Combat Sports Historian and Martial Artist
Posts about catch-as-catch-can or catch wrestling matches, the dominant style of wrestling in the United States after 1890.
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
Sorakichi Matsuda travelled to the United States in late 1883 to begin his professional wrestling career. Matsuda intended to learn American professional wrestling and return to his homeland to start his own wrestling promotion. Matsuda’s manager made claims about his training in Japan, which could not be verified. Matsuda trained in sumo wrestling with the famous Isegahama stable but did
On Tuesday, June 3, 1924, up-and-coming wrestler Jim Browning challenged Taro Miyake in a mixed styles match in Nashville, Tennessee. Browning, a wrestler from Verona, Missouri recently left the Missouri-Kansas area to wrestle in Tennessee and Kentucky. The 21-year-old Browning was developing a reputation for solid wrestling. Browning impressed promoters so much in the 1920s that the promoters put the
Over the past twenty years, preservationists have found several wrestling films from the 1920s through the 1950s that were assumed lost. Fans can watch most of the newly discovered films on YouTube. One of the surviving films is eighteen minutes of an hour, twenty minutes match from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1930. Jim Londos wrestled Dick Shikat (video link) for a
On Saturday, September 10, 1910, Stanislaus Zbyszko, fresh off his first tour of the United States, wrestled the Great Gama at Shepherd’s Bush Stadium in London, England. 7,000 spectators crowded into the stadium to watch the match. A few weeks earlier, Mr. Benjamin brought a group of Pehlwani wrestlers from India to wrestle in England. Fans consider the Great Gama
When World Heavyweight Wrestling Champion William Muldoon retired in 1889, he hoped his protege Ernest Roeber would be recognized as the new champion. However, Muldoon won his title in Greco-Roman wrestling, which was the German-born Roeber’s expertise. Unfortunately, the exploits of Martin “Farmer” Burns and Evan “The Strangler” Lewis catapulted catch-as-catch-can wrestling into the dominant style. Roeber did have a
Ed “Strangler” Lewis is one of the top two American professional wrestlers of all-time. While Lewis was a legitimate submission wrestler, who could beat anyone in a wrestling contest, he worked almost exclusively in prearranged exhibition matches. In 1929, he took part in a match with professional football player turned wrestler, Gus Sonnenberg. Sonnenberg was on the Providence Steam Roller,