At 6-foot-6, and 320 pounds, Langley’s Don Leo Heaton was one of the top professional wrestlers in his prime.
Author and SLAM! Wrestling website contributor Greg Oliver described Heaton as fast and agile, despite his hulking size, able to perform a “nip-up” where an athlete lying horizontally on the ground makes an acrobatic spring to a standing position.
“Contrasting his size was his voice, which was squeaky and high-pitched, yet measured and thoughtful, menacing when it needed to be, motivating when he wanted to rally the fans,” Oliver said in an online tribute to Heaton, who passed away in hospital on Oct. 13 at the age of 87.
Born in Hurricane, Utah and raised as a Mormon, Heaton was nicknamed the Mormon Giant. He wrestled under the name of Don Leo Jonathon.
He won two National Wrestling Alliance international tag team championships and in 2006 he was inducted into the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame.
A Chicago Film Archives video of a Heaton match 1955 at the Chicago International Amphitheatre shows an villainous Heaton losing to Vern Gagne in a match the featured, among other things what the announcer called a “king-sized” body slam and a “double pin” that left both wrestlers apparently dazed in the ring.
“That’s an awful lot of big man to be laid out like he’s been laid out” the announcer said after the smaller Gagne managed to get the gigantic Heaton in a sleeper hold.
Heaton was a second-generation pro wrestler. His father was former wrestler Brother Jonathan.
He appeared in the wrestling movie Paradise Alley, the 1978 film written and directed by Sylvester Stallone that featured several cameos by actual professional wrestlers.
In July 2016, Heaton was named part of a class action lawsuit filed against World Wrestling Entertainment, the largest wrestling promoter in the world, which alleged that wrestlers suffered traumatic brain injuries the company concealed the risks of injury.
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In a 2015 Times profile, the long-retired Heaton said he still had dreams about competing.
“Once in a while I have dreams that the match is ready to go on and they are calling me to the ring and I don’t have my shoes tied up or some silly damn thing,” Heaton said with a laugh.
He said he loved performing for an audience, whether he was playing good guy or bad guy.
And that depended on where he was wrestling.
“In Vancouver, I could do no harm (but) in Quebec City, I didn’t speak enough French,” he said.
He wrestled for 30 years, participating in more than 3,000 matches and securing numerous championships along the way, in several different wrestling associations.
Heaton moved to Langley in the late 1990s, long after his wrestling days were done.
He was forced to retire in 1980, at the age of 49, after he injured his back by body-slamming Andre the Giant, the 550-pounder once known as the Eighth Wonder of the World.
His wrestling career took him all over North America, Mexico, Europe, South Africa, Australia and Japan.
Wrestling in the Canadian West book author Vance Nevada said Jonathan “was considered by many to be the original giant of professional wrestling … one of the biggest acts there was.”
dan.ferguson@langleytimes.com
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