THE
GOLDEN ERA
George
first came to the publics attention one night in England , when he accepted
the challenge being thrown out to the audience by Jack Careek, he climbed
onto the stage, removed his dinner suit, funny enough he was wearing his
tights at the time, but Careek was no idiot, he reconised the Lion immediatly
as the man who had won the tourney at Paris,Jack told the crowd who his
mystery challenger was and said he was challenging british guys only...hmmmmm!!!(obviously
not in the mood for a butt kicking ...hehe).......eventually the lion started
to wrestle around London, but he was that good and provided no sort of
spectacle, so his contract was not renewed. But his manager
got him to learn Catch style and it was then his challengers picked up,
the most important being a turk by the name of Madrali a very good and
well rounded wrestler, until he met The Lion that is, george took approximately
two minutes to dislocate his arm and throw him.
George
went on to flog everyone he met, including in 1904 the U.S champ Tom Jenkins....he
then went on tours to Australia and the U.S again.....this left his manager
with a wrestler shortage, until along came
Stanislaus
Zybsco from Crakow, Poland, the crowd hated Zybsco as much as they loved
The Lion....a full house was a certain when the giant pole wrestled, mostly
to see if he would be beaten.
Meanwhile
, the lion was in america and was firmly enrenched in a running battle
with Frank Gotch, ending when the IOWA farmer put the lion away for
the world title in 1908.
In 1911
the most important fight in franks history would take place, the return
bout for the title against the russian lion, hackenschmidt had been trying
to avoid the champ claiming he had a sore knee from training, Gotch countered
with a injured neck, so the lion accepted, only to discover a 100% fighting
fit Gotch when he climbed in the ring, 21 minutes later the american had
held onto his title.....Come 1913 Gotch retired having run out of opponents...when
he left the ring the golden age ceased to exist.....there was a war about
to start when it finished, the modern age of Pro-wrestling got underway,
and the old timers would not have recognised it at all
