Combat Sports Historian and Martial Artist
Posts about professional wrestling in the 19th and early 20th Centuries.
On Thanksgiving in America, Thursday, November 26, 1908, Yussouff Mahmout wrestled former American Heavyweight Wrestling Champion Tom Jenkins at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Mahmout recently to the United States to wrestle Frank Gotch for the World Heavyweight Wrestling Championship. If Mahmout defeated Jenkins, Mahmout would prove to be a bona fide challenger to Gotch. Jenkins was the
On Tuesday, January 29, 1884, approximately two thousand fans crowded into the Detroit Opera House to watch the first of a two-match series between Colonel James H. McLaughlin and Henry Moses Dufur. The crowd had to delight the organizers and wrestlers. Matches drawing crowds in the thousands were rare during the 19th Century. Organizers claimed McLaughlin was defending the American
Jim Londos rose through the ranks of professional wrestling to become the biggest box office star of not only the 1930s but of all-time. However, if Londos had not come to St. Louis in the early 1920s, the story could have been quite different. Londos learned catch-as-catch-can wrestling while Londos performed as a strong man in the carnival circuit during
Jack Claybourne, one of the earliest African-American, professional wrestlers, was born Elmer Claybourn at Mexico, Missouri, on March 8, 1910. In 1910, Mexico was home to about 5,939 residents. Claybourne started his professional wrestling career in Missouri in 1931. Initially, Claybourne wrestled in nearby Moberly, Missouri. Moberly had a population of 13,722 residents compared to 8,290 residents in Mexico, Missouri
Henry Moses Dufur held the World Heavyweight Collar-and-Elbow Wrestling Champion during the 1870s. By 1855, Dufur retired from professional wrestling to pursue his full-time profession of clothing tailor. Even during his wrestling career, Dufur worked as a tailor. Dufur told the correspondent from The Boston Globe that he was born in Richford, Vermont on June 5, 1943. This date of
Henry Moses Dufur specialized in collar-and-elbow wrestling when Dufur wrestled professionally in the 1870s and 1880s. Born on May 5, 1844, in Richmond, Vermont, Dufur wrestled primarily in the northeastern United States. On June 27, 1878, Dufur wrestled a return match with a wrestler named Cox at the Boston Baseball Park in front of five hundred fans. Five hundred fans
Wrestling historians consider either Ed “Strangler” Lewis or Frank Gotch to be the greatest American professional wrestler. While we know quite a bit about the early career of Frank Gotch, we know much less about the early career of Ed “Strangler” Lewis. Various sources claim Lewis learned catch-as-catch-can wrestling in the carnivals when he was only fourteen years old. Lewis
Besides being the preferred venue for professional boxers and wrestlers to train when in St. Louis, the St. Louis Business Men’s Gymnasium hosted smaller boxing and wrestling events. In 1898, former American Heavyweight Wrestling Champion Martin “Farmer” Burns wrestled Oscar Wasem in front of a small crowd at the Business Men’s Gymnasium. Burns was transitioning into training wrestlers full-time and
During the early 1930s, the most powerful promoters in professional wrestling, Jack Curley, Joseph “Toots” Mondt, Paul Bowser, and Tom Packs executed double-crosses on each other hurting the overall drawing power of their wrestlers. During the promotional war, Jack Pfefer aligned himself with Jack Curley and “Toots” Mondt, who ran out of New York City. In late 1933, Curley and
I took a second look at this match after listening to the Shut Up and Wrestle podcast interview with Mike Chapman, one of the foremost experts on Frank Gotch. Mike Chapman put forth a convincing argument for his belief that both Earl Caddock vs. Joe Stecher world title matches were “shoots” or legitimate contests. After reviewing the accounts of the