Owen Nolan saw Tony Twist do something unbelievable
He wouldn't believed it if he didn't see it
Tony Twist
Tony Twist was a left wing who played 445 NHL games for the St. Louis Blues and the Quebec Nordiques and was widely rated the hardest puncher in the league at the time. Twist was a pure specialist: 10 goals across ten NHL seasons, 1,121 penalty minutes, and a job that amounted to keeping St. Louis stars such as Brett Hull untouched. Twist never played again after breaking his pelvis in a motorcycle accident in July 1999.
| Position | Left wing, shot left |
|---|---|
| Born | 9 May 1968, Sherwood Park, Alberta |
| Drafted | 1988, ninth round, 177th overall, St. Louis Blues |
| Teams | St. Louis Blues (1989-90 and 1994-1999), Quebec Nordiques (1990-1994) |
| Career totals | 445 games, 10 goals, 18 assists, 28 points, 1,121 penalty minutes |
| Known for | Punching power opponents openly feared, and protecting St. Louis scorers including Brett Hull |
| Career ended | Pelvis broken in a motorcycle accident in St. Louis, July 1999 |
| After hockey | St. Louis radio co-host, bar owner, and the winning plaintiff in a court case over the Spawn comics |
What is on the record about Tony Twist’s wife and family
Twist's marriage is on the public record only as far as he and established outlets have taken it. Sports Illustrated profiled him in March 1998 and reported that Twist married Jocelyn in 1990 and that the couple had two children. No established outlet has reported on his marital status in the years since, so this page takes it no further than that profile did.
The family detail Twist has talked about freely is the hockey side of it. We have covered the time Twist fought the best man from his own wedding four times.
Tony Twist's bar: Twister's Iron Bar Saloon
After his playing career Twist opened a bar under his own nickname, Twister's Iron Bar Saloon, with locations in St. Charles and Imperial, Missouri. The name borrowed from the charity motorcycle ride he had already built in St. Louis, and the bars traded on the same thing his jersey sales did: in St. Louis, Twist was a genuine local celebrity rather than a role player.
Business ventures came and went afterwards. Twist also co-hosted the Smash and Twist show on 590 The Fan in St. Louis and has run a windshield repair and replacement company in Missouri.
Tony Twist against Frank Bialowas, 26 March 1994
Frank Bialowas played four NHL games in his career, all for the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1993-94, and one of them put him opposite Twist. Fan-compiled fight logs date the meeting to 26 March 1994, in a Quebec Nordiques game against Toronto, and it survives online because of the mismatch: a career minor-leaguer getting his NHL look against the one opponent nobody wanted.
The NHL keeps no official fight record, so the date and the teams are the verifiable part. The same limit applies to his meetings with Bob Probert, including what Probert said to Twist before their final fight.
The fighting family behind Tony Twist
Twist did not pick up punching in junior hockey. His grandfather, Harry Twist, boxed professionally as Harry Runcorn, and his father, Stan Twist, served as an RCMP officer.
Twist has spoken about the mechanics of it himself, both about where he learned to fight and about the trick that gave him the upper hand in fights.
What ended Tony Twist's NHL career?
In July 1999 Twist broke his pelvis in a motorcycle accident in St. Louis. The injury ended his playing career outright: he never appeared in another NHL game, and his final totals stopped at 445 games and 1,121 penalty minutes. Nothing about the accident was hockey related, which is why the ending reads so abruptly in the record books.
Twist has stayed close to the subject of fighting since, and he has consistently refused to rank the men he faced, as we covered in his explanation for not naming his toughest opponents.
The Spawn case against Todd McFarlane
Todd McFarlane named a mob enforcer in the Spawn comics Antonio Twistelli, and Twist sued over the commercial use of his name. A St. Louis jury awarded him 24.5 million dollars in 2000, that award was set aside, and a second jury awarded him 15 million dollars in 2004 after finding that McFarlane's company had profited from his identity. An appeals court upheld the 15 million dollar verdict in June 2006.
The case closed with a 5 million dollar settlement funded by insurers, approved in an Arizona bankruptcy court in 2007. Those are the figures the courts actually recorded.
Tony Twist's charity work in St. Louis
The documented charity Twist built was a motorcycle ride rather than a foundation in his own name. Twister's Iron Horse Tour was a Harley-Davidson charity run organised with the Head First Foundation, which worked on the prevention of head injuries, and Sports Illustrated reported in 1998 that Twist sponsored the ride personally and that the event was expected to raise more than a million dollars.
Twist also led a long-distance charity ride from Vancouver to Los Angeles for the same cause. We have found no record of an organisation called the Tony Twist Foundation.
