Early
on in America
In
the first half of the 19th century , there was no national champion , instead
each region had its own champ. There was some rather large bets put on
matches at the time, but there were no pro's as such, the guys were usually
just local farmers or blacksmiths who earned some extra bucks going into
"grudge-matches".
collar
& elbow was the preferred style, but the punters found it rather dull,
but then in 1876 the wrestling got a boost in popularity when a NY Policeman
named Muldoon battered his opponents in the heavyweight section of the
police Championship's using greco-roman.
January 19th 1880
saw William Muldoon win the Greco-roman title of America when he beat Thiebaud
Bauer. In April of the same year he wrestled a draw with a guy named Miller,
the most amazing fact about this match was that it took 9 hours and 35
minutes to complete.
He retired in 1892 announcing at
the time that his replacement as Champ would be
Ernest Roeber. A few guys thought
this was wrong and proceeded to line up to meet the new champ, but Muldoon
didnt pick a slouch, and Roeber promptly belted everybody he was matched
against.
Until the
terrible Turk showed up that is , Yousef claimed to be the favoirte wrestler
of the Sultan of Turkey, he was more your marseilles dock worker actually
and he met Roeber twice both times ending up with Roeber winning by DQ
cause the turk was more ya thug than ya wrestler when he found someone
who could tie him into a pretzel.
Yousef
left New York claiming he was robbed and he would return to defeat Roeber,
but the ship he was on sank and he didn't survive.
Although
Roeber was the champion,this was using greco-roman, which was falling from
favour the people liked "catch as catch can", the best bloke at this was
a mill worker with one eye from Cleveland OHIO named Tom Jenkins.
Jenkins
had built up a string of victories, at least the best in the U.S.A but
lost claim to world honours twice being soundly whipped by the "Russian
lion" George Hackenschmidt.
BUT...
just when it was thought Jenkins was gonna hang on to his U.S title forever
along came the farmer from IOWA, named Gotch, Frank Gotch. In 1903
he met Jenkins for the title and Gotch was not ready and was thrashed by
Jenkins, Jenkins boasting lasted exactly one year when he met Frank again,
Gotch won the first fall despite Jenkins gouging and using elbows...the
second fall saw Jenkins fly off the handle and punch Gotch in the head,
the ref stepped in DQ'd Jenkins and awarded the title to Frank Gotch...
THUS BEGAN
THE GOLDEN ERA
