Posts about professional wrestling history from the 1860s to the 1940s.
On Thursday, July 9, 1925, Ed “Strangler” Lewis made one of the early defenses of his version of the World Heavyweight Wrestling Championship in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Lewis wrestled Howard Cantonwine in front of 5,000 fans at McNulty Park. After Stanislaus Zbyszko double-crossed Sandow’s and Lewis’ promotional group by defeating Wayne “Big” Munn legitimately, both Joe Stecher and Ed “Strangler” Lewis […]
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Bernarr MacFadden, born Bernard Adolphus McFadden in Mill Spring, Missouri, on August 16, 1868, founded a publishing company in 1899 that still operates today. MacFadden, an early proponent of physical culture, authored books and published magazine about physical culture, early bodybuilding training. MacFadden moved into pulp magazines like True Detective in the 1920s. Before MacFadden made his fortune as a publisher […]
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Jim Londos developed into professional wrestling’s biggest box office star during the 1930s. Londos wrestled main events against Ed “Strangler” Lewis and Jim Browning at baseball stadiums. These matches drew crowds of more than 30,000 fans for the first time since the second Gotch vs. Hackenschmidt in 1911. When Londos wrestled in Greece, Londos drew crowds estimated to be at […]
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Professional wrestlers dying in the ring is rare but occasionally happens. In 1936, 5,000 wrestling fans in Washington, D.C. inadvertently booed a dead man at the end of the Mike Romano vs. “Irish” Jack Donovan match at Griffith Stadium on Thursday, June 25, 1936. The 40-year-old Romano was putting Donovan over in a worked match. Newspapers inaccurately reported Romano as […]
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John “The Nebraska Tigerman” Pesek started wrestling professionally in 1915, but Pesek was more suited to the 1885 professional wrestling ring. By 1915, wrestlers worked their matches. Skilled lightweight wrestler Clarence Ecklund trained Pesek in catch-as-catch-can wrestling. Pesek developed into a skilled hooker or submission wrestler. Pesek never liked working and wrestled contests in his early career. Eventually, Pesek did […]
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When Frank Gotch retired as World Heavyweight Wrestling Champion after beating Georg Lurich in his last match, promoters scrambled to find a successor. Samuel Rachmann tried to put forth his own champion by hosting the 1915 International Wrestling Tournament in New York City. Rachmann wanted his challenger Aberg to win the tournament and be recognized by the public as the […]
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During March 1910, the United States Attorney General in Council Bluffs, Iowa charged John C. Mabray (a version of his actual name, Mabry) and a dozen defendants with using the mail to commit gambling fraud in professional boxing, professional wrestling, and professional horse racing. Mabry, a livestock dealer living in Kansas City, Missouri, employed insiders in boxing, wrestling, and horse […]
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In the early morning hours of August 5, 1933, four safe burglars broke a window at the Marshfield Brewing Company in Marshfield, Wisconsin. The burglars knocked a dial off the safe and removed $1,550.00 in federal stamps. In 2024 dollars, the burglars stole over $37,000.00. The same burglars successfully took another $1,000 in federal stamps from the Wausau Brewing Company […]
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Why do wrestlers work matches instead of wrestling competitive contests? The second legitimate contest between Joe Stecher and Ed “Strangler” Lewis at the Omaha, Nebraska Fairgrounds on Tuesday, July 4, 1916, can answer the question definitively. The contest bored the fans to tears as Lewis avoided Stecher for the duration of the match. Go into the match, fans expected to […]
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D. A. McMillan served as a competent journeyman wrestler during the last two decades of the 19th Century. McMillan wrestled American Heavyweight Wrestling Champion Martin “Farmer” Burns in a worked gambling scheme that a newspaper reporter exposed. While McMillan never won the American title, McMillan beat lesser competition before the better wrestlers like Burns defeated him. On December 22, 1888, […]
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