Martial Arts Of The World - Webs

pionships, and subsequently organized a National Wrestling Association.
In practice, however, promoters and wrestlers continued doing business as
they always had.
During the 1920s, there were several ways wrestlers earned their keep.
Some wrestled for regional promoters such as Lou Daro in Los Angeles,
Paul Bowser in Boston, and Jack Pfeffer in New York. Here they were told
who would win and who would lose. Others worked carnivals and Wild
West shows. In these venues, shills were often used to work the crowd. An
example of a shill was actor Kirk Douglas, who worked his way through
college taunting the Masked Marvel. The Marvel in this case was future
New York assemblyman Red Plumadore. As Plumadore recalled it for
Robert Crichton, occupational hazards of the carnival wrestler included
drunken opponents who didn’t know when they were hurt, challengers
who introduced rocks or knives into what was supposed to be a wrestling
match, and the occasional college wrestler who proved to be a terror. Pay
could be good, however, especially when the locals paid the Marvel to be
particularly hard on a local bully or especially kind to a popular foreman
or labor leader. Finally, a few wrestlers continued hustling. Fred Grubmeier,
for example, was legendary for dressing like a hick, losing matches to second-rate
local wrestlers, and then “accidentally” defeating the regional
champion once the big money was down.
Of course hustling was a hard life, and so most wrestlers and promoters
tried something easier. One new product was “Slam Bang Western
Style Wrestling,” which combined the showiest moves of boxing, football,
and Greco-Roman wrestling with the “old-time lumber camp fighting”
seen in the Miller Brothers’ 101 Ranch Wild West Show. Essentially this
was film-style stunt work performed before live audiences; pioneers in this
development included Joseph “Toots” Mondt, Billy Sandow, and Ed
“Strangler” Lewis.
During the Depression, theaters closed and circuses retrenched, and
this led to financial difficulties for promoters, contract wrestlers, and hustlers
alike. Meanwhile, as wrestling promoters had never adopted boxing
promoters’ practice of paying sportswriters to write favorable things about
their stars, there was a spate of scandalous exposés in the newspapers. For
example, in 1936 heavyweight champion Danno O’Mahoney lost to Dick
Shikat. This was apparently a double cross, as Shikat had been scheduled
to lose. The defeat cost O’Mahoney money, so his promoters took Shikat
to court, and the newspapers had a field day. Taken together, all this led to
a sharp decline in business, and by the mid-1930s venues such as Madison
Square Garden no longer booked wrestling shows.
Promoters are nothing if not resourceful, however, and gimmicks introduced
to draw crowds during the 1920s and 1930s included flying tack-
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