled, said in a statement on Monday that he was known for his “hard-nosed style and gruff demeanor.”
Mr. Anderson wrestled professionally from the late 1960s through the 1980s, after training under Verne Gagne, a member of the W.W.E. Hall of Fame.
Through the 1970s and early 1980s, he was a member of the tag team known as the Minnesota Wrecking Crew, which over the years included Gene, Lars and Arn Anderson, who called themselves brothers and were popular around the Midwest. They were part of regional circuits like Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling and Georgia Championship Wrestling that were united under the National Wrestling Alliance, which regularly crowned them tag-team champions.
In the 1980s, Mr. Anderson teamed up with Arn Anderson, Ric Flair and Tully Blanchard to become the Four Horsemen, who went on to dominate the N.W.A. and later World Championship Wrestling, which competed with the W.W.F.
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Source: Television - nytimes.com
