{"id":67237,"date":"2020-04-20T19:24:09","date_gmt":"2020-04-20T23:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonprowrestling.com\/?p=67237"},"modified":"2020-04-20T19:24:09","modified_gmt":"2020-04-20T23:24:09","slug":"msg-referee-jack-lotz-passes-away-at-86","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2020\/04\/20\/msg-referee-jack-lotz-passes-away-at-86\/","title":{"rendered":"MSG Referee Jack Lotz Passes Away at 86"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday night saw yet another passing from the world of pro wrestling, as former New York State Athletic Commission referee <strong>Jack Lotz<\/strong> passed away at the age of 86. In an era where regional athletic commissions assigned the referees, much like in boxing or UFC now, Lotz was the main referee to work Madison Square Gardens for events for the WWWF in the 1970s and WWF in the 1980s. He was the referee for the match that saw <strong>Bob Backlund<\/strong> defeat <strong>&#8220;Superstar&#8221; Billy Graham<\/strong> on February 20, 1978, for the WWWF World Heavyweight Championship, as well as the September 22, 1980 Title Unification match between NWA World&#8217;s Heavyweight Champion <strong>Harley Race<\/strong> against WWF World Champion Bob Backlund. His biggest title match he reffed in the WWF was arguably on January 23, 1984, when he counted the &#8220;1-2-3&#8221; that saw <strong>Hulk Hogan<\/strong> defeat the <strong>Iron Sheik<\/strong> for the WWF World Heavyweight Championship.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Hulk Hogan reflects on his first WWE Title win 35 years later\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ET-kIIfiBDk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>He would referee as part of the first three WrestleMania events, including the <strong>Mr. T vs Rowdy Roddy Piper<\/strong> match &#8211; he was also accredited to ref boxing matches. Jack Lotz was used in movies as the referee in on-screen fights, including <strong>Martin Scorcese<\/strong>&#8216;s <em><strong>Raging Bull<\/strong> <\/em>and Norman Jewison&#8217;s <em><strong>The Hurricane<\/strong><\/em>, a biopic about <strong>Ruben &#8220;Hurricane&#8221; Carter<\/strong>. He was also a stuntman on the <em><strong>Sopranos<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-67241\" src=\"https:\/\/lastwordonprowrestling.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2020\/04\/Screen-Shot-2020-04-20-at-7.20.10-PM-e1587424939839.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"341\" height=\"600\"><\/p>\n<p>LWOPW sends its sincere condolences to the Boni Blackstone and the entire Pedicino family, his friends, peers, and colleagues. Stay tuned to the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/lastwordonprowrestling.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/a>\u00a0for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Sad to hear Jack Lotz passed away<br \/>He was NY State referee did many of my early matches<br \/>Was ref for 2 <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WWE?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@wwe<\/a> title changes Backlund vs Graham<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/HulkHogan?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@HulkHogan<\/a> vs <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/the_ironsheik?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">@the_ironsheik<\/a><br \/>A Korean War veteran<br \/>Saw him about 2 years ago<br \/>We spoke about 20mins he was raising $$ for the Veterans <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/zt9sJQBe7j\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/zt9sJQBe7j<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Tommy Dreamer (@THETOMMYDREAMER) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/THETOMMYDREAMER\/status\/1252067475543515136?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">April 20, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Saddened to hear of the passing of former referee John L. &quot;Jack&quot; Lotz this past Friday. He was a good, kind man. Always so nice. RIP good sir. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/kmdSl2Zey5\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/kmdSl2Zey5<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jimmy Korderas (@jimmykorderas) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jimmykorderas\/status\/1252058862909304835?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">April 20, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday night saw yet another passing from the world of pro wrestling, as former New York State Athletic Commission referee Jack Lotz passed away at the age of 86. In an era where regional athletic commissions assigned the referees, much like in boxing or UFC now, Lotz was the main referee to work Madison Square [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":649,"featured_media":67242,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[547,6],"tags":[6356],"class_list":["post-67237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-memorium","category-north-america","tag-jack-lotz"],"modified_by":"Jamie Greer","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/649"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}