Joe Stecher Bergulat untuk Gelar Negara

Joe Stecher melakukan debut gulat profesionalnya pada akhir pertandingan 1912 atau lebih awal 1913. Stecher terbukti menjadi seorang profesional yang berbahaya sejak awal karirnya.

Martin “Petani” Terbakar, pegulat dan pelatih terkenal, membawa salah satu anak didiknya, Yussiff Hussane, untuk menguji Stecher dalam kontes yang sah selama bulan Juni 1913. Burns and most followers of the sport expected Hussane to humble the young wrestler.

Instead, Stecher took Hussane to the mat and applied his leg scissors. Stecher squeezed the hold and put rib breaking pressure on Hussane’s mid-section. Hussane realized his dire predicament and bit Stecher’s thigh causing an immediate disqualification.

Hussane chose to force a disqualification instead of having to submit to the 20-year-old Nebraska farmer. Hussane refused to continue and forfeited the match to Stecher.

Stecher’s performance so impressed Burns that Burns began training and mentoring both Joe Stecher and his brother Anton “Tony” Stecher. Tony Stecher wrestled as a lightweight but achieved fame as Joe’s manager. Later, Tony Stecher promoted professional wrestling in Minnesota.

By the end of 1913, Joe Stecher won seventeen of the eighteen matches he wrestled that year. One wrestler held Stecher to a draw, but no one beat him. Based on his outstanding record, Stecher wrestled I.A. Johnson of St. Paul, Minnesota for the Nebraska Heavyweight Wrestling Championship on December 22, 1913.

The men wrestled at the Albion Opera House in Albion, Nebraska. The organizers of the show charged $1.00 for front row tickets, $0.75 for the next five rows and $0.50 for general admission tickets.

The organizers stipulated “Ladies Are Invited”, which was not always the case in this era. The organizers also banned smoking, which was very unusual.

Billed as “The Terrible Swede”, I.A. Johnson made several boasts to the local newspapers about how easily he would defeat Joe Stecher. Johnson said he would throw Stecher for the first fall in five minutes. Johnson outweighed Stecher by about twenty pounds, which may have led to Johnson’s overconfidence. Stecher entered the ring at 202 pon

A wrestler won the first fall quickly, but his name was not I.A. Johnson. Joe Stecher used his scissors hold and half-Nelson to pin Johnson in seven minutes.

After a ten-minute intermission, Stecher used the same hold combination to pin Johnson for the second fall in four minutes. Stecher easily won his first title in only eleven minutes by winning two straight falls.

Stecher did not slow after winning the Nebraska title. Within a year and a half, Stecher wrestled for the American Heavyweight Championship. After winning that title, fans recognized Stecher as the World Champion. It would take the rise of Ed “Strangler” Lewis in the mid-1910s to present the first legitimate challenge to Stecher’s dominance.

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Sources: The Albion Argus (Albion, Nebraska), Desember 18, 1913, p. 5, dan The Fremont Tri-Weekly Tribune (Fremont, Nebraska), Desember 30, 1913, p. 5

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