After retiring in 1977, Kowalski started a professional wrestling school in Malden, Massachusetts and trained many professional wrestlers, including Studd, Triple H, Chyna, Eddie Edwards, Frankie Kazarian, Kofi Kingston, Damien Sandow, Fandango, Brittany Brown, April Hunter, John Kronus, Perry Saturn, and Tommaso Ciampa.

[6] Years later, he told interviewers that he never expected to be a wrestler – by the age of 14, he was already 6 feet 4 inches (193 cm), and because he was thin for his height, he began working out at the local YMCA, but had no plan to go into athletics at that time.

The most common one is that while attending the University of Detroit (some sources say Assumption College in Windsor), he heard that there was an opportunity to make good pay by wrestling.

Outside of the ring, however, Kowalski was considered so friendly and polite that some wrestling promoters complained about the way he would "drop character" in public.

"[11] Photographs from the Quebec City match helped to establish André's reputation in American wrestling magazines, since they showed him towering over the better-known Kowalski.

[1] In reality, Eric's ears were already badly cauliflowered due to years of abuse and the injury was an accident, but it fortified Kowalski as being a ruthless villain who gleefully maims his opponents.

By the time the feud had run out of steam several years later, Yukon Eric joked to Kowalski about the small size of an audience, "God, that's a lousy house.

"[citation needed] Kowalski also gained some notoriety in Boston for an incident in late June 1958 when he was wrestling Pat O'Connor.

Kowalski reached down, applied the claw hold and Moto was not only counted out, but deemed by the referee too hurt to continue.

The Fall River Herald News reported in its next day morning edition that these two "mortal enemies" were late because the car in which they had ridden together to the match had broken down on the way.

Kowalski formed a tag team with fellow heel Gorilla Monsoon and took Red Berry as his manager; Monsoon and Kowalski held the WWWF United States Tag Team Championship, winning the belts in two straight falls from Skull Murphy and Brute Bernard on Washington, D.C. television, and later losing to The Tolos Brothers in two straight falls in Teaneck, New Jersey in December 1963.

However, they were stripped of the championship, following the interference of a third Executioner during a title defense against Chief Jay Strongbow and Billy White Wolf.

His last match took place in 1993, when Kowalski was 66 years old losing to Baron Von Raschke at the Maccabiah Mania fundraiser show in Livingston, New Jersey.

Kowalski would remain a fixture on the Northeast independent wrestling scene taking autograph and personal appearances.

His last appearance was on March 14, 2008, for Top Rope Promotions at an event in North Adams, Massachusetts, where he came to the ring and put the claw on local wrestler "Gorgeous" Gino Giovanni and was declared the winner of the segment.

[citation needed] He also made numerous post-retirement television appearances, including Late Night with David Letterman in 1982, and was featured in a comic role in Michael Burlingame's surrealist film To a Random in 1986.

"Lost in the B-Zone", a music video for Birdsongs of the Mesozoic which was derived from this film, also prominently featured Kowalski.