Shooters

by Jonathan Snowden

  Hutton remembered, “Before the match, the commissioner called me in and said, ‘If this match isn’t on the level, I’m going to have both of you suspended and banned in the rest of the country.’ That seemed to spook Lou a little because he didn’t know me from Adam, so he asked me to come up to his hotel room so we could talk a little,” Hutton said. “I guess he was trying to find out who I was, what I could do, and whatever else. We had our match. The commissioner invited people in to watch the match. They were people who were supposed to have knowledge of amateur wrestling. When we finished, they told people that it was the greatest wrestling match they had ever seen. Lou came over and told me, ‘Dick, don’t let anybody ever tell you that you can’t work.’”

  Hutton was a three-time NCAA champion at heavyweight, losing an opportunity to win an unheard-of fourth title when he fell victim to future wrestling promoter Verne Gagne in the 1949 NCAA Tournament in Fort Collins, Colorado. The two were so evenly matched that the bout came down to a referee’s decision that denied Hutton the record-breaking fourth title. Hutton was seeded first; Gagne, despite an undefeated record, was only considered the second-best heavyweight coming into the tournament. After all, the two had met in 1947 with Hutton coming out on top. The next year Gagne dropped to 191 pounds and both won titles. Now back at heavyweight, they seem destined to meet again.

  At 245 pounds, Hutton had 30 pounds on the Minnesotan, but Gagne was deceptively strong and smart. Hutton actually managed a takedown in the closing seconds, but officials decided he hadn’t controlled Gagne before time expired. That meant the score was still 1–1; and thanks to a small advantage in riding time Gagne was awarded a referee’s decision, denying Hutton his fourth title.

  “Verne was an outstanding wrestler,” Hutton said. “Not only on the mat but how he sized up an opponent. He knew if he came into me I would beat him decisively. He also knew in matches where my opponent stayed away from me, I would win maybe three to two or two to one. And that’s just what he did. In all honesty, I truly believe I won that match. I don’t blame Verne. He came out to win and that’s just what he did. I believe they should have started him down for not being aggressive. I shot in and caught him in the last few seconds and that put me up three to two. Some kid comes out on the mat from the timekeeper’s table and tells the official that the time ran out before he gave me the two points. He took the two points away and walked over and raised Verne’s hand. The entire crowd became unglued. The coach of Nebraska was head of the tournament committee at the time. He told me that if coach Griffith would make a formal protest they would reverse the decision. I went to my coach but he wouldn’t protest. So I came in second.”

  After fulfilling his obligations to the U.S. Army, Hutton soon joined the ranks of the professionals. He saw his old nemesis Gagne was making six figures and figured he was at least as good. Trained by Ed “Strangler” Lewis and Leroy McGuirk, complete with Lewis’s famed headlock as his first finishing hold, Hutton’s first real supporter in the industry was promoter Al Haft in Ohio. Haft loved working with accomplished amateurs and took Hutton under his wing.

  Hutton remembered, “Al had this promotional gimmick where one of the boys takes on all comers. . . . The fan gets a dollar a minute and if he beats me $1,000 . . . I took on all kinds. The oddest I ever had was this truck driver. He gets a headlock on me and then he freezes. I swear, for the life of me I couldn’t get that sucker off. So I pick him up and drop him backward on his head. That surprised him and he finally let go. Al used these kinds of matches to toughen us up.”

  Hutton may have been an excellent legitimate wrestler, but his work in and out of the ring was bland. Thesz insisted on passing on the championship to him, wanting a real wrestler, but he was the product of another era. Unlike Thesz, his wrestling excellence didn’t translate in a professional context. As champion he was a bust.

  With less than five years of experience and no real presence on television, Hutton wasn’t a national attraction. His unimaginative style did him no favors when he was introduced in new towns either, nor did his growing waistline. After a title defense against Dory Funk in Odessa, Texas, the local paper speculated he had gained 40 pounds in the four months since he had debuted as champion in the town and declared Hutton “had developed a shape like a collection of overstuffed watermelons. Maybe getting the title swelled him up!”

  To make matters even worse, Thesz had lost a controversial match to Canadian Édouard Carpentier just before losing the title to Hutton, and in many key cities the promoters recognized the acrobatic French-Canadian as champion. It was a throwback to Ed Lewis’s loss to Henri DeGlane, allowing wrestling promoters to recognize two world champions. With Hutton failing to draw, it seemed like a good decision in retrospect. NWA President Sam Muchnick battled hard for Hutton with fellow promoters, but according to Tim Hornbaker, the writing was on the wall: “Various promoters had complained about Lou’s lack of color, but even more grumbled about the stoic Hutton. He offered a high degree of credibility, but there were promoters who didn’t want that. They wanted drama, and if necessary, flying chairs and blood. . . . A fraction of the country now recognized Édouard as titleholder, and rejected Dick’s claim all together. More than half of the 28 members still welcomed Hutton into their territories, and he did what he could to maintain the prestige of the title at a low point in Alliance history. His tenure was lackluster in terms of excitement and fan support, and Carpentier was generally regarded as a more electrifying performer.”

  Hutton was such a lame duck that the Alliance never even issued him a title belt. Thesz owned the belt he used as champion and refused to give it up, so Hutton traveled the country, either not carrying a belt at all or using a strap he had won as an amateur in college. After just 13 months, the Hutton experiment was over. In January 1959, the decision was made to take the belt off of the former college star.

  Said Hutton, “Muchnick, the promoter there in St. Louis, and Wild Bill Longson, who was his booker, came into the locker room, came straight up to me, and said, ‘Dick we want two straight’ and headed out. I said, ‘You dumb sonofabitches, come and get it then.’ They turned around and said, ‘How do you want to do it?’ And Pat O’Connor, he’s sitting right there and he didn’t dare say a word. He had tried me on already in Canada . . . he decided to hook me in one of our matches. Of course, it didn’t work and he was trying to get out of the ring because he thought I was going to get mad.”

  O’Connor did a better job at the box office than Hutton had, but the business was slumping generally. Television, once a primary revenue driver, had overexposed the audience to wrestling shenanigans. It was hard to motivate people to take in a match at the arena when so much wrestling was available on TV.

  A Legend Grows

  Thesz hadn’t been vacationing from the business during the Hutton and O’Connor reigns. He had made major money working with Japanese wrestling pioneer Rikidozan in Japan, drawing an astounding 87.5 television rating for an October 1957 match in Tokyo. Thesz also worked his way through Europe, where he had an altercation that bothered him for the rest of his life.

  Lou had arrived in London on the S.S. United States, the fastest luxury cruise liner in the world. It made the trip in less than four days, and upon arrival he went right to work. He still had his world title belt in his possession, and despite losses to Carpentier and Hutton, represented himself in England as the world champion. He opened a three-month British tour against Indian star Dara Singh at the Royal Albert Hall in London. While waiting to take the ring, Thesz noticed a commotion. Noted British grappler Bert Assirati was attempting to make his way through security to issue both Thesz and Singh a challenge. He never made it, leaving wrestling fans with a major “what if.”

  Assirati was notorious in England, well respected by the wrestlers as the top mat man in the country. His strength was legendary. He could clean and jerk 380 pounds, deadlift 800 pounds, and was built like a fireplug — but As
sirati could also do a one-handed handstand and a standing back flip. This rare athleticism made him a handful in the wrestling room. Not only that, but like Thesz, he knew all the hooks too: “No one has ever questioned Bert Assirati’s skill, agility, strength, or recognition as one of Britain’s greatest heavyweights. Open to question has been exactly why Assirati was feared and avoided by many heavyweights of his day. Was it because of the qualities we list above, or was it because of a penchant for hurting opponents and inflicting unnecessary pain?”

  In his autobiography wrestler Rene Lasartesse recounts getting a huge pay raise: extra money not for his performance, but for the inconvenience of working with Assirati. In 15 matches together, Assirati broke his nose three times. Lasartesse wasn’t alone. The shooter was famous for abusing younger wrestlers, sometimes even going so far as to break bones.

  In addition to his penchant for inflicting pain, a refusal to lose upon request had gotten him blacklisted from Joint Promotions, the top wrestling organization in the U.K., leaving him on the outside looking in. Thesz, then in his early 40s, had an interesting opportunity. His reputation as a shooter was mostly just that — a reputation. He had some training shoots and workouts, but no actual competition as either an amateur or a professional to hang his hat on. Opinions on Thesz’s ability among old timers varies.

  “Lou could wrestle some,” former carnival wrestler Dick Cardinal said. “Very quick fellow, but I don’t think he was the best wrestler during his time. . . . He was a great performer and looked like a great wrestler . . . Don’t get me wrong, Lou could wrestle some too. I mean, some guy off the street wasn’t going to beat him, but he wasn’t the best hooker or the best wrestler around. Lou told me one time that Ed Lewis beat him in less than a minute.”

  “Judo” Gene LeBell, himself a martial arts expert and notorious toughman, remembered,

  I saw him work with a bunch of amateur wrestling champions, national champions, and just play with them. We were in, I guess it was Omaha, Nebraska, and there were a couple of guys that supposedly were national champions . . . Lou was working out with these guys, and he’s meeting them, really, like, playing with them. You just get very casual. And then, he said, “Okay,” to this big guy, and I said, “He’s going to have one hell of a rough time. How is he going to get him?” I mean, this guy’s big and he’s strong. He had me in the air a bunch of times, not finishing, but he’s got me up there.

  And, he picked Lou up, threw him down, and the next thing I knew — this is all in about a minute — Lou had him in an anklelock, and the guy is screaming for help. And I said, “Oh, fuck.” And he got up slowly and was limping off, and he said, “That’s great, but it’s illegal.” What are you going to say? Of course, it’s illegal, but you don’t play a guy at his own game.

  Billy Robinson shared his opinions about Thesz in his autobiography Physical Chess: “I’m going to say this about Lou. Lou was probably the greatest of all professional world champions for one reason: he conducted himself professionally inside the ring, in the gym, outside the ring, in business world and with your gentry (royal families) around the world. Everybody respected professional wrestling because of Lou Thesz. He may not have been the best competitive catch wrestler but he was very good in his time.”

  A legitimate shoot with Assirati would have proved plenty for Thesz, but promoters in England were steadfastly against it. Explains Dave Meltzer, “Word rarely travelled fast in those days about things overseas, but because it was Thesz, quickly the word got to the States that Assirati’s reputation was so fierce that even Thesz had backed down from his challenge . . . When Thesz left Europe, Assirati stayed, and proclaimed for the rest of his life that he had made Thesz back down, even though it was clearly a grandstand challenge and the promoters Thesz was working for wanted nothing to do with Assirati anyway. That stuck in Thesz’s craw for years.”

  Thesz wrote in Hooker, “Does Assirati deserve to be remembered as one of the greatest of all time? I’m not in any position to say, because I never saw him wrestle. . . . But I’ve talked with wrestlers who worked out with Assirati and had little or no trouble with him. These same wrestlers say he earned his reputation as a dangerous wrestler by doing things like ‘accidentally’ head-butting on the break or knocking some teeth loose with an ‘accidental’ elbow. I do know, too, that he was notorious for hooking opponents when they were supposed to be performing and hurting them. . . . It’s one thing to be a great gymnasium wrestler, though, and another thing altogether to make money at it. He may have succeeded at the one, but he was a flop at the other.”

  Thesz’s cavalier dismissal of Assirati infuriated some British wrestling fans and some of his contemporaries. Thesz had made enemies over the years, but there was an unspoken detente amongst wrestling’s elder statesmen. Even Thesz and Buddy Rogers had come to terms before Rogers’ death. But the publication of Hooker opened some old wounds, and wrestlers felt the need to stand up for those dismissed by the NWA icon.

  “Bert Assirati, everybody that I’ve known including Karl Gotch said the guy was an animal when it came to the ring,” former WWWF champion and fellow Hooker victim Bruno Sammartino said. “Thesz makes him out to be a guy he could have mopped up the floor with. Karl Gotch told me . . . when he went to England to wrestle Assirati, he got an inferiority complex. Assirati was a great submission wrestler. He went to Wigan, England . . . because he was so devastated at how this guy had handled him so he wanted to be good at submission wrestling. Here comes Thesz making this guy, who’s also dead, out to be like he wasn’t really anything. I’ve never met a human being who met Bert Assirati who wasn’t in awe of him as to how ridiculously tough he was.”

  No one can say how a contest between the two men would have turned out. Assirati was near the end of his career, while Thesz, also an old man, seemed like he might wrestle forever. He had one final run as NWA champion, returning as the industry’s standard-bearer for three years. He won the title at 46, taking it from his arch nemesis Buddy Rogers, which gave him no small pleasure, finally losing the gold belt to Gene Kiniski in 1966 at the age of 49. Thesz continued to wrestle on and off for years, wrestling his final match against Masahiro Chono in Japan in 1990 at the age of 74. He was the last of his kind.

  Although wrestlers like Thesz had populated the sport for decades, no wrestler had the impact of a cathode ray tube connected to a fluorescent screen — a scientific marvel changed wrestling forever.

  11

  THE REVOLUTION Will Be TELEVISED

  Television changed everything for the wrestling industry in America. The effect of television on the nation, let alone American sports, seems obvious now in retrospect. At the time it was anything but. In 1946, when RCA introduced its first set using wartime technology with an improved picture, only 10,000 sold nationwide at the exorbitant cost of $350. Television was far from a staple in middle-class homes — instead they were found in bars, complete with low brow programming designed for the working class to enjoy while having a drink or three at their neighborhood pub. “Television in 1946 was primarily a ‘live’ medium just like radio,” Albert Abramson explains in The History of Television, “Programming consisted mainly of ‘live’ programs of minor character, mainly sporting events (wrestling, boxing, etc.), second-rate motion pictures (usually old Westerns), some newscasts, and demonstrations and discussion programs. While these were not very good, it was the novelty of the experience that made television grow. . . . Just seeing a picture in a store window was a new, exciting experience. Crowds would gather in bars and restaurants to watch sporting events and the new variety shows that were springing up.”

  Boxing and wrestling in particular took advantage of early television’s limitations. The cameras were heavy and tough to move around, and without proper lighting, images were difficult to make out. Wrestling was filmed in a studio under bright lights and offered the kind of action that allowed performers to locate the camera and f
ocus their activity where it could be easily filmed. Not only that, but the rounds in boxing and different matches in wrestling were a perfect spot for commercial breaks.

  Televised sports were an enormous success. It was the ideal programming for groups of people, and wrestling in particular was popular with female viewers. Much of the airtime in the New York area was devoted to sports in the late 1940s. According to The Complete Directory to Prime-Time Network and Cable TV Shows, three of the top 10 programs in Chicago were wresting shows:

  Professional wrestling was a regular and popular form of entertainment on early, live network television, particularly on ABC and DuMont. The two longest-running wrestling shows originated from Chicago — Jack Brickhouse doing the play-by-play from Marigold Garden every Saturday night on DuMont for almost six years, and Wayne Griffin announcing from Rainbow Arena for ABC for roughly the same length of time. DuMont’s other long-running wrestling show originated from various arenas around the New York City area (Jerome Arena, Jamaica Arena, Sunnyside Gardens, and Columbia Park Arena) with Dennis James at the mike.

  The most famous of these early wrestling announcers was probably DuMont’s Dennis James, whose simplified explanations and infectious enthusiasm made the sport palatable even to little old ladies. His oft-repeated phrase “Okay, Mother” became so identified with him that it was later used for the title of one of his numerous daytime game shows. That a game-show emcee like James could become wrestling’s most famous commentator was perhaps symbolic of the fact that on TV, wrestling was more show business than sport.

  Wrestling had a place at the table on all the television networks, but it was DuMont in particular that concentrated on the sport. NBC, ABC, and CBS were all profitable and popular radio networks. They had the money to invest in dramas and other higher-class programs. DuMont was a start-up business. They needed to make money off of their television programs — and more importantly, the actual televisions they were selling across the country. Wrestling was cheap programming. There were no sets to build, actors to pay, no expensive writing staff. They simply showed up and rolled the cameras. Announcer James was a big part of the program. He talked directly to the females in the audience, making sure everyone at home knew exactly what was going on.