Stanley Weston

Stanley Weston (né Weinburger; September 25, 1919 – April 11, 2002) was an American publisher, sportswriter, artist and photographer.

He promoted the sport of boxing and professional wrestling throughout his career.

Weston started Pro Wrestling Illustrated, a professional wrestling magazine, as well as 20 other magazines over his career.

Weston soon became enamored with the sport of boxing when his father brought home a copy Fleischer's magazine and in 1937 Fleischer hired him as copy boy.

In December 1939, Weston, a budding artist, painted a portrait of Billy Conn that would be the first of 57 Ring covers painted by Weston.

Daughter Toby Weston Cone said of her father, he "never liked going to boxing matches but was extremely interested in the sport. He felt it paralleled life in many ways."

Weston was a World War II and Korean War veteran who enlisted in the United States Army in 1941 and was promoted to second lieutenant in 1943.

Weston's work in the publishing industry was interrupted by World War II when served in the United States Army from 1941 until 1946.

He remained on active duty until 1946 when he transitioned into the reserves.

Weston returned to active duty for service in the Korean War and then once again transitioned back to the reserves after the war.

He returned to civilian life and The Ring in 1946, but left the publication in 1951 and once again returned to the Army during the Korean War.

Weston launched Boxing Illustrated/Wrestling News in 1958 and published it until 1964, successfully competing with The Ring.

The following year, Weston began publishing Wrestling Revue which soon became the best selling wrestling magazine in the world.

At the height of its popularity, Weston sold the highly successful magazine to Bert Sugar, Lew Eskin and Norman Kietzer and then went on to publish under the company name "G.C. London Publishing", competing magazines to include The Wrestler, Inside Wrestling, Wrestling Yearbook, Wrestling Annual, Pro Wrestling Illustrated, World Boxing and Boxing International.

He retired from Air Force Reserves in 1966 at the rank of major.

After being hired by Fleischer, Weston was soon colorizing black and white portraits of boxing figures with oils.

In 1970, Weston ensured access to wrestling's most important celebrities by hiring 25 year old wrestling enthusiast Bill Apter who cultivated friendships with the biggest stars in the business.

Apter's photography, writing and interviewing skills became a mainstay in Weston's magazines for over two decades.

In the 1972, Weston started a new magazine, Sports Review Wrestling, that featured "bloody covers and outlandish stories".

Initially, competing with other Weston publications, the magazine sold poorly.

In 1973, Weston showed Apter a set of photos taken by Los Angeles-based boxing photographer Theo Ehret.

Apter was surprised that the photo set showed young, bikini-clad women in posed wrestling moves.

Weston referred to the wrestling sessions as "Apartment House Wrestling" and told Apter that they would constitute a new feature in Sports Review Wrestling.

Juxtaposing photographs of girls in bikinis fighting each other alongside photos of legitimate wrestlers such as Chief Jay Strongbow infuriated people in the wrestling industry, including Strongbow who asked Apter "What is this crap doing in a wrestling magazine? Why is my picture next to them?"

Professional wrestler Gorilla Monsoon threw a copy of the magazine at Apter and said "Tell Weston this doesn't fly!"

Despite pushback from the professional wrestling community, sales of Sports Review Wrestling soared and Weston decided to retain "apartment house wrestling" as a monthly feature.

Using the same kayfabe approach as professional wrestling, Dan Shocket soon became the editor responsible for crafting the apartment house wrestling storylines, typically featuring a fight between a blonde and a brunette, battling in front of a fictitious community of apartment house wrestling fans.

Organizing the monthly wrestling matches for groups of wealthy businessmen who enjoyed the spectacle of women fighting, was done by "Dave Moll", described in one issue as a "millionaire playboy", and considered to be Shocket's alter ego.

Weston began publishing Pro Wrestling Illustrated in 1979 and assigned Bill Apter as the magazine's senior editor and photographer.

Ehret remained the principal photographer throughout the feature's run in Sports Review Wrestling, eventually publishing his own book Exquisite Mayhem, a photographic collection of apartment house wrestling. Apartment House Wrestling's last feature was in 1983.

By the end of the decade, knowing that adolescents represented a large share of his sales audience and in response to parental concerns, Weston had also removed bloody photos from the magazine's covers.

In 1989, fifty-two years after joining The Ring as a stock boy, Weston purchased the magazine that gave him his first job.

Two years later, Weston's G.C. London Publishing had a portfolio of five boxing and nine wrestling magazines with annual sales of more than $13 million.

Sports Review Wrestling ceased publication in July 1992.

Weston subsequently sold all of his publications, to include The Ring, to Kappa Publishing in 1993.

Weston was also an author who penned several of the definitive books on boxing history, including History of the Heavyweights, The Heavyweight Champions, The Best of The Ring, The Chronicle of Boxing and, with Steve Farhood, The Ring: Boxing the 20th Century.

In 1995 Kappa reintroduced the magazine, formatted in a reduced size, but the new version lasted less than a year.

Weston was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2006.

Weston was born to Bessie (Biegeleisen) and Jacob Weinburger in the Bronx.

His family eventually moved out to Long Island and became neighbors with Nat Fleischer, publisher of The Ring magazine.