By Ruslan Pashayev
Part 2
What were the championships they “held”?
There was no real championships back then, in the true meaning of it when let’s say we say NWA champion or WWE champion, we mean the organizations, the companies that own those titles and run the championships. Such things simply didn’t exist because there were no pro wrestling companies around to run them. The titles of that bygone era existed only in press. Match organizers, the promoters, were paying newspapers to advertise a certain match being for such and such championship and that was it. No one really cared or asked themselves questions about the origins of such titles nor followed through. It was the newspapers that were paid by the bosses of the game that could make any, literally any match, being some kind of championship. It was the newspapers that were making up stories and spreading the word about the supposed animosity between the athletes who for the fact belonged to the same troupe of performers. All this was done for a single purpose attract attention of the masses and make them waist their money on betting. The champion essentially was the champion of that troupe, the wrestler who was paid the most, usually the most experienced and knowledgeable performer or the coach himself. Those troupes were travelling all over the country and offering the same matches over and over again in every big or small town. There even was a joke back then how many times you need to defeat the same person to convince the audience that you are a better wrestler…and thus win their hearts, and then suddenly lose to that the same opponent to win their wallets content.
The only real attempt to organize pro wrestling nationwide, make it at least to look structured was done by the Police Gazette of NYC a publication that was running a great variety of different professional championships in some other sports and even some wrestling styles including the Greco-Roman (Wm Muldoon was their champion), but that has never happened with catch wrestling performers. Catch wrestlers of that era were all independent showmen and they didn’t need structure or any kind of organization to control them and own “their” pro wrestling “titles”. The state of chaos and anyone can claim at least some kind of championship thing was exactly what they were pleased with.
The pre-1920s pro wrestling was a genuine sport?
No it never was and yes, they were deceiving the crowds claiming that it was an actual sport. They made it look like sporting events though. The wrestling matches didn’t look like farcial fight showcases instead they looked like legit wrestling matches. Shorter and smaller guys were all the great technicians and the bigger guys being less skilled always could put up a good roughing and fighting type of shows. Both were appreciated and fans believed them to be a true competition. The situation started changing in the 1910s it was around that time that pro wrestling was exposed as being a “job” and the fans all around the world learned about it and since there was no reason of making it look like sport so that the more farce was brought into matches. People come, watch a show, have their portion of fun, go home and either forget about it if it was a poor show, or have some nice memories about it for years if it was a good one. That was it. Period.
Deadliest and most vicious submissions that never were!
Such thing as “submissions” simply didn’t exist because all North American pro wrestling styles were either of European Continental or of British origin. It was their traditional wrestling, a pastime of those people, culturally unique to them before it became their pro wrestling entertainment. It was French, to be more accurate the Provencal wrestling traditions that gave birth to the modern Greco Roman wrestling, and catch wrestling originated from the Lancashire County in England. The wrestling matches in those cultures were only won on the actual physical falls, on ability of the wrestler to fell their opponent either off his feet (in all Western European upright styles) or from their knees (this was allowed in both the French Greco-Roman and in Lancashire catch as catch can wrestling) onto their backs.
The submissions culture instead is exclusively of oriental origin. All currently existing pro wrestling submission holds and finishing moves are of Japanese background, there is no doubts about it. This is a historical fact. The Japanese judo and jiu-jitsu submissions were introduced into North American pro wrestling syllabus when it was no longer the Lancashire catch wrestling or French Greco-Roman wrestling but rather a free-for-all kind of wrestling showcase in which you either win on a count of three pinfall, or submission, or a knock-out. That new all-in wrestling entertainment was a fusion of two wrestling cultures those of the West and the East.
Now there is an important question still to answer. Should we consider such holds as a chancery hold (the headlock), the full-nelson or a basic hammerlock submission holds, or we shouldn’t? They sure are submissions because they were used as such for centuries in Continental Europe and in Britain as well. But historically these pain causing holds belonged to the self-defense wrestling vocabulary and never were allowed in traditional wrestling matches and tourneys and by the way those weren’t wrestling shows they were genuine sports, the competitions. And as I previously stated the goal in those contests was to fell your opponent to the ground, it never was about deliberately hurting him and thus making him quit. Sometimes the above holds were used to punish an arrogant person too. But all that has nothing to do with the Western European traditional wrestling styles in which North American pro wrestling takes its origins.
Notably in pro wrestling shows all those holds were essential whether it was the French Greco-Roman shows or those of Lancashire catch wrestling. These holds along with some basic roughing always were part of it here in America. Why? Because without them the show would be plane looking, uninteresting to watch and having this in wrestling show is like adding some spice to it!
14470
Wrestling Heritage 