09.01.2008, 08:08
PART FOUR
NEW YORK CITY -- There are two "big leagues" of wrestling, similar to the National and American Leagues in organized baseball. There is a third league, also, composed of independent promoters, managers and wrestlers. Mostly, the two big leagues grab the gravy.
The big man in what we shall call the National League is Jack Curley. There are two big men in the American League -- Paul Bowser and Billy Sandow. Sandow's former name is Billy Bauman, and he is one of the Bauman brothers of Rochester, where Jules Bauman is a promoter.
The alignments of the wrestlers themselves and their managers change swiftly from time to time, often so swiftly they are hard to follow. Thus, Ed White for years was a lieutenant of Billy Sandow, head of the western circuit. Now Ed White is manager of Jim Londos, the Curley champion.
There is mutual hatred between the two big leagues. Each at present has its champion. Strangler Lewis, though he lost to Henri Deglane when the Montreal commission allowed Deglane's claim that he had been bitten on the wrist, is the big shot of the Bowser-Sandow league. Jim Londos is the protagonist of the Curley organization. A story of recent events may help to illustrate the workings of the two cliques.
In January, 1929, Gus Sonnenberg won the world's heavyweight wrestling championship (except for New York and Pennsylvania) from Ed Lewis in Boston. Jack Curley always has insisted that Lewis deliberately let Sonnenberg win, that Sonnenberg can't wrestle a lick and that the proof lies in Gus' constant refusal of remunerative offers from Curley to meet any one of his men. Sonnenberg, avoiding Curley's wrestlers, reaped a rich harvest in Boston, Kansas City, Los Angeles and other cities while holding the championship. He was pursued by offers from Curley, but so long as he could play to gross gates of more than $3,000,000 by dint of wrestling the men of his own league, why should he harken to an outsider's proposition?
Wrestling champions, however, are subject to change. They work hard every night, play in many cities, and soon the fans begin to tire of this or that "champion's" style. It was only natural that recently Gus should lose his title to a slashing young collegian from Michigan, Don George -- of the Bowser-Sandow league, of course.
George held the title for a while, wrestled profitably in 100 cities and was beset by offers from Curley who offered his good men -- Londos, Steinke, Shikat, Szabo, Steele, Dusek, Freeman, Pojello or any other of a dozen wrestlers -- without avail, though an attractive bonus was offered.
It was not long until another changed seemed necessary in the Sandow-Bowser league. Lewis wrestled George in a match at Los Angeles and won his title back for the fourth or fifth time before a tremendous crowd at Wrigley Field.
Suddenly the challenges from Curley to the Bowser-Sandow group ceased. The reason may have been that Lewis had thrown the present Curley championship incumbent, Jim Londos, something like a dozen times. With the old Strangler walking the beat, danger and annoyance from Curley challenges were quickly done away with.
Curley's own explanation of his unwillingness to challenge Lewis was that Lewis is a crooked wrestler and he wants nothing to do with him. At any rate, prior to the last Lewis-George bout, in which the championship changed hands, the very thing that happened was predicted by several sports writers who have made a close study of wrestling alignments.
The promoter of the Los Angeles bouts in which title passed from hand to hand was Lou Daro. Like the other big shots in the big leagues of wrestling, Daro has had a colorful career. Eleven years ago he didn't have two dimes to rub against each other when, an ex-wrestler and vaudeville strong man, he went to Los Angeles. I think he hocked his shirt to promote his first wrestling match, an awful affair. In the last few years, this same Daro has grossed more than $3,000,000 in wrestling shows, using mostly the Bowser-Sandow pachyderms.
++++
PART FIVE
NEW YORK CITY -- The same men who shifted the puppets of the wrestling shows 20 years ago are behind the scenes today. The action and scenery are a little different, there is a bit more of comedy and a great deal more roughhouse -- but the theme is the same. That theme is hippodrome.
The only improvement I have found -- and the greatest factor in the present wave of wrestling popularity -- is that the modern wrestlers with their dash and go are better entertainers than the grunters and grimacers of a decade past.
The same routine is being followed today that was popular then. A wrestling champion doesn't last very long -- he can't last very long -- not only because the public constantly is demanding a new interest, but because the strain of constant travel and demands upon his physical self are too great to bear. Strangler Lewis has lost his title and regained it four times. A man just has to rest sometimes!
Rivival of a racket like wrestling depends upon new faces and changing styles. The lines of Punch and Judy must be changed once in a while. Jim Londos hasn't been the Curley champion very long now, but already fans in cities where he has shown half a dozen times are beginning to wonder how he manages to end all his matches with the same old airplane spin by which he whirls a brother pachyderm over his head a couple of times and slams him to the mat with a resounding crash. The first few times you see the airplane spin. It is thrilling -- all that flesh thudding to the floor in an inert mass and so on. But after you see it seven or eight times, worked with the same unvarying technique, ho hum! And a couple of well, wells!
When Lewis regained this title recently in Los Angeles from Don George, he really was only resuming his work where he left off when he lost to Sonnenberg early in 1929 before a $70,000 house in Boston. His vacation was over; he was back pounding the beat.
The fact is that Jim Londos, the Curley champion, recognized in New York and Pennsylvania, had been cutting seriously into the national wrestling surplus. Understand, Lewis had thrown Londos many, many times. With Lewis, the conqueror of Londos, champion again, the fans would scream for the Strangler. Besides, a rich field in New York City has been practically untouched by the Bowser-Sandow people. Now they are starting to go after the spoils here and in other Curley strongholds.
Thus, Illinois acted drastically after the Strangler had posted a forfeit and signified his willingness to meet this Londos champion. The substance of Illinois' action was that there can't be two wrestling champions defending their titles in that state. The problem was solved by declaring there is no wrestling champion at all, no not one.
You never know just what plan the men who control wrestling are hatching. From certain sources come tips to the effect that Ray Steele, the California collegian, is soon due to supplant Londos. There are other whisperings that Joe Savoldi is to become the Bowser-Sandow bell cow, since Lewis was so unfortunate as to lose his championship in Montreal to one Henri Deglane over the little matter of a bitten wrist.
As a rule, the lines of action of the big leagues of wrestling are fairly sharply defined, but I am told there have been some disagreements lately between Paul Bowser, manager of Don George, and Billy Sandow, the Strangler's head man. This dissension within the league may mean that the wrestlers of the Curley circuit will get more of a play on the Pacific Coast, up to this time a Boswer-Sandow shindig.
Lou Daro, the Los Angeles promoter who ran a shoestring into considerable hay putting on wrestling shows, recently visited New York and there is a possibility that he may change the cast at Los Angeles to include more of the Cutler herd. Los Angeles fans are beginning to catch on to the Bowser-Sandow curves.
In both the wrestling leagues, changes in the "championship" are soon due. It is not good policy to let a champion stay in there too long. That may help to explain why Mr. Lewis has won and lost the title four times. Can you imagine that sort of thing happening in boxing?
The story of Lewis' title the last few years is intriguing in more ways than one. You may remember that Lewis lost his title in Kansas City in 1925 to Wayne (Big) Munn. The mistake that Mr. Munn made was to wrestle Stan Zbyszko later in the same year. Jack Curley went to Zbyszko's corner, offered him a small fortune if he would throw Munn, and Zbyszko consented, making short work of Munn.
It was then claimed by Lewis that he had been fouled in the Munn match. In the same year, Stecher lifted "the title" from Zbyszko, so it became necessary for Lewis to wrestle Mr. Stecher in order to get back that championship.
Mr. Lewis did wrestle Mr. Stecher and won.
++++
PART SIX
NEW YORK CITY -- Wrestling comes and goes. Revivals even greater than the current upturn have been seen in the past. And each chapter ends with a note of disgust.
Wrestling prosperity will last just so long. Eventually the wrestlers slay themselves by their own cleverness. When things reach the stage of being "too good" -- such as the Gotch-Hackenschmidt match in Chicago twenty years ago, a match that grossed a gate of $94,000, wrestling falls into a swift decline.
"This year is nothing to get excited about," Jack Curley, who books a set of pachyderms out of New York and who stages the big shows here, told me the other day. "It will pass. Wrestling always has been an in-and-out sport. These revivals come in cycles of every five or six years. Then come the lean seasons. It has been that way as long as I can remember, and I have been promoting for forty years."
The fan never knows when he is seeing a square wrestling match. The same condition recently came into boxing. Most of the fights not only have been "in the bag" during the last few years but have been poor exhibitions in the bargain. Wrestling, even if most of the matches are alleged hippodrome, has sped the renunciation of boxing by appealing with slashing drama, with big bodies spinning through the air in onslaughts crude and fierce enough to understand.
There is bound to be hippodroming while the wrestling world is divided among so few men. Jack Curley heads one league of grapplers. Paul Bowser and Billy Sandow are the chieftains of another set of champions. Too many men are working for the same employer to make any of the matches within the league do-or-die struggles. These men are maneuvered about as so many elephants building an ancient temple to some Egyptian deity.
Day after day now, the results of matches in the principal cities are being printed. The wrestling fan, after seeing a few of these, quickly learns what it is all about. He reads that Londos has just thrown Zaharias in St. Louis. Well, well, and just a week or two ago he saw Londos throw Zaharias in Cleveland.
Repetition of stunts within each of the big leagues soon palls upon the paying clientele. Even the most avid action loses its charm when tinged by the suspicion that it has been rehearsed.
Years ago when Paul Bowser, the big shot of New England wrestling, was getting his start in Boston, he was the hero of a vaudeville wrestling show in which the gladiator offered to throw anybody in the house. Sometimes a woman would come up out of the audience to do battle with him. The action was spirited and all that, the lady giving the gentleman all he could do to master her, but after the customers learned that Cora Livingston, the wrestlerette, was Mrs. Paul Bowser, enthusiasm for the skit lost much of its savor.
Recently Bowser was manager of Don George and had a finger in the till of many fat houses from coast to coast. His friend, Billy Sandow, manager of Strangler Lewis, has been a power in western wrestling for years.
It has been said before in these articles that changes are due in the championships of the big leagues. Ray Steele is being groomed for the crown in Jack Curley's organization. Joe Savoldi is expected to win the title to the Bowser-Sandow circuit.
Will these two men meet? Well, not just now.
That would be a "world series" between the two leagues and it would be staged only if a gate of at least $100,000 could be assured. The time is not yet ripe for such an enterprise.
NEW YORK CITY -- There are two "big leagues" of wrestling, similar to the National and American Leagues in organized baseball. There is a third league, also, composed of independent promoters, managers and wrestlers. Mostly, the two big leagues grab the gravy.
The big man in what we shall call the National League is Jack Curley. There are two big men in the American League -- Paul Bowser and Billy Sandow. Sandow's former name is Billy Bauman, and he is one of the Bauman brothers of Rochester, where Jules Bauman is a promoter.
The alignments of the wrestlers themselves and their managers change swiftly from time to time, often so swiftly they are hard to follow. Thus, Ed White for years was a lieutenant of Billy Sandow, head of the western circuit. Now Ed White is manager of Jim Londos, the Curley champion.
There is mutual hatred between the two big leagues. Each at present has its champion. Strangler Lewis, though he lost to Henri Deglane when the Montreal commission allowed Deglane's claim that he had been bitten on the wrist, is the big shot of the Bowser-Sandow league. Jim Londos is the protagonist of the Curley organization. A story of recent events may help to illustrate the workings of the two cliques.
In January, 1929, Gus Sonnenberg won the world's heavyweight wrestling championship (except for New York and Pennsylvania) from Ed Lewis in Boston. Jack Curley always has insisted that Lewis deliberately let Sonnenberg win, that Sonnenberg can't wrestle a lick and that the proof lies in Gus' constant refusal of remunerative offers from Curley to meet any one of his men. Sonnenberg, avoiding Curley's wrestlers, reaped a rich harvest in Boston, Kansas City, Los Angeles and other cities while holding the championship. He was pursued by offers from Curley, but so long as he could play to gross gates of more than $3,000,000 by dint of wrestling the men of his own league, why should he harken to an outsider's proposition?
Wrestling champions, however, are subject to change. They work hard every night, play in many cities, and soon the fans begin to tire of this or that "champion's" style. It was only natural that recently Gus should lose his title to a slashing young collegian from Michigan, Don George -- of the Bowser-Sandow league, of course.
George held the title for a while, wrestled profitably in 100 cities and was beset by offers from Curley who offered his good men -- Londos, Steinke, Shikat, Szabo, Steele, Dusek, Freeman, Pojello or any other of a dozen wrestlers -- without avail, though an attractive bonus was offered.
It was not long until another changed seemed necessary in the Sandow-Bowser league. Lewis wrestled George in a match at Los Angeles and won his title back for the fourth or fifth time before a tremendous crowd at Wrigley Field.
Suddenly the challenges from Curley to the Bowser-Sandow group ceased. The reason may have been that Lewis had thrown the present Curley championship incumbent, Jim Londos, something like a dozen times. With the old Strangler walking the beat, danger and annoyance from Curley challenges were quickly done away with.
Curley's own explanation of his unwillingness to challenge Lewis was that Lewis is a crooked wrestler and he wants nothing to do with him. At any rate, prior to the last Lewis-George bout, in which the championship changed hands, the very thing that happened was predicted by several sports writers who have made a close study of wrestling alignments.
The promoter of the Los Angeles bouts in which title passed from hand to hand was Lou Daro. Like the other big shots in the big leagues of wrestling, Daro has had a colorful career. Eleven years ago he didn't have two dimes to rub against each other when, an ex-wrestler and vaudeville strong man, he went to Los Angeles. I think he hocked his shirt to promote his first wrestling match, an awful affair. In the last few years, this same Daro has grossed more than $3,000,000 in wrestling shows, using mostly the Bowser-Sandow pachyderms.
++++
PART FIVE
NEW YORK CITY -- The same men who shifted the puppets of the wrestling shows 20 years ago are behind the scenes today. The action and scenery are a little different, there is a bit more of comedy and a great deal more roughhouse -- but the theme is the same. That theme is hippodrome.
The only improvement I have found -- and the greatest factor in the present wave of wrestling popularity -- is that the modern wrestlers with their dash and go are better entertainers than the grunters and grimacers of a decade past.
The same routine is being followed today that was popular then. A wrestling champion doesn't last very long -- he can't last very long -- not only because the public constantly is demanding a new interest, but because the strain of constant travel and demands upon his physical self are too great to bear. Strangler Lewis has lost his title and regained it four times. A man just has to rest sometimes!
Rivival of a racket like wrestling depends upon new faces and changing styles. The lines of Punch and Judy must be changed once in a while. Jim Londos hasn't been the Curley champion very long now, but already fans in cities where he has shown half a dozen times are beginning to wonder how he manages to end all his matches with the same old airplane spin by which he whirls a brother pachyderm over his head a couple of times and slams him to the mat with a resounding crash. The first few times you see the airplane spin. It is thrilling -- all that flesh thudding to the floor in an inert mass and so on. But after you see it seven or eight times, worked with the same unvarying technique, ho hum! And a couple of well, wells!
When Lewis regained this title recently in Los Angeles from Don George, he really was only resuming his work where he left off when he lost to Sonnenberg early in 1929 before a $70,000 house in Boston. His vacation was over; he was back pounding the beat.
The fact is that Jim Londos, the Curley champion, recognized in New York and Pennsylvania, had been cutting seriously into the national wrestling surplus. Understand, Lewis had thrown Londos many, many times. With Lewis, the conqueror of Londos, champion again, the fans would scream for the Strangler. Besides, a rich field in New York City has been practically untouched by the Bowser-Sandow people. Now they are starting to go after the spoils here and in other Curley strongholds.
Thus, Illinois acted drastically after the Strangler had posted a forfeit and signified his willingness to meet this Londos champion. The substance of Illinois' action was that there can't be two wrestling champions defending their titles in that state. The problem was solved by declaring there is no wrestling champion at all, no not one.
You never know just what plan the men who control wrestling are hatching. From certain sources come tips to the effect that Ray Steele, the California collegian, is soon due to supplant Londos. There are other whisperings that Joe Savoldi is to become the Bowser-Sandow bell cow, since Lewis was so unfortunate as to lose his championship in Montreal to one Henri Deglane over the little matter of a bitten wrist.
As a rule, the lines of action of the big leagues of wrestling are fairly sharply defined, but I am told there have been some disagreements lately between Paul Bowser, manager of Don George, and Billy Sandow, the Strangler's head man. This dissension within the league may mean that the wrestlers of the Curley circuit will get more of a play on the Pacific Coast, up to this time a Boswer-Sandow shindig.
Lou Daro, the Los Angeles promoter who ran a shoestring into considerable hay putting on wrestling shows, recently visited New York and there is a possibility that he may change the cast at Los Angeles to include more of the Cutler herd. Los Angeles fans are beginning to catch on to the Bowser-Sandow curves.
In both the wrestling leagues, changes in the "championship" are soon due. It is not good policy to let a champion stay in there too long. That may help to explain why Mr. Lewis has won and lost the title four times. Can you imagine that sort of thing happening in boxing?
The story of Lewis' title the last few years is intriguing in more ways than one. You may remember that Lewis lost his title in Kansas City in 1925 to Wayne (Big) Munn. The mistake that Mr. Munn made was to wrestle Stan Zbyszko later in the same year. Jack Curley went to Zbyszko's corner, offered him a small fortune if he would throw Munn, and Zbyszko consented, making short work of Munn.
It was then claimed by Lewis that he had been fouled in the Munn match. In the same year, Stecher lifted "the title" from Zbyszko, so it became necessary for Lewis to wrestle Mr. Stecher in order to get back that championship.
Mr. Lewis did wrestle Mr. Stecher and won.
++++
PART SIX
NEW YORK CITY -- Wrestling comes and goes. Revivals even greater than the current upturn have been seen in the past. And each chapter ends with a note of disgust.
Wrestling prosperity will last just so long. Eventually the wrestlers slay themselves by their own cleverness. When things reach the stage of being "too good" -- such as the Gotch-Hackenschmidt match in Chicago twenty years ago, a match that grossed a gate of $94,000, wrestling falls into a swift decline.
"This year is nothing to get excited about," Jack Curley, who books a set of pachyderms out of New York and who stages the big shows here, told me the other day. "It will pass. Wrestling always has been an in-and-out sport. These revivals come in cycles of every five or six years. Then come the lean seasons. It has been that way as long as I can remember, and I have been promoting for forty years."
The fan never knows when he is seeing a square wrestling match. The same condition recently came into boxing. Most of the fights not only have been "in the bag" during the last few years but have been poor exhibitions in the bargain. Wrestling, even if most of the matches are alleged hippodrome, has sped the renunciation of boxing by appealing with slashing drama, with big bodies spinning through the air in onslaughts crude and fierce enough to understand.
There is bound to be hippodroming while the wrestling world is divided among so few men. Jack Curley heads one league of grapplers. Paul Bowser and Billy Sandow are the chieftains of another set of champions. Too many men are working for the same employer to make any of the matches within the league do-or-die struggles. These men are maneuvered about as so many elephants building an ancient temple to some Egyptian deity.
Day after day now, the results of matches in the principal cities are being printed. The wrestling fan, after seeing a few of these, quickly learns what it is all about. He reads that Londos has just thrown Zaharias in St. Louis. Well, well, and just a week or two ago he saw Londos throw Zaharias in Cleveland.
Repetition of stunts within each of the big leagues soon palls upon the paying clientele. Even the most avid action loses its charm when tinged by the suspicion that it has been rehearsed.
Years ago when Paul Bowser, the big shot of New England wrestling, was getting his start in Boston, he was the hero of a vaudeville wrestling show in which the gladiator offered to throw anybody in the house. Sometimes a woman would come up out of the audience to do battle with him. The action was spirited and all that, the lady giving the gentleman all he could do to master her, but after the customers learned that Cora Livingston, the wrestlerette, was Mrs. Paul Bowser, enthusiasm for the skit lost much of its savor.
Recently Bowser was manager of Don George and had a finger in the till of many fat houses from coast to coast. His friend, Billy Sandow, manager of Strangler Lewis, has been a power in western wrestling for years.
It has been said before in these articles that changes are due in the championships of the big leagues. Ray Steele is being groomed for the crown in Jack Curley's organization. Joe Savoldi is expected to win the title to the Bowser-Sandow circuit.
Will these two men meet? Well, not just now.
That would be a "world series" between the two leagues and it would be staged only if a gate of at least $100,000 could be assured. The time is not yet ripe for such an enterprise.