The WAWLI Papers No. 116...

ARE WRESTLERS PEOPLE?

(January, 1934, source unknown)

By Westbrook Pegler

Often, as I have sat at the ringside, watching the great hairy lumps of living meat spank, throttle and wring one another, it has occurred to me to wonder whether wrestlers love and are loved and whether they really suffer. Or are they, like the fishworm, incapable of emotion and insensitive to pain?

Perhaps I am wrong in assuming that the fishworm has neither sentiment nor senses but I do assume as much because it spares my conscience on those rare occasions -- the last one was in 1926 -- when I string him on the hook. I did have a twinge of misgiving some time ago when I read in a sporting-goods catalogue of a device for luring the fishworm from his hole in the ground. This was an electrical apparatus, something like a tuning-fork, which, being jabbed in the ground near the worm-hole, uttered a faint mooing note and brought the male, or bull, worm charging out of the soil with his neck arched and his pulses pounding in his veins.

It suggested that the fishworm might have depths after all and that we might all be mistaken in our easy belief that because he does not quack, bark or snarl, he doesn't know he is being ill-treated. Maybe he is just reticent. There are New Englanders like that but we call them canny.

It would be very unchivalrous, I think, to impose upon the most beautiful sentiment of all in any of God's creatures with the siren call of love to seduce him to his doom. This, moreover, is quite aside from the moral aspect of the matter. Sex is something which Nature has implanted in all of us and in its proper relation to life is a very beautiful thing. But I would call it most immoral to inflame the fishworm's passion by artificial means even though we did not string him on a hook but merely left him there, bothered, bewildered and breathing hard.

The wrestler is a strange organism. It has certain characteristics which must test the conviction of the most confirmed Fundamentalist, suggesting that 'way, 'way back in some rocky cave all of us were wrestlers. It walks on its hind legs, it can be trained to speak and understand and Mr. Jack Curley, the promoter of wrestling shows, once had one in his herd which could cook a good dinner. However it cooked only one dinner for Mr. Curley.

He was entertaining a party of friends at his home in Great Neck, Long Island, that night and his wrestler had cooked pheasant for them. During the meal, Mr. Curley remarked to the lady sitting next to him that his cook was a wrestler. "Oh, I would like to see it," the lady said and Mr. Curley, clapping his hands, cried, "Wrestler! Come heren sie!"

That was Mr. Curley's way of addressing this wrestler. It was a German. When he wanted the wrestler to go downstairs he said, "Wrestler! Down-stairsen sie" and when he wanted it to go upstairs he said, "Wrestler! Up-stairsen sie." The ablative, you know.

So when the lady said she would like to see the wrestler which had cooked the dinner, Mr. Curley clapped his hands and called, "Wrestler! Come heren sie!"

The kitchen door opened and the wrestler entered. It was wearing a pair of wool wrestling trunks and sneakers. Its hide and the fur on its chest were moist.

"Wrestler," said Mr. Curley, "dinner is very good tonight."

"Jah?" said the wrestler, puckering its face in an appreciative grin and blinking its knobby ears. "Fine. But boy is it hot in that kitchen. Look how the sweat runs off of me."

Many a night at the ringside I have heard laymen sitting in the forward rows explain to their ladies that the punishment which wrestlers inflict on one another really does not hurt them as they are used to it and cannot feel, anyway. This is of a piece with the assumption that the fishworm cannot feel. I am not sure that it is true.

The fishworm wriggles and squirms when it is put upon the hook and the wrestler trumpets terribly and whooshes and writhes when it is being twisted in the ring. This may only mean that some vague intuition, such as turtles possess, is telling the wrestler not to go over on its back. Yet the wrestler is so amenable to training that it is comparatively easy to teach it to recognize a signal and, in violation of a strong natural instinct, to roll over on its back momentarily after thirty or forty minutes of wrestling, while the referee gives its adversary a slap on the shoulder signifying that it has won the contest.

The word contest, of course, is merely a trade term. Most of the minor politicians who constitute the various prizefight commissions and supervise wrestling do not authorize its use in connection with wrestling bouts. They insist upon calling them exhibitions and the newspaper boys who cover them call them mockeries or make-believes and refer to that thirty or forty minutes of action which precedes the fall as the squirm.

Wrestling is the one hazardous occupation in the sport department of journalism because wrestlers are vindictive in a dumb way and one never can tell when one of them will pick up another and throw it at a correspondent sitting at the ringside. Moreover, after one has seen a few squirms one has seen them all and consequently one is likely to doze off during that time when the wrestlers are putting on the squirm. One learns to gauge these cat-naps and come out of it just in time for the signal.

But the wrestler may resent this as an affront to its art and retaliate by heaving 250 pounds of moist and rather smelly weight, usually foreign matter, into the journalist's lap. I have seen as many as six journalists mown down by one wrestler thrown in this manner and had a very exciting evening myself once when I made a mistake at ringside.

One wrestler was sitting on top of another and, with the dumb concentration of a trick baboon untying a shoelace, was twisting a large, bare foot.

"Hey, wrestler!" I cried, in honest error, for they were badly tangled up, "you are twisting your own foot."

At that the wrestler let out a loud howl of "Ow-oo," thinking that if it was twisting its own foot it must be hurting itself, and let go. But it happened to be the other wrestler's foot after all and when the first one let go the other one jumped up.

This enraged the wrestler who had been twisting the foot and six times that evening it threw the other one at me with intent to inflict great bodily harm. But, fortunately, though it had plenty of swift, its control was b ad. So nothing happened to me, although the New York World-Telegram was hit twice and the New York Times's typewriter was smashed.

The fact that wrestlers utter sounds of apparent anguish does not necessarily prove that they really feel pain. They are trained to that, too. In former times they wrestled without sound effects and these were introduced in recent years by Mr. Curley who hired an expert in bird-calls and animal cries to instruct the members of his herd. At first the wrestlers made some ludicrous mistakes and one sometimes heard a wrestler twittering gaily when it was supposed to bleat piteously.

As to whether they love and are loved I just have no way of knowing. Maybe so, though.

Hippopotamuses do.

MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL CARDS FROM 1941 (Jim Melby)

January 7, Minneapolis
Bronko Nagurski beat Rudy Strongberg (COR), Cliff Gustafson beat Jack McDonald, Orville Brown beat Jim Wright, Earl Wampler beat Bob Foster

January 13, Duluth
Ray Steele beat Rudy Strongberg (NWA title match), Walter Podolak beat Andy Moen

January 14, Minneapolis
Ray Steele beat Hans Kampfer (NWA title match), Cliff Gustafson beat Andy Moen, Joe Pazandak beat Sammy Feeback, Steve Brody drew Charles Harben

January 20, St. Paul
Hans Kampfer beat Ras (Seelie) Samara, Cliff Gustafson beat Earl Wampler, Rudy Strongberg beat Jack McDonald, Stan Mayslack drew Charles Harben

January 21, Minneapolis
Dick Raines beat Walter Podolak, Cliff Gustafson beat Seelie Samara, Orville Brown beat Jack McDonald, Stan Mayslack drew Earl Wampler

January 28, Minneapolis
Maurice Tillet (French Angel) beat Dick Raines, Rudy Strongberg beat Alf Johnson, Joe Pazandak beat Jack McDonald, Andy Moen drew Earl Wampler

February 4, Minneapolis
Cliff Gustafson beat Rudy Strongberg, Ali Adali drew Hans Kampfer, Joe Pazandak beat Earl Wampler, Stan Mayslack drew Charles Harben

February 11, St. Paul
Ray Steele drew Hans Kampfer (NWA title match), Rudy Strongberg beat Joe Dusek, Andy Moen drew Walter Podolak, Joe Pazandak beat Stan Mayslack

February 18, Minneapolis
Cliff Gustafson beat Walter Podolak, Orville Brown beat Jack Hader, Rudy Strongberg beat Ray Schwartz, Earl Wampler beat Charles Harben

February 26, St. Paul
Bronko Nagurski beat Rudy Strongberg, Walter Podolak beat Jack Hader, Ray Eckert drew Jim Wright, Earl Wampler beat Gaius Young

March 4, St. Paul
Cliff Gustafson beat Ray Eckert, Hans Kampfer beat Walter Podolak, Jim Wright beat Andy Moen, Jack Hader beat Charles Harben

March 11, Minneapolis
Bronko Nagurski beat Ray Steele (NWA title change), Ralph Garibaldi beat Stan Mayslack, Rudy LaDitzi beat Andy Moen, Jim Wright beat Rudy Strongberg (8,000)

March 21, St. Paul
Bronko Nagurski drew Lou Thesz (NWA title match), Rudy Strongberg drew Jim Wright, Ralph Garibaldi beat Walter Podolak, Stan Mayslack beat Charles Harben

March 25, Minneapolis
Lou Thesz beat Rudy LaDitzi, Cliff Gustafson beat Rudy Strongberg, Don McIntyre beat Jack Hader (dec), Earl Wampler beat Steve Brody

April 8, Minneapolis
Bronko Nagurski beat Lou Thesz (NWA title match), Jim Wright beat Ralph Garibaldi, Don McIntyre beat Stan Mayslack, Jack Russell beat Earl Wampler

April 15, Minneapolis
Cliff Gustafson vs. Jim Wright, Don McIntyre vs. Earl Wampler, Ralph Garibaldi vs. Stan Mayslack

April 22, Minneapolis
Bronko Nagurski beat Ray Steele (DQ) (NWA title match), Jim Wright beat Don McIntyre, Jack Russell beat Jack Hader, Steve Brody beat Charles Harben

April 29, Minneapolis
Iron Talun beat Jim Wright, Abe Coleman beat Jack Russell, Andy Moen beat Jack Hader, Earl Wampler beat Cy Berres

May 6, Minneapolis
Bronko Nagurski beat Iron Talun (COR) (NWA title match), Everett Marshall beat Abe Coleman, Bill Lee beat Jack Russell, Earl Wampler beat Gaius Young

May 13, Minneapolis
Bronko Nagurski drew Everett Marshall (NWA title match), Bill Lee beat Joe Dusek, Jim Wright beat Rudy Strongberg, Don McIntyre beat Stan Mayslack

May 20, Minneapolis
Cliff Gustafson beat Dick Raines, Bill Lee beat Jim Wright, Rudy Strongberg beat Don McIntyre, Earl Wampler drew Dobie Osborne

May 27, Minneapolis
Cliff Gustafson beat Everett Marshall, Dick Raines beat Jack Russell, Bill Lee beat Seelie Samara, Stan Mayslack beat Dobie Osborne

June 3, Minneapolis
Maurice Tillet (French Angel) beat Hans Kampfer, Dick Raines drew Rudy Strongberg, Bill Lee beat Abe Kashey, Alf Johnson drew Earl Wampler

June 6, St. Louis
Sandor Szabo beat Bronko Nagurski (DQ) (NWA title change)

June 10, Minneapolis
Bronko Nagurski beat Bill Lee, Orville Brown beat Rudy Strongberg, Hans Kampfer drew Joe Cox, Earl Wampler beat Steve Brody

June 17, Minneapolis
Cliff Gustafson beat Bronko Nagurski, Orville Brown drew Joe Cox, Hans Kampfer beat Benny Rosen, Stan Mayslack beat Jack Hader (8,000)

July 1, Minneapolis
Sandor Szabo drew Cliff Gustafson (NWA title match), Orville Brown beat Joe Cox, Rudy Strongberg beat Jack Kennedy, Steve Brody drew Stan Mayslack

October 7, Minneapolis
Sandor Szabo beat Joe Savoldi (NWA title match), Dick Raines beat Rudy LaDitzi, Mark Hosely drew Rudy Patek, Alf Johnson beat Alvin Britt

October 17, St. Paul
Sandor Szabo beat Dick Raines (NWA title match), Mark Hosely drew Earl Wampler, Alf Johnson drew Rudy Patek, Stan Mayslack beat Bob Foster

October 21, Minneapolis
Sandor Szabo beat Al Lovelock (NWA title match), Dick Raines beat Rudy Patek, Mark Hosely beat Bob Foster, Earl Wampler beat Johnny Seals

October 23, Minneapolis
Bronko Nagurski beat Dick Raines, Orville Brown drew Mark Hosely, Benny Rosen beat Earl Wampler, Andy Moen beat Al Lafoon

November 16, Minneapolis
Cliff Gustafson beat Al Mills, Orville Brown beat Alf Johnson, Rudy Patek beat Jack Kennedy, Earl Wampler drew Stan Mayslack

November 25, Minneapolis
Orville Brown beat Mark Hosely, Dick Raines beat Rudy Patek, Abe Coleman beat Earl Wampler, Andy Moen beat Ron Etchison

December 2, Minneapolis
Orville Brown beat Joe Savoldi, Al Mills drew Abe Coleman, Alf Johnson beat Jack Hader, Andy Moen beat Gaius Young

December 9, Minneapolis
Orville Brown beat Abe Coleman, Al Mills drew Joe Savoldi, Andy Moen drew Earl Wampler, Stan Mayslack beat Pete Sherman

December 16, Minneapolis
Orville Brown drew Cliff Gustafson, Bill Bartush beat Alf Johnson, Abe Coleman drew Rudy Patek, Stan Mayslack beat Johnny Seals

CRASH FINISHED SEATTLE MAN'S CAREER ON MAT

(Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Tuesday, Aug. 13, 1985)

By Ken Turetzky

FORT WORTH, Texas -- For Johnny Valentine, the wrestling arena remains the one place where life makes sense.

He loves the arena not necessarily because that was where he crushed opponents with his trademark "elbow," but because it was where he came alive.

Valentine, 56 and a Seattle native, doesn't often visit the arenas anymore, and he rarely watches professional wrestling on television. Shut out of the ring by injury, he is not a patient spectator.

He once was one of the meanest, most athletic, and most successful wrestlers, earning an annual income in the six figures as a main-event attraction around the world.

But the show stopped for Valentine in 1975 when the chartered plane taking him and fellow wrestler Ric Flair from Charlotte, N.C., to Wilmington, N.C., ran out of gas and crashed five miles short of its destination.

The pilot eventually died. Flair was badly shaken up, but later returned to the ring and is reigning National Wrestling Alliance champion. Valentine, then 47, suffered a broken back, foot, and hand.

It has taken a decade of therapy for Valentine to reach the point where he can drop his metal crutches and take 22 steps supported only by leg braces.

But while he displays no real bitterness about his condition and has developed other interests over the years, he's not prepared to put aside the one-time passion of his life.

"I never gave up the fact that I'd wrestle again. I'm still not sure I've given up," Valentine said from the sunlit front room of the two-story, 19th-century house on the north side of Fort Worth that he shares with his wife of 13 months, Sharon.

Through regular workouts at the health club, he has maintained his muscular upper body. Valentine's blond hair -- which provided his nickname, "The Blond Bomber" -- remains moderately long and his face, though creased at the brow, is unlined.

If he could walk he could wrestle, and would. "The only time I ever really enjoyed life was my hour in the ring. There I was king, you might say," Valentine said.

"It was the only time I felt really complete. It didn't matter about the (world) championship (which Valentine never won) or what the people thought. I knew in the time I was in the ring that I was better than anybody else. It's a good feeling knowing that you're doing something nobody else can do as well."

He was born John Wisniski, the son of Polish parents. While in high school at Hobart, 30 miles east of Seattle, Valentine boxed as a semipro with the idea that he would turn professional.

But that was before Stanislaus Zbyszko, a world champion wrestler in the 1920s who came to prominence by beating such opponents as Ed (Strangler) Lewis and Jim Londos, found Valentine, then 15, in a Seattle gym.

"Zbyszko sold me on wrestling," Valentine said. "By the time I looked in all his old scrapbooks, I was very interested." Valentine told his parents he was leaving ("They weren't too pleased") and moved to Zbyszko's Missouri farm, where he trained for three years to become a wrestler.

Valentine was 19 and weighed 190 pounds when Zbyszko sent him to Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1947, for his first bout against Karl Nowena.

The bout did not go well for Valentine. "I just remember he (Nowena) was an old guy. He looked like nothing, but he gave me a hard time," Valentine said. "He started my education -- my real education that appearances are deceiving as far as how tough a person is."

Although Valentine won many titles, beginning with the Cuban championship in 1949 and winding up with the Japanese championship in 1972, he drew or lost more than 100 matches for the world championship.

He did, however, beat 10 world champions from 1953 to 1975.

He succeeded without a true "gimmick," other than the elbow or the double leg-lock for which fans came to know him. Never a hero ("babyface," in wrestling vernacular) or villain, Valentine won't deny that he was nasty.

"I never took it easy on an opponent. I punished everybody I wrestled," he said. "Nobody ever had a night off with me." His "coup de grace" was the elbow, which the discerning observer might say never really nailed its victim as appearances would indicate.

"Once I had (the opponent) on his back," Valentine said, "I'd leap up in the air and drop my full weight on his throat or face. He got the full force."

However, "I didn't worry whether people liked me or not. I drew money, attention, and crowds. I was a winner and (fans) never came to my matches without seeing a good fight."

In that way, Valentine was secure in his profession. He views himself as an honest wrestler. "I would have felt real uncomfortable as a hero or a villain, playing a part somebody gave me."

He doesn't care for "good guys," particularly the currently popular Von Erich brothers, or their father and one-time Valentine nemesis, Fritz Von Erich.

"I don't think there's a good guy I know of who is legitimate," he said. "I think you'll find more good guys in the bad guys' dressing room. You get a bunch of good guys in the dressing room, all they're doing is walking in front of the mirror and posing. Sometimes the bad guys show their muscles to aggravate the audience, but the good guys are in the dressing room sneaking looks at themselves."

He had planned to wrestle until age 60, but said he probably would have kept going until 70. That wouldn't be so unusual, however. Lou Thesz, now 72 (sic), still wrestles occasionally.

In wrestling, Valentine said, "you don't get tore up like a football player. You don't get punch-drunk like a fighter.

"A wrestler is usually at his best after 40. There's so much to know. I don't think I was real tough until I was 40."

Valentine also sells his book, "Power Play -- 25 Wrestling Holds for Fun and Profit," ($5), and runs the "Johnny Valentine School of Wrestling," ($50 by correspondence), which he said has about 500 students.

And Valentine retains the dream he will wrestle again. "I miss it," he said. "I was good at it."

The WAWLI Papers No. 117...

THE GRUNT AND GROAN BUSINESS

(Canadian Business, January, 1948)

By Andy O'Brien

For better or for worse, the hilariously maligned science of Grunt & Groan has been parlayed into big business in Montreal. Local enthusiasts there contributed more than $300,000 to wrestling during 1947. This all-time record box office gross, amassed during 40 shows at the Forum and exceeding even the previous turnstile feat of $240,264 in 1946 at the same Forum, has firmly entrenched the Canadian metropolis as wrestling mecca of the world and a reformed Boston taxi-driver as Pachyderm Promotional Peer.

Executives of more prosaic business enterprises are often surprised to learn that Grunt & Groan Inc. operates more by guide than by guess.

The combination of cauliflowered cavorters' sweat, blood and tears and Promoter Eddie (Vesuvius) Quinn's violent showmanship has swollen attendance to 15,000 in Montreal while his Ottawa Auditorium sideline has seen Bytown boomed from a $600 town to one grossing $5,500. All in all, his array of some 150 wrestlers now appear in a chain of 35 clubs extending from Ottawa to Halifax, over which Quinn beams as Muscle Mahatma for a ten per cent cut from all shows. He schedules the talent and takes in the checques without ever having to go near the minor spots.

As this issue of Canadian Business goes to press, Quinn expects to be in Paris to work an international exchange deal with ex-Montreal mat idol Henri Deglane, who now rules the Palais des Sports. French Canada has always gone for French grapplers in a big way, as three $20,000 gates testified in recent years in Montreal. Quinn feels he definitely can do with more of same "if some guy will only put me straight on this dollar mix-up. My wrestlers won't go over there if they can't take the francs out."

Mahatma Quinn is pressed for the secret of his success -- evidenced by his $30,000 home in the Town of Mont Royal, a half-acre of Cadillac, ownership in the $100,000 El Morocco night club and a net yearly income of approximately $50,000 -- but will tell you: "Mob hysteria on a mass production basis does the trick."

If you attempt to insinuate that this very tactic tends to remove wrestling from the sphere of legitimate business, Quinn will forthwith light a fuse.

"Whattayoumean?" he will bark. "Even the National Hockey League relies on mob hysteria whenever it has a chance to use same. Just look at the rhubarb kicked up by hockey executives last season Canadiens' Elmer Lach was allegedly felled by a Toronto player. The only difference is that wrestling doesn't wait for the old mob appeal to be injected by chance. We create M.H. by insisting on slam-bang thriller shows for every card."

A prime example of mob hysteria in action is a histrionic meanie, Henry (Kulky) Kulkovich, who earns almost four times the salary of a Canadian Senator simply by being hated.

"I owe my $15,000 annual income," Kulkavich once told me, "to the general repugnance with which the sporting public regards me."

The fact that he lost or tied the vast majority of some 8,000 (sic) bouts fails to create an inferiority complex in this matdom Bad Man.

Note that this professional crowd-disaster is not only superb company personally but a man of considerable intelligence and impressive background. By losing three bouts and drawing one in one week for a $135 fee in Montreal, $75 at Ottawa, $75 at Quebec and $150 as headliner at Burlington, Vermont, he feels the average fan places himself in the role of the hero and the more decisively he, Kulky, is beaten, the happier the fan will be. That's good business because the fans will insist Kulky be brought back again to be defeated some more.

Meanwhile, entirely unhappy about her son's success, Mrs. Kulkavich enjoys social prestige at Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y. She keeps Henry in the doghouse on a more or less permanent basis, releasing him only during visits home -- occasions on the infrequent side because this year he added movie-making in Hollywood to his United States, Canada and South America wrestling engagements.

And, still talking about business, I was once asked by Kulkavich not to mention the fact that he had served with the U.S. Navy. The unusual request came as a result of my hearing that the wrestler had won a "served with distinction" tag for anti-submarine action in the Caribbean.

"This might be hard to understand," he shrugged, "but being detested means money in the bank to me. In fact, it's the only way I can make such money and have so much travelling fun, because I'm not the classiest wrestler in the world and could probably never get to the top on my mat ability alone. So being hated gets me bookings. Once the public learn I was a sailor and did a fair job in the war, nothing I do in the ring will make them made at me.

Instead of shrieking that I'm a heel, they'll grin and say: 'That gob sure is a tough baby.' Actually, the only time I wrestle cleanly is on service fund shows."

Whereas you and I treasure little trophies of triumph -- a silver spoon from bowling, a little statuette from golfing, a college letter, an illuminated address from admiring co-workers -- the professional baddie Kulkavich points with pride to the pop bottles, ladies' shoes, men's rubbers and canes, tons of paper programs and even a pair of false teeth that have been tossed by raging customers.

"I try to tell the indignant ones that if justice hasn't triumphed this week it might do so next week, so why in hell are they getting all het up?" he says.

Does all this make wrestling a racket?

Most of us sport writers have taken so many cracks at the game that perhaps it would be more interesting to hear how Big Business Man Quinn answers the charge.

"We admit there's showmanship in wrestling," he says. "By showmanship I mean that one wrestler may be able to beat another in ten minutes but it takes him twenty to do it. Yet is that so different from horse racing, where the best horse doesn't go out front and stay there all the way? No, a smart rider often tucks his oatburner into place position and lets somebody else set the pace to the stretch, when he comes in with a winning burst of speed."

If you have an hour or so to spare, the Mahatma will expound this theme at length, stressing that you'll find "experts" on Wall Street and in the newspapers who are still convinced World War II wasn't on the level.

"Besmirch the wrestling profession as much as you like," desk-thumps Quinn, "but what other form of sporting entertainment gives as much to its fans? There have been 26 wrestlers -- including Stan Stasiak, Jim Browning and Charley Hanson -- who died from ring injuries. Mike Romano's collapse in a ring at Washington caused a riot as fans shrieked: 'Fake!' After they carried him to the dressing room, the medicos found Mike was dead.

In the same ring in Washington in 1937, Montreal's spectacular Yvon Robert called it quits after seven minutes of wrestling with Cliff Olson, the toehold king. As he was carried out of the ring the fans hissed him, one shoved a lighted cigarette into Yvon's back. X-rays showed Yvon suffered a quintuple fracture of the left leg. The same wrestler suffered a broken back, two fractures of the arm and . . ."

This could go on to the end of the article but the showmanship argument plus the entertainment provided cannot be disputed.

Quinn has been undeniably shrewed and has established himself not only in Canada but through affiliation with the International Wrestling Association down as far as St. Louis, by avoiding ice cream, smelt and mud matches. He abhors freak spectacles, stressing wrestlers who at least act like athletes. Even Primo Carnera and "The Angel" went about Montreal shows a la wrestler.

Whenever there are signs of waning enthusiasm in the gentle art of gouging, poking and heaving opposition out of rings, the Montreal public has had bigger spectacles tossed at them. The result has invariably been bigger business. For instance, Quinn introduced team wrestling -- two wrestlers versus two others -- a couple of years ago. The Forum was quickly sold out. Then Quinn apparently decided to make those who hadn't tried to get tickets feel they had been very foolish indeed. He added ex-heavyweight world's boxing champion Jack Sharkey as referee. Then, as an apparent afterthought, he 'confessed' to the newsmen that he feared even Sharkey couldn't instil law and order into the impending battle. So he added Jack Dempsey as co-referee. The fact that Dempsey and Sharkey would be appearing together in a ring for the first time since their one million dollar fight years ago and that they had been alleged enemies ever since, needled the public into a frenzy. For the first time in local history, wrestling tickets were being scalped along Peel Street. And subsequent shows boomed.

The custom of importing a 'name' referee, whether or not he knows any more than Mother Machree about wreslting, is in itself rather slick showmanship. It is designed primarily to give waning publicity a shot in the arm. If, during the course of mat action, an ex-world's boxing champ hangs a brisk right hook on the chin of a particularly obnoxious pachyderm, that's also all to the good for subsequent publicity. As long as the fan's concept of justice rules, everybody remains uproariously content.

Financially, all wrestlers on the major circuits do all right for themselves, largely because they have little or no overhead beyond a few pairs of shorts, a dressing gown and ring shoes.

They don't have to worry about bookings or cutting in managers on their earnings.

Take, for instance, a team match of a year or so ago in which Montreal's French-Canadian favorites, Yvon Robert and Larry Moquin, were sent in against the storm Dusek brothers from Omaha. Sharkey was pressed into service as referee.

About 50 per cent of the gross gate was divided among the grapplers. Robert, whose income hits the $40,000 bracket and Moquin, a former $12-per-week RCA Victor handyman and now garnering $25,000 per annum, achieved increased local prestige as well as $1,750 apiece by winning over the notorious Riot Squad of Wrestling. Sharkey drew $800. After paying the Forum rental, supporting performers and publicity expenses, Quinn took home a few thousand for his own efforts.

Last September on Old Orchard Beach I met a knarled old-timer emerging like a graying walrus from the frigid Atlantic where, at the ripe young age of 73, he had just done his daily three-mile swim. He was Stanislaus Zbyszko, who was a world's wrestling champion in the days when they made 'em one at a time instead of by the gross.

A veteran of 3,000 bouts all over the world, he admitted that he still feels the terrible strength of Strangler Lewis's crushing holds. It was 26 years ago, when he was 46 years old, that Zbyszko took the title from Lewis but lost to him the next year. In 1925, a few months later, Wayne Munn trimmed Lewis and the same year Zbyszko tossed Munn to regain the crown, only to lose it for the last time to Joe Stecher.

In forty years of mat warfare, Zbyszko told me he had grossed over two million dollars and had managed to retain a goodly slice of it. He has a farm up north, a home on the beach at Old Orchard and lots of pleasant friends. It made one wonder how many major business executives could say the same, if any of them live to 75. Even if they do, how many could romp into the cold Atlantic for a marathon swim daily?

"There was a day when wrestling was honorable, before the comics overran it. However, I honestly believe the sport will come back."

But if it does come bazck, there is every reason for suspecting wrestling won't be the Big Business it is today. Without the stress on showmanship, it is hardly likely that Montreal, for example, would support the game as it does. Whether it's funny or phoney, rugged or riotous, seems beside the point. The emphasis is now on entertainment and wreslting is just that, in a frenzied sort of way. Without a rule book, such goings-on are possible and entirely plausible financially.

ROBERT BEATS WATSON, TAKES EMPIRE TITLE

(The Herald, Montreal, Thursday, January 26, 1950)

Yvon Robert is British Empire wrestling champion, today, but there will be great outcries in Toronto.

Robert won back the title from the Queen City's Whipper Watson, last night, by virtue of a count-out by referee Arthur Paquette, which ended a match replete with fast falls.

Robert took the first fall, lost the second in 25 seconds when Watson rushed from his corner, knocked Robert through the ropes with a drop-kick, yanked him back, and flattened him again.

In the third tussle, Watson threw another drop-kick that knocked Robert through the ropes. As the big Hab got himself erect on the ring apron, Watson threw a flying leg-scissors across the ropes, in an effort to drag Robert in. Both wrestlers were thus outside the ring, and when Watson refused to break his hold, the referee started to count. Robert then pitched Watson loose, the Toronto wrestler fell on the floor outside the ring, and Robert scrambled back through the ropes at the count of "7." Watson didn't make it, and Robert was declared the winner, over the wild protests of Watson.

It was a whirlwind battle, crowded into some 20 minutes of actual wrestling time, but all action.

Robert took the lead after 17 minutes of the fastest wrestling seen here in a long time, as they moved from grip to grip at top speed, with little to choose between them. Robert finally got his short-arm scissors fastened on, and though Watson fought to get out, he couldn't break the hold, and had to concede the fall after being bumped heavily around the ring.

Watson evened up with a whirlwind drop-kick attack that won him the second fall in 25 seconds, and just over two minutes had elapsed before the third fall was decided by the referee's count-out. "It was cold-blooded robbery," said Watson. "My body was inside the ring, even if my feet were out when I put that head-scissors on Robert. Anybody who thinks he can beat Robert here with that kind of refereeing is crazy."

Meanwhile, Robert has claims on the world title, and gets recognition here as world champion. That claim is challenged by Bobby Managoff, who sent a challenge, read in the ring, to meet the winner for that honor.

The three Baillargeon brothers, members of a family of six whose grocery bills you would hesitate to under-write, made their debut in a Montreal ring, all three won, and in so doing, showed a good deal of wrestling talent, plenty of bulging muscles, and a great deal of physical strength.

Brother Jean gavea fine display in beating tough Les Ryan, of Boston, using a head-hold which prompted Ryan to say "Uncle" or reasonable facsimile of same. Brother Adrien had too much power for Joe Christie, of Detroit, and pinned him with a body-press in 16:24.

Mayes McLain, the former All-American, a big, rugged chajp, gave the family most trouble.

He wrestled Paul, who has a head of hair like Samson possessed before Delilah clipped him and is a fine looking lad. They went at it hammer and tongs, Paul seeking continually for a body-scissors. When McLain got real tough, Paul gave him the old heave-ho right out of the ring and McLain landed with such a jolt that he couldn't beat the count back to the ring.

The three brothers are likely to be seen in action here again, soon.

KOWALSKI DRIVES PRIMO TO DEFEAT AS 13,000 WATCH

(The Globe and Mail, Toronto, Friday, February 27, 1953)

By Al Nickleson

Killer Kowalski, as a mat butcher, fully realizes the high price of beef. Last night, he attempted to rustle a month's supply by galloping off with Primo Carnera's leg. (This is a leg?) He didn't succeed, but he did force the Italian strongman into conceding the main maul at Maple Leaf Gardens.

There wasn't a doubt but what most of the 13,000 fans -- representing one of Canada's largest wrestling crowds -- were in the corner of the one-time world heavyweight boxing ruler. But Carnera just couldn't cope with that foulness-filled fellow, Kowalski -- and neither could Referee Bunny Dunlop.

As nimble as a gazellephant, Da Preem, aided by a right-hand smash to Kowalski's face, kept knocking the mayhem out of the tyrant's head in the early going. Then, Kowalski began working on that right leg, as if he wanted it for cold storage, and the end came at 16:13 after a succession of leg drops followed by a toehold. carnera had that well-nigh useless leg doubled into a "V for Victory" sign when he admitted defeat from his prone position, with Kowalski on top.

The chill of the booing, and ear-splitting whistles, would have given pneumonia to a polar bear. Kowalski left the ring hurriedly, no doubt to start immediate preparations for his main bout here next week against Yukon Eric, the barrel-chested bear he partially de-eared in a Montreal ring several months ago.

Carnera, actually outweighed by two pounds at a mere 268, was a victim of hair-pulling, hitting on the breaks, elbows in the teeth, and, in the late stages, some leg-kicking that weakened the massive underpinning for the crash.

There was a concerted chant of "Primo" at such times as the 46-year-old picked up his young opponent and threw him 10 feet, or when he smashed Kowalski's face five successive times in retaliation for some nasty goings-on. Once, from a fighting crouch, Carnera hit Kowalski as if he was a good fast ball, but the Polish giant refused to bounce any further than second base.

Sky Hi Lee was his usual dastardly, puffed-up self in the semifinal, but handsome Larry Moquin took over with enough finesse at times to earn a draw after 30 minutes. Lee, the big dope, fell for an old trick midway through the bout. Moquin had missed a drop-kick and Lee fell atop him. Quick-thinking Larry reached up and patted Lee's broad, milky-white back in the sign that referees give for victory. Lee arose and leered. Moquin arose, came up behind the guy who dwarfed him, and let go such a clout that Lee tumbled from the ring.

After all the dirty work that went on, a preliminary between Pat Flanagan and hairless Hardy Kruskamp was a pleasing peace conference by comparison. Flanagan, who has 51 more hairs on his noggin than the 46-year-old Kruskamp, ended the scientific crowd-pleaser with an acrobatic back-drop as the clock roamed around to near nine minutes.

Main Bout
Wladek Kowalski, 270, defeated Primo Carnera, 268, with knee drops and toe-hodl at 16:13. 
Semi-final
Sky Hi Lee, 292, and Larry Moquin, 222, wrestled to a 20-minute draw.
Preliminaries
Pat Flanagan, 230, defeated Hardy Kruskamp, 220, with back drop at 8:36 of scheduled 20-minute bout. Don Beitleman, 228, and Joe Christie, 234, wrestled to a 20-minute draw. Sammy Berg, 235, awarded referee's decision over Frank Taylor after 20 minutes.

VARIOUS MAT CARDS, WEEK OF JANUARY 18, 1960

January 18, Boston
Pepper Gomez beat Wladek Kowalski (DQ), Frank Scarpa beat Angelo Savoldi, Larry Moquin beat Mike Higgins, Rito Romero-Arnold Skaaland beat Boris Fabian-Manuel Torres

January 18, Fort Worth
Pete Managoff beat Cyclone Anaya, Nick Kozak beat Tosh Togo, Rip Hawk beat Enrique Guzman, Adnan Kaisy drew Duke Keomuka, Guy LaRose beat Frank Valois (DQ)

January 18, Detroit
Chris-John Tolos beat Guy Brunetti-Joe Tangaro, Dick Garza beat Ali Bey, John Smith beat Don Duffy, Bert Villard beat Johnny Gates

January 19, Little Rock
Kenny Ackles-Dan Hodge-Farmer Jones beat Red Berry-Soldat Gorky-Haru Sasaki, Dan Hodge beat Haru Sasaki, Farmer Jones beat Soldat Gorky (DQ), Kenny Ackles drew Red Berry

January 19, San Francisco
Mike Sharpe drew Enrique Torres, Don Joyce-Jack Laskin beat Tom Rice-Ben Sharpe, Joe Swiderski beat Steve Stanlee, Ron Etchison drew Clyde Steeves

January 19, Hamilton, Ont.
Don Leo Jonathan-Fritz Von Erich beat Yukon Eric-Whipper Watson (DQ), Bill Stack beat Bud Cody, Len Hughes drew Don Jardine

January 19, Queens, N.Y.
Antonino Rocca beat Bull Curry, Lou-Red Bastien beat Jerry Gordet-Skull Murphy, Amazing Zuma beat Tony Altomare, Bearcat Wright beat Miguel Torres, Enrique Romero beat Swede Hanson

January 19, Minneapolis
Stan Kowalski beat Verne Gagne (DQ), Butch Levy-Frank Townsend beat Wayne Bock-Tiny Mills, Thor Hagen drew Roy McClarty, Joe Pazandak beat Lou Whitson

January 19, San Diego
Ed Carpentier beat Al Costello, Roy Heffernan vs. Sandor Szabo (NC), El Gran Lotario beat Ted Christy, Joe Scarpa drew Bob (Legs) Wilson

January 20, Asheville, N.C.
Paul Anderson-Haystack Calhoun beat Two Ton George Harris-Duke Hoffman, Karl Von Hess beat Reg Parks, Danno O'Shocker beat Judy Jack Terry

January 20, Honolulu
Hard Boiled Haggerty beat Lucky Simunovich, Jerry Graham beat Angelo Savoldi, Lord Blears beat Taro Miyake, Toyonobori-Yoshimura beat Don Manoukian-Bill Savage

January 20, Bridgeport, Conn.
Skull Murphy beat Vic Christy, Mark Lewin beat Arnold Skaaland, Ricki Starr beat Bull Curry, Enrique-Rito Romero beat Swede Hanson-Fritz Wallick

January 20, Los Angeles
Ed Carpentier-Sandor Szabo beat Hans Hermann-Mr. Moto, Al Costello-Roy Heffernan (w/Red Berry) beat Juan Hernandez-Mighty Joe, Joe Scarpa beat Ted Christy, Gene LeBell drew Legs Wilson, Gino Garibaldi drew Art Michalik

January 21, Stockton, Calif.
Al-Enrique-Ramon Torres beat Tom Rice-Ben & Mike Sharpe, Don Joyce beat Bud Curtis, Ben Sharpe drew Enrique Torres

January 21, Toronto
Ilio DiPaolo-Whipper Watson beat Ivan-Karol Kalmikoff, Fred Atkins drew Sam Steamboat, Doc-Mike Gallagher beat Pat Flanagan-Tim Geohagen, Bernard Vignal beat Bud Cody, Len Hughes drew Tiger Tasker

January 21, Cleveland
Fritz Von Erich beat Billy (Red ) Lyons, Dick Beyer-Bobo Brazil vs. Dan-Ed Miller (NC), Don Eagle beat Waldo Von Erich, Sid Youngelman beat Baron Gattoni, Tony Marino beat Chief Chewacki (Len Montana)

January 21, Washington, D.C.
Donn-Mark Lewin beat Lou Albano-Chet Wallick, Lou-Red Bastien drew Iron Russians (Hans Schnabel-Lou Newman), Tarzan Kowalski beat Swede Hanson, Argentina Zuma beat Tony Altomare, Chief Big Heart drew Iron Russian

January 22, Long Beach, Calif.
Ed Carpentier beat Mr. Moto, Bob Wilson beat El Gran Lotario, Roy Heffernan drew Joe Scarpa, Al Costello beat Billy Darnell

January 22, St. Louis
Rip Hawk-Gene Kiniski beat Bill Longson-Whipper Watson, Red Scorpion beat Tommy O'Toole-Sonny Myers

January 23, Philadelphia
Wladek Kowalski drew Bearcat Wright, Gorgeous George beat Gene Marian, Amazing Zuma beat Tony Altomare, Ricki Starr beat Fritz Wallick, Bruno Sammartino beat Zebra Kid, Iron Russians beat Lou-Red Bastien

January 23, Tyler, Tex.
El Gordo Chihuahua beat P.Y. Chong (Tojo Yamamoto) (DQ)

FROM DAN PARKER'S COLUMN, N.Y. MIRROR, 9-25-63

. . . What happened to the injury, or whatever it was, that kept Buddy (Nature Boy) Rogers from appearing on the Garden's Virtually Honest Wrestling Show last week and which was to have kept him away from beloved mat for six months but doesn't seem to have prevented the New Haven Arena from advertising him to appear on its opening card Friday night? (None of the foregoing is intended to be construed as a snide allegation that wrestling matches are on the level! Did you ever see a convex, concave or slanted mat?)

The WAWLI Papers No. 118...

SZABO TOSSED BY LOPEZ AFTER LONG MAT MATCH

(Los Angeles Times, October 24, 1935)

Senor Vincent Lopez and Sandor Szabo, a couple of healthy young men who take their rassling so seriously that they require a whole evening to settle a question of supremacy on the mat, kept 10,400 grunt-and-groan fans up until way after bedtime last night at the Olympic.

Senor Lopez finally flopped his Hungarian foe, but not until after one hour, thirty-five minutes and thirty seconds of hectic activity that had the customers in what is technically known as a lather of excitement. And there's no telling how long the marathon match might have lasted if Lopez hadn't clipped Szabo from behind with a flying tackle that wrecked the Hungarian Adonis's shapely kneecap.

In football, the Mexican, who, by the way is recognized as champion by Luigi the Daro, the California Athletic Commission and everybody who ever sunk a tooth into a tamale, would have been penalized fifteen yeards, but this was rassling. So Senor Lopez hopped on and promptly mangled Szabo's wrecked knee, causing the Hungarian to give up.

A minute inspection of the injured member by Dr. Lloyd Mace disclosed the startling fact that Szabo was suffering from an acute attack of housemaid's knee, which only goes to show that a guy can't be too careful when choosing his companions of the evening. And amid the sobs of the feminine fans, who go for the Hungarian Adonis's bronzed torso in a big way, Szabo was carried from the ring, defeated but not disgraced, as the saying goes.

By their efforts last night Lopez and Szabo definitely established their claims as the outstanding marathon rassling team in these parts. Only last week they went an hour and twenty-two minutes before the good Senor asserted his superiority.

In the wildest match of the evening, Wee Willie Davis, a behomothic gentleman from old Virginia, won the semi-windup on a foul from Al Bisignano, the Italian favorite. Wee Willie and Al did a lot of nasty things to each other for twenty minutes and fifty-seven seconds, after which Senor Bisignano, to put it mildly, went nuts. Al started kicking, gouging and punching Wee Willie, but he wouldn't have been disqualified for just this had he not continued his tactics upon Referee Dick Rutherford.

Al got so mad when Rutherford interfered with his efforts to obliterate Wee Willie that he heaved the referee around with a couple of backward slams and treated the so-called arbiter something scandalously. Manhandling a referee is considered a distinct violation of the union rules, so Bisignano was disqualified, although it took a couple of cops to make Al cease his efforts to ruin both Wee Willie and Mr. Rutherford.

In the other matches Gino Garibaldi disposed of Abie Coleman with a body slam in 12m 26s; Mayes McLain, the big Injun, flopped Paul Boesch with a couple of salms in 8m 17s; Nick Lutze knocked out Pat Fraley with four right crosses and a body press, and Dr. P.A. Mullikan flopped Steve Strelich in 9m 42s with a stepover toe hold.

Among other things, Luigi Daro lost his voice, either from rooting for his champion, Senor Lopez, or from trying to call back the 3,000 cash customers who were turned away because there was no more room in the Olympic.

THE SPORTS PARADE: by Braven Dyer, L.A. Times

--Levin-Lopez Mat Match Nearest Thing to Title Bout Among Nation's Bone Benders

I suppose that ordinarily my reaction at a wrestling match, after watching a number of semi-nude giants pull and lug each other much after the fashion of that many playful puppies and with no more malice than the pooches, is that everybody is nutty but myself, although this may be the tip-off that the boys should ring up the ambulance with the steel bars and tell the officers to bring along a strait-jacket in case I become violent. I am bright enough to realize that modern wrestling is conducted in a spirit of good fun and "please don't keep it any cleaner than you have to, boys." I also know that a fall means no more in the lives and letters of the modern pachyderms than an assist to an Angel infielder or a stolen lap to a confirmed six-day bicycle rider. I know, too, from a rather ripened experience, that the slam, slug and slam boys, as a class, are sensible fellows with nice homes and most of them are good to their mother and their sweeties. On the whole, they probably rate as high in the social and conversational avenues as that many boxers, football players or what-have-you.

But the proof of the pudding, in the home of the sports presentation, is the eating thereof, and the way wrestling has gripped the cities and the countrysides, and has pushed other sports events into the side rooms and the smaller clubs, is surely pretty good proof that the customer can't be wrong.

You'll find that the customers will turn out to a Levin-Lopez match in just as large numbers as they would if Samson were taking on the whole Philistine army, either with or without the jawbone, and they could throw in an encore of the David-Goliath shindy as a semifinal and it wouldn't draw more at the gate than a Chewacki-Steinke joust in the same spot at the big match.

However, I must confess that the thing that gets my goat is the rasslin' champions galore, which goes to show, however, that the industry must be thriving. The world's champion market sort of went to seed when Jim Londos was ruling the blood-sweating behemoths, but it is certainly in full bloom at present. A conference of wrestling moguls a short time ago drew up an elaborate chart showing that there was only one champion, a certain Dave Levin, who makes the girls indulge in a yen to gurgle "mmm-mmmm's" and who is now blowing the whistle around here on the haughty Lopez. Right on the heels of that another opposition group set up Everett Marshall as champion without the shadow of a doubt. Last week, the Montreal commission named their countryman, Yvon Robert, after he had flattened Danno O'Mahoney, who sails for Ireland this week richer by many thousands of dollars, and it sure looks as if he had all the better of it as viewed by and large. Of course, the daro entourage scoffs at the claims of anyone but the Mexican idol, Vincent Lopez . . . and so it goes.

As far as I'm convcerned the claims of Mr. Yvon Robert are not worth the paper they're scribbled on . . . But I imagine Mr. Robert is some pumpkins with the fans of Canada . . .

That's the way it goes . . . One community recognizes their favorite bone bender and the next town may have a "champion" of an entirely different hue . . . Everett Marshall's claims receive serious consideration largely in the state of Colorado, which isn't surprising because this is Mr. Marshall's bailiwick . . . He used to be a fairish sort of a grappler . . . What he is now, I don't know, for he hasn't seen fit to exhibit his well-muscled torso in these parts for some time.

All of which brings us down to Levin and Lopez . . . Of all the championship bouts promoted within the last year I think this Wrigley Field fracas is more entitled to top billing than any of the others . . . Lopez is recognized by a flock of states and is a GOOD wrestler . . . Levin has the backing of eastern commissions and must have ability . . . I can't classify him definitely as I have never seen his undraped form in action . . . But those who have watched him say he has what it takes, both physically and from the histrionic standpoint . . . Picking the winner of a wrestling match is a harmless pastime, so I'll take a chance on Levin, bearing in mind the fact that even if the commission has barred a possible draw ending there are many other ways of concluding the match so that neither Dave nor Vincent will lose standing.

About $230 would buy the equipment of every scowl and squirm artist in the country . . . The greatest "take" in modern razzeling is $78,000 -- Lewis and Sonnenberg, in 1929 . . . but it doesn't touch the $90,000 return of Gotch-Hackenschmidt in 1908. We hazard a $27,500 guess for the Levin-Lopez wallow and wallop carnival Wednesday night . . . Wrestlers in India are like those of Japan . . . flabby men with vast paunches and unwieldly puffy limbs, but with unusual and quite unexpected strength . . . Remember when old Stanley Zbyszko made a trip to India for the purpose of wrestling Gama, the great India champion, before the Maharajah of Patialla? It lasted three seconds with Zyb nearly out of sight in the dirt and Game majestically sitting on top of him . . . Wrestling in Japan is traced back to the year 24 B.C., which is a fairish bit of tracery in any league.

Funniest match in Los Angeles was when Londos picked up that mountain of suet, Mr. Dean, heaving him out of the ring and missing Mae West's left ear by an inch. He fell so heavily that four bluejays, a colony of boll weevils, a pair of fledgling vampires and two cockroaches fell out of his beard . . . Chief Little Wolf today was Ben Tenario yesterday, proving that his press agent is full of innocent merriment . . . John Pesek and Joe Stecher staged a marathon wrestling match in St. Louis years ago. At 6 a.m. the next morning they were still "going" strong. The promoter served coffee to the fans. An usher tapped a weary customer on the shoulder: "Coffee, sir?" The fan rubbed his eyes, took the prooffered cup and replied, "What, no doughnuts?" . . . Ed Don George owns a flourishing dairy farm near Buffalo . . . Don't think Lou Daro will import many very high-class wrestlers from Japan because in that country an exponent of judo, their national sport, becomes an outcast if he performs for money . . . They say Chewacki strangles himself every time he looks in the mirror . . . A health journal advocates the use of a new "dry soup." I've seen it around here, too, usually on some of those preliminary rasslers' vests . . . Frank Gotch took part in 331 bouts and won 324 of them . . . Wonder has Gus Sonnenberg's heart healed yet . . . Jack Curley says that any of the present-day wrestlers would ahve made a monkey out of Gotch, but many oldtimers refused to subscribe to the statement . . . Danno O'Mahoney was born on the shores of Bantry Bay, famous in Irish song and story . . . Jimmy Londos has three-quarters of a million smackeroos salted away. He once earned 30 cents an hour as an artist's model . . . Don George counts to fifty quickly every time he sees a cat. And he'll got around a block any time to avoid having a black feline cross his path . . . Chief Little Wolf played halfback on the football team at Haskell Institute.

(ED. NOTE -- Vincent Lopez won the big match, taking two out of three falls, with Dave Levin exiting the ring via a stretcher. In the preliminary events, Billy Hansen flattened Howard Cantonwine in two of three falls, Sandor Szabo and Gus Sonnenberg went 20 minutes to a draw, Pat O'Shocker used a backbreaker to down Baron Ginsberg in 6m 47s, Babe Zaharias went over Myron Cox in 14m 49s with face locks, Ray Richards subdued Brother Jonathan in 3m 3s with a series of tackles and Jack McArthur polished off Rudy Skarda in 3m 29s with a body slam. The crowd was announced as 10,400.)

APRIL, 1953, CARDS FROM CHICAGO'S RAINBO ARENA

Leonard Schwartz, Promoter
Rainbo Arena, Clark at Lawrence, Prices: $1-$1.50-$2.50
Listen to Rainbo's own Vince Garrity, every day, Monday through Saturday, over WAAF 950 AM on your dial: Time, Temperature, Weather Reports, Rainbo Sports Results, 8-9 a.m.

SONNY MYERS VS. SKI HI LEE (Wednesday, Apr. 8, 1953)

Ski Hi Lee's vicious victories over his past opponents and his snarling manners in the ring have made him the most disliked wrestler in Chicago and fans would like to see this big French-Canadian get the trimming of his life. Sonny Myers asked for a chance to do this job and the popular Missouri matman is confident he will whip Ski Hi Lee. Myers demanding this match is typical of the spirit he has always displayed. Many a wrestler who would have preferred to sidestep this scrap against the seven-foot giant, but to Sonny they all look alike.

REGGIE LISOWSKI VS. MILT OLSON

WALTER PALMER VS. JOHNNY CARLIN

JACK MOORE VS. DON LEO JONATHAN

Australian Tag Team Match MEL DOVE and STAN HOLLICK versus JOHNNY GATES and JACK MOORE

DON JONATHAN VS. SKI HI LEE (Wed., Apr. 15, 1953)

BOBBY NELSON VS. GEORGE GALLAGHER

REGGIE LISOWSKI VS. FRANK THOMPSON

MEL DOVE VS. BULL ALLEN

Australian Tag Team Match STAN HOLLICK and BERT RUBI versus SHEIK OF ARABY and GOLDEN PIRATE

(ED. NOTE -- The results of these cards were as follows: April 8--Sky Hi Lee beat Sonny Myers, Mel Dove-Stan Holek beat Johnny Gates-Jack Moore, who subbed for Great Kadimier, Don Leo Jonathan beat Jack Moore, Walter Palmer beat Johnny Carlin, Reggie Lisowski beat Milt Olson & April 15--Sky Hi Lee beat Don Leo Jonathan, Stan Holek-Bert Rubi beat Sheik of Araby-Golden Pirate, Bobby Nelson beat George Gallagher, Reggie Lisowski beat Frank Thompson, Mel Dove beat Bull Allen

SHOW BIZ WITH GLOVES; PRIMO'S GUAM GAFFE

(Seattle Times, circa 1980)

By Vince O'Keefe, Times executive sports editor

The new boxing program coming to town, So You Wanna Fight, has a show-biz ring to it.

That figures. The main wheel in S.Y.W.F. was one of the first wrestlers to appear on television and has been putting his lessons to good use ever since. Sandor Kovacs came down from Vancouver, B.C., the other day to lay the groundwork for the September 26 round-robin tournament in Center Arena.

In the course of discussing the new venture Sandor reminisced about his 34 years in professional wrestling, as performer and promoter.

"I was just a kid wrestling around New York and Boston when they put me in a televised match with Gino Garibaldi in the Jamaica Arena in 1948. Dennis James was the commentator. Gino was an old hand and gave me a going-over. 

"Those were REALLY the good old days. You could wrestle in different arena six nights a week and never leave New York."

The Happy Hungarian's mat travels ended in Vancouver in 1962. He was a grunt-and-groan promoter the next 17 years, dropping out of that field several months ago.

Like most veterans of the game, he is in good shape and of indeterminate vintage. He could be anywhere from 45 to 65. (One of his former associates, Dutch Savage, answered a query about his age on a TV talk show the other night: "I'm, uh, 43 going on 44.")

The big-money syndrome which plagues other professional sports has begun to take its toll on wrestling, says Sandor.

"It used to be, football players like Joe Savoldi and Gus Sonnenberg and Wahoo McDaniel loved the showmanship, the crowds, the physical contact. Now, the guys don't want to get hurt, they can get big money for playing football. They don't have the flair or desire for it (wrestling). Dutch Savage and Gene Kiniski are among the last of the old breed."

A high point in Kovacs' mat travels, he said, occurred one winter when he was booked into Honolulu. The late Primo Carnera was on the same card and was a big hit.

"The governor of Hawaii -- it was a territory then -- asked Primo to be his good-will emissary to the governor of Guam. If you remember, Carnera would greet new friends with 'Hi, Keed', shake with his right hand a throw a couple of playful jabs with his left. They were just love taps to Da Preem but not to the other guy.

"He was warned to be careful when he went to Guam. So what happens? They have a red carpet rolled out when he gets off the plane; he meets the governor, shakes hands, gives him the old pop-pop and the guy's false teeth fall out. That ended the reception."

Many fans never realized that wrestling was Primo's first love; he was heavyweight champion of Europe before he was old enough to vote. After an ill-starred boxing career, he went back to wrestling. The accompanying picture was taken when he wrestled in Seattle in 1952. This writer got the "Hi, Keed" greeting but the jabs missed -- probably because Primo was a foot taller.

Where were we? Oh, yes, So You Wanna Fight. The publicity handout says it is "open to all nonprofessionals, such as bouncers, bikers . . . and other tough guys who feel the urge to fight and pick up a few dollars. Each bout is for three 2-minute rounds."

Despite its obvious tent-show format, it has created a lot of interest here. For one thing, the $1,500 top prize in each weight division is considerably more than many an old-line pro receives for a main event.

What about ringers? Not to worry, says Kovacs. Entrants must furnish proof of age and undergo the regular State Athletic Commission physical exam the day before the bouts.

No Masked Marvels allowed.

(ED. NOTE--Sandor Kovacs was, for most of the 1970s, a partner with Gene Kiniski in the Vancouver, B.C., wrestling office, handling most of the promotional details and booking. His wrestling career took him practically everywhere in North America, seldom on top, save for his early days in and around the East Coast, but always a solid, mid-card performer who was popular with promoters and his colleagues alike. He is now in his late 70s, and still makes his home in Vancouver. The So You Wanna Fight promotion was a shortlived affair, albeit enormously popular, because jealous boxing promoters convinced the State Athletic Commission to yank the license on the grounds of it being "too dangerous" for the competitors.) 

The WAWLI Papers No. 119 . . .

IN THE NAME OF SPORTS A MAN WAS KILLED!

(Seattle Times editorial, Saturday, March 2, 1940)

They killed a man at the Civic Auditorium last night! It might be more in the point to say that "WE killed a man!"

We, of Seattle, who have sat back and tolerated something in the name of sports that hasn't been a sport for years.

We, of Seattle, who have gone to an occasional wrestling program and have more than once said, "Some day they'll kill somebody."

Well, they did!

A referee was thrown against the ropes enclosing the ring. He was thrown with force enough so that when he fell to the floor he died within a few minutes.

Who threw him? Was it part of the horseplay that has been the only crowd-getting feature left in wrestling for these many years?

Was that horseplay rehearsed or planned in advance? By whom?

These things that have menaced lives before and now have claimed one -- these things don't just happen. Someone is directly responsible for them -- it's up to the proper authorities to determine who is responsible.

But we, of Seattle, are indirectly responsible for having tolerated these morbid spectacles. And we, of Seattle, are directly responsible for seeing that this sorry affair is not quietly shush-shushed.

And after direct responsibility for this death has been placed, we, of Seattle, must shake off our shackles of tolerance and see that this crime in the name of sports is never permitted again.

(ED. NOTE -- Russell McGrath, the longtime managing editor of The Seattle Times, was a lifelong hater of professional wrestling. For the longest time, he would permit not even the barest mention of wrestling matches in The Times' sports sections. One might guess he had a hand in this attempt to inflame the citizenry, even as the coroner's inquest determined a heart attack killed the referee, not the other participants for throwing him "with force enough" to kill him.)

CITIZENS DEMAND PERMANENT BAN ON WRESTLING

Inquest Called in Death of Referee; 'Mat' Exhibitions Not Sport, Says Athletic Chief, Ordering Temporary Curb; Sepp Denies Countenancing Rough Tactics

(The Seattle Sunday Times, March 3, 1940)

Professional wrestling in Seattle, under a temporary ban pending three investigations into the death of John Stevens, 50-year-old wrestling referee, must be eliminated permanently, Seattle citizens said yesterday.

Stevens died of heart disease Friday night in a Civic Auditorium dressing room shortly after he was thrown from the ring during a melee of wrestlers and their seconds. The fracas was one which has been repeated at professional wrestling "exhibitions" many times, and public officials and citizens were united in a declaration that the wrestling business should be subjected to a thorough investigation.

George Adams, secretary of the State Athletic Commission, yesterday announced all wrestling shows banned in Seattle pending a study of the situation.

Coroner Otto H. Mittelstadt announced an inquest into Stevens' death would be held at 10 o'clock Tuesday morning in room 356 of the County-City Building. Mittelstadt, who will be aided by Prosecutor B. Gray Warner, said the inquest would go into the crowd-luring "horseplay" which resulted in Stevens' death and would attempt to fix responsibility for the incident.

Adams predicted that if wrestling is permitted to continue, referees will be subjected to the same physical examinations as wrestlers.

"Wrestling shows have been staged here for seven years (sic) and this is the first time there has been a serious result from the 'acting,'" Adams said. "Wrestling is in no sense a real sport and we have never permitted it to be anything except a show or exhibition. It's simply a rough tumbling act, which a certain number of persons enjoy and demand."

In a third inquiry, Joseph Little, city building superintendent, tomorrow will study the report of W.J. Coyle, manager of the auditorium shows. Little indicated he might present the question to the City Council of whether the city should continue leasing its public buildings for this purpose.

August Sepp, promoter who staged the wrestling show, last night issued the following statement:

"I am not at liberty to discuss the situation at this time for I will undoubtedly be called at the coroner's inquest of Jack Stevens' death Tuesday morning. However, I don't think there is any person in Seattle who can say that I ever told any wrestler to go in the ring and use any rough methods whatsoever.

"I have spent eleven years of my life here, bringing my wife and family to Seattle, and intend to remain here for many years. The death of Stevens naturally grieved me for he was one of my closest personal friends. I have encouraged the wrestlers to use only clean tactics turing all the time I have been in the promotion business in Seattle and never have encouraged them to fight with the referees."

Mittelstadt said members of the Athletic Commission and city officials connected with the leasing of the public buildings to wrestlers would be subpoenaed to the inquest.

Stevens died in a dressing room shortly after he was pushed from the ring and his head hit a steel post. He had just awarded a bout to John Katan, Montral. The other wrestler, LaVerne Baxter, Monroe, Ore., protested.

Then followed a familiar scene. Wrestlers, their seconds and Stevens engaged in a tussle. A spectator tossed a bottle into the ring. Stevens was pushed to a corner, rolled under the ropes and fell out of the ring. After an autopsy, it was declared that Stevens had died of heart disease.

"This occurrence is most unfortunate," Warner said. "For the advancement of strenuous athletics as a whole, strict supervision of participants' condition should be maintained if these sports are to survive with public favor.

"There was a time when football became an unnecessarily dangerous institution because supervision was lacking with the result that physically unfit players were permitted to continue, often with fatal results. Football, then, did not have the universal public favor it now enjoys. 

"This is true of all sports. The day was when boxing was little more than an invitation to manslaughter. As a result, it was outlawed in most states because of the pressure of public opinion. Today, under regulation, that public prejudice has been overcome to a large degree.

"It should be a condition precedent to any contest that the referees must be as physically fit as the contestants and subject to the same check, so tragedies of this type will not reoccur. In the final analysis, the continued existence of such sports depends on public favor. My office will do anything it can to clean up this situation."

"Baxter told me a beer bottle, thrown from the audience, hit him during the fracas after the bout was over," Mittelstadt said. The coroner declared he had forced Baxter, due to wrestle in Yakima and one other Northwest city this weekend, to cancel the matches and hold himself in readiness for the inquest. 

"During the excitement, Baxter said he kicked at Stevens," Mittelstadt said. "At that moment, Stevens rolled under the ropes and fell from the ring, Baxter told me."

Meanwhile, Seattle's citizenry was thoroughly aroused. Many persons were frank in declaring that "wrestling must go." Others criticized a situation which permitted a referee of middle-age, in poor physical condition, to enter a ring and attempt to control the actions of large, powerfully built young men. Some of the comments follow:

Henry Foster, director of physical education at the University of Washington -- Many people have wondered for a long time why these affairs have been permitted in city-owned buildings. Certainly a referee in professional wrestling is just as much a participant as the wrestlers. He should be subject to the same examination as a wrestler. Professional wrestling is a vicious sport and appeals to mob hysteria. Our sports ought to be on a higher plane.

Mrs. Virginia Field, 4760 20th Ave. N.E. -- I've never thought much about the wrestling matches. Such a thing as this never has happened before, and probably won't ever happen again, but I think a man refereeing a sports event should be examined first. If that man had a weak heart he shouldn't have been permitted in any kind of sports at all.

George Kosmos, bowling alley concession operator -- I get to pretty near all the wrestling matches -- but I didn't happen to be present Friday night -- and I've done some wrestling myself, though not professionally. I know what a referee is up against, and he's got to be in good physical condition himself, as well as knowing about wrestling. It was poor judgment to let that man go into the ring if it was known he had a poor heart, and it WOULD have been known if physical examinations were compulsory, as they should be.

The Rev. P.A. Klein, pastor of the Dunlap Baptist Church -- I agree with every word contained in The Times' editorial and want to offer my support as well as the support of many others who feel as I do toward a campaign to clean up this sport. I certainly endorse your words wholeheartedly. 

SPORT BOARD CRITICIZED AT INQUEST

(Seattle Times, March 6, 1940)

Chief Little Wolf Tenaro, 28-year-old professional wrestler, today "stopped" the coroner's inquest into the death of John Stevens, wrestling referee, by declaring that he "did not get these cauliflower ears answering telephones," then stripping to the waist and permitting a spectator to pummel him in the stomach.

Tenaro's appearance on the witness stand followed testimony yesterday that the "horseplay" of the wrestling "stage," which includes fisticuffs between wrestlers and referees, is prearranged in defiance of an order from the State Athletic Commission. 

Tenaro, well-known in Seattle rings as one of the most colorful wrestlers, provided a highlight of today's inquest session when Coroner Otto H. Mittelstadt asked the witness to show the jury how well-developed a wrestler had to be. Smiling, and bowing an apology to the women on the jury, Tenaro slipped off his coat, brown shirt and white undershirt.

"You don't think a man has to be tough to be in this business? Tenaro asked, flexing huge biceps and tightening the muscles of his abdomen. Come on up here and take a punch at my stomach. Hit me as hard as you can. Come on. Hit me any place."

Harry Pittson, 4524 33rd Ave. W, a wrestling fan, stepped forward. Pittson swung hard blows with his right fist into Tenaro's abdomen. The wrestler smiled during the exhibition, shook hands with Pittson, then replaced his clothes.

Of a more serious nature, however, was Tenaro's statement that the State Athletic Commission should never have permitted Stevens, who had a weak heart, to enter the ring.

Stevens died in a Civic Auditorium dressing room Friday night (March 1, 1940) after LaVerne Baxter, Monroe, Ore., wrestler, staged "horseplay" fisticuffs with Stevens after the referee had awarded the bout to John Katan, Montreal.

"Nobody else is to blame but the State Athletic Commission," Tenaro, who wears his coal-black hair in long curls over his neck, said. "They never should have let him in the ring. When a wrestler gets funny with a referee, the commission should slap a heavy fine on that man. I couldn't get away with it in other states."

Under questioning by Mittelstadt and Prosecutor B. Gray Warner, Tenaro declared there is much horseplay in wrestling but insisted matches are not faked to any great extent.

"I've played all sports," the witness said. "You call it horseplay and baloney. I call it color. Max Baer, the boxer, has horseplay, only people call it color. "But when the going gets tough, you can bet I'm in there to win. If a wrestler is not on top, he doesn't make money."

The coroner asked if arrangements were made prior to bouts as to which wrestler is to win. "Never," was the indignant answer. "I punch them in the nose if they talk that way. You know, everybody thinks wrestlers are bums. They're all high-class men. Most of them are college graduates. They've all got nice homes. I'm known all over the world. I don't owe anybody a dime."

Tenaro said the pay wrestlers receive "depends on the house." Spectators, who filled the courtroom, laughed when he said sometimes he wrestled "for peanuts." In New York City, however, he sometimes is paid $5,000 a match, he said.

Tenaro declared he is not "controlled" by anybody, adding that "some promoters try to get funny, but I just walk out of town.

"Anybody who thinks wrestling is all hooey, doesn't know," Tenaro testified. "Wrestling is serious business."

First witness of the forenoon session was Mrs. Jack L. Zander, 175 Dravus St. She said she saw the match Friday night, her second visit to a wresling show. She insisted that Baxter was not engaged in horseplay when he struck Stevens, pulled his shirt off and kicked him when he fell to the mat.

"I stood on my chair and yelled that he was killing him because you could see that the referee was unconscious," Mrs. Zander testified. "I don't see how any man stand those kicks without injury, or death."

Asked if she thought the fisticuffs were not part of the regular wrestling horseplay, Mrs. Zander replied:

"That was no show. Baxter was so angry, he lost control."

A different view was taken by Everett Mathews, 4226 Brooklyn Ave., another spectator. Mathews, who said he saw many wrestling shows because he enjoyed them, declared Baxter's treatment of the referee looked like "part of the show." He said he did not see Baxter kick Stevens.

Gordon Hopkins, radio sports commentator, testified Stevens "had absolutely no business in the ring after awarding Katan the bout. Stevens met his death through "his own negligence,"

Hopkins, who broadcasts the matches, testified. Baxter's actions toward Stevens were not "malicious" but part "of the show," the witness said.

Hopkins compared Baxter's roughness to Prime Minister Chamberlain's umbrella and the underslung pipe of former Vice President Charles Dawes, all of them being "stocks in trade," according to the witness.

W.C.B. Fisher, 1611 Eighth Ave. N., member of the audience who has witnessed wrestling bouts for fifteen years, said he did not believe Baxter was angry when he hit Stevens.

Detective Lieut. James Lawrence said police investigation resulted in a report that Stevens died a natural death due to excitement.

Contrasting testimony was given late yesterday by Harvey Donaldson, wrestler's second, and John Katan, wrestler, Montreal. Donaldson frankly said professional wrestling is prearranged and the agonizing "grunts and groans" of wrestlers are faked. Katan, however, declared he did not know of prearrangements for the horseplay and that he did not know of predetermination of the winning wrestler.

Also featuring yesterday's afternoon session was the declaration by Dr. Gale Wilson, county autopsy surgeon, and Dr. Alfred L. Bailie, pathologist, that the 50-year-old referee died of heart disease and not from kicks and a fall he received in a crowd-luring tussle after officiating the match Friday between Katan and Baxter.

Although Katan was noncommital in response to most questions about wrestling "secrets," he declared that Ted Thye, Portland, Ore., wrestling promoter, arranges bookings for most wrestlers in the Pacific Northwest.

Typical of Donaldson's disclosure that wrestling is not a competitive sport but a show for the spectators was his use of the term "stage" for the wrestling ring. Donaldson, one-time national amateur featherweight wrestling champion, said he prevented a spectator from hurling a whiskey bottle at Baxter and Stevens in the after bout melee.

Donaldson said he told the spectator, "Don't get excited. It's only entertainment."

Prosecutor Warner asked Donaldson if the fisticuffs between referee and wrestlers after bouts is prearranged.

"Usually we do," Donaldson said. "We have orders from the commission not to do it, yet we do it to help out the show."

Donaldson, declaring the only place in Seattle to witness real wrestling is at the University of Washington team matches, said wrestlers often cry out in simulated agony but "are not getting hurt at all."

Howard E. Foster, attorney, had testified earlier that in two years of witnessing wrestling matches regularly, he had never seen anything other than clean, competitive wrestling except in two instances, yet Donaldson testified:

"I don't see how anybody could be fooled."

Millard Douglas, 23, Katan's second, said he was "not in" on any prearrangements.

ZANY ANDY TOSSES IN THE TOWEL

(New York Post, April 19, 1982)

Comedian Andy Kaufman says he's through with wrestling -- but that didn't stop him from getting into a verbal brawl near Lincoln Center. 

Zany Andy, who's taken on a number of bizarre opponents in the ring, was dumped head first in a match in Tennessee this month by 235-pound Jerry Lawler. He was hospitalized briefly and now wears a neck brace. As the "Taxi" regular was walking by Scooterwear, a West Side clothing store, songwriter Chris Robison, who happened to be lending the store owner a hand, yelled, "Serves you right, Andy." Andy stormed over. 

"He used every profanity in the book," Robison told PAGE SIX, "and threatened to return with bodyguards." Kaufman returned later, alone. Denied entrance to the shop, he let loose again, "yelling and screaming," said Scooterwear owner Toby Davidson. "I always knew he was a wild guy but this was obnoxious and venomous."

Davidson said Kaufman kicked in the door, but Andy denies that. He said his only kicks were verbal. Kaufman told PAGE SIX: "I admit I was wrong. I know I acted like a crazy person." Kaufman even concede that Robison had a point. "It DID serve me right -- I was foolish to get in the ring (in Tennessee). But why did he (Robison) have to taunt me?"

Sensitive Andy reported that his neck feels better but also told PAGE SIX he'll never wrestle again.

(ED. NOTE -- Of course, as regular WAWLI readers now may recall, this was not true. Kaufman kept going back to Tennessee in his relentless pursuit of "revenge" against the aforementioned Mr. Lawler, creating one of the great wrestling angles of the '80s and, as we have opined previously, maybe the last real "heat" seen in an American wrestling ring.)

The WAWLI Papers No. 120 . . . 

WRESTLERS WARNED AS DEATH PROBE ENDS

(The Seattle Times, March 7, 1940)

After LaVerne Baxter, "villain" wrestler, testified the horseplay which figured in the death of John Stevens, referee, was partly prearranged and was not prompted by anger, George Adams, secretary of the State Athletic Commission, concluded testimony at a coroner's inquest today with a warning that "harsh" penalties will be invoked in the future against wrestlers who harm referees.

Baxter said he "pushed" Stevens Friday night at Civic Auditorium and kicked at him, but declared the kicks could not have harmed Stevens.

Other developments as a jury called by Coroner Otto Mittelstadt neared the end of its three-day hearing included predictions by Adams of new stringent professional wrestling regulations, and testimony by August Sepp, a wrestler promoter, that Stevens violated Sepp's orders not to mix with wrestlers in horseplay tactics.

Testimony was also given that Stevens was paid $3 for officiating in two bouts the night he died.

Baxter, tall, 225-pound farmer from Monroe, Ore., was dressed in black cowboy shirt, with white string laces, gray business suit and high, black cowboy boots as he strode to the witness chair and waived his rights by permitting Mittelstadt and Prosecutor B. Gray Warner to question him.

"A couple of weeks ago, Steve had asked me to rough him up at the end of a match to make him look tough," Baxter testified. "He wanted me to grab him by the hair and pull him about the ring."

"Did you?" Mittelstadt asked.

"I did," was the answer. "I took him by the hair and threw him around the ring and he went right on out. Then, last Friday, Steve asked me to throw him out into the second row of seats. I didn't think that was right. The referee is supposed to leave the ring right after a bout. I told him I wouldn't do it."

Baxter said he thought a false fall had been declared when Stevens awarded the bout to John Katan, Montreal, so Baxter kept on wrestling.

"Katan's second got in the ring," the witness said. "First thing I knew there was a scuffle and Katan's second's glasses flew off to one side. We all were on our feet. Stevens got a push of some sort. He started to roll toward the ropes. I kicked at him twice, because I thought it would be good color and might make good stuff for a return match if I protested at the decision.

"He couldn't get hurt on those kicks. I had nothing against that man. You could put anything between that kick and him and it wouldn't have broken."

Baxter told Warner he was not "incensed" at losing the bout. He said he did not intend to hurt Stevens.

Baxter said Stevens wanted to be "roughed up" by Baxter so that the crowd would get the idea that Stevens was a "hero being beaten up by the villain."

"Was this tussle a usual aftermath of bouts?" Warner asked.

"It was usual," Baxter said. "If you weren't rough and didn't give the people something satisfied to go home with the show wouldn't be any good."

Nevertheless, Baxter said, the horseplay with referees was contrary to orders given wrestlers by the state commission and by Sepp. Adams said the inquest had given him a "great opportunity" to learn about things that often had perturbed the commission. The commission, at one time, threatened to bar all wrestling, but learned, Adams said, that the public wants the "rough-and-tumble" sport, so regulated it on a basis of "exhibitions" and not competitive athletics.

"It never occurred to us that referees should be physically examined," Adams testified. "If he followed the duties set out by the commission, he would not be hurt, we thought.

"This case has brought things to a point where referees, in the future, will be examined regularly and there will be harsh penalties for wrestlers who lay a hand on referees. This is a sad thing, but I feel certain that in the future it will prove to be a benefit."

One of the last witnesses was Mrs. Helen Mildred Baxter, wife of the wrestler. Mrs. Baxter said she did not see the attack on Stevens, but did see a spectator about to hurl a whiskey bottle at her husband during the after-bout melee. She testified that her husband acts the part of a "villain" so that he "can make more money." She said his roughness was "not serious" and that she would call it "color or showmanship."

Testimony in the second day of the inquested ended late yesterday with Sepp declaring that Stevens violated Sepp's ban of fisticuffs with wrestling. Sepp testified: "I wouldn't say all the bouts are on the square." The promoter added that wrestlers must get "consent" of Ted Thye, Portland, Ore., promoter, before appearing in Seattle rings and that outcome of bouts often are predetermined by the matching of a superior wrestler with a poorer competitor.

Funeral services for the referee will be held at 11 o'clock tomorrow in the Mittelstadt Funeral Home, with the Rev. Homer L. Wilhelm officiating. Burial will be in Crown Hill.

Surviving are three daughters, Mrs. Virginia Hamilton, Washington, D.C., and Jeanne and Mary Ellen Stevens, New York City.

(ED. NOTE -- The aftermath of the incident led to a ban on wrestling in publicly owned buildings in Seattle for more than five years. This effectively curtailed the sport during almost all of World War II and amounts to one of the longest prohibitions of the sport in U.S. history, at least where a major city was involved. Not until a friendly city councilman, Al Rochester, went to bat for the wrestlers in the spring of 1945 was the ban reversed, leading to a resumption of the game on a regular basis and the first Seattle appearances of Lou Thesz, then stationed at nearby Fort Lewis.)

DR. BONICA WHIPS EX-GRIDDER AT CIVIC CENTER

(The Bremerton, Wash., Sun, Friday, April 13, 1945)

Dr. John Bonica, who has ingratiated himself with Bremerton rassle fans, last night proved more popular than ever when he came from a first-fall loss to take the next two and whip Cliff Thiede, 220-pound former University of Southern California football star, as a large audience howled with glee at Civic Center.

The army medico, considerably shorter than the ex-grid star, proved clever from the start and had Thiede guessing as to what grip to try in an effort to subdue the Ft. Lewis mat instructor.

Then somebody became angry -- perhaps both Thiede and Bonica -- and a few punches were landed to add oil to the flames. Thiede, who became the "bad boy" in fans' estimation, found the secret in a series of arm locks that practically paralyzed Dr. Bonica's left arm. Thus, after 15 minutes of having the arm worked over and bent like a pretzel, the doctor gave up for the first fall.

But he came back -- and how! First he threw Thiede out of the ring into the laps of the cash customers, just to show them that Thiede was still alive at that moment and to indicate to the footballer what was yet to come. Then the two started to slug it out, even giving Referee Hal Erickson some punishment only to have the hefty Swede dish out some of his own; but the opportunity Dr. Bonica had awaited came in a series of slams and he pinned the bemuscled Thiede to the mat for a three-count.

On the third fall, Thiede lasted only a few minutes in a rough go, the medico finally subduing Thiede in a series of slams and a climaxing body press.

Referee Erickson also got a bad time in the other main event between Lt. Bud Higgins and Frank Stojack, former Washington State College footballer. But three body slams and a press after 27 minutes of the one-hour limit bout gave Higgins the first fall. Then things began with a vengeance, Stojack kicking Higgins out of the ropes and into the throes of the ringsiders, but a forthcoming body scissors by Stojack forced Higgins to plead and lose the second fall.

Stojack won the third fall, too, by reversing the tables on Higgins when the latter made a flying body tackle and found himself bent over helpless.

In the opener, Urgel Rivard, pride of the P.S.N.Y. machine shop, lasted for 10 minutes and 20 seconds with experienced Bob Kruse, the "Oswego Cabbage King" from Portland. Kruse heaved Rivard out of the ring, but the X-31 favorite came back -- not quite as he left, however, and an arm bar and body press was what turned the trick for Kruse.

A profound silence fell over the large crowd last night when one minute's meditation over the president's death was observed. The next pro wrestling show will be held next Thursday night.

VINCE McMAHON: THE TRADITION LIVES ON

(from Wrestling World, date unknown, circa 1968)

By Lou Sahadi

It was still early and the place was empty. The main lights hadn't been turned on in the arena and the only signs of life were a number of wrestlers who began arriving one at a time. A couple of them stopped and looked around the new arena before heading for their respective dressing rooms.

Vince McMahon stood in the runway leading directly to the middle of the vast floor. His eyes were fixed at the ring and then he slowly gazed around the environs of the new Madison Square Garden.

Natilly dressed as always, McMahon appeared a bit concerned. He is a master craftsman as a promoter yet he couldn't help but wonder how many people would be lured into the $36-million emporium. No one could predict. This was the first wrestling show ever held in the new 33rd St. structure that rises majestically over Penn Station.

McMahon was pondering a number of questions out loud. How good are the acoustics? . . . Is the lighting sufficient? . . . Can the spectators in the far-off seats see well enough? . . . How will the fans react to a new arena?

The latter question offered concern. A few years back a rival promoter tried to run a number of wrestling events in the New York Coliseum, a modern edifice just a stone's throw from the old Madison Square Garden. The promoter took a heavy financial loss and oldtimers opined that the reason the wrestling fans did not accept the Coliseum was that it was a new building.

It's a strange paradox, but that is the nature of the wrestling fan. He associates himself with the old through habit and rebels against a vast physical change. He's used to going to the arena at a certain night in the month and sitting in his same seat show after show. It's almost as if he projects himself into the program. He'll cheer world champion Bruno Sammartino and he'll boo anyone he opposes. He wants to stand up and be counted.

McMahon himself is a throwback to the past. He was exposed to the serious business of promoting ever since he could remember. Now in his early 50s, McMahon still retains that boyhood charm that most Irish kids growing up in New York possessed in the 1920s. He runs a first-class operation that has earned him the respect of wrestler and fan alike.

His association with Madison Square Garden runs deep. His father, Jess, promoted the first ring attraction in the old place on December 11, 1925, a lightheavyweight championship fight between Jack Delaney and Paul Berlenbach.

Young McMahon played in the Garden as a kid of 11. He'd explore the catacomb level underneath the arena and end up sitting at the knees of fabled celebrities. This was the Golden Age of sports, and McMahon was exposed to it all as an Irish moppet, wide-eyed by it all in the excitement of smoke-filled arenas.

"My big charge came from seeing Ching Johnson of the Rangers come up the ice with the puck," reflected McMahon. "He was electric, shedding body checks like Bronko Nagurski shaking off tacklers.

"I remember the Garden being so jammed by fans waiting to see Reggie McNamara in the six-day bicycle races that my father and the Striblings had to sit on the steps in an aisle to make a bout. My father sat behind me with Pa Stribling, who managed Young Stribling, sitting next to me.

"Not many people know that Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney were booked to fight in New York, which turned it down because Harry Wills, a Negro, said that Dempsey was ducking him. That's why the fight went to Philadelphia instead. Dempsey was not ducking Wills. Jack Sharkey had no trouble with Wills before winning on a foul."

These were some of the memories that McMahon can easily recall when talking about promotions and Madison Square Garden. He's had pleasant memories and sad ones, like the time last January when McMahon staged the last ring show in the old Garden, which featured Sammartino against Taru Tanaka.

"I was just about the last person in the place," he remarked. "All the front doors were locked and I had to leave by way of the employee's entrance. I just sat around thinking back. It felt eerie, thinking about the things that I saw there in the 42 years since my dad opened it."

Jess McMahon wasn't one of the Damon Runyon type characters that made up the fight game then. First of all, he was a graduate of Manhattan College, and how many guys along Jacobs Beach could make that distinction? Then Jess ran a neat and proper office. His working hours were strictly from 9 to 5 and who ever heard of that among the cigar smoking, card playing characters who usually conducted their business in the back rooms of the many saloons along the way? McMahon himself didn't smoke and purposely kept proper hours in order to maintain a close family life in Far Rockaway.

In a tribute to his memory, the Garden moguls gave Vince the distinction of putting on the first ring show in the new Garden. McMahon came right back with Sammartino in the main event against Bull Ramos, a 325-pound Apache Indian. It was Sammartino's 55th main event appearance in five years in the Garden, and no athlete in any sport could come close to approaching such a milestone.

"He is the strongest man in the world," exclaimed McMahon. "He can do a pushup with two wrestlers on his back. Most people don't seem to know it but Bruno outdid Paul Anderson, the weightlifting champion, by 90 pounds in a tournament. Bruno began lifting weights in a Pittsburgh YMCA to build himself up after virtually starving during World War II when the Germans occupied his little town in northern Italy."

Although his office is located in Washington, D.C., McMahon's operations extend far beyond the eastern seaboard. He recently concluded a contract with Japanese promoters for a two-week tour by Sammartino. He also set up a longer tour of Australia for Gorilla Monsoon.

McMahon has also arranged for Sammartinto to appear in Canada, South America and Australia. He is constantly on the telephone at his office in the Franklin Park Hotel or from his home in a fashionable section of Washington. Even when traveling, McMahon makes liberal use of the telephone. He does over 90 percent of his business that way.

A number of years ago he promoted an outdoor show in Chicago's Comiskey Park. It was a fantastic succss. A crowd of 39,995 turned out for the program which still stands today as the largest crowd ever to attend a wrestling match.

McMahon maintains a humble ego in his performers. One night they could be headlining a television show, or appear on top in Madison Square Garden, before sending them off to such far off corners as Lewiston, Maine, to fulfill a contract with a local promoter.

Travel and television are some of the complexities that face McMahon and that his father never confronted. He has to serve as a behind the scenes producer of the television shows, matching the right performers who will provide the finest matches. Then, he has to arrange for a weekly schedule for a large number of wrestlers who appear in one city one night and a different one the next.

The schedule does have its headaches. Like the time a few years ago when Sammartino was scheduled for a matinee match in Pittsburgh and an evening appearance in Newark, N.J. In order to insure Sammartino's arriving on time at the Newark Armory, McMahon arranged for a police escort from Newark Airport through the busy streets of Newark. Sammartino made the committment with about three minutes to spare.

Usually, promoters do not foster a close relationship with wrestlers. They establish a good rapport but maintain a business relationship. However, it is quite obvious that McMahon is fond of Sammartino.

"He's the greatest champion in the game today," beamed McMahon. "He's had the belt over five years which should tell you just how great a champion he is. I'd venture to say he has received more fan mail than any wrestler in history and I mean ever since the sport became popular. He's known all over the world and promoters constantly are in touch with me seeking Bruno's services. I have turned down more requests than I have agreed to. It just can't be helped. It isn't humanly possible to fulfill all the requests he has received."

Along with his vast wrestling network, McMahon somehow finds the time to dabble in other promotional ventures. He currently possesses the promotional rights to one of boxing's hottest properties, lightheavyweight champion Bob Foster. He did so by a daring maneuver by guaranteeing then lightheavyweight champion Dick Tiger $100,000 if he would meet Foster in New York's Madison Square Garden. The match was made last May and Foster easily knocked out Tiger to capture the title.

"I may move Foster up into the heavyweight ranks," disclosed McMahon. "Why, there's nobody around in the lightheavyweight division who can come close to beating him. The way I see it, he can beat most of the heavyweights around right now."

Although he may get involved in any number of promotions, wrestling is closest to McMahon's heart. By his own admission, he'd rather promote wrestling than any other event.

Actually, it's more demanding and more challenging. That's what McMahon thrives on. It makes him go. It turns him on like an eight-day clock. Right now he's faced with his biggest challenge, selling out the new Garden in the same manner that he did the old one. If any one can do it it's McMahon. It'll take some masterful strokes, though.

There wasn't going to be a sellout this particular night. A crowd, yes, but not one that will completely satisfy McMahon in the manner in which he has sold out Boston and Philadelphia. That's about all that's left for McMahon to do. The smart money says he will accomplish it.

THE LAST SHOW AT THE OLD MADISON SQUARE GARDEN

January 29, 1968, New York City

Angelo Savoldi beat Wes Hutchings Earl Maynard beat Johnny Rodz Louis Cerdan (sub for The Sheik) beat Mario Fratarolli Dom DeNucci (sub for Kentucky Butcher John Quinn) beat Smasher Sloan Bull Ramos beat Antonio Pugliese Victor Rivera-Miguel Perez beat Luke Graham-Guillotine Gordon Edouard Carpentier drew Hans Mortier Bruno Sammartino beat Prof. Toru Tanaka Attendance -- 14,130

THE FIRST SHOW AT THE NEW MADISON SQUARE GARDEN

February 19, 1968, New York City

Miguel Perez beat Guillotine Gordon Little Beaver-Irish Jackie beat Sky Low Low-Little Brutus The Sheik beat Louie Cerdan (Gino Britto) Earl Maynard beat Luke Graham Toru Tanaka drew Dom DeNucci Victor Rivera beat Hans Mortier Virgil Butcher (John Quinn) beat Edouard Carpentier Bruno Sammartino beat Bull Ramos 
Attendance -- 12,989 

The WAWLI Papers No. 121 . . . 

O'MAHONEY DOWNS MACALUSO; FANS AROUSED

(The Hartford, Ct., Times, Saturday, January 15, 1938)

By Bill Shea

That famous cheer which, according to history, was first sounded in the Bronx received a tremendous workout at Foot Guard Hall last night.

The recipients were Danno O'Mahoney, who at one time wore the crown designating him world's heavyweight wrestling champion, and Smiler Livingstone, Hartford's own "popular" referee.

Danno, by the way (copyright, 1892, by A.B. McGinley) won the bout in two straight falls over Len Macaluso, ex-Colgate grid luminary, who substituted for Ed Don George. The latter, according to medical reports, is incapacitated by an abscessed arm.

Danno last night assumed the role of villain. But he wasn't a very good one. He knew all the tricks, such as hair pulling, kicking, elbow battering, referee baiting, etc., but the performance in this strange role revealed crude and unconvincing style. It certainly looked as though he had been miscast.

Macaluso gave Danno more than the latter bargained for throughout the brawl. Danno's tactics aroused the crowd, as it was expected, and even many of his warm admirers joined in the thunder of boos which arose every time the husky Irishman decided to become unorthodox.

The boys started off fast, each clamping a series of headlocks on the other. When the going got rough, Danno would run away or crawl out of the ring. That would make any Irishman mad -- to see his own countrymen flee from a battle. It just wasn't cricket, to use a good old British phrase. The first fall went to the son of Erin with his famed Irish whip in 22 minutes.

But it was the second fall which caused all the trouble. Macaluso got Danno in a vise-like scissors soon after the start and by the look on Danno's face subjected the big Irishman to plenty of punishment. Danno squirmed and fought but couldn't break the hold. Finally Macaluso pushed Danno's shoulders firmly to the mat and kept them there for at least five seconds. No doubt Danno was down, but Smiler happened to be far over in back of the wrestlers and by the time he reached a position to see, Danno had swept up to his feet and with Len's legs still tightly wound around his middle, held his opponent so his shoulders were touching. Smiler didn't miss this one and Danno got the nod.

Pandemonium then broke loose. Hoots, catcalls and jeers filled the arena, as Danno ran to his dressing room. Smiler looked a little sad as his many constituents continued to give him the razzberry. They just couldn't understand.

In the semifinal, Stan Pinto, former "bad man" of the ring, threw George Gostovich, the so-called &