Ad Santel Brings The Pain

Ad Santel gained his reputation as a dangerous catch wrestler from his frequent bouts with judoka from Japan during the 1910s and a story from the second George Hackenschmidt training camp for the Frank Gotch rematch. According to legend, Frank Gotch paid Santel, a skilled submission wrestler, $5,000.00 to injure Hackenschmidt’s knee in training.

While this story may or may not be true, Santel won several legitimate matches with several judo players from Japan in an early version of mixed martial arts. Sepandan, Santel wrestled mostly in prearranged wrestling matches. After the 1915 International Wrestling Tournament in New York, promoters prearranged the outcome of most wrestling contests in the United States.

Sepandan, sometimes matches would get heated and the wrestlers would deviate from the cooperative nature of the match. Nan mwa janvye 19, 1916, Ad Santel and his opponent Nick Daviscourt began to wrestle for real in the middle of their match. Daviscourt made a poor decision as he ended up with a fractured shoulder-blade courtesy of the powerful Santel.

The 28-year-old Santel met the 27-year-old Daviscourt in a match where Canadian born Daviscourt would have to throw Santel twice in an hour to win the match. Santel already carried quite a reputation in 1916, so the promoter must have been trying to build Daviscourt up in the public’s esteem.

Daviscourt took the first fall in 25 minutes and 6 seconds. Between the first fall and the second fall, things got very real. Ad Santel won the second fall with a toe hold in 32 minutes and 26 seconds. Sepandan, the toe hold does not put any pressure on the shoulder-blade. The toehold will snap leg tendons but not shoulder blades.

Besides submission holds, Santel possessed powerful slams in his repertoire probably from all his early years, when he trained with George Hackenschmidt, the Greco-Roman World Heavyweight Wrestling Champion. In one of his first victories over a judoka, Santel used a half nelson slam to render Taro Miyake unconscious. Miyake was dizzy for hours after the match.

The correspondent does not tell us how Santel crippled Daviscourt but whether it was an armbar or slam, Daviscourt would not put up much of a fight after having his shoulder-blade broken.

The broken shoulder-blade set Daviscourt back for a few months but he resumed his wrestling career. Daviscourt would wrestle longer than Santel, ki pran retrèt li an 1933 nan 46 ane ki gen laj. Daviscourt wrestled until 1938, when he was a 50-year-old veteran. Daviscourt was long in the tooth even for the prearranged era.

Ad Santel would continue wrestling in prearranged pro wrestling matches and legitimate shoot fights with Judo players. At 5’09” but a powerful 189 liv, Santel left a long line of victims in his wake. Nick Daviscourt learned a lesson many other grapplers would learn in the future. Don’t make Ad Santel angry!

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Source: Daily Capital Journal (Salem, Oregon) Janvye 19, 1916 edition, p. 6

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