Londos vs. Nagurski in 1938
On November 18, 1938, former world wrestling champion Jim Londos wrestled current world champion Bronko Nagurski, the great former football player for the Chicago Bears. The men wrestled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for Nagurski’s version of the world wrestling championship. You can view the 14-minute match in its entirety on YouTube.
When I viewed the match for the first time, several things stood out. First, a wrestler needed to hold his opponents shoulders to the mat for three seconds to win the match. In some of the early surviving films from the 1930 to 1934, a wrestler only need to touch both his opponents shoulders to the mat to win like Londos does in the match above.
Artist rendering of Jim Londos (Public Domain)
While Bronko Nagurski did not know much legitimate wrestling, Tony Stecher taught him enough wrestling to have a credible match with Londos, a shooter and hooker although Londos was not on the level of Ed “Strangler” Lewis, Joe Stecher or John Pesek.
The match also disproves that matches wrestled before the past twenty years are slow and boring. Nagurski and Londos wrestled a fast-paced match for the entire fourteen minute match. Watch the match and judge for yourself.
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