Shooters

by Jonathan Snowden

  “Gotch was a cunning and tricky wrestler, and as strong as a bear,” said Hackenschmidt. “I soon found it impossible to get a grip of him, and so was at a great disadvantage. In addition, Gotch was not above probing me in the eye from time to time with his thumb, until I was almost blinded.”

  Gotch wrestled a very defensive match. As Hackenschmidt chased him around the ring, the Iowan responded with the kind of rough tactics that had become par for the course in American wrestling. Hackenschmidt, already the victim of one knee surgery, was deathly afraid of Gotch’s famed toehold. Though it wasn’t his bread and butter finishing move, Gotch was known not only to use the hold, but to do serious damage with it. Looking back, a Washington Post reporter who’d been at the match remembered Gotch’s previous gleeful brutality:

  Frank Gotch was first to use a “torture hold” that had nothing to do with wrestling, the object of which always had been to put an opponent on his back. Gotch invented the “toe hold.” With it he wrenched an opponent’s ankle until he quit. Gotch always seemed to think there was a fine bit of humor concealed somewhere in this performance. I once saw him wrestling a tall young German in Chicago. The German was no match for Frank as a wrestler, so to put a little pep into the match Frank sat on him, got his toe hold, and very slowly bent his ankle back until it was nearly broken.

  The German wrestler, unable even to roll over on his back, screamed. This was before the days of grunt and groan wrestling, and it was a real scream. The crowd piled into the ring and pulled Gotch away. Frank got up and walked around, grinning. The German was carried out. I heard afterward his ankle actually was broken, and six months later he was still partly crippled.

  Despite Gotch’s crippling holds, the two wrestled for more than two hours without a fall. Hackenschmidt, used to much shorter contests, began to tire quickly. He asked several times for the bout to be declared a draw. Each time, Gotch refused. In the end, Hackenschmidt simply quit. “You can have it, Mr. Gotch,” he said, and walked out of the ring. In the immediate aftermath, Hackenschmidt told reporters he had fallen to a superior wrestler. “Gotch is the better man,” the former champion said. “I have to acknowledge it.” Weeks later, safely back on his home turf in London, Hackenschmidt was more vocal, telling the papers that he had been a victim of foul play. He told the Lowell Sun & Citizen Leader that Gotch’s dirty tactics, combined with his oil-covered appendages, made victory almost unimagnable. Hackenschmidt claimed it was nearly impossible to grip the slippery American. When he complained to the referee, Hackenschmidt said Ed Smith’s answer was terse: “Don’t squeal.”

  It wasn’t merely the oil that concerned Hackenschmidt. The toehold seemed ever present on his mind, perhaps due to his history of knee injuries. Hackenschmidt wrote to the London Daily Mail:

  The people at ringside were all prejudiced against me and unfair, so that I concluded the best thing to do was to keep silent and do my best. Gotch then dug his finger into my eye, and I called out, “Unfair,” but he continued, and the referee did not stop him. Then he caught hold of my ear and started to pull it off. In releasing my ear he scratched my face, tearing the skin off. Now happened an unusual thing, which I don’t think fair. Gotch grabbed my big toe and tried to sprain it, with the object of crippling me by breaking the bone. Throughout the match he kept pulling and wrenching my toe, and I saw that it was not a wrestling, but a butchery match. After an hour and a half, I was disgusted and ready to quit, but I decided to try again. Gotch seemed to weaken, but, cheered by the crowd, he kept up the “bloody work” on my face, so half an hour later, I said, “I’m done.”

  Gotch scoffed at the accusations he had cheated to win. “I made Hack reach for me all the time and he never did get a chance to exert his strength close up,” the new champion said. “He was forced to use his power at arm’s length, which greatly diminished it of course.” He also disputed the idea that his toehold was designed to cripple, claiming it was all a matter of science. In How to Wrestle, Gotch explained,

  I was asked quite often to explain the toehold. A sporting writer asked me whether I thought it right to use such a painful grip. He said it was against the rules to twist a wrestler’s finger and it was certainly just as unfair to twist one of his toes. To have answered that question would have spoiled a good joke, but it expresses the general idea of the toe hold, which is an erroneous one. One day when I had been wrestling in Cincinnati a newspaperman wanted me to show him how I secured the toe hold. I told him to get down on the floor and I would show him a touch of real life.

  “Gotch bent over me,” said this writer, “toyed a while with one of my feet, then quickly grabbed the other and gave it a twist. I looked for a nice clean spot on which to put my shoulders to keep my leg from snapping off. I wanted the leg for future use. It felt as though Gotch wanted to take it along with him. At that he exerted only a few pounds pressure.”

  This writer had caught the principal idea of the toehold — the idea of leverage. I made a study of mechanics and it was there that I learned the true value of leverage in wrestling.

  Referee Ed Smith also vehemently denied any foul play: “Hackenschmidt subsequently told the most disgraceful stories about Gotch and myself after he got to England, claiming to have been fouled deliberately and in general to have been the victim of a job to down him. Inasmuch as Hackenschmidt was utterly unable at any time to secure one hold of any importance on the wonderful man from Iowa, those who saw the match at once construed his talk as being that of a mighty bad loser and the words that might be expected from a quitter, for that is what Hackenschmidt showed himself to be that night . . . Hackenschmidt’s tale about Gotch being greased was the veriest bosh.”

  With the win over Hackenschmidt, Gotch became an international star. The motion picture of the bout traveled the country and then the world, and he was featured in the play All About a Bout, which toured America. Nightly, fans arose from their seats at the beginning of the performance to give the new champion a standing ovation. Gotch toured with the play for 38 weeks, wrestling new manager Emil Klank at each performance, even traveling overseas, taking his act to London. He was a product pitchman as well, shilling everything from whiskey to a Swedish “muscle vibrator” for home massage. He should have sold both to his battered rival.

  Enter Jack Curley

  Boxing at this time was in ill repute, partially due to a series of questionable contests, but also spurred by blatant racism as white fans refused to accept African American champion Jack Johnson. As boxing’s heroes became villains, Gotch emerged as the leading light of combat sports. Fascinated with fisticuffs, he got involved in the despicable smear against Johnson, joining Farmer Burns to help train the “Great White Hope” Jim Jeffries for his comeback fight against Johnson.

  PROMOTER JACK CURLEY (center)

  SPECIAL COLLECTIONS OF THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES OF NOTRE DAME

  He and Jeffries toured the country with a troupe of wrestlers, boxers, and baseball stars in a show called “The Band of Champions.” Gotch made a fortune on these kinds of tours, wrestling Dr. Benjamin Roller nightly and collecting easy money. A world tour was planned, a tour Johnson derailed by knocking out Jeffries with embarrassing ease. Gotch was suggested as a possible opponent for the boxing champion, but having tasted defeat during a boxing match in his early years in Alaska, he wisely demurred. Retirement was on his mind, but promoter Jack Curley, who managed Gotch on this tour, believed a Hackenschmidt rematch would be worth sticking around for.

  Curley, a genius promoter who had booked the speaking tour of William Jennings Bryan and performances by the Vatican choir, had gotten involved in the wrestling game when boxing was banned in many locales in 1909. Curley successfully promoted a Gotch title defense against Yussif Mahmout in April of that year, drawing 10,000 fans in Chicago to see Gotch whip a foreign foe who would later become his training partner and right-hand man.

  Curley had connections to seemi
ngly every major wrestler of the era. He had promoted Gotch in several matches and a big money tour, managed Roller in the good doctor’s bouts in London, and emerged in 1910 as the manager of George Hackenschmidt as well. Soon Curley, Hackenschmidt, and Roller were touring America, with Roller taking the fall for the Russian night after night. Roller’s hometown paper, the Seatle Times, wasn’t buying it as legitimate competition:

  Dr. Roller of Seattle was licked again last night. He went to the mat with George Hackenschmidt, the “Russian Lion,” in Montreal last night and was beaten in two straight falls — the first in 47 minutes and the second one and the match in 19 minutes . . .

  Hack is billed to wrestle Jess Westergaard in Chicago in a finish match pretty soon. He will beat Jess, too, and after cleaning up a few more like him, the boards will be swept clean for Gotch. Along about the first of the year the yapping will begin for Gotch to come out of his retirement and clip the whiskers of the Russian Lion, who, by the way, is a German.

  The paper had seen Roller work the crowd in Seattle and simply wasn’t believing any contest with the doctor at the forefront as honest. “It is safe to say that 99 percent of all wrestling matches where an admission fee is charged and where professionals take part have been prearranged before the men shake hands. Many have even trained together — those that made any show of training. The hitting and biting in the matches, the kicking, the calling of foul vulgar names, the threats, the falls from the stage, the challenges from the audience — all those things are the little jokers used to stir up the maddened crowd. It does little harm, and it makes the game ‘good,’ say the wrestlers.”

  Still, no exposé seemed to slow down rabid wrestling fans. It didn’t matter that Curley was managing Hackenschmidt against Roller, a man he had represented mere months before. Fans wanted to buy into the matches and nothing could persuade them to do otherwise. Despite these signs of corruption, not only did fans continue to come to the shows, they continued to bet on matches with abandon. Curley saw dollar signs when he imagined a rematch between Gotch and Hackenschmidt. Gotch, angry over the Russian’s post-match accusations, and the American public needed some convincing. The Saturday Evening Post’s Milton McKay summed up the situation: “[Gotch] considered himself as important as a United States senator and his manners were very little better. He developed a very personal dislike for Hackenschmidt, and once described him as a ‘money-hungry greaseball.’ Gotch was convinced that Hack had quit cold in their 1908 engagement, and missed few public opportunities to say so. A large section of the sporting group agreed with Gotch’s diagnosis of Hack’s competitive temperament.”

  Gotch retired several times in 1910 and 1911, although they never seemed to stick. He was lured back to the ring for a bout with Hackenschmidt in September 1911. His continued and vehement attacks against the Russian in the press helped fire up the fans, and the former champion himself, for the contest. Hackenschmidt was in peak form for the match. Training extensively with Roller, he was prepared this time, he claimed, for all of Gotch’s tricks. In one training session, Hackenschmidt had felt particularly good. Almost done for the day, Hackenschmidt wanted one more tumble with Roller.

  “Dr. Roller advised me to stop, but I requested him to hold me down once more, and I should endeavor to get up from the knees,” Hackenschmidt told Health and Strength magazine. “I jumped up to my feet, but, unfortunately, Dr. Roller had the same movement as myself, and in consequence caught me with my right foot over his knee, and in doing so he tore the sinews from the bone — this only five days before the contest with Gotch was to take place. When it was dark, I was carried home. The following day Dr. Mackenzie, the doctor who extracted the bullet from President McKinley, when the latter was shot, was called in.”

  Thousands had gathered in Chicago for the rematch, most unaware of the injury that threatened to call the bout off. Hackenschmidt considered it, but promised $11,000, there were plenty of reasons to fight through the pain.

  “Curley, my manager, and the promoter of the contest,” continued Hack, “was insistent that I should not compete against Gotch unless I felt able to do so. I knew that tickets to the value of over £6,000 had been sold, and a lot of other expenses incurred, but it was the splendid attitude of Curley that finally determined me to go forward.”

  Wrestling champion Lou Thesz helped spread the rumor that Ad Santel, a noted shooter, had actually injured Hackenschmidt’s knee, intentionally hurting the foreign star at the instruction of Farmer Burns. There is no indication that this is true, though Santel was in Hackenschmidt’s camp. The principals had a pretty consistent story, with Hackenschmidt, Curley, and Roller all singing the same song. Hackenschmidt, who spent years complaining about his injured knee, would have certainly leaped at a story as colorful as being intentionally injured by an agent of his opponent.

  Whatever the cause, there is some debate about the severity of Hackenschmidt’s injury. The wrestler insisted he could barely move. His manager, decades later, disputed this account, explaining that a respected doctor in Chicago “examined Hack’s injury and pronounced it trifling but, to satisfy both Hack and myself that his diagnosis was correct, had x-ray photos taken of the knee. They bore out his diagnosis absolutely.”

  Despite attempts to cover up Hackenschmidt’s injury, word soon began to spread that something was fishy. What Curley had marketed as the battle “of the century” was turning into a farce. Tens of thousands planned to attend, packing the new Comiskey Park and setting wrestling attendance records that would stand for years. Reported the Reno Evening Gazette:

  Through personal friends Charles Comiskey was induced to permit the match to be held at the ball park — at grand opera prices — Comiskey to receive scarcely enough to pay the expenses of cleaning the grounds. The match was wonderfully advertised, and on the afternoon of the contest more than 20,000 persons were piled into the stands.

  But three days prior to the match it became evident that something was wrong. There had been an abortive effort to put across a great betting coup — and the public refused to come in.

  On the afternoon prior to the match ugly rumors began to pass around and, gradually, toward night, the rumor persisted that Hackenschmidt was suffering from a badly sprained leg and had agreed to wrestle only on condition Gotch did not touch that leg or use the famous toehold. This was angrily denied by friends of the promoters.

  During the following morning the rumors persisted. One Chicago paper learned so much that it printed a warning to all its readers to avoid the match. The storms of angry comment arose and it was a suspicious and war crowd that gathered. An hour or so before the men were to go on the mat Comiskey held a conference with the wrestlers, promoters and referee. He told them plainly that they could not use his park to stage the robbery of the public. He and some others had taken the matter up with the chief of police, who ordered Referee Smith to call off all bets.

  Before going onto the mat, Gotch calmly declared it didn’t make any difference to him whether it was a fake or not — he was going out to throw Hackenschmidt. The men stepped into the ring, and before the applause subsided, Referee Smith announced that by orders of the chief of police, he declared all bets off. An angry roar ran through the crowd followed by a buzz of wonderment as to what it meant.

  “In addition to 20 yards of India-rubber bandaging round my right knee,” Hackenschmidt said, “I had ordinary bandages from my ankle upwards, and it was in that condition I engaged upon the match. . . . On entering the ring, I requested the referee to call off all the bets. At first he refused, but on my saying that otherwise I should leave immediately, he did as asked.”

  PRINT FROM THE 1911 GOTCH-HACKENSCHMIDT MATCH FOR WORLD’S CHAMPIONSHIP

  COPYRIGHT E. W. KELLEY, COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

  Gotch proceeded to wipe the mat with the Russian. He pinned him easily in the first fall, shockingly calling his shot like “Babe” Ruth would in
the 1932 World Series:

  It was told to Gotch in 1911 that an American wrestler who wished to see him defeated had been tutoring Hackenschmidt against the grapevine hold leading to the half-nelson and crotch. The world’s champion laughed at the story. He said the Russian Lion was privileged to practice the maneuver all he pleased, but he would defeat him in one fall by this same ruse. This remarkable prediction actually came to pass.

  When Hackenschmidt met Gotch for the second time in Chicago he was coached to the minute to avoid this rapid-fire attack of Gotch. It was the means of his downfall in the first bout. Gotch put Hack off his guard, raised his near leg, grapevined his far one and then reversed it into a half nelson and crotch, with which the “Lion” was pinned for the first fall in the bitterest defeat of his career.

  “In the condition I was in, the merest tyro could have beaten me and Frank Gotch is one of the most powerful opponents I ever met,” Hackenschmidt told reporters after the match when back on his home turf in London. “I could not put my left knee to the ground, or even bend it, and my left foot was worse than useless, because every lateral movement gave me intense pain. Without his feet the wrestler is helpless.”

  Whether the match was a worked bout, a work gone wrong with Gotch double-crossing Hackenschmidt, or simply a winning performance by an all-time great is much debated even today between wrestling historians. Gotch biographer Mike Chapman believes that the great champion was beyond reproach. Chapman hangs his hat on the newspapermen of the time, stating, “The dilemma for today’s wrestling historians is this: If the newspaper editors of the era considered wrestling to be fixed, why would they give it such tremendous coverage? And conversely, if it was fixed, shouldn’t they have known that was the case . . .”