Shooters

by Jonathan Snowden

  This time the ring was surrounded by ropes, designed to keep the Turk from tossing his opponent out into the crowd again. Instead, Youssuf used them to his advantage by forcefully hurling Roeber into the corner. Fans and critics complained that the Turk was more animal than wrestler, avoiding holds and using brute force instead. This was actually the style of the Turkish wrestlers. When they competed in their home country, both competitors were oiled up to the point holds were impossible. Brute force was their science, but Roeber and the audience failed to appreciate this. The New York Times chronicled the chaos that erupted when the two styles clashed:

  Tiring of the big man’s roughhouse tactics, Roeber punched the Turk square in the face twice. Chaos erupted as Youssuf’s promoter William Brady hit the ring to try to tackle Roeber but was met in the middle by the wrestler’s training partner Bob Fitzsimmons. A renowned pugilist and wrestler, Fitzsimmons tossed Brady from the ring like he was a child. Brady landed on the table housing reporters and was prevented by police from reentering the fray.

  The ring filled with police, trainers, and sportsmen. When the police restored order, both sides wanted the other disqualified. Instead the bout was declared a no contest. The crowd was furious and after the previous hijinks in Madison Square Garden, believed they were being put on. The bout that was supposed to rescue wrestling from its growing reputation of not being on the level was instead met with cries of “Fake, Fake, Fake” that echoed through the building.

  The next month it was Jenkins’ turn to meet the Turkish sensation. Wrestling for $1,000 a side, in front of the largest crowd ever to witness a wrestling contest in Cleveland, Jenkins could do nothing with Youssuf. Before the bout Jenkins claimed his opponent downed a whole bottle of olive oil and the liquid was oozing out of his very pores. He tried all the holds he knew above the waist but couldn’t move the massive man. When he dove for the legs, the behemoth kicked him. The resulting row ended with the Turk leaving the ring in a fury. Coaxed back in, he made short work of the American champion. The press claimed the foreigner made Jenkins look like a boy in the hands of a monster. Jenkins agreed. “He roared like a bear, picked me up and spun me over his head in an airplane whirl and threw me out of the ring like I was a chip,” Jenkins recalled. “I landed in the third row of seats, hurt.”

  Youssuf had taken the first fall in just over an hour and was awarded a second when Jenkins refused to continue after being tossed off the mat. With the victory, the Turk had a strong argument that he was the best wrestler in the world. After dispatching former champion Evan Lewis in Chicago in June 1898, Youssuf sailed for Europe, certain to return for bouts with other top American stars. Instead, his ship wrecked, his claim to the world championship dying with him in the swirling seas off Nova Scotia. Pierri was forced to bring forward a new slew of Turkish champions, each one a paler copy of the last. But the memory of Youssuf remained strong. Dubuque, Iowa’s Sunday Herald reported,

  Wrestling has been steadily declining for years. But the advent of Yousouf [sic], the Terrible Turk, about whom thousands of yards of “fairy tales” were written by susceptible critics, threatened for a time to cause a rejuvenation of the game. Yousouf was a fat, ignorant, stolid, eccentric, and powerful Mussulman who threw to the winds all sorts of theories about athletics. He was so gross and corpulent that no ordinary mortal, no matter how strong he was in his back and arms, could throw him on the mat.

  Yousouf became at once a sort of a fad. But he was in bad hands. The men who brought him to this country as the “Sultan’s Imperial wrestler” challenged any wrestler in the country on behalf of their Turkish wonder. Yousouf perspired and grunted before throngs that spoke a language with which he was not familiar, threw his men sometimes and fouled his rivals whenever it pleased the management to have the Turk lose. Stuffing a few dollars in the pudgy hands of the Turk, his managers would tell him in choice Turkish that “it was all right,” and the foreign athlete would return to his room and his several gallons of strong coffee, many pounds of fried chicken, and pounds of rank tobacco, to “train” for another contest.

  Trading the American Title: Jenkins vs. MacLeod

  Jenkins’ reputation wasn’t badly damaged by his loss to the Turk and a subsequent draw with Hadli Adlai in November 1898. The mammoth men were barely considered human at the time, and their tactics weren’t considered sporting. Between his major bouts, Jenkins took on all comers in a variety of vaudeville and carnival acts, vowing to throw any man who lived in less than 15 minutes. Only once in hundreds of attempts was he forced to pay out his $50 prize. He beat a succession of boxers, including former champion Tom Sharkey, who took up wrestling when boxing was banned in New York at the turn of the century. But another shot at the title eluded him.

  By 1900 it had been years since Jenkins whipped Burns in straight falls, and he was no closer to getting matches with any of the Burns-affiliated mat men who controlled the grappling game through much of the Midwest. Jenkins traveled to Iowa to meet with Burns and took on a young Frank Gotch in a gym match.

  As we’ve seen, many of the bouts in front of the audience were for show. But behind the scenes, with just the other wrestlers watching, the boys went all out. Often the matches were for more than pride — side bets were common. While we don’t know if Jenkins took Gotch’s money, we do know he pinned the young up-and-comer in less than an hour.

  Also unknown is what kind of accommodation Jenkins made with Burns and his crew. What is known is that Jenkins was soon back in the fold, settling all disputes about who the legitimate American champion truly was by beating McLeod in Cleveland in November 1901 in front of 6,000 fans at the Central Armory. Jenkins lost the first fall before coming back to pin the champion in the final two falls. “McLeod is a wonder,” he told the press after the bout. “He is certainly the best white man I ever met. Never have I had to work so desperately before.”

  McLeod got his revenge the next year. After wrestling Jenkins to a draw in June, he took home the title on Christmas day in Worcester, Massachusetts. Jenkins had injured his leg against John Parr and exacerbated it in an exhibition with lightweight Bothner. He had promised to throw the smaller man four times in an hour, but could manage only three. To make matters worse, his injured leg got infected and blood poisoning set in. Jenkins wore a brace with brass buckles to support his injured leg rather than postpone the bout with McLeod. It was a bravura show of guts, but ended up costing Jenkins big time. According to onlookers, the brace fell apart and tore into the champion’s skin. Some even say McLeod targeted the vulnerable area. The Chicago Tribune account noted,

  In order to protect the injured leg Jenkins had a leather bandage with a steel strip down the front of the shin fastened with brass buckles. Two of these were broken in the early part of the match and the brass points dug into his flesh until the pain was unbearable and he was afraid of further blood poisoning.

  He had wrestled 20 minutes in the third bout when he told McLeod the condition he was in and offered to quit and call the match a draw or go on wrestling. McLeod insisted on continuing, but Jenkins’ manager refused to let the big fellow go on and forfeited the match.

  The championship changed hands, but McLeod’s win rang hollow. To most wrestling fans, Jenkins was still the top hand in the business. He proved it the next February in Cleveland, where he beat Burns’s rising star Gotch in straight falls. Gotch, known as a dirty wrestler who liked to hurt people, hit Jenkins in the face several times with the heel of his hand. Jenkins, in turn, roughed Gotch up badly, drawing blood as he indiscriminately threw his arms across Gotch’s body, purportedly looking to secure an arm hold, but conveniently whacking the Iowan in the face time after time.

  The finishing hold in the deciding fall was Jenkins’ patented jaw lock. Many called it a chokehold disguised as a headlock, and it drove Gotch to his knees and then to the mat. The young Iowan later called Jenkins the toughest man he ever met: “Some could not understand why I lost to
Jenkins. The headlock defeated me. It will defeat any man when secured by a wrestler as strong as Jenkins. He secured the jaw lock on me while we were standing. I tried in vain to extricate myself. Jenkins applied the twist and I began to think of all the mean things I had ever done. I wanted my head for future use, so I dropped to the mat.”

  Although some of their later matches would be all about business considerations, this bout had all the signs of being a legitimate contest. It was a long trip back to Humboldt, Iowa, for the future champion. He had come to Cleveland fully expecting to win. Instead, in Jenkins he’d met a man who was willing to go to any lengths to win a wrestling match. Strangely, this realization actually seemed to strengthen Gotch’s resolve. Biographer George S. Robbins recounts, “Gotch had suffered terribly from strangleholds and Jenkins’ old trick of stabbing across the face for a further arm hold and hitting the nose. Gotch was a sorry sight as he returned to his homefolk . . . bruised and bandaged, his body decorated with plasters and other reminders of battle, but eager for a return encounter.”

  Jenkins would go on to take the title back from McLeod that April in Buffalo and closed the year with yet another win over his foe. Once again champion, and seemingly at the height of his powers, Jenkins would face Gotch the next January, a turning point in the sport’s history. Meanwhile, in the old world, a great champion was being forged in Europe’s Greco-Roman wrestling tournaments. George Hackenschmidt was about to join the Americans on the world stage.

  5

  THE RUSSIAN Lion ROARS

  While Gotch and Jenkins battled over American supremacy, a new contender to the title of world’s best wrestler was being created in the salons and gymnasiums of Europe. The “Russian Lion” George Hackenschmidt took the continent by storm. The son of a German and a Swede, Hackenschmidt was born in Estonia and trained in Russia. He spoke five languages fluently and could be claimed by fans all over Europe as one of their own.

  A natural athlete, Hackenschmidt came to the attention of the Russian tsar’s physician Dr. von Krajewski, a millionaire bachelor interested in wrestling and physical culture. Von Krajewski, a confirmed bachelor, was a prominent supporter of most of Russia’s young strong men. An interesting character who did all his own exercising in the nude, von Krajewski often housed promising young athletes, who would gather in his St. Petersburg, Russia, home to wrestle and lift weights.

  With nothing to occupy him but exercise and rest, Hackenschmidt quickly developed into one of the strongest men in Europe. He perfected more than just your run-of-the-mill lifts. He could lift a horse onto his shoulders, and it was said he could hold a wrestling bridge while lifting as much as 311 pounds. He was also a gifted gymnast, once jumping over a table from a standing position 100 times in succession to win a bet.

  In 1898, with Hackenschmidt a now robust 20 years of age, von Krajewski decided it was time to unleash him on the world. The budding strongman had already beaten the notable Frenchmen Paul Pons in a wrestling match and won several weightlifting competitions when he confronted the legendary strongman Eugen Sandow during a performance in St. Petersburg, questioning the older man’s claims that he was the strongest in the world. Sandow was a great showman, the founder in many ways of modern bodybuilding. He didn’t just lift for records — he put on an extravaganza, often using a “dumbbell” that was actually a bar with a giant basket on each end. In the baskets he would put real people. It was often less weight that simply pressing iron, but it was quite a show. Hackenschmidt, for his part, wasn’t impressed. Wrote biographer David Chapman, “Sandow went through his usual routine, lifting sausages marked plainly ‘4,000 lbs.,’ snapping crowbars with his bare hands, permitting a dozen men to load themselves on a platform balanced on his chest and then lifting platform and all with one puff of his pneumatic lungs. Then came the challenge. At that moment — such was the careful planning — Hackenschmidt dropped his trousers in the darkness of the box, peeled off his shirt and jumped to the stage in full gymnasium costume. The engagement was brief. Hackenschmidt not only managed all the feats of strength but dusted the floor with Sandow’s extremities and then ran him clear into the wings. That finished Sandow and started Hackenschmidt.”

  GEORGE HACKENSCHMIDT

  SPECIAL COLLECTIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES OF NOTRE DAME

  By the turn of the century it was clear Hackenschmidt was something to behold in the Greco-Roman style. He won his first tournament in Vienna at the end of 1898, won again in Finland in January 1899, and finished the year as the Russian champion. In France that same year, he earned the nickname “The Russian Lion.” In June 1900 he turned professional, earning 2,500 francs a month and immediately proving to backers he was worth it by winning tournaments in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

  By then, Hackenschmidt was a star. Crowds gathered to gawk at his physique and watch him perform, not just wrestling, but feats of strength. He traveled to Dresden where he was an attraction, wrestling three to five opponents a night and making a spectacular showing of it. In Budapest he beat the Turk Kara Ahmed after a three-hour struggle, atypical for Hackenschmidt, who often dispatched foes in mere minutes. Hackenschmidt recalls, “The whole audience rose like one man, and thunders of applause echoed through the building. I was seized, carried shoulder high and decked with flowers. For fully a quarter of an hour I was borne like a victorious general through the streets, kissed, embraced . . . I was heartily glad when I at last made my escape to the privacy of the dressing room.”

  He won tournaments all over Europe, sometimes epic affairs that lasted for more than a month. In 1901 he won the world championship in Vienna, a championship he considered the most significant of his career because of the sheer talent gathered in one place. He repeated the feat later that year in Paris and, having conquered mainland Europe, was off to take on all of Britain.

  It was a tough go at first. The British had no Greco-Roman tradition and Hackenschmidt’s growing reputation meant he attracted little interest from the cautious English mat men. Only an impromptu challenge from Jack Carkeek, a veteran of the mat game who had worked with everyone from William Muldoon to Farmer Burns, rescued Hackenschmidt from a return trip to Europe.

  Carkeek was accepting all challengers at the Alhambra Theatre in Leicester Square in London. His cronies, notably smooth-talking C.B. Cochran, took an interest in the Russian wrestler and suddenly Hackenschmidt was off and rolling in England. Cochran organized a tour of the country and his new compatriots taught him how to play to the crowd. His first real success came in Liverpool, beating an aged Tom Cannon, another veteran of the American scene. The most exciting event that night, despite the wrestling action within, came outside the Prince of Wales Theatre. The theater management had second thoughts about the show and tried to stop it by disconnecting the gas supply and announcing the match was cancelled. Eventually a fight broke out between thugs hired by the theatre to tell the crowd the show was off and ruffians hired by the promoter to tell the crowd the show would go on. Locals called the dustup the Battle of Clayton Square.

  Despite a complete lack of familiarity with catch-as-catch-can, the scrappier British version of the mat game, Hackenschmidt seemed to thrive. He and Cannon pulled out all the stops. First Hackenschmidt upset the veteran in Septemeber. His reputation in the new style established, the two wrestled to a time limit, before Hackenschmidt won the culminating “match to a finish.” It was classic American-style pro wrestling booking, the kind hustlers in the new world had been using to part fools from their money for years.

  Hackenschmidt clearly learned plenty from Carkeek, a notorious con man who would later do jail time for his role in the infamous Mabray Gang. When he organized his own tour of Australia a few years later, Hackenschmidt attempted to send a wrestler in his employ named Woods to bolster the local competition and build excitement. When he refused to throw a match, Hackenschmidt fired him: “Woods asked for $5,000 damages because Hack
enschmidt discharged him. He told the court that Hackenschmidt requested him to ‘go down’ to Clarence Weber, a local light, so that when Hackenschmidt came to wrestle Weber there should be some public excitement. Woods refused to do as asked because he reckoned himself immensely superior to Weber. ‘Why don’t you do it, like Carkeek’s men did?’ asked Hackenschmidt, in surprise.”

  Whether his wins were all on the level is arguable. His rising profile in the sport was not. Hackenschmidt soon hooked up with Antonio Pierri. An accomplished wrestler in his own right, Pierri kept a steady stream of Turks headed to New York for an American wrestling fandom that couldn’t get enough of them. The gimmick played just as well in Britain.

  Pierri pledged to find a Turk who could defeat Hackenschmidt and returned with Ahmed Madrali. While some claim Madrali was really a dockworker from Marseilles in disguise, he was played up big, booked by Pierri in the Old Surrey Music Hall, where he built a reputation of his own.

  The two men collided on January 30, 1904, at the Olympia in London. The giant building had housed the circus, dog shows, and was even turned into a gigantic roller skating rink when that fad was at its peak in the 1890s. Nearly 10,000 fans flocked to see the wrestling match there, bringing London traffic to a standstill.

  They didn’t get much for their money. Hackenschmidt secured a hammerlock, and when he threw the Turk to the mat, a scream of pain was heard throughout the cavernous hall. Hackenschmidt had dislocated his opponent’s elbow and was declared the winner in just 44 seconds.

  “The victory raised my reputation to its zenith,” Hackenschmidt recalled. “And since that time I do not think that I had a wrestling rival in the affections or esteem of the British public.” He would not be able to say the same about America.

  A Rivarly on Two Continents: Jenkins, Hackenschmidt, and Gotch