Stanislaus (Cyganiewicz) Zbyszko
Born: April 1, 1879.
Died: September 23, 1967.
#PWHS #Bio #Biography #Zbyszko #Poland #GrecoRoman #Catch #CACC #CatchWrestling
Shortly after Stanislaus's birth the Cyganiewicz family moved to Vienna, Austria where he was listed as from in Europe, although Stanislaus was later be billed from his birth place, Poland, during his professional wrestling career in America. In 1891 his brother was born, Wladek Zybyszko, he also went on to become a catch-as-catch-can star and like his older sibling, Stanislaus, he was trained by Wladyslaw Pytlansinski.
According to Stanislaus in an interview he stated he joined the Cracow Solkol circus at the age of 15. Eventually he went to the University of Vienna where he studied music, gymnastics and philosophy and worked persistently on his physique to the point where the 5'8'' college student was listed in Health & Strength as one of Europe's elite Graeco-Roman heavyweight competitors. Finally graduating as a lawyer by the age of 24. Around this time he also spent time as a lieutenant in the Polish infantry.
As always with these early competitors in professional wrestling, unless you are multilingual it is hard to get certain information on these foreign wrestlers, it is hard to pin point an exact start in the career of Stanislaus. What is known though is in the city of Riga in Latvia, Stanislaus competed in a tournament during the months of October and November in 1902. He failed to place. The following month he competed in a tournament held in Lemberg, Ukraine there are no results for that series of contests at present.
Also known is he competed in the May-June, 1903 tournament held in Paris, France. Stanislaus managed to finish third, behind only Jess Pedersen and Raoul Le Boucher, two big names on the European circuit. July saw him trump Paris when he finished second in the Vilnius, Lithuania tournament, that time only Georg Lurich was ahead of him. He competed in several other tournaments that year too which the results are unknown for.
His career continued with him travelling Europe competing in the tournaments held across the continent. It is thought he may have traveled to America during 1905, but whether he actually went has yet to be confirmed. Of course he later made a long trip to the United States, first he had a big win in his career. Zbyszko was crowned the "World Heavyweight Champion" on November 23, 1906, the closing day of one of the regular Paris, France tournaments. Stanislaus recalled starting to wrestle in the Catch-as-Catch-Can style around 1906.
Over the course of time his name evolved from using his real name of Stanislaw Cyganiewicz to Stanislaus Cyganiewicz-Zbyszko to just plain old Stanislaus Zbyszko. Most likely the final shortening was a way to hep people pronounce his name better. It's worth noting that whenever he returned to the place he grew up in, he was always referred to by his real name.
After a final year of touring in 1907 it was time for Stanislaus to go to a new pasture. After all during his time on main land Europe he had faced them all and picked up wins over big names such as Buzovac Mourzouck, Pietro le Belge, Emil Peyrouse, Karl Saft, Georg Lurich, Michael Hitzler, Constant Le Marin, Gustav Fristensky, Georg Strenge Ivan Poddubny, as well as many others. Now it was on to conquer the cream of the crop in Great Britain.
It was there a major professional wrestling scandal took place for all of the public to see. Within January of 1908 Stanislaus was approached by a wrestler called Kara Suliman during an open challenge. The match however was put off for an unrecorded reason. It was simply listed Kara did not meet the satisfactory conditions required to take Stanislaus up on his challenge.
The two were to meet up at a later date and Stanislaus fairly easily pinned Kara Suliman. Unfortunately for Stanislaus and the man responsible for promoting his fights in England at that time , Charles B. Cochran - who had managed Georg Hackenschmidt previously - someone tipped off the local papers that Kara Suliman was actually under employment of the Cochran camp and was a Bulgarian wrestler who went by the name of Ivan Offtharoff.
The Sporting Life newspaper summed it up:
"We cannot deny that there is a certain element of humour in the situation. Here are two foreign wrestlers hoaxing the British public as it has not been hoaxed for many a long day. There were challenges and counter challenges, affected quarrels, threatened breaking off of negotiations, meetings at the Sportsman office, the deposit of money on behalf Mr. 'Constantin Papiani,' who does not exist, charges of skin-greasing, and to crown it all, hot water baths for the two friends who were soon to be in each other's deadly embrace. Jow these two fellows must have enjoyed their baths - with their tongues in their cheeks, while the deluded British public were rolling up in their thousands to pay for admission to see the wrestling. It is more like a bit from a comic opera than anything we have ever heard of in the world of sport. While we admit to the humour of the situation, we cannot shut our eyes to the seriousness of the matter, and we ask.
How long is the generous-hearted supporter of wrestling to be imposed upon these gentlemen from the continent? If a state of matters exist such as we have shown existed between Zbyszko and Suliman, what confidence can we have that when the men, after due palaver, do meet, we are to have real honest wrestling? Both at the Pavilion and the Holborn Zbyszko and Suliman gave 'good shows', but the story we have disclosed of Zbyszko paying for Suliman's board and lodging since he stayed at Kennington Road does not reassure us that the two men were really trying. Is this wrestling farce never to end?"
Meanwhile Charles B.Cochran in his book Secrets of a Showman released in 1925 recalls:
"After his London engagement Zbyszko did enormous business in the provinces. I supplied him with a number of aggressive contestants, who always appeared to have a good chance with him - and this made for big receipts. I had learned from experience with Hack that the music hall public required a show, and I had no compunction in giving them what they wanted - a show.
A member of the troupe, who was particularly successful in creating excitement, and making the receipts go up, was a raw-boned Scotsman. Zbyszko wrestled under Graeco-Roman rules, but the Scotsman always disregarded them, and notwithstanding the protest of the referees, in the different towns we visited, practiced catch-as-catch-can holds. In one case, I remember, he threw the referee himself into the orchestra."
With England being disgruntled following the hoaxing of February 1908 its somewhat amazing that Stanislaus still managed to spend much of the rest of the year there before travelling back across Europe and finally to America in 1909. September 21, 1909 marked the day of his arrival along with several other foreign talent.
Even Vince McMahon with all his modern technology could not have given Stanislaus a bigger build-up to his arrival. For over a month before he was even in the country, papers were talking about the foreign wrestlers coming and in specific the serious threat to the American public's pride of wrestling and World Heavyweight Champion, Frank Gotch. There was no doubt every American considered Stanislaus Gotch's most dangerous opponent to date and he was not even in the country yet.
Then in his first match on October 7, 1909 Stanislaus defeated three men in row. For just over a month Stanislaus competed in various matches, sometimes he may lose a handicap contest by being unable to throw an opponent enough times in a specific amount of time, but for the most part he dominated.
In front of 10,000 people, a large audience for that time, Stanislaus met Frank Gotch for the first time. The location was Buffalo, New York and it was a handicap match, whereby Gotch had to throw Stanislaus twice within 60 minutes. The big polish wrestler came out of it unthrown, stating he knew for certain now he could throw Gotch in a straight match and that was all the people of America needed to convince them that their American really was in trouble.
During 1910 he toured America defeating such people as "Rough" Tom Jenkins, Fred Beell, Charles "Kid" Cutler, Yussiff Mahmout, Charles Olsen, Dr. Benjamin F. Roller. Of course, all of this was to build up to a straight match between Frank Gotch and Zbyszko from the Chicago Coliseum in Illinois, on June 1, 1910 for the World Heavyweight Championship.
That match for the World Heavyweight Championship was won by Frank Gotch, it is said that Gotch jumped Stanislaus during the opening handshake that came before match. The rest of the match was pretty much all Gotch's as he picked up two straight falls in what has to be considered a surprisingly low crowd of 8,000 people considering what had been pulled in for Stanislaus's debut match.
Of course that was the end of his gigantic backing in America and he fell back in line as another challenger was built up for the champion to conquer. Stanislaus was left to find something else to do for the time being.
Spending more then 12 months in America battling many of the top stars there had fine tuned Stanislaus's catch-as-catch-can wrestling skills, where as before he had been more proficient in Graeco-Roman, he was now becoming known as a serious and legitimate hooker in the world of wrestling. It was that reputation that led him into his next match against the famed, the legendary, some say the greatest wrestler of all time, the Great Gama.
The two met in London, England for the finals of the John Bull World Championships. They competed for over 2 hours and 30 minutes before the match was declared a draw, it is considered to be a poor match by many as Stanislaus used such a defensive style in the contest to try and avoid the Great Gama's size and strength advantage. The two were set to fight in a rematch two weeks later, however, Stanislaus did not show up to the event and was therefore declared as forfeiting and the victory handed to the Great Gama.
Through all of this though Stanislaus earned a place in the record books as one of a handful of men who stepped into a match with Gama and came out without a loss.
Zbyszko soon returned to America where over the course of the next two or so years he continued wrestling. By 1912 Frank Gotch had retired from the mat and everyone thought it would be permanent. He awarded his World Heavyweight Championship to the winner of a contest between Fred Beell and Americus in March of 1914.
Just two months later, Stanislaus who was still considered a strong competitor was given a shot at Americus on May 7, 1914. The two met in Kansas City in front of a "Huge" crowd. Stanislaus came out the champion. He was now recognized as the World Heavyweight Champion, in America at least anyway.
Unfortunately his reign was cut very short due to the outbreak of World War I, which forced him to vacate the title in the process. In August of that year he was called back to Poland and enlisted in the army, where he remained until 1920. Immediately after his return he set to work climbing back to the top of the ladder and wearing that belt around his waist again.
He once again reached a high level of notoriety in 1921 when he was enlisted by the Gold Dust Trio (Ed Lewis, Billy Sandow, Joseph "Toots" Mondt) to become the new World Heavyweight Champion on their behalf. With the Trio trying to monopolize professional wrestling they needed someone who could really wrestle to hold the belt in case anyone tried to double cross them and even at over 40 years old, Stanislaus was still considered a formidable force.
It was not meant to be though as his run with the championship was a financial failure for the Trio. His reign only lasted until March 3, 1922 after winning it on May 6, 1921. He lost the belt to the same man he had originally won it from, Ed "Strangler" Lewis. Following that Stanislaus found himself in the midst of controversy...a pattern certain seems to be in place.
The main rivals of the Gold Dust Trio were the Stecher brothers, Joe and Tony, and Jack Curley. The Trio had put the World Heavyweight Championship onto a newcomer, former football star, Wayne Munn. A match was set up between Munn and Stanislaus as a way to solidify Munn as a real serious competitor in the eyes of the spectators. On April 15, 1925 the Trio saw all their hard work taken away from them in the blink of an eye as Stanislaus double crossed them and continuously pinned Munn until the referee had to announce him as the winner.
Stanislaus had not gone into business for himself though, he had been paid a large sum of money by the Stecher brothers to do so. Just over a month later completing the deal, Stanislaus dropped the title to Joe Stecher. From that point on his career things started to wind down, he still continued to compete on a semi-regular basis though and as the nature of the business dictates, he kept on travelling to do so.
On January 29, 1928 he once again met the Great Gama, it is often reported that the match drew 60,000 spectators, but it is thought the stadium which had been specially built for the event in India could only hold 40,000, either way, the event sold out and was a massive hit even 18 years after the original encounter between the two and was impressive to say the least when considering that both men were well past their prime.
The outcome of the match which is often told is the Great Gama threw and Stanislaus in around 45 seconds in a legitimate bout, this probably was not the case though. It is rumored that the Maharajah who was in attendance for the match, had hired Gama as his private wrestler in 1910, so he paid Stanislaus to lose in fear of a riot if he did win. The reasoning provided for Stanislaus accepting the pay-off was he had lost a lot of his fortune during World War I and had been trying to build it up since, it is also noted that the Great Gama would not have known of the plan or he would not have competed.
There are also stories wrestlers in the 1950s heard tales of something suspicious during the match, but it is recorded that none of them were willing to speak in detail on the matter. It seems only fitting though that right up until the end Stanislaus had conspiracy, controversy and people pondering over the workings of his match.
After that match Stanislaus went into semi-retirement, at first he became a matchmaker in New York, but that does not appear to have lasted too long. So with his wrestling days behind him, he found a new direction to focus all his acquired skill and efforts; training the next generation.
He traveled to South America to scout young athletes he could train in the art of professional wrestling. While there he came across someone who went on to be considered a true pioneer of the industry, Argentina Rocca. Stanislaus also trained Harley Race and Johnny Valentine, with the help of his bother Wladek. Stanislaus actually spent quite a lot of time in South America and touring various areas with his brother as both his manager and a promoter of shows, also.
Zbyszko appeared in a movie during 1932 called "Madison Square Garden," where he played himself. When World War II broke out Stanislaus found his skills as a linguist useful and thus was called upon by the War Department. He also had a lead role in the 1950 movie, "Night and the City," in that he played a grizzled pro-wrestler. Director Jukes Dassin recalls when he contacted Zbyszko he was living in New Jersey working as a chicken farmer and remembered him as being "a beautiful, cultured, multilingual."
At the age of 88 on September 23, 1967, Stanislaus (Cyganiewicz) Zbyszko suffered a heart attack and passed away. He will forever be remembered as one of the first controversial figures in professional wrestling, along with being known as a legitimate hooker with an excellent skill set and knowledge. To anyone who knew him outside of the ring and had the privilege of knowing him personally, they remembered him as the intellect he was. Even the fans who don't know who Stanislaus Zbyszko is, will always remember the name Zbyszko from when Larry Whistler adopted the surname Zbyszko during his professional wrestling career during the 1970's all the way up until present day.
Shortly after Stanislaus's birth the Cyganiewicz family moved to Vienna, Austria where he was listed as from in Europe, although Stanislaus was later be billed from his birth place, Poland, during his professional wrestling career in America. In 1891 his brother was born, Wladek Zybyszko, he also went on to become a catch-as-catch-can star and like his older sibling, Stanislaus, he was trained by Wladyslaw Pytlansinski.
According to Stanislaus in an interview he stated he joined the Cracow Solkol circus at the age of 15. Eventually he went to the University of Vienna where he studied music, gymnastics and philosophy and worked persistently on his physique to the point where the 5'8'' college student was listed in Health & Strength as one of Europe's elite Graeco-Roman heavyweight competitors. Finally graduating as a lawyer by the age of 24. Around this time he also spent time as a lieutenant in the Polish infantry.
As always with these early competitors in professional wrestling, unless you are multilingual it is hard to get certain information on these foreign wrestlers, it is hard to pin point an exact start in the career of Stanislaus. What is known though is in the city of Riga in Latvia, Stanislaus competed in a tournament during the months of October and November in 1902. He failed to place. The following month he competed in a tournament held in Lemberg, Ukraine there are no results for that series of contests at present.
Also known is he competed in the May-June, 1903 tournament held in Paris, France. Stanislaus managed to finish third, behind only Jess Pedersen and Raoul Le Boucher, two big names on the European circuit. July saw him trump Paris when he finished second in the Vilnius, Lithuania tournament, that time only Georg Lurich was ahead of him. He competed in several other tournaments that year too which the results are unknown for.
His career continued with him travelling Europe competing in the tournaments held across the continent. It is thought he may have traveled to America during 1905, but whether he actually went has yet to be confirmed. Of course he later made a long trip to the United States, first he had a big win in his career. Zbyszko was crowned the "World Heavyweight Champion" on November 23, 1906, the closing day of one of the regular Paris, France tournaments. Stanislaus recalled starting to wrestle in the Catch-as-Catch-Can style around 1906.
Over the course of time his name evolved from using his real name of Stanislaw Cyganiewicz to Stanislaus Cyganiewicz-Zbyszko to just plain old Stanislaus Zbyszko. Most likely the final shortening was a way to hep people pronounce his name better. It's worth noting that whenever he returned to the place he grew up in, he was always referred to by his real name.
After a final year of touring in 1907 it was time for Stanislaus to go to a new pasture. After all during his time on main land Europe he had faced them all and picked up wins over big names such as Buzovac Mourzouck, Pietro le Belge, Emil Peyrouse, Karl Saft, Georg Lurich, Michael Hitzler, Constant Le Marin, Gustav Fristensky, Georg Strenge Ivan Poddubny, as well as many others. Now it was on to conquer the cream of the crop in Great Britain.
It was there a major professional wrestling scandal took place for all of the public to see. Within January of 1908 Stanislaus was approached by a wrestler called Kara Suliman during an open challenge. The match however was put off for an unrecorded reason. It was simply listed Kara did not meet the satisfactory conditions required to take Stanislaus up on his challenge.
The two were to meet up at a later date and Stanislaus fairly easily pinned Kara Suliman. Unfortunately for Stanislaus and the man responsible for promoting his fights in England at that time , Charles B. Cochran - who had managed Georg Hackenschmidt previously - someone tipped off the local papers that Kara Suliman was actually under employment of the Cochran camp and was a Bulgarian wrestler who went by the name of Ivan Offtharoff.
The Sporting Life newspaper summed it up:
"We cannot deny that there is a certain element of humour in the situation. Here are two foreign wrestlers hoaxing the British public as it has not been hoaxed for many a long day. There were challenges and counter challenges, affected quarrels, threatened breaking off of negotiations, meetings at the Sportsman office, the deposit of money on behalf Mr. 'Constantin Papiani,' who does not exist, charges of skin-greasing, and to crown it all, hot water baths for the two friends who were soon to be in each other's deadly embrace. Jow these two fellows must have enjoyed their baths - with their tongues in their cheeks, while the deluded British public were rolling up in their thousands to pay for admission to see the wrestling. It is more like a bit from a comic opera than anything we have ever heard of in the world of sport. While we admit to the humour of the situation, we cannot shut our eyes to the seriousness of the matter, and we ask.
How long is the generous-hearted supporter of wrestling to be imposed upon these gentlemen from the continent? If a state of matters exist such as we have shown existed between Zbyszko and Suliman, what confidence can we have that when the men, after due palaver, do meet, we are to have real honest wrestling? Both at the Pavilion and the Holborn Zbyszko and Suliman gave 'good shows', but the story we have disclosed of Zbyszko paying for Suliman's board and lodging since he stayed at Kennington Road does not reassure us that the two men were really trying. Is this wrestling farce never to end?"
Meanwhile Charles B.Cochran in his book Secrets of a Showman released in 1925 recalls:
"After his London engagement Zbyszko did enormous business in the provinces. I supplied him with a number of aggressive contestants, who always appeared to have a good chance with him - and this made for big receipts. I had learned from experience with Hack that the music hall public required a show, and I had no compunction in giving them what they wanted - a show.
A member of the troupe, who was particularly successful in creating excitement, and making the receipts go up, was a raw-boned Scotsman. Zbyszko wrestled under Graeco-Roman rules, but the Scotsman always disregarded them, and notwithstanding the protest of the referees, in the different towns we visited, practiced catch-as-catch-can holds. In one case, I remember, he threw the referee himself into the orchestra."
With England being disgruntled following the hoaxing of February 1908 its somewhat amazing that Stanislaus still managed to spend much of the rest of the year there before travelling back across Europe and finally to America in 1909. September 21, 1909 marked the day of his arrival along with several other foreign talent.
Even Vince McMahon with all his modern technology could not have given Stanislaus a bigger build-up to his arrival. For over a month before he was even in the country, papers were talking about the foreign wrestlers coming and in specific the serious threat to the American public's pride of wrestling and World Heavyweight Champion, Frank Gotch. There was no doubt every American considered Stanislaus Gotch's most dangerous opponent to date and he was not even in the country yet.
Then in his first match on October 7, 1909 Stanislaus defeated three men in row. For just over a month Stanislaus competed in various matches, sometimes he may lose a handicap contest by being unable to throw an opponent enough times in a specific amount of time, but for the most part he dominated.
In front of 10,000 people, a large audience for that time, Stanislaus met Frank Gotch for the first time. The location was Buffalo, New York and it was a handicap match, whereby Gotch had to throw Stanislaus twice within 60 minutes. The big polish wrestler came out of it unthrown, stating he knew for certain now he could throw Gotch in a straight match and that was all the people of America needed to convince them that their American really was in trouble.
During 1910 he toured America defeating such people as "Rough" Tom Jenkins, Fred Beell, Charles "Kid" Cutler, Yussiff Mahmout, Charles Olsen, Dr. Benjamin F. Roller. Of course, all of this was to build up to a straight match between Frank Gotch and Zbyszko from the Chicago Coliseum in Illinois, on June 1, 1910 for the World Heavyweight Championship.
That match for the World Heavyweight Championship was won by Frank Gotch, it is said that Gotch jumped Stanislaus during the opening handshake that came before match. The rest of the match was pretty much all Gotch's as he picked up two straight falls in what has to be considered a surprisingly low crowd of 8,000 people considering what had been pulled in for Stanislaus's debut match.
Of course that was the end of his gigantic backing in America and he fell back in line as another challenger was built up for the champion to conquer. Stanislaus was left to find something else to do for the time being.
Spending more then 12 months in America battling many of the top stars there had fine tuned Stanislaus's catch-as-catch-can wrestling skills, where as before he had been more proficient in Graeco-Roman, he was now becoming known as a serious and legitimate hooker in the world of wrestling. It was that reputation that led him into his next match against the famed, the legendary, some say the greatest wrestler of all time, the Great Gama.
The two met in London, England for the finals of the John Bull World Championships. They competed for over 2 hours and 30 minutes before the match was declared a draw, it is considered to be a poor match by many as Stanislaus used such a defensive style in the contest to try and avoid the Great Gama's size and strength advantage. The two were set to fight in a rematch two weeks later, however, Stanislaus did not show up to the event and was therefore declared as forfeiting and the victory handed to the Great Gama.
Through all of this though Stanislaus earned a place in the record books as one of a handful of men who stepped into a match with Gama and came out without a loss.
Zbyszko soon returned to America where over the course of the next two or so years he continued wrestling. By 1912 Frank Gotch had retired from the mat and everyone thought it would be permanent. He awarded his World Heavyweight Championship to the winner of a contest between Fred Beell and Americus in March of 1914.
Just two months later, Stanislaus who was still considered a strong competitor was given a shot at Americus on May 7, 1914. The two met in Kansas City in front of a "Huge" crowd. Stanislaus came out the champion. He was now recognized as the World Heavyweight Champion, in America at least anyway.
Unfortunately his reign was cut very short due to the outbreak of World War I, which forced him to vacate the title in the process. In August of that year he was called back to Poland and enlisted in the army, where he remained until 1920. Immediately after his return he set to work climbing back to the top of the ladder and wearing that belt around his waist again.
He once again reached a high level of notoriety in 1921 when he was enlisted by the Gold Dust Trio (Ed Lewis, Billy Sandow, Joseph "Toots" Mondt) to become the new World Heavyweight Champion on their behalf. With the Trio trying to monopolize professional wrestling they needed someone who could really wrestle to hold the belt in case anyone tried to double cross them and even at over 40 years old, Stanislaus was still considered a formidable force.
It was not meant to be though as his run with the championship was a financial failure for the Trio. His reign only lasted until March 3, 1922 after winning it on May 6, 1921. He lost the belt to the same man he had originally won it from, Ed "Strangler" Lewis. Following that Stanislaus found himself in the midst of controversy...a pattern certain seems to be in place.
The main rivals of the Gold Dust Trio were the Stecher brothers, Joe and Tony, and Jack Curley. The Trio had put the World Heavyweight Championship onto a newcomer, former football star, Wayne Munn. A match was set up between Munn and Stanislaus as a way to solidify Munn as a real serious competitor in the eyes of the spectators. On April 15, 1925 the Trio saw all their hard work taken away from them in the blink of an eye as Stanislaus double crossed them and continuously pinned Munn until the referee had to announce him as the winner.
Stanislaus had not gone into business for himself though, he had been paid a large sum of money by the Stecher brothers to do so. Just over a month later completing the deal, Stanislaus dropped the title to Joe Stecher. From that point on his career things started to wind down, he still continued to compete on a semi-regular basis though and as the nature of the business dictates, he kept on travelling to do so.
On January 29, 1928 he once again met the Great Gama, it is often reported that the match drew 60,000 spectators, but it is thought the stadium which had been specially built for the event in India could only hold 40,000, either way, the event sold out and was a massive hit even 18 years after the original encounter between the two and was impressive to say the least when considering that both men were well past their prime.
The outcome of the match which is often told is the Great Gama threw and Stanislaus in around 45 seconds in a legitimate bout, this probably was not the case though. It is rumored that the Maharajah who was in attendance for the match, had hired Gama as his private wrestler in 1910, so he paid Stanislaus to lose in fear of a riot if he did win. The reasoning provided for Stanislaus accepting the pay-off was he had lost a lot of his fortune during World War I and had been trying to build it up since, it is also noted that the Great Gama would not have known of the plan or he would not have competed.
There are also stories wrestlers in the 1950s heard tales of something suspicious during the match, but it is recorded that none of them were willing to speak in detail on the matter. It seems only fitting though that right up until the end Stanislaus had conspiracy, controversy and people pondering over the workings of his match.
After that match Stanislaus went into semi-retirement, at first he became a matchmaker in New York, but that does not appear to have lasted too long. So with his wrestling days behind him, he found a new direction to focus all his acquired skill and efforts; training the next generation.
He traveled to South America to scout young athletes he could train in the art of professional wrestling. While there he came across someone who went on to be considered a true pioneer of the industry, Argentina Rocca. Stanislaus also trained Harley Race and Johnny Valentine, with the help of his bother Wladek. Stanislaus actually spent quite a lot of time in South America and touring various areas with his brother as both his manager and a promoter of shows, also.
Zbyszko appeared in a movie during 1932 called "Madison Square Garden," where he played himself. When World War II broke out Stanislaus found his skills as a linguist useful and thus was called upon by the War Department. He also had a lead role in the 1950 movie, "Night and the City," in that he played a grizzled pro-wrestler. Director Jukes Dassin recalls when he contacted Zbyszko he was living in New Jersey working as a chicken farmer and remembered him as being "a beautiful, cultured, multilingual."
At the age of 88 on September 23, 1967, Stanislaus (Cyganiewicz) Zbyszko suffered a heart attack and passed away. He will forever be remembered as one of the first controversial figures in professional wrestling, along with being known as a legitimate hooker with an excellent skill set and knowledge. To anyone who knew him outside of the ring and had the privilege of knowing him personally, they remembered him as the intellect he was. Even the fans who don't know who Stanislaus Zbyszko is, will always remember the name Zbyszko from when Larry Whistler adopted the surname Zbyszko during his professional wrestling career during the 1970's all the way up until present day.
Unique content strictly for the Professional Wrestling Historical Society.
Biography of Stanislaus (Cyganiewicz) Zbyszko.
Author: Jimmy Wheeler.
Published: July 2014.
Biography: #137.
Editor: Jimmy Wheeler.
Updated: November 30, 2018.
Unique content strictly for the Professional Wrestling Historical Society.
Biography of Stanislaus (Cyganiewicz) Zbyszko.
Author: Jimmy Wheeler.
Published: July 2014.
Biography: #137.
Editor: Jimmy Wheeler.
Updated: November 30, 2018.