Famous People from Midland County Texas
Wahoo McDaniel

Born
Edward McDaniel June 19, 1938. His father, nicknamed "Big Wahoo", worked in the oil fields and moved to
several towns before settling down in Midland, Texas. While Wahoo
was in middle school, one of his baseball coaches was
George H. W. Bush.
McDaniel
was a Choctaw-Chickasaw Native American who achieved fame as a
professional football player and later as a professional
wrestler. One of the sport's legitimate tough guys, Wahoo was an
unstoppable force in the ring. He held the NWA United States
Heavyweight Championship five times.
He played linebacker for the American Football League's Houston
Oilers and Denver Broncos but really became a star when he was
traded to the New York Jets in 1964. He was a crowd favorite and
made 23 tackles in a single game against his former Denver Broncos.
McDaniel was picked by the Miami Dolphins in the 1966 American Football
League expansion draft, as the team's major name player. During the
1968 season, he knocked out two police officers in an altercation
and was traded to the San Diego Chargers. Wahoo never played a game
for San Diego and started wrestling full-time.
McDaniel's health started to deteriorate in the mid-1990s, which led
to his retirement in 1996, and he eventually lost both kidneys. He
was awaiting a kidney transplant when he died of complications from
diabetes and renal failure on April 18, 2002.
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