09.01.2008, 08:07
Im Fruehling 1931 schrieb William Braucher einen sechs teiligen Artikel ueber den Wrestling Boom des Pro Wrestling damals. Es scheint das er viele der Zahlen von NY Promoter Jack Curley hat, aber viele davon sind anzuzweifeln oder falsch. Der Artikel fing an mit den Worten:”After years of unpopularity.” Und dann ging es weiter mit:”wrestling is undergoing a tremendous revival. These will be six articles revealing the scope of the modern mat game, studying the causes of its regeneration and investigating the conduct of matches as they are staged today.”
WHY PRO WRESTLING ATTRACTS RECORD-BREAKING CROWDS
1931
Newspaper Enterprise Association
William Braucher
Service Sports Editor
PART ONE
NEW YORK CITY -- From Cape Cod to the Golden Gate is a long way lined with rich cities filled with sports fans hungry for the thrills of violent action.
That is the golden highway wrestlers are riding today. And the reason is showmanship as fine as ever provided in a Belasco third act.
Meanwhile, boxing suffers in the throes of a self-inflicted depression -- and, while wrestlers ride, glove-wielders are walking on well-worn heels. Lackadaisical mitt programs have done much to kill that sport, but the grunt, creep and grimace of wrestling's unhappier day have been replaced by a headlong attack which has captured the public imagination. Into the new pattern of wrestling have been blended slapstick and sober-sided melodrama in an appealing and moving measure.
The only showmanship that seems to be omitted in the modern mat melee is perhaps the wearing of a Chaplin costume, the singing of a mammy song or the gunfire of road agents attacking the coach to Fargo. The rest of it seems to be all there.
The revival, gaining headway slowly all winter, burst into blossom shortly after the first of the year when thousands were turned away from Madison Square Garden, where one of the several world champions, Jim Londos, defended his title against Jim McMillen, square-shouldered plunger who used to run interference for Red Grange at the University of Illinois. More than 23,000 customers packed every cranny of the Garden, setting a new all-time attendance record for sporting events and bringing in a gate of $67,000.
The colorful Londos, ticketed with "the Greek God," "the Apollo," "the Adonis of the Arena," and various other catch-names, has gone up and down the country since then, defending his championship almost nightly in one city or another.
Some sort of world record was established by the Adonis recently when he was the main attraction at 10 shows in 10 different cities in 12 nights. The cities were Atlanta, Richmond, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis and Memphis. [Dates of these shows fell within the March 2-13, 1931, period.]
And in each of these cities the show was a sellout, the box office being closed before the show started!
Between January, 1930, and January, 1931, Londos alone will earn more than $300,000 at his present scale of wages. Already he has profited more than $100,000, and big outdoor matches are near.
In the few months that Don George held the title after winning it from Gus the Goat Sonnenberg, he collected $100,000 before losing recently to Strangler Lewis in a bout at Los Angeles.
With Londos earning $300,000 a year, how much is the public paying annually for the wrestling of other "champions," near champions, semi-finalists and preliminary puffers?
Figuring on gates in such cities as Los Angeles, Chicdago, Boston, New York, Denver, Kansas City, St. Louis, Cleveland, Buffalo, Montreal and Toronto ranging all the way from $10,000 to $75,000, it would not be hard for even a baseball umpire to see that the racket is pretty good pay.
The under-champions and semi-finalists, by dint of plugging, can earn all the way from $10,000 to $20,000 a year. Fifty to 60 per cent of the gates is divided among the performers, with the principals' share between 25 and 30 per cent of the gross, the semi-finalists drawing a 5 per cent end and the apprentices getting all the way from $50 to $300.
The frequency of the shows, indicated by Londos' successive one-night stands in various cities around one of the big wheels, and the showings of Strangler Lewis, the other champion, on the other circuit, prove that without doubt wrestling is "up in the bucks" -- and then some.
Meantime, events are moving toward an outdoor show on a scale undreamed of since the $100,000 Gotch-Hackenschmidt affair at White Sox Park in Chicago 20 years ago.
++++
PART TWO
NEW YORK CITY -- The prosperity of wrestling may be traced directly to the collapse of boxing that resulted from an epidemic of fouls and unsatisfactory fights.
But there is another source further back than that, traced to a squatty Dartmouth tackle, Gus Sonnenberg, who brought to the mat a new kind of onslaught in the flying tackle.
Three years ago, before a $70,000 house in Boston, Gus and his flying tackle rendered champion Strangler Lewis hors de combat. The young athlete from the Michigan iron and lumber country "carried the ball" across the country and back again on an end run that netted hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Sonnenberg was accused of faking practices. It was charged he wrestled Dan Koloff half a dozen times in different cities, with Koloff advertised under different names. Gus did not deny it, but told newspaper men that he had not known promoters were changing Koloff's name.
Sonnenberg, understand, was champion of what might be called the "American League" of wrestling, the Bowser-Sandow group with strongholds in Boston, Kansas City and along the Pacific coast. Meanwhile, in National League of wrestling, centered in New York and controlled by Jack Curley, a promoter for 40 years, was advancing the claims alternately of Hans Steinke, Richard Shikat and Jim Londos.
Curley, insisting that Sonnenberg "couldn't wrestle a lick," challenged him to meet any one of a dozen of his pachyderms, offering $50,000 if the man Gus chose should not be able to throw him twice in three minutes.
The challenge was not answered. Sonnenberg, working the charm of his flying tackle upon crowds from coast to coast, was reaping rich rewards. Other collegians began to follow his lead. It was but a short time until wrestling was crowded with young men from the colleges who brought to the mat gifts of swift, fierce action learned on the gridiron.
Wrestlers of all the "leagues" -- and the independents, such as Al Haft's man at Columbus, O., John Pesek -- copied the furious tactics of Gus the Goat. This stirring action went over big with the crowds. The "airplane slam," consisting of whirling the victim over one's head and flinging him with a crash to the canvas, was added to the repertoire and soon became a favorite stunt of the grunters.
The influx of college men continued until, today, there are more than 30 collegians on the big circuits, many of them wrestling three and four nights a week.
The latest recruits are Joe Savoldi, the former Notre Dame fullback, who has been "playing" for the Bowser-Sandow booking firm, and Len Macaluso, the Colgate All-America choice. Upon these college men such old wrestling entrepreneurs as Monsieur Curley look with a jaundiced eye, and with the comment, "they can't wrestle, but it is getting so that any 200-pounder from a college football field can pack a house."
The big college shot of the Curley herd at the moment is Ray Steele, from the University of California. Another on the Curley circuit is Billy Bartush, the former University of Illinois lineman.
Other collegians who now hold lucrative positions in the big leagues of wrestling are: Tiny Roebuck, Haskell; Jim McMillen, University of Illinois; Don George, Michigan; Hank Bruder, Northwestern; Ray Richards, Nebraska; Bibber McCoy, Holy Cross; Sun Jennings, Haskell; Joe Boyle, Columbia; Firpo Wilcox, Oklahoma; George Zaharias, Colorado and Ohio State; Herb Freeman, City College of New York; Earl McCready, Oklahoma A&M; Everett Marshall, Denver University; Father Lumpkin, Georgia Tech; Paul Harper, Southern Methodist; Lloyd Burdick, University of Illinois; Al Morelli, Boston College; Jack Williams, University of Pittsburgh; Willie Davis, University of Virginia; Paul Jones, Rice Institute; Bill Middlekauf, University of Florida; Dr. Ralph Wilson, University of Pennsylvania, and Al Pierotti, Boston College.
Sonnenberg's title passed to another collegian, Don George, in a bout at Los Angeles. Understand, this was the Sandow-Bowser title, not recognized by the Pennsylvania and New York athletic commissions. Challenges from Curley, couched in terms cajoling, failed to win a match for the Curley champion, Jim Londos, with Don George.
Then the title passed back to where it came from -- to Strangler Lewis. And the shouting from Monsieur Curley's crowd ceased abruptly. The Strangler was old -- but that headlock was just as young as ever.
++++
PART THREE
NEW YORK CITY -- College men have helped to revive wrestling. The decline of boxing interest also has been a factor. But there is another cause perhaps as great as either of these. It is showmanship.
Part of this showmanship is expressed in such rough-houise tactics as the flying tackle, flying mare and airplane spin, which have largely supplanted the immobile pulling and tugging of the tiresome past. Part of it is expressed in straight slapstick comedy. A great deal of the quality that Barnum worshiped is in the cast of characters of the act itself, which provides that one man must be a conniving, unscrupulous villain and his adversary the righeous, gracious, triumphant hero.
Take the fellow George Zaharias, Denver collegian. He is one of the villains of the east. One minute he is cringing in a corner against the ropes, his face expressing abject terror of his opponent. Then, suddenly, he is lashing out with a vicious blow that resounds through the hall as it bounces from our hero's manly bosom.
Villains also take every possible advantage of a situation, crawling along the floor to the ropes so the referee will break a painful hold once the villain's head is outside the ropes, as the rules specify.
At one time or another during the conduct of a match, the villain has the upper hand and the hall resounds with boos and jeers as he goes about his seemingly sinister business.
At another time the sneering rascal is being foiled at his own game. Thus, one night I watched Zaharias make seven slashing flying tackles aimed generally in the direction of Jim Londos. Londos nimbly sidestepped each crude plunge, and the rafters trembled with applause.
Again, the evil one, obtaining a cruel hold upon your hero, exhibits almost superhuman wickedness in pressing his torture to the utmost while Handsome Harry bravely and stoically submits to the punishment without a whisper.
It is the sheerest sort of silliness -- but it brings a crowd to its feet like no display of dispassionate scientific skill on the mat ever could. In fact, skill in wrestling today, the wrestlers themselves will admit, is almost entirely unappreciated.
The credo of the wrestling people seems to be that the public likes to be fooled, a belief not denied by the generous patronage the mat game is receiving from people in all walks of life, including the so-called intelligentsia.
"Exposure?" Jack Curley, master of a herd of pachyderms told me recently. "You can't expose anything nowadays. Rather, I mean you can expose and expose and expose and what does it get you?
"Chicago writers called the turn exactly on the recent Lewis-George matdch in Los Angeles in which the championship changed hands. Lewis was going to win back his title as a matter of expediency. The match turned out exactly as they prophesied."
You understand, of course, that Mr. Curley was referring to the Bowser-Sandow wrestling enterprises when he thus scathingly spoke. Mr. Curley, who presents Jim Londos as his world champoion, would not want to throw cold water on Mr. Bowser or Mr. Sandor or the Bowser-Sandow champion, "Strangler" Lewis. Of course not!
Added to the showmanship of villain vs. hero, there appear at nearly every wrestling show, in the preliminaries at least, a couple of monumental mountebanks whose playful absurdities roll dear old Gus Phann right out of his seat.
Stars of this branch of the trade are such men as Sergei Kalmikoff, the bearded Siberian. The present stunt is for his adversary to pull his whiskers. Another is Ferenc Holuban, who has no neck but manages to support in the style to which they have become accustomed seven separate and distinct stomachs. One of the villainous clown types (and a sure crowd pleaser, boys) is Rudy Dusek, the rough and rapacious roughneck rascal.
Even in a so-advertised championship match, there is a great deal of whoop-te-do about nothing before the serious business of throwing begins. There is much leaping and heaving of bodies -- often a wrestler is pitched through the ropes into the press box, or to the floor outside the ring.
When the men really get down to business, one of the favorite falls is the airplane spin. Your champion seizes his man, hoists him high over his head, whirls rapidly a couple of times and bangs the old boy to the mat with a resounding crash. Hooray!
++++
WHY PRO WRESTLING ATTRACTS RECORD-BREAKING CROWDS
1931
Newspaper Enterprise Association
William Braucher
Service Sports Editor
PART ONE
NEW YORK CITY -- From Cape Cod to the Golden Gate is a long way lined with rich cities filled with sports fans hungry for the thrills of violent action.
That is the golden highway wrestlers are riding today. And the reason is showmanship as fine as ever provided in a Belasco third act.
Meanwhile, boxing suffers in the throes of a self-inflicted depression -- and, while wrestlers ride, glove-wielders are walking on well-worn heels. Lackadaisical mitt programs have done much to kill that sport, but the grunt, creep and grimace of wrestling's unhappier day have been replaced by a headlong attack which has captured the public imagination. Into the new pattern of wrestling have been blended slapstick and sober-sided melodrama in an appealing and moving measure.
The only showmanship that seems to be omitted in the modern mat melee is perhaps the wearing of a Chaplin costume, the singing of a mammy song or the gunfire of road agents attacking the coach to Fargo. The rest of it seems to be all there.
The revival, gaining headway slowly all winter, burst into blossom shortly after the first of the year when thousands were turned away from Madison Square Garden, where one of the several world champions, Jim Londos, defended his title against Jim McMillen, square-shouldered plunger who used to run interference for Red Grange at the University of Illinois. More than 23,000 customers packed every cranny of the Garden, setting a new all-time attendance record for sporting events and bringing in a gate of $67,000.
The colorful Londos, ticketed with "the Greek God," "the Apollo," "the Adonis of the Arena," and various other catch-names, has gone up and down the country since then, defending his championship almost nightly in one city or another.
Some sort of world record was established by the Adonis recently when he was the main attraction at 10 shows in 10 different cities in 12 nights. The cities were Atlanta, Richmond, Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis and Memphis. [Dates of these shows fell within the March 2-13, 1931, period.]
And in each of these cities the show was a sellout, the box office being closed before the show started!
Between January, 1930, and January, 1931, Londos alone will earn more than $300,000 at his present scale of wages. Already he has profited more than $100,000, and big outdoor matches are near.
In the few months that Don George held the title after winning it from Gus the Goat Sonnenberg, he collected $100,000 before losing recently to Strangler Lewis in a bout at Los Angeles.
With Londos earning $300,000 a year, how much is the public paying annually for the wrestling of other "champions," near champions, semi-finalists and preliminary puffers?
Figuring on gates in such cities as Los Angeles, Chicdago, Boston, New York, Denver, Kansas City, St. Louis, Cleveland, Buffalo, Montreal and Toronto ranging all the way from $10,000 to $75,000, it would not be hard for even a baseball umpire to see that the racket is pretty good pay.
The under-champions and semi-finalists, by dint of plugging, can earn all the way from $10,000 to $20,000 a year. Fifty to 60 per cent of the gates is divided among the performers, with the principals' share between 25 and 30 per cent of the gross, the semi-finalists drawing a 5 per cent end and the apprentices getting all the way from $50 to $300.
The frequency of the shows, indicated by Londos' successive one-night stands in various cities around one of the big wheels, and the showings of Strangler Lewis, the other champion, on the other circuit, prove that without doubt wrestling is "up in the bucks" -- and then some.
Meantime, events are moving toward an outdoor show on a scale undreamed of since the $100,000 Gotch-Hackenschmidt affair at White Sox Park in Chicago 20 years ago.
++++
PART TWO
NEW YORK CITY -- The prosperity of wrestling may be traced directly to the collapse of boxing that resulted from an epidemic of fouls and unsatisfactory fights.
But there is another source further back than that, traced to a squatty Dartmouth tackle, Gus Sonnenberg, who brought to the mat a new kind of onslaught in the flying tackle.
Three years ago, before a $70,000 house in Boston, Gus and his flying tackle rendered champion Strangler Lewis hors de combat. The young athlete from the Michigan iron and lumber country "carried the ball" across the country and back again on an end run that netted hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Sonnenberg was accused of faking practices. It was charged he wrestled Dan Koloff half a dozen times in different cities, with Koloff advertised under different names. Gus did not deny it, but told newspaper men that he had not known promoters were changing Koloff's name.
Sonnenberg, understand, was champion of what might be called the "American League" of wrestling, the Bowser-Sandow group with strongholds in Boston, Kansas City and along the Pacific coast. Meanwhile, in National League of wrestling, centered in New York and controlled by Jack Curley, a promoter for 40 years, was advancing the claims alternately of Hans Steinke, Richard Shikat and Jim Londos.
Curley, insisting that Sonnenberg "couldn't wrestle a lick," challenged him to meet any one of a dozen of his pachyderms, offering $50,000 if the man Gus chose should not be able to throw him twice in three minutes.
The challenge was not answered. Sonnenberg, working the charm of his flying tackle upon crowds from coast to coast, was reaping rich rewards. Other collegians began to follow his lead. It was but a short time until wrestling was crowded with young men from the colleges who brought to the mat gifts of swift, fierce action learned on the gridiron.
Wrestlers of all the "leagues" -- and the independents, such as Al Haft's man at Columbus, O., John Pesek -- copied the furious tactics of Gus the Goat. This stirring action went over big with the crowds. The "airplane slam," consisting of whirling the victim over one's head and flinging him with a crash to the canvas, was added to the repertoire and soon became a favorite stunt of the grunters.
The influx of college men continued until, today, there are more than 30 collegians on the big circuits, many of them wrestling three and four nights a week.
The latest recruits are Joe Savoldi, the former Notre Dame fullback, who has been "playing" for the Bowser-Sandow booking firm, and Len Macaluso, the Colgate All-America choice. Upon these college men such old wrestling entrepreneurs as Monsieur Curley look with a jaundiced eye, and with the comment, "they can't wrestle, but it is getting so that any 200-pounder from a college football field can pack a house."
The big college shot of the Curley herd at the moment is Ray Steele, from the University of California. Another on the Curley circuit is Billy Bartush, the former University of Illinois lineman.
Other collegians who now hold lucrative positions in the big leagues of wrestling are: Tiny Roebuck, Haskell; Jim McMillen, University of Illinois; Don George, Michigan; Hank Bruder, Northwestern; Ray Richards, Nebraska; Bibber McCoy, Holy Cross; Sun Jennings, Haskell; Joe Boyle, Columbia; Firpo Wilcox, Oklahoma; George Zaharias, Colorado and Ohio State; Herb Freeman, City College of New York; Earl McCready, Oklahoma A&M; Everett Marshall, Denver University; Father Lumpkin, Georgia Tech; Paul Harper, Southern Methodist; Lloyd Burdick, University of Illinois; Al Morelli, Boston College; Jack Williams, University of Pittsburgh; Willie Davis, University of Virginia; Paul Jones, Rice Institute; Bill Middlekauf, University of Florida; Dr. Ralph Wilson, University of Pennsylvania, and Al Pierotti, Boston College.
Sonnenberg's title passed to another collegian, Don George, in a bout at Los Angeles. Understand, this was the Sandow-Bowser title, not recognized by the Pennsylvania and New York athletic commissions. Challenges from Curley, couched in terms cajoling, failed to win a match for the Curley champion, Jim Londos, with Don George.
Then the title passed back to where it came from -- to Strangler Lewis. And the shouting from Monsieur Curley's crowd ceased abruptly. The Strangler was old -- but that headlock was just as young as ever.
++++
PART THREE
NEW YORK CITY -- College men have helped to revive wrestling. The decline of boxing interest also has been a factor. But there is another cause perhaps as great as either of these. It is showmanship.
Part of this showmanship is expressed in such rough-houise tactics as the flying tackle, flying mare and airplane spin, which have largely supplanted the immobile pulling and tugging of the tiresome past. Part of it is expressed in straight slapstick comedy. A great deal of the quality that Barnum worshiped is in the cast of characters of the act itself, which provides that one man must be a conniving, unscrupulous villain and his adversary the righeous, gracious, triumphant hero.
Take the fellow George Zaharias, Denver collegian. He is one of the villains of the east. One minute he is cringing in a corner against the ropes, his face expressing abject terror of his opponent. Then, suddenly, he is lashing out with a vicious blow that resounds through the hall as it bounces from our hero's manly bosom.
Villains also take every possible advantage of a situation, crawling along the floor to the ropes so the referee will break a painful hold once the villain's head is outside the ropes, as the rules specify.
At one time or another during the conduct of a match, the villain has the upper hand and the hall resounds with boos and jeers as he goes about his seemingly sinister business.
At another time the sneering rascal is being foiled at his own game. Thus, one night I watched Zaharias make seven slashing flying tackles aimed generally in the direction of Jim Londos. Londos nimbly sidestepped each crude plunge, and the rafters trembled with applause.
Again, the evil one, obtaining a cruel hold upon your hero, exhibits almost superhuman wickedness in pressing his torture to the utmost while Handsome Harry bravely and stoically submits to the punishment without a whisper.
It is the sheerest sort of silliness -- but it brings a crowd to its feet like no display of dispassionate scientific skill on the mat ever could. In fact, skill in wrestling today, the wrestlers themselves will admit, is almost entirely unappreciated.
The credo of the wrestling people seems to be that the public likes to be fooled, a belief not denied by the generous patronage the mat game is receiving from people in all walks of life, including the so-called intelligentsia.
"Exposure?" Jack Curley, master of a herd of pachyderms told me recently. "You can't expose anything nowadays. Rather, I mean you can expose and expose and expose and what does it get you?
"Chicago writers called the turn exactly on the recent Lewis-George matdch in Los Angeles in which the championship changed hands. Lewis was going to win back his title as a matter of expediency. The match turned out exactly as they prophesied."
You understand, of course, that Mr. Curley was referring to the Bowser-Sandow wrestling enterprises when he thus scathingly spoke. Mr. Curley, who presents Jim Londos as his world champoion, would not want to throw cold water on Mr. Bowser or Mr. Sandor or the Bowser-Sandow champion, "Strangler" Lewis. Of course not!
Added to the showmanship of villain vs. hero, there appear at nearly every wrestling show, in the preliminaries at least, a couple of monumental mountebanks whose playful absurdities roll dear old Gus Phann right out of his seat.
Stars of this branch of the trade are such men as Sergei Kalmikoff, the bearded Siberian. The present stunt is for his adversary to pull his whiskers. Another is Ferenc Holuban, who has no neck but manages to support in the style to which they have become accustomed seven separate and distinct stomachs. One of the villainous clown types (and a sure crowd pleaser, boys) is Rudy Dusek, the rough and rapacious roughneck rascal.
Even in a so-advertised championship match, there is a great deal of whoop-te-do about nothing before the serious business of throwing begins. There is much leaping and heaving of bodies -- often a wrestler is pitched through the ropes into the press box, or to the floor outside the ring.
When the men really get down to business, one of the favorite falls is the airplane spin. Your champion seizes his man, hoists him high over his head, whirls rapidly a couple of times and bangs the old boy to the mat with a resounding crash. Hooray!
++++