Sweet Daddy Siki RIP

Sweet Daddy Siki RIP

Sweet Daddy Siki was my first brush with greatness. I was 6. He was a professional wrestler. Siki was legendary. The Calgary Stampede parade had just run along 9 Avenue behind our family business. It was a dry cleaner in downtown Calgary, where city hall stands today. Wrestlers were on a float. This is a big wrestling town because of the Hart family and home to Stampede Wrestling on local TV. I was a fan. I knew all the good guys and bad guys, including Siki. I was standing next to the counter and in he walked. I was tiny. He was enormous, a very black man with very white hair. There weren’t many black people in Calgary back then and he was likely the first one I had ever seen in real life. “Go get your cowboy hat and ask him to sign,” my dad says. I took my jaw off the floor. Speechless I handed him my hat. He smiled, signed, picked up his dry cleaning and left. Siki died on New Years Eve 2024. He was 91.