Shooters
Page 6
Three days earlier, in Bellingham, Washington, a sleepy town just 20 miles from the Canadian border, Frank Gotch won the American title for the first time against Tom Jenkins. It was a brutal bout and the crowd was rabid for the action. The building was packed to the point that some of the 3,000 spectators, most of them gamblers with monetary interest in the bout, were forced to observe from the rafters. Four of them took a long fall into the ring from the ceiling. It was worth it to witness in person a legendarily violent match. Jenkins had made his reputation with a roughhouse style, but Gotch was giving as good as he got. Neil Fleischer gives a play-by-play in From Milo to Londos:
For 20 minutes the men wrestled head to head without going to the mat. Jenkins was roughing it at every opportunity, rubbing his elbows and fists across Frank’s face.
Gotch retaliated in kind and both were dripping blood after a few minutes work. Jenkins tripped Gotch after 20 minutes and one second and was behind for a few minutes, but Frank wriggled out of a dangerous wristlock and jumped to his feet. As Jenkins arose Gotch rushed him about the ring, cuffing and rubbing his doubled fists into the Clevelander’s midsection.
And so it continued before Gotch slammed Jenkins four times and pinned him after almost an hour of wrestling. Jenkins had to be carried to his corner, but after a 10-minute rest returned to action like a wild man. He was desperate, going again and again to an illegal stranglehold. Gotch remembered,
It is the most dangerous grip in wrestling, and yet the old timers used to employ it quite often. In my match with Tom Jenkins at Bellingham, Washington, when I won the American championship, he put a strangle hold on me after I had won the first fall. His powerful arms and great strength made it difficult for me to extricate myself.
Maddened over the loss of the first fall and the peril of losing the championship, which he had held for six years, Jenkins charged at me furiously in the second [fall] and in a mix-up worked himself behind me. He slipped his left forearm under my chin and bore the weight of his right arm against the top of my head, tightening his grip and completing a stranglehold, from which it would have been impossible for a weak man to escape.
There is only one way in which to break this hold, and one cannot linger, as delay may prove fatal. That is to employ both hands in grasping the aggressor’s left member below the elbow, and thus lessening the heavy pressure on the Adam’s apple. If one possesses great strength it is possible to break the hold. I employed this method in escaping from Jenkins.
Gotch retaliated by any means necessary, leaving the champion bloody around the eyes and mouth. One stranglehold was met by Gotch lifting Jenkins high into the air with a huge slam. A frustrated Jenkins hauled off and punched Gotch in the head, perhaps the last resort of a desperate man. The referee disqualified the champion and awarded the match and the American title to Gotch, as the crowd at ringside, covered in both men’s blood, cheered enthusiastically.
“A gent that would gouge out another man’s eye ain’t no gent,” Jenkins said. Titleless, he journeyed for the first time to the shores of England, making it his business to challenge the great Hackenschmidt. The two met in a Greco-Roman match at Albert Hall in front of 6,000 fans. The British public was not initially impressed with Jenkins. He clearly wasn’t the physical specimen Hackenschmidt was and was “carrying too much flesh.” He won them over with his enthusiastic and clever wrestling. It was a different Jenkins who wrestled the Russian champion. Gone were the roughhouse tactics that had won him such success in America. He was the perfect gentleman while in England, losing in straight falls, but doing it honorably in a combined 35 minutes. The Sportsman gave the American challenger due credit:
When the men got to grips, Hackenschmidt attacked in decisive style, and twice just missed with the flying mare. In less than three minutes he fixed his rival in a cruel body grip and swung him over onto the stage. Jenkins endeavored to spring forward onto his feet, but Hackenschmidt’s arms shot out like lightning, and he pulled his man down with the greatest ease. The American defended very cleverly, and, failing to find an opening for an arm-hold, the Russian picked his opponent up with the intention of pitching him over his back. Jenkins smartly eluded his grip, and after six minutes both were on their feet.
. . . The strength and science which the challenger exhibited were a complete revelation, and he kept his opponent at bay without much difficulty. When a quarter of an hour had gone, Hackenschmidt rushed in and swung Jenkins bodily round the stage, describing three circles before he threw him to the boards, but the American once more eluded his grip like an eel. Then the Russian braced himself for a big effort. Twice he twisted Jenkins over onto one shoulder, and just as promptly did Jenkins, with a mighty contraction of his neck and shoulder muscles, snap the holds. At this point Jenkins mysteriously weakened. Hackenschmidt bore down on him with the power of a Hercules, and with a pedal action similar to a man pushing a heavy roller up a hill, forced his man over on his back, and with an irresistible “half-nelson” gained the first fall in 20 minutes and 37 seconds. The cheer which he received after his defeat was quite as hearty as that accorded Hackenschmidt.
But the matchup with Jenkins was not without controversy. Another Russian wrestler, George Lurich, was looking for his own bout with Hackenschmidt, and when it wasn’t offered, he blew the lid off the wrestling business in the London papers. Lurich said he had been all set to wrestle the champion, but the arrival of Jenkins changed everything. Eventually the two Russians met to discuss the issue and Lurich asked Hackenschmidt point blank if and when they might wrestle. Lurich stated,
Hackenschmidt then led me to understand that Jenkins was not only prepared to go down to him in Graeco-Roman, but also in catch-as-catch-can, and that he, Hackenschmidt, would go down in catch-as-catch-can to Jenkins in America, and pretended that he was in a dilemma, adding, “Jenkins is prepared to go down in both styles and what am I to do?”
The only inference to be taken from his language was that he would wish me to wrestle if I would do as Jenkins had promised to do. I, of course, have a reputation to lose, as well as Hackenschmidt, and pretended that I did not understand his meaning. Hackenschmidt afterwards made precisely the same statement to another Russian wrestler in the Artistes Club, and both he and myself are prepared to swear to the truth of these statements.
I was not surprised at what Hackenschmidt had said regarding Jenkins, as a certain wrestling promoter, named Haggarty, who informed me he had come from Jenkins, called one day and endeavored to obtain my sanction to wrestle Jenkins a mixed match under catch-as-catch-can and Graeco-Roman rules. He said he had Jenkins’ permission to say that he, Jenkins, would go down in Graeco-Roman if I would go down in catch-as-catch-can.
I refused these overtures, and the same person repeated his call, this time assuring me that if I would wrestle a match with Jenkins, the American was prepared to go down in both styles, and that there were rich Americans who would back him and the money could be shared. I have witnesses to prove the truth of what I have written regarding this affair. How far Jenkins was connected with these mediums, I cannot say.
No one can say with certainty whether Jenkins really proposed to take a dive for Hackenschmidt. Later in life he would admit to friends that he had lost money in a bad investment and he complained regularly about the lack of money in the wrestling racket. True or not, Hackenschmidt left town to escape the heat of the Lurich exposé, traveling to Australia where he had surgery on the knee that had troubled him for years. With London out of the question, not yet ready for his return after the scandal, Hackenschmidt made his first trip to America, specifically to meet Jenkins. That spring was integral to the history of American wrestling; the three months between March and May 1905 were as action packed as any sports fans had ever seen.
Stateside Showdown
In March, Jenkins upset Gotch, who had beaten him in a return match earlier that year in Cleveland, to win back the American title. Fans in Cl
eveland didn’t respond well to the match, accusing Gotch of losing the first fall on purpose to spur betting on Jenkins. “There never was a prize fight or a wrestling match pulled off that someone did not yell fake,” the champion replied.
The New York Times reported that Gotch and Jenkins played to a sellout crowd at Madison Square Garden, with hundreds more peering in to get a glimpse of the mat behemoths. Jenkins took the first fall, Gotch returning with a previously unseen vim and vigor to take the second in just six minutes. Looking unstoppable, popular opinion (and the betting) swung towards Gotch to win the match. “The experts in this case were mistaken,” the Times reporter drolly conceded. Jenkins was again champion, making his upcoming bout with Hackenschmidt more important than ever.
Lurich had already revealed to London sportsmen exactly what would happen in a match between the American and the European. Perhaps the news hadn’t crossed the Atlantic with Hackenschmidt, as he was met with great pomp and circumstance in New York after sailing into San Francisco in April. People came to the Orpheum Theater in the East Village just to look at the man and see him spar.
On May 5, Hackenschmidt dispatched of Jenkins to claim the world championship, just as Lurich said he would. Despite it being, by his own account, his first significant bout in the catch wrestling style, Hackenschmidt was never in danger against a repeat champion in the style. In his efforts to get Jenkins down on all fours he repeatedly sent the American whirling. Once he gave Tom a taste of his prodigious power, grabbing him by the shoulders and tossing him clear off his feet.
Hackenschmidt won the match in straight falls and departed for Britain. Gotch challenged him to a bout before he left, but the new champion declined. He had just beaten Jenkins, who had himself vanquished Gotch a mere two months before. A match with the Iowan seemed a step backwards to the proud champion who went back to London still a star, albeit a diminished one.
When he met Madrali in a rematch the crowd was still large, but not nearly as large as it had been in 1904. “The expensive seats were not a quarter filled, to the profit of the gallery, who climbed down and took possession of all the vacant places,” the Bystander reported. Even winning a world title hadn’t quite scrubbed Hackenschmidt clean from the charges he was a faker.
Two weeks after the Hackenschmidt match, Jenkins defended his American championship against Gotch. The New York Times described the bout as sensational, claiming it nearly drove the crowd to riot. Gotch had Jenkins in trouble throughout, nearly pinning him several times with Jenkins scrambling for the ropes whenever he was in trouble. It was a foul-filled affair, with Jenkins resorting to kicking and a stranglehold and Gotch giving it right back. Jenkins claimed Gotch even bit him, showing the referee, an overwhelmed Tim Hurst, the wound on his right forearm.
The match was started and stopped several times as both sides protested various fouls. It started late, at 10:30 p.m. and lasted past the New York Times deadline, going well beyond midnight before the second fall even started. Gotch was exhausted by the time it was all over. He had to be carried to the back by his seconds and Jenkins escaped with the title.
By now the writing was on the wall that Jenkins’ competitive career was coming to a close. He was 33 and starting to pack on weight, when President of the United States Teddy Roosevelt threw him a lifeline. Roosevelt was a supporter of wrestling, boxing, and the newly discovered Japanese art of jiu-jitsu and thought self-defense was so important that it needed to be taught to future military leaders at West Point.
“I am wrestling with two Japanese wrestlers three times a week,” Roosevelt wrote his son Kermit. “I am not the age or the build one would think to be whirled lightly over an opponent’s head and batted down on a mattress without damage. But they are so skilful that I have not been hurt at all. My throat is a little sore, because once when one of them had a stranglehold I also got hold of his windpipe and thought I could perhaps choke him off before he could choke me. However, he got ahead.”
Despite being enamored with the Japanese style, Roosevelt thought Jenkins would be the perfect man to teach unarmed combats to prospective Army officers. Future students included George Patton amongst a host of other military legends. But before he could retire from the mats, there remained the small matter of the American championship. Jenkins lost the title for the last time to Gotch in Kansas City’s Convention Hall on May 26, 1906.
It was a departure from their earlier bouts. Jenkins eschewed his usual roughhouse routine and wrestled Gotch in a straight match. According to wrestling historian Steve Yohe, Gotch’s manager Horace Lerch had $3,000 from Gotch supporters in Buffalo. After Jenkins took the first fall in a convincing fashion, Lerch used the money to cover all the bets coming in from the Jenkins fans. Of course, Gotch then proceeded to wipe the mat with Jenkins, winning the next two falls in just over 30 minutes.
After the bout, Jenkins congratulated Gotch, telling the crowd he would be champion for many years to come. That was true, but only after a quick title switch with Fred Beell, like Gotch a Farmer Burns disciple, who beat the champion in a huge upset that December. Gotch hit his head on the ring post and was knocked loopy. The 165-pound Beell took advantage and took the American title.
Many point to this being a worked match, erroneously believing it to be the first of its kind. Others, like Gotch biographer Mike Chapman, believe it was just one of those things that happen in sports, a weird injury that led to a once in a lifetime upset. Gotch took the title back later that month and would never again meet defeat, only ever conceding one more fall in his entire career. Beell would go on to be a regular Gotch foe, also serving as a setup man for future Gotch opponents and even wrestling old mainstays of the Burns trust like Jack Carkeek and the old Farmer himself. Beell went from making $60 a week to clearing $2,829 for the Gotch rematch alone.
In Europe, Hackenschmidt continued to draw respectable crowds, but his body was breaking down, perhaps from his training regimen that included carrying 600 pounds of cement on his back with a 232-pound training partner lounging on top of that, all while the champion did light exercises. He recalled, “In August 1907, my old knee trouble again made its appearance, but this time the water gathered in the joint itself, so that my knee cap stood away from the joint quite a quarter of an inch. By medical advice I now always wore a bandage, and found it practically impossible to do any serious wrestling practice. Even a slow trot caused me such pain that I could only fulfill my ordinary engagements with the utmost difficulty.”
By the time he was finally to meet Frank Gotch in 1908, Hackenschmidt was no longer at his best physically. His legs were shot, but money talks — and the $10,000 offered by promoter William Wittig for a single bout with Gotch spoke loudly indeed. In March 1908, Hackenschmidt sailed for the United States. The two best wrestlers in the world were headed for a showdown.
6
OLD WORLD vs. NEW WORLD: Gotch vs. Hackenschmidt
When the two greatest wrestlers of their era finally met in the ring, it was more than a wrestling match — it was an event. Wrestling promoter William Wittig offered up a $10,000 purse, an astronomical sum at the time, and the big Russian sailed once again for America, arriving in March for a bout scheduled on April 3, 1908, in Chicago.
The match was bigger than the two individuals involved. It was billed as a battle between old Europe (represented by the urbane and educated Hackenschmidt) and America (represented by the rough and tumble Iowan farmer Gotch). The bout would also be a battle of styles. Hackenschmidt specialized in the Greco-Roman form, popularized by Muldoon decades prior in New York, while Gotch was the standard-bearer for America’s own style of catch-as-catch-can wrestling.
The match was promoted nationwide, with headlines announcing the bout had been signed and that Hackenschmidt had sailed, and articles detailing the world champion’s tune-up bouts on the east coast. Some of the promotion was pretty clever. In January 1908 Hackenschmidt beat the enormo
us American wrestler Joe Rogers in straight falls, barely breaking a sweat by accomplishing this task in less than 20 minutes. In March that same year, Rogers was back in New York to wrestle Gotch at the New Amsterdam Hall. Gotch struggled mightily with the big man, who weighed more than 250 pounds, and fans couldn’t help make comparisons. If Hackenschmidt had dispatched with Rogers so quickly, and Gotch had so much trouble with him, wouldn’t the Russian Lion have his way with Gotch as well?
Moments like that helped establish Hackenschmidt as the prohibitive betting favorite. He was the toast of the town, wowing even noted wrestling fan President Teddy Roosevelt. “If I weren’t president,” Roosevelt said upon meeting the great wrestler at the White House, “I’d want to be George Hackenschmidt.”
The champion seemed to be buying into his own hype. He barely trained in Chicago, later claiming the proprietor of the local gym had been rude to him, leaving him to confine his workouts to the hotel. Despite his lack of activity, his opponent couldn’t help but be impressed. “Picture the most perfect man, and you’ve described George Hackenschmidt,” Gotch admitted.
But the American was also confident in his abilities. “He thinks I’m a mark,” the Iowan told referee Ed Smith. “And he isn’t training. I never was better in my life and can stand him off for a half hour easily. Then he will begin to weaken and after that he will quit. He never will let me throw him because he will want to go back to England and say he couldn’t be thrown and will have some bad excuse to offer.”
A PROMOTIONAL POSTER FOR THE GOTCHHACKENSCHMIDT MATCH AT COMISKEY BALL PARK
The two had met face to face once before, when Gotch challenged the champion in Buffalo, days after Hackenschmidt had secured his claim as the world’s best against Jenkins. When they met again at 10:29 p.m. on April 3, 1908, at the Dexter Pavilion in Chicago, it was to shake hands and wrestle. Six thousand fans looked on as the two men battled for supremacy.