[3] Eddie Sharkey's career in professional wrestling commenced on the carnival circuit in the late 1950s where he was trained and promoted by Boris Malenko, Bob Geigel, and Joe Scarpello.
Sharkey made his American Wrestling Association (AWA) debut in Fargo, North Dakota in 1961 where he assumed the role of a babyface.
In September 1968, Sharkey clinched the National Wrestling Association (NWA) United States Heavyweight Championship from Jack Donovan.
Although a chief rival of the American Wrestling Alliance during the late 1980s, Sharkey and Gagne eventually agreed to a talent exchange deal between the two promotions.
In 1986, Eddie Sharkey and promoter Tony Condello worked out an agreement for PWA wrestlers to appear in televised wrestling events in central Canada.
A number of PWA wrestlers often appeared on The Prima-Donns, a long-running Public-access television cable TV show in the Minneapolis-area, including Eddie Sharkey, Baron von Raschke, Nick Bockwinkel and Jerry Lynn.