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[Definitie:] "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance."
(Wilmore and Costill) 
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2 6 - 0 1 - 2 0 05 Bodybuilder and photographer was known as Singing Wrestler
Contemporary of Weider brothers, he took photos for muscle mags
ALAN HUSTAK
Tony Lanza, one of the first accomplished muscle magazine photographers in the country, was also a professional wrestler known in the ring as Lario Lanza, the Singing Wrestler.
Lanza died Thursday in Montreal after a fall in his bathroom. He was 84. Lanza worked with brothers Ben and Joe Weider in the late 1940s to create the International Federation of Body Builders.
"Tony Lanza didn't have a bad bone in his body. He was an up-front, decent human being with a great sense of humour," Ben Weider said yesterday. "Not only was he a good wrestler, he was an outstanding photographer, the best in the world, who knew and photographed all the grand champions like Steeve Reeves, Ed Theriault and Leo Robert."
Ferdinando Antonio Lanza, the son of newly arrived Italian immigrant parents, was born in Montreal on July 27, 1920, and grew up in the Villeray district. During the war he served in the army as a military policeman and took up boxing.
About the same time he befriended Joe Weider, who had begun publishing Your Physique, a muscle magazine, even before he and Ben began selling weight-lifting equipment.
Joe Weider gave Lanza an inexpensive Speed Graphic camera as a gift and encouraged him to take photos for the magazine.
In 1950, Lanza won the Mr. Sante Quebec bodybuilding title, and started wrestling professionally. Intially, Lanza promoted himself as Lario Lanza, aping the name of a popular tenor, Mario Lanza. As Lario Lanza, Tony would burst into song before each wrestling match.
He had other eccentric personas: the Masked Strangler, the Masked Spider, and King Kong, the Gorilla Man.
In 1964, Lanza won the junior heavyweight wrestling championship title. He opened a wrestling school in the basement of his house, where he taught until the late 1970s, when he retired.
Lanza's wife, Margot Gravel, a seamstress whom he married in 1942, died in 1997. They had two children, a son, Tony, and a daughter, Claudette. The funeral is to be held Friday at 1 p.m. at Eglise St. Marc, 2602 Beaubien St. E.
A gallery of Lanza's physique photography can be found at robertuniverse.com/lanza/classicwrestlers.htm.
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