Slams and Salaams
Unprofessional Conduct In San Francisco
#PWHS #Article #Slams #Salaams #SanFran #Frisco
The pictured article is from February 25, 1917. That's thirty years prior to the inner workings of professional wrestling were divulged in the now famous Fall Guys book released by Marcus Griffin. The author's primary focus was cast upon the "Gold Dust Trio" which consisted of Ed "Strangler" Lewis, Billy Sandow and Joseph "Toots" Mondt. Most people will be familiar with those names I think, but for those of you who need a refresher:
Ed "Strangler" Lewis
Extremely well drawing World Heavyweight Champion who wrestled for years even though he suffered from Trachoma contracted on the grimy mats he wrestled on. He is maybe better known in this day and age for being Lou Thesz's mentor for many, many years. His nickname of the "Strangler" came from the hold he liked to use in matches which would now be known as a side-headlock.
Billy Sandow
A talented wrestler who had an even better mind for promoting wrestling. He and Lewis had a long term partnership and the pair released a series of physical culture related books known as the "Sandow-Lewis Library." It was Sandow's small Wichita, Kansas promotion that used the name the "National Wrestling Alliance" as well as boasting their own World Heavyweight Champion under that name which provided the inspiration for the name of the well-known group that "Pinkie" George founded in 1948 and is still going today.
Joseph "Toots" Mondt
The "policeman," a real tough guy who could do what it took to quieten any opposition of the "Gold Dust Trio." He was a good wrestler with great strength too, but like Sandow he made his name more so behind the scenes. He found success booking cards in most areas that he resided and helped Vince McMahon Sr. found the Capitol Wrestling Corporation that eventually led to the World Wide Wrestling Federation which is of course now known as simply the WWE.
While those three men did do an awful lot to cement the way pro-wrestling shows would be put together and worked until this day, they were by no means the first guys to work matches. Nor was Griffin's book the first time the wrestling industry had been exposed. Something the poem printed in the San Francisco Chronicle provides an example of. Of course, there were much more notable articles printed over the decades prior to this, I just liked the poem and also the area it was composed for.
California in general, but San Francisco especially has one of the longest histories when it comes to professional wrestling. A history that will be covered much more in depth in the very near future and I am sure will be an excellent release by Rock Rims called "When It Was Big Time Wrestling." For this article though, I just want to take a look at the on-again-off-again founding years of the Bay City.
By the end of the 1860s San Fran had regular matches going on with titles such as the "Championship of California" being contended for. Men like Michael "Corduroy" Whalen, Harvey Warden, Thomas Carkeek, and William Reynolds were some of the biggest names in the NorCal Cornish wrestling scene. Before the 60s even ended there was a setback for any momentum wrestling had been building when the "largest theater in San Francisco" caught fire shortly after a match took place between Pat Cribben and Warden. The place was ruined and even though it was suspected to be an intentional fire, the idea that it had happened due to careless wrestling fans throwing the cigar ends on the floor by the stage area was brought up in newspaper reports.
The dampening of interest would not last too long though because as the early 70s rolled around things were going to start to change in major ways.
When Graeco-Roman wrestling arrived on the West Coast in the 1870s it was through Alfred Perrier and Vincent "the Man of Iron" to the best of my knowledge and the two were in San Francisco by May 1871 at the latest. Vincent was said to be the promoter and he called his athletes "The Troupe of Hercules. As well as club swinging from Bennett of the famed Olympic Club there were gymnastics performed by Durand and Painter. Of Perrier and Vincent it is printed:
"MESSRS. PERRIER & VINCENT, The first champions of the world have just arrived from London, where they performed at the CRYSTAL PALACE and at the ALHAMBRA MUSIC HALL; also on the principal European stages and circuses. They are the Directors of numerous Athletic StarTroupe, who will perform the herculean feats called the ROMAN WRESTING."
The next day it was said to be a good novelty that satisfied the fans and appeared to be more fatiguing plus more painful than other forms of wrestling. It was planned as a one off show and it appears it was not attempted for quite a while afterward. The local guys continued to wrestle in the mean time with the "Pacific Coast Championship" being billed as on the line between Markey and Ward in November 1872. The following year Daniel Murray defeated Eugen Markey for the California State Championship on March 8, 1873.
On July 19, 1873 it is announced locally that a governing body of professional wrestling is going to met at a convention in New York to attempt to nationally improve and regulate championship contests as well as vote on officials. It's said a tournament would follow. Nothing else is mentioned of this going forward. Also worth noting is I can find no other mention of this besides in the San Francisco Chronicle. However, something interesting does being to happen.
Up until then very little was reported on what happened in wrestling matches outside of San Francisco, let alone California. Now John McMahon was getting increased coverage. He was not making front page news or anything, but from him winning the American Collar & Elbow Championship back in May 1873 from Homer Lane got a small article, one of the first on Northeast wrestling to be printed here, some of the pieces on his matches were nothing short of lengthy for the time. The "International Matches" he had with Canada's champion, Thomas Copeland, and England's Devonshire & Cornish Champion, Albert Ellis were of particular interest apparently. Those matches took place between July and the end of the year.
McMahon was not the only one to get coverage over the next year or so. Bigger matches by Homer Lane and other Collar & Elbow stars of the east coast also received occasional print in the newspapers. There's no doubt that with McLaughlin included that those three men were the first national names of post-Civil War wrestling. For whatever reason though, McMahon did not travel to the west until mid-1875. Colonel (or Major) James Hiram McLaughlin had a short stint in California with a stop off in San Francisco in early 1874. He drew an "immense crowds" with Michael Whalen as his opponent. McLaughlin billed himself as the unbeaten American Collar & Elbow Champion. The change to Collar & Elbow was not that big of a deal for the local audiences as it was not too far off of what Cornish wrestling was. The big change came next.
During the summer of 1874 around the beginning June Professor Thiebaud Bauer arrived. He was a splendid specimen of a man it was said and he initially wrestled in the French & German styles, Spanish style, Collar & Elbow and put on impressive, match winning performances in each appearance. The story went that no-one could beat Bauer so Professor William Miller came over to challenge him. Miller arrived around the end of the summer. The build to Miller and Bauer squaring off against each other is quite the thing to read. There is no other match with the kind of publicity this one had in San Francisco prior to it.
On November 14, 1874 it happened drawing a "large number" of people with it to the Pacific Hall. Tickets went for between one and two dollars, that's roughly $20 to $40 today and a heck of a lot of money back then. It was billed as being for the "Pacific Coast Championship in the Roman Gladiator style." No champion was decided and a draw declared at one fall each due to an injury, or so they said, to Bauer's groin.
A rematch took place on December 8 with Bauer winning the title. To give you an idea of how popular these two were in San Francisco, Miller was cast to play "The Fighting Gaul" in "The Gladiator" produced by the well respected producer John McCullough, and Miller was on the adverts as a selling point. That may also be the first time a wrestler ever crossed over into the world of acting.
Over the course of the next few months the pair capitalized on all of the attention they had drawn upon themselves. Finally they culminated their feud, in that city anyway, on May 28, 1875. Tickets went for between $1.00 to $2.50 or you could purchase a private box for a whopping $12.00. That's around $260 in today's money! An "immense" crowd is listed as attending and they witnessed a disaster. A referee by the name of Lawton stopped the match in the fifth and final fall. He declared that if they were not going to really wrestle there would be no finish to the championship match in the "Roman style." He s stated that it was evidently a fix and all bets were off.
Soon after the two men were practically run out of the city. With that one match Graeco-Roman wrestling was dead in the city of San Francisco. It'd take nearly a decade for any kind of interest to re-emerge in that particular style of wrestling and the other styles didn't fair too much better.
Luckily some new stars were coming around the Bay area like William Farrell, a local guy and the arrival of Homer Lane. Even though he was in the latter half of his career and had dropped the Collar & Elbow title to John McMahon a couple of years back, he was still a well known name, because of that association with McMahon, who is no relation to the Vince's in case you were wondering. Things were not good though. The first Bauer-Miller match drew over 1,200 people. In McMahon's big match against Farrell he drew only 800. From there attendances continued to drop.
It wasn't that the matches were bad, but there had been a two year gap between McMahon's big bout of publicity in the city, plus the sporting community really were holding a grudge over the work of the fakirs. By December 1876 ticket prices had dropped to fifty cents to one dollar for an American Lightweight Collar & Elbow Championship match between Andre Christol and Homer Lane. Christol had not made many appearances in California. Like Lane he was not a spring chicken any more, but his name still carried weight in most sporting circles.
By the end of the decade matches were few and far between in San Francisco and what matches there were, the coverage was practically non-existent. Even Christol & Lane no longer held much interest. Then seemingly out of nowhere Clarence Whistler and William Muldoon, who had been taking the rest of the country by storm stopped off in California during 1883. On November 1, 1883 they drew 4,000 people to the Mechanic's Pavilion with a gate of $2,420, around $60,000 today. In a very similar way to the first Bauer-Miller match, both of whom had wrestled with Muldoon, Miller actually at one time being somewhat of a mentor to the young Irish-American. The match was topped when Whistler suffered an injury to his shoulder.
3,000 people turned up to witness Bauer lose the "World Graeco-Roman Championship" to Muldoon not long after. A "large crowd" saw a March 24, 1884 rematch between Whistler and Muldoon which again ended in a draw, this time as Muldoon stated they are tired after over two hours of wrestling. All of a sudden San Francisco was a hotbed for wrestling. Guys like Tom Cannon, Pietro Delmas, Tomioki from England, Belgium and Japan respectively were turning up in the city. Whistler and Delmas even drew 2,400 people in September of the same year.
Duncan C. Ross and Tom Cannon "filled" the famous California Theater on December 8 in a bout for the Mixed Style Championship. Ross won. Unfortunately other than the big matches like Ross-Cannon or Ross-Whistler the attendance figures had dropped since Muldoon versus Whistler and it was not just because they were bored of the style. The following had been printed on March 26, 1884 and the second on March 27:
Whistler tells the Daily Los Angeles Herald "that the match was prearranged to be a draw by request of Muldoon. His alleged reason for disclosing this imposition on the public is that he was cheated out of his fair share of the gate money."
Then he tells the San Francisco Chronicle that "my attention has been attracted to a card from Muldoon, published in the Alta, I have this to say in connection with the late wrestle with Muldoon. He states that the proposition to call the match a draw emanated from me. I wish to say that this is not so. And further, I will put up $1,000 that I can throw this alleged champion inside of fifteen minutes, if he will wrestle, the match to take place in the presence of four friends of each of the principals; or the match to take place in a hall, the entire proceeds go to a benevolent institution. Muldoon sent word to me asking for the draw. I'm willing to bet $100 to ten cents that Muldoon does not know what it is to make a square match. He has never wrestled one in his life, and I can prove it. All his matches with me have been frauds. I can bring up Englehardt and Bauer to show that all of his wrestles have been arranged beforehand, so that he would be declared a victor."
And as soon as Whistler left the city for good in June 1885 the bottom of the wrestling scene dropped out. Andre Christol returned in 1886 to try and make something of it, but he was only drawing a few hundred people for a "Grand Wrestling Tournament." Amateur wrestling did make an impact there just before the turn of the century and became a more relevant part of athletic clubs and holding the AAU tournaments.
Wrestling was a scarce form of entertainment going forward. Even during the Gotch-Hackenschmidt matches the city's scene never got invigorated enough to promote there regularly again. Some cities bounced back quickly from bad hippodrome affairs, but not San Francisco. It wouldn't be until around 1916 when the wrestling scene really started to pick back up there. Guys like Adolph Ernst and Constantine Romanoff with their fast paced, painful looking, scientific wrestling styles captured the attention and more importantly the money of the local fans. A trend that would continue in the area as NorCal blossomed into mainstay territory under several promoters including Joe Malcewicz until it became "Big Time Wrestling" again and Roy Shire ruled the roost.
Ed "Strangler" Lewis
Extremely well drawing World Heavyweight Champion who wrestled for years even though he suffered from Trachoma contracted on the grimy mats he wrestled on. He is maybe better known in this day and age for being Lou Thesz's mentor for many, many years. His nickname of the "Strangler" came from the hold he liked to use in matches which would now be known as a side-headlock.
Billy Sandow
A talented wrestler who had an even better mind for promoting wrestling. He and Lewis had a long term partnership and the pair released a series of physical culture related books known as the "Sandow-Lewis Library." It was Sandow's small Wichita, Kansas promotion that used the name the "National Wrestling Alliance" as well as boasting their own World Heavyweight Champion under that name which provided the inspiration for the name of the well-known group that "Pinkie" George founded in 1948 and is still going today.
Joseph "Toots" Mondt
The "policeman," a real tough guy who could do what it took to quieten any opposition of the "Gold Dust Trio." He was a good wrestler with great strength too, but like Sandow he made his name more so behind the scenes. He found success booking cards in most areas that he resided and helped Vince McMahon Sr. found the Capitol Wrestling Corporation that eventually led to the World Wide Wrestling Federation which is of course now known as simply the WWE.
While those three men did do an awful lot to cement the way pro-wrestling shows would be put together and worked until this day, they were by no means the first guys to work matches. Nor was Griffin's book the first time the wrestling industry had been exposed. Something the poem printed in the San Francisco Chronicle provides an example of. Of course, there were much more notable articles printed over the decades prior to this, I just liked the poem and also the area it was composed for.
California in general, but San Francisco especially has one of the longest histories when it comes to professional wrestling. A history that will be covered much more in depth in the very near future and I am sure will be an excellent release by Rock Rims called "When It Was Big Time Wrestling." For this article though, I just want to take a look at the on-again-off-again founding years of the Bay City.
By the end of the 1860s San Fran had regular matches going on with titles such as the "Championship of California" being contended for. Men like Michael "Corduroy" Whalen, Harvey Warden, Thomas Carkeek, and William Reynolds were some of the biggest names in the NorCal Cornish wrestling scene. Before the 60s even ended there was a setback for any momentum wrestling had been building when the "largest theater in San Francisco" caught fire shortly after a match took place between Pat Cribben and Warden. The place was ruined and even though it was suspected to be an intentional fire, the idea that it had happened due to careless wrestling fans throwing the cigar ends on the floor by the stage area was brought up in newspaper reports.
The dampening of interest would not last too long though because as the early 70s rolled around things were going to start to change in major ways.
When Graeco-Roman wrestling arrived on the West Coast in the 1870s it was through Alfred Perrier and Vincent "the Man of Iron" to the best of my knowledge and the two were in San Francisco by May 1871 at the latest. Vincent was said to be the promoter and he called his athletes "The Troupe of Hercules. As well as club swinging from Bennett of the famed Olympic Club there were gymnastics performed by Durand and Painter. Of Perrier and Vincent it is printed:
"MESSRS. PERRIER & VINCENT, The first champions of the world have just arrived from London, where they performed at the CRYSTAL PALACE and at the ALHAMBRA MUSIC HALL; also on the principal European stages and circuses. They are the Directors of numerous Athletic StarTroupe, who will perform the herculean feats called the ROMAN WRESTING."
The next day it was said to be a good novelty that satisfied the fans and appeared to be more fatiguing plus more painful than other forms of wrestling. It was planned as a one off show and it appears it was not attempted for quite a while afterward. The local guys continued to wrestle in the mean time with the "Pacific Coast Championship" being billed as on the line between Markey and Ward in November 1872. The following year Daniel Murray defeated Eugen Markey for the California State Championship on March 8, 1873.
On July 19, 1873 it is announced locally that a governing body of professional wrestling is going to met at a convention in New York to attempt to nationally improve and regulate championship contests as well as vote on officials. It's said a tournament would follow. Nothing else is mentioned of this going forward. Also worth noting is I can find no other mention of this besides in the San Francisco Chronicle. However, something interesting does being to happen.
Up until then very little was reported on what happened in wrestling matches outside of San Francisco, let alone California. Now John McMahon was getting increased coverage. He was not making front page news or anything, but from him winning the American Collar & Elbow Championship back in May 1873 from Homer Lane got a small article, one of the first on Northeast wrestling to be printed here, some of the pieces on his matches were nothing short of lengthy for the time. The "International Matches" he had with Canada's champion, Thomas Copeland, and England's Devonshire & Cornish Champion, Albert Ellis were of particular interest apparently. Those matches took place between July and the end of the year.
McMahon was not the only one to get coverage over the next year or so. Bigger matches by Homer Lane and other Collar & Elbow stars of the east coast also received occasional print in the newspapers. There's no doubt that with McLaughlin included that those three men were the first national names of post-Civil War wrestling. For whatever reason though, McMahon did not travel to the west until mid-1875. Colonel (or Major) James Hiram McLaughlin had a short stint in California with a stop off in San Francisco in early 1874. He drew an "immense crowds" with Michael Whalen as his opponent. McLaughlin billed himself as the unbeaten American Collar & Elbow Champion. The change to Collar & Elbow was not that big of a deal for the local audiences as it was not too far off of what Cornish wrestling was. The big change came next.
During the summer of 1874 around the beginning June Professor Thiebaud Bauer arrived. He was a splendid specimen of a man it was said and he initially wrestled in the French & German styles, Spanish style, Collar & Elbow and put on impressive, match winning performances in each appearance. The story went that no-one could beat Bauer so Professor William Miller came over to challenge him. Miller arrived around the end of the summer. The build to Miller and Bauer squaring off against each other is quite the thing to read. There is no other match with the kind of publicity this one had in San Francisco prior to it.
On November 14, 1874 it happened drawing a "large number" of people with it to the Pacific Hall. Tickets went for between one and two dollars, that's roughly $20 to $40 today and a heck of a lot of money back then. It was billed as being for the "Pacific Coast Championship in the Roman Gladiator style." No champion was decided and a draw declared at one fall each due to an injury, or so they said, to Bauer's groin.
A rematch took place on December 8 with Bauer winning the title. To give you an idea of how popular these two were in San Francisco, Miller was cast to play "The Fighting Gaul" in "The Gladiator" produced by the well respected producer John McCullough, and Miller was on the adverts as a selling point. That may also be the first time a wrestler ever crossed over into the world of acting.
Over the course of the next few months the pair capitalized on all of the attention they had drawn upon themselves. Finally they culminated their feud, in that city anyway, on May 28, 1875. Tickets went for between $1.00 to $2.50 or you could purchase a private box for a whopping $12.00. That's around $260 in today's money! An "immense" crowd is listed as attending and they witnessed a disaster. A referee by the name of Lawton stopped the match in the fifth and final fall. He declared that if they were not going to really wrestle there would be no finish to the championship match in the "Roman style." He s stated that it was evidently a fix and all bets were off.
Soon after the two men were practically run out of the city. With that one match Graeco-Roman wrestling was dead in the city of San Francisco. It'd take nearly a decade for any kind of interest to re-emerge in that particular style of wrestling and the other styles didn't fair too much better.
Luckily some new stars were coming around the Bay area like William Farrell, a local guy and the arrival of Homer Lane. Even though he was in the latter half of his career and had dropped the Collar & Elbow title to John McMahon a couple of years back, he was still a well known name, because of that association with McMahon, who is no relation to the Vince's in case you were wondering. Things were not good though. The first Bauer-Miller match drew over 1,200 people. In McMahon's big match against Farrell he drew only 800. From there attendances continued to drop.
It wasn't that the matches were bad, but there had been a two year gap between McMahon's big bout of publicity in the city, plus the sporting community really were holding a grudge over the work of the fakirs. By December 1876 ticket prices had dropped to fifty cents to one dollar for an American Lightweight Collar & Elbow Championship match between Andre Christol and Homer Lane. Christol had not made many appearances in California. Like Lane he was not a spring chicken any more, but his name still carried weight in most sporting circles.
By the end of the decade matches were few and far between in San Francisco and what matches there were, the coverage was practically non-existent. Even Christol & Lane no longer held much interest. Then seemingly out of nowhere Clarence Whistler and William Muldoon, who had been taking the rest of the country by storm stopped off in California during 1883. On November 1, 1883 they drew 4,000 people to the Mechanic's Pavilion with a gate of $2,420, around $60,000 today. In a very similar way to the first Bauer-Miller match, both of whom had wrestled with Muldoon, Miller actually at one time being somewhat of a mentor to the young Irish-American. The match was topped when Whistler suffered an injury to his shoulder.
3,000 people turned up to witness Bauer lose the "World Graeco-Roman Championship" to Muldoon not long after. A "large crowd" saw a March 24, 1884 rematch between Whistler and Muldoon which again ended in a draw, this time as Muldoon stated they are tired after over two hours of wrestling. All of a sudden San Francisco was a hotbed for wrestling. Guys like Tom Cannon, Pietro Delmas, Tomioki from England, Belgium and Japan respectively were turning up in the city. Whistler and Delmas even drew 2,400 people in September of the same year.
Duncan C. Ross and Tom Cannon "filled" the famous California Theater on December 8 in a bout for the Mixed Style Championship. Ross won. Unfortunately other than the big matches like Ross-Cannon or Ross-Whistler the attendance figures had dropped since Muldoon versus Whistler and it was not just because they were bored of the style. The following had been printed on March 26, 1884 and the second on March 27:
Whistler tells the Daily Los Angeles Herald "that the match was prearranged to be a draw by request of Muldoon. His alleged reason for disclosing this imposition on the public is that he was cheated out of his fair share of the gate money."
Then he tells the San Francisco Chronicle that "my attention has been attracted to a card from Muldoon, published in the Alta, I have this to say in connection with the late wrestle with Muldoon. He states that the proposition to call the match a draw emanated from me. I wish to say that this is not so. And further, I will put up $1,000 that I can throw this alleged champion inside of fifteen minutes, if he will wrestle, the match to take place in the presence of four friends of each of the principals; or the match to take place in a hall, the entire proceeds go to a benevolent institution. Muldoon sent word to me asking for the draw. I'm willing to bet $100 to ten cents that Muldoon does not know what it is to make a square match. He has never wrestled one in his life, and I can prove it. All his matches with me have been frauds. I can bring up Englehardt and Bauer to show that all of his wrestles have been arranged beforehand, so that he would be declared a victor."
And as soon as Whistler left the city for good in June 1885 the bottom of the wrestling scene dropped out. Andre Christol returned in 1886 to try and make something of it, but he was only drawing a few hundred people for a "Grand Wrestling Tournament." Amateur wrestling did make an impact there just before the turn of the century and became a more relevant part of athletic clubs and holding the AAU tournaments.
Wrestling was a scarce form of entertainment going forward. Even during the Gotch-Hackenschmidt matches the city's scene never got invigorated enough to promote there regularly again. Some cities bounced back quickly from bad hippodrome affairs, but not San Francisco. It wouldn't be until around 1916 when the wrestling scene really started to pick back up there. Guys like Adolph Ernst and Constantine Romanoff with their fast paced, painful looking, scientific wrestling styles captured the attention and more importantly the money of the local fans. A trend that would continue in the area as NorCal blossomed into mainstay territory under several promoters including Joe Malcewicz until it became "Big Time Wrestling" again and Roy Shire ruled the roost.
Unique content strictly for the Professional Wrestling Historical Society.
Slams and Salaams.
Author: Jimmy Wheeler.
Published: October 5, 2016.
Article: #156.
Editor: Jimmy Wheeler.
Slams and Salaams.
Author: Jimmy Wheeler.
Published: October 5, 2016.
Article: #156.
Editor: Jimmy Wheeler.
Other articles by Jimmy can be Read Here.