# Wahoo McDaniel: Midland, Texas Made a Legend > Before he ever stepped into a wrestling ring, Ed "Wahoo" McDaniel was a West Texas multi-sport phenomenon and an AFL champion. From a childhood baseball team coached by George H.W. Bush to legendary feuds with Ric Flair, explore the larger-than-life true story of a Texas icon. **By:** Marcus Bellamy Shaw **Published:** June 14, 2026 **Tags:** football, wrestling --- Before he ever set foot in a wrestling ring, Edward Hugh McDaniel was already one of the more remarkable athletes West Texas had seen. He came out of Midland High School as a state shot put champion, a two-time all-state football player, and a baseball catcher who led the entire state of Texas in home runs with 14 in a single season. One of his Pony League coaches? A young George H.W. Bush, then a Midland oil man with political ambitions nobody had fully sorted out yet. That's the kind of origin story you can't manufacture. And for all the miles Wahoo McDaniel logged — AFL rosters in Houston, Denver, New York, and Miami; wrestling territories from Amarillo to Charlotte to Tokyo — Texas claimed him from the jump. He billed himself from Midland until the day he died. ## **Wahoo McDaniel's Texas Roots: Midland and the Oil Patch Life** Wahoo's father, Hugh "Big Wahoo" McDaniel, was a Choctaw-Chickasaw oil field worker who moved his family through several towns before landing in Midland, Texas, when his son was in middle school. The Permian Basin was booming in the late 1940s and early 1950s, pulling workers west from Oklahoma and Louisiana. The McDaniels came with it. At Midland High School, the kid they called "Little Wahoo" became something else entirely. Track state champion in the shot put. Second in the state in the discus. Football All-American. Baseball standout at catcher. He wasn't an athlete. He was an event. Bud Wilkinson at the University of Oklahoma took notice and signed him. At Norman, McDaniel played linebacker and punter for the Sooners, set a school record with a 91-yard punt against Iowa State in 1958 — a record that still stands — and earned All-Big Eight honors as a senior. The AFL draft came calling in 1960. ## **Houston Oilers: Wahoo's First Pro Stop** The Houston Oilers picked him up that same year, and McDaniel was part of the team that won the very first AFL Championship in 1960, beating the Los Angeles Chargers. While the Oilers backed it up with a second straight title in 1961, McDaniel had already moved on to the Denver Broncos. Still, he helped lay the foundation for that golden era—and no professional football team in Houston has won a league championship since. During his time with the Oilers and later the Denver Broncos, McDaniel was already wrestling in the off-season. AFL salaries in 1961 weren't enough to retire on, and Dory Funk Sr. was running a tight wrestling operation out of Amarillo that paid real money. McDaniel trained under Funk and started working NWA territories across Texas and the Southwest. Football and wrestling, running parallel. ## **The Wrestling Career That Outgrew the Football Career** By the time McDaniel joined the New York Jets in 1964, his dual life was the whole act. He had "Wahoo" stitched above jersey number 54 in a custom job the team allowed. When he made a tackle at Shea Stadium, the public address announcer would ask the crowd who made it — and they'd shout "Wahoo! Wahoo!" back. Joe Namath later wrote about him. Len Dawson said McDaniel delivered the hardest hit he ever took on a football field. But the money was in wrestling. McDaniel said so himself in a 1982 interview with The Post and Courier: _"I was just making so much money wrestling, I decided to quit football."_ He walked away from the Dolphins after the 1968 season and never looked back. His wrestling career then operated on a different scale. He sold out the Sam Houston Coliseum multiple times in feuds against Boris Malenko and as a recurring challenger for Dory Funk Jr.'s NWA World Heavyweight Championship. He went to the Mid-Atlantic and captured the NWA United States Heavyweight Championship five times from Jim Crockett's promotion. He worked feuds against Johnny Valentine, Ric Flair, Harley Race, and Roddy Piper. Greg Valentine — Johnny's son — broke Wahoo's leg in 1977 and had T-shirts printed reading "I Broke Wahoo's Leg." That is either the most heel move in wrestling history or the most Texan, depending on your perspective. ## **NWA Big Time Wrestling and the Texas Territory** Texas wrestling fans knew Wahoo through NWA Big Time Wrestling, the Dallas-Fort Worth territory that eventually became World Class Championship Wrestling. He was a fixture. The Choctaw-Chickasaw heritage he wore into the ring — the war bonnet, the tomahawk chop that became his signature — connected in Texas the way it connected everywhere else he worked: audiences understood they were watching someone real. The toughness wasn't theater. Quarterbacks and linebackers who played against him said the same thing. He wrestled across Texas throughout his career. Amarillo, where Dory Funk Sr. first trained him. Houston, where he drew the biggest crowds of his early wrestling days. Dallas. The full map. ## **The End of the Line** McDaniel retired from wrestling in 1996 as his health started to fail. Diabetes had taken both kidneys by around 1997, and he spent his last years on dialysis, waiting on a transplant list that never came through in time. He died April 18, 2002, in Houston — where his professional life in Texas had started — at 63. Two daughters, Nikki and Cindi, one in Houston and one in Rowlett. A legacy that runs from the Permian Basin to Madison Square Garden and back again. The ring name was his father's nickname first. That detail matters — it means "Wahoo McDaniel" was always a Texas family name before it was anything else. What's your memory of Wahoo — did you catch him at the Sam Houston Coliseum, or did you know him from the Midland years? --- **About the author:** Marcus Bellamy left Michigan in 2024 with his wife Jesi, drove south, and kept driving until the air smelled like the Gulf. They landed in Galveston and decided that was that. He writes about Texas history, culture, and the communities that make this state unlike anywhere else — a perspective sharpened by being someone who chose Texas deliberately, not by accident of birth. His interests run from Gulf Coast fishing and boating to technology, science fiction, and the kind of deep-cut local history most people scroll past. Every Bit Texas is his attempt to make sure those stories don't disappear. --- _Read the full article at [everybittexas.com/posts/wahoo-mcdaniel-midland-texas-made-a-legend](https://everybittexas.com/posts/wahoo-mcdaniel-midland-texas-made-a-legend)_ [← All Posts](https://everybittexas.com/posts/index.md)