The Strongest Men on Earth

by Graeme Kent

  ‘You are Englishmen!’ he cried self-righteously. ‘This man is a famous foreign professional. He comes here tonight for cheap advertisement. I will gladly meet him in a properly arranged match. My challenge is to British wrestlers only!’

  Billed as ‘the King of Wrestlers’, Carkeek had always been a quick-witted man with an eye on the main chance. For some years he had been wrestling in the West Country, the home of his parents, using the jacketed Cornish style in which grips could only be held on the coats and the object was to throw an opponent flat on his back.

  Carkeek would take on all comers, defying any of them to last fifteen minutes against him. He would then end his act with the usual hackneyed displays of manual strength. The Cornishman described the climax of Carkeek’s performance at a hall in Penzance in 1888: ‘Carkeek threw two volunteers from the crowd. He then allowed them to stand on his chest while he rested on his hands and feet.’

  After a lucrative sojourn, the American finally had to flee the area after complaints that the results of a number of bouts in which he had been engaged had been fixed in advance in order to facilitate betting scams. The West Briton newspaper of 15 December 1887 censoriously had exposed details of such a prearranged match between Carkeek and a wrestler called Sam Rundle and a subsequent court case, emphasising the fact that Carkeek was involved in a match with a pre-arranged verdict: ‘Carkeek, Rundle and a man named Pascoe had arranged the match. Rundle knew that the match was a bogus one.’

  At the Alhambra Theatre, in the space of a few minutes the resourceful Carkeek had managed to make the tongue-tied Russian appear a double-dyed villain intent only on perpetrating a fraud on the innocent English public. The audience began to hiss the now bewildered Hackenschmidt and shout at him to go home. Disconsolately the Russian wrestler walked off the stage.

  It had been a long journey from his Dorpat birthplace in 1878 to the inhospitable stage of the Alhambra. By the time he was sixteen, Hackenschmidt already had a local reputation as a muscular prodigy and all-round athlete. His speciality was declared to be having a horse lowered by a pulley on to his shoulders and then walking a few paces carrying the animal. He attracted the interest of Dr Wladislav von Krajewski, a physical culture guru who ran a gymnasium in St Petersburg. The physician started training the young Hackenschmidt, promising the youngster, as Hackenschmidt said in his autobiography, ‘I will make you the strongest man in the world.’ What the Estonian did not know was that von Krajewski believed that sex was a great weakener for young athletes. As Hackenschmidt morosely complained for the duration of his stay in St Petersburg, he was chaperoned as carefully as a young girl.

  With such stories, true or false, circulating, it was not long before the young Hackenschmidt had attracted the attention of one of the many touring wrestlers roaming from tournament to tournament on the Continent. The grappler was George Lurich, a well-known strongman. Lurich took the young Hackenschmidt under his wing, coaching the youth in the rudiments of wrestling and helping him to develop his muscular strength even further.

  By 1898, Hackenschmidt’s burgeoning reputation was such that he was invited to display his strength in St Petersburg by Count Ribeaupierre, who held the ceremonial title of Master of Horse to the Tsar. Hackenschmidt impressed an invited audience with his new party piece. He stood between two horses, each facing in a different direction. Hackenschmidt grasped their harnesses, tensed his mighty muscles and resisted all efforts by the straining animals to tear him in half. Experienced strongmen muttered that the feat was not quite as impressive as it looked, because by pulling in opposite directions the two horses had each nullified the effect of the other. However, this was a display for seasoned strongmen. Few young men could have pulled off such a stunt and Hackenschmidt now certainly looked the part of a strongman.

  He also continued with his wrestling. In the same year the Russian won several amateur tournaments and was feted when he pressed a weight of 279lbs above his head. In 1899, he was recruited into service in the Life Guards but was released after five months to sally into the wide world and win glory for the Tsar and his adopted motherland as a professional wrestler. Wrestling in the static Greco-Roman style, which did not permit holds below the waist, he toured Europe, winning tournaments in Moscow, Paris, Budapest, Vienna and Constantinople. The Moscow championships were a real test of stamina, extending over a forty-day period.

  After the Viennese tournament, Hackenschmidt had claimed the Greco-Roman heavyweight championship of the world, but then as now there was no authoritative international sanctioning body and the Russian was only one of many wrestlers laying claim to the title.

  Nevertheless, the word was beginning to spread among the strength fraternity that in Georg Hackenschmidt a new star, both in wrestling and weightlifting, was beginning to emerge. Almost inevitably, it would seem, Hackenschmidt cemented that reputation against the perennial fall guy, Charles A. Sampson.

  Their meeting occurred, or rather did not occur, in St Petersburg. Sampson, on tour as usual, was going through his customary routine at a theatre in the city when he heard that the young Georg Hackenschmidt was in the audience. Sensing a chance for additional publicity and always happy to embarrass younger strength athletes, Sampson challenged Hackenschmidt to come up on to the stage and lift the long, heavy steel pole that the older man had just finished hoisting above his head. Unfortunately Sampson’s reputation for deviousness had preceded him even as far as Russia. Hackenschmidt and his companions had noticed that the challenge pole had been discarded, as if by chance, behind a curtain. Hackenschmidt surmised correctly that while it was out of sight in this fashion the Frenchman’s assistants had been busily filling the hollow steel cylinder with lead shot, increasing its tonnage considerably.

  Nevertheless, Hackenschmidt strolled nonchalantly on to the stage and agreed to attempt to lift the weight – as long as Sampson would elevate it above his head one more time first! As was his wont, Sampson argued and blustered, but adamantly refused to attempt the lift again, knowing it to be impossible. Triumphantly Hachenschmidt turned to the audience and in stentorian tones explained what had happened, exposing the other man as a fraud. In an attempt to alleviate matters, Sampson insisted that he only needed more time in order to prepare for this unexpected challenge contest. He defied Hackenschmidt to come prepared for a trial of strength with him on the following Friday night. The Estonian agreed willingly. At this the crowd’s catcalls turned to cheers. However, when Hackenscmidt and the spectators arrived at the hall a few days later it was to discover that Charles Sampson had broken his theatrical engagement and had fled from the city.

  The day after his abortive attempt to challenge Jack Carkeek in London, the disconsolate and almost penniless Hackenschmidt was on the point of returning to the Continent when he met C. B. Cochran. The introduction was effected by Harry Taft, an American comedian outside the Tivoli theatre. He had seen Hackenschmidt wrestle on the Continent and described the Russian’s prowess in glowing terms. The opportunistic Cochran immediately offered to become Hackenschmidt’s manager. The Englishmen knew nothing about wrestling but he was not about to let a little thing like that stand between him and a potential meal ticket. Initially Hackenschmidt was dubious about the proposed business relationship with a stranger, but Cochran was persuasive and the wrestler had nothing to lose. With some reluctance he agreed to allow the would-be entrepreneur the opportunity to steer him to the promised gold and glory.

  Cochran was aware that he would have to capitalise on Georg Hackenschmidt’s ability as a wrestler. He was also aware that the real money was to be earned as a strongman on the music hall stages. The Russian was a very well-built man, possessed great natural strength and could easily be taught a few strongman tricks. Accordingly the fledgling manager bombarded newspapers with florid handouts describing the shy and retiring Hackenschmidt as ‘the wonder of the age’. It was not all bombast. C. B. Cochran’s privately expressed opinion of the Russian Lion was just as laudatory as his public utteranc
es: ‘The most perfect specimen of physical manhood I have ever seen. He had not the bulging muscles of Sandow or Sampson, the strongmen, but the smooth rippling muscles of a greyhound, and a slender waist.’

  The breakthrough came surprisingly quickly when the Daily Mail published a glowing puff in the shape of an article with the heading ‘Is Strength Genius?’ Hackenschmidt was a thoughtful, philosophical and surprisingly temperamental man. He did not conform to the public image of a strength athlete, and the article made great play with his theories of the cosmos.

  More to the point, as far as Cochran was concerned, the publicity bore fruit in the shape of a week’s booking at a music hall for his new client, at a rate of £70. Dutifully Hackenschmidt went through the usual hackneyed stage routines of lifting weights, giving posing exhibitions and challenging any member of the audience to wrestle with him.

  By now other newspapers were writing about the Russian, leading to an appearance in the boxing ring at the National Sporting Club, where he stripped to his posing trunks and gave a display of muscle flexing.

  Cochran was doing his job well, but trouble lay over the horizon. Flushed with triumph, Hackenschmidt next accepted a fee of £150 a week to appear for five weeks at the London Tivoli. He flopped. The Russian’s steadily decreasing audiences could not help noticing that the stolid Hackenschmidt was no showman. His physique was impressive but his weightlifting displays were dull and his onstage wrestling bouts were over almost as soon as they had begun. Hackenschmidt simply could not grasp the concept of ‘carrying’ a challenger from the audience for a few minutes in order to entertain the audience. Nor could the agitated Cochran at first persuade his protégé of the necessity of spicing up his act.

  By the end of the Tivoli booking, word of the Russian’s boring stage routines had spread among the other music hall proprietors and Hackenschmidt and Cochran were both unemployed again. In desperation Cochran turned to the city of Liverpool. Wrestling was quite popular in Lancashire. Tom Cannon was a local veteran, a former champion of England who still laid claim to the European title bestowed upon him by someone who happened to be passing after an obscure provincial match as long ago as 1894. No one in the sporting world paid much attention to such claims, which were the stock-in-trade of most professional wrestlers of the era.

  A more genuine claim on the part of the Liverpool man was that he had probably been the first English wrestler to earn a living in the emerging grappling market in the USA. Little is known of the contests he engaged in there, but he is on record for having been annoyed by the Solid Man, William Muldoon, and even to have challenged him. An edition of the New York Times on 21 December 1882 described how the Englishman issued his defiance at a sports meeting organised by the Metropolitan Rowing Club before a crowd of five hundred:

  Mr Tom Cannon caused a sensation by preceding a wrestling exhibition by saying that Mr William Muldoon, who was present, had been stating through newspaper columns that Tom Cannon was no good. ‘I am good enough for him!’ continued Mr Cannon, ‘and I now challenge him to step upon this platform to wrestle me either Graeco-Roman or catch as catch can.’ Loud and prolonged cries for Muldoon followed Mr Cannon’s challenge but Mr Muldoon remained in his seat.

  Cannon was an interesting and courageous man. If he had come along a little later when the wrestling boom was at its height, and if he had been able to secure the services of a manager as lively as C. B. Cochran, he might have become a major figure in the early grappling world. As it was the best that he could do was use his strength and skills to meet the needs of a wanderlust practically amounting to restlessness. Tom Cannon was a muscular fidget.

  Like many brawny Lancashire men of his age and class, Cannon started by working in the pits. He then served for a time as a policeman, where he honed his wrestling skills to such an extent that he was encouraged to turn professional. He never secured enough backing to make a great deal of money and he was never the ‘house’ fighter, aided by a sympathetic promoter to build up an impressive winning record. This meant that throughout his career Cannon sometimes had to wrestle to order, losing to much inferior wrestlers when the wagers were laid. Still, in the vernacular, when his chains were off and he could fight freely, in his prime he could be a fearsome opponent, especially when he abandoned the staid Lancashire and Greco-Roman styles and concentrated on the more spectacular catch-as-catch-can form of grappling.

  In 1881, he is recorded as losing to ‘Little’ Joe Acton in a match billed for the catch-as-catch-can championship of the world. By 1887 he was wrestling in New Zealand. At the end of the same year he had moved across to Australia and was lodging at a hostelry owned by a man called Tom Taylor near Randwick Racecourse in Sydney. He was challenging all comers to matches under the rules of all or any of the five major currently recognised wrestling styles. His weight was recorded as 200lbs and his height as 5ft 8in.

  By 1888, Cannon had visited the USA, where he defeated such highly rated performers as the Japanese Sorakichi and the original Ed ‘Strangler’ Lewis. A typical itinerary on this tour was impressive. On Monday he wrestled in Rochester. Tuesday saw him grappling in Buffalo. On Wednesday he appeared in Cleveland against the formidable Tom Jenkins. By Friday he was back in Cleveland. He ended the week with a bout in Cincinnati.

  It was on this tour that Tom Cannon reached the nadir of his professional career when he was forced to tour briefly in a tent show with the notorious psychopath Clarence Whistler, who had the habit of turning a pistol on co-stars with whom he had fallen out. At the end of that year Cannon returned to London to grapple the Frenchman Eugen Bazin at the Royal Aquarium. In 1889, he was in Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Louis Uni, the mighty Apollon, and for a time became his manager and trainer, looking after the big man when he took on challengers at a wrestling and strongman show in the Avenue de Neuilly.

  Cannon also had a few bouts in the French capital but obviously was not putting his all into his contests. In 1890, the Paris correspondent of the Sportsman wrote,

  The grand wrestling match at the Folies Bergère between Tom Cannon and Felix Bernard which has been advertised all over Paris as a genuine contest for ten thousand francs, was, after all, nothing but a hoax.

  The contest at the Winter Garden was so tame, with both contestants rolling aimlessly all over the stage, and so incensed the crowd, convinced that it was being cheated, that there were cries of ‘A bas les voleurs!’ (‘Down with the robbers!’). Spectators stormed the box office to get their money back. The gas was turned off, a customary precaution in such riots, and the police summoned. The crowd was driven into the street by a number of forced charges, but not before almost all the tables and chairs in the hall had been smashed.

  Nothing daunted, Tom Cannon then went on to wrestle Carl Abbs at the American Theatre in Berlin, losing after eighty minutes. He next popped up in India, where he was matched against Karim Bux in Calcutta. Bux was the favourite wrestler of the wealthy Maharajah of Cooch Behar, who played a prominent part in proceedings from the ringside. Cannon was adjudged the loser. He left the theatre furiously, saying that the Maharah had influenced the judges to give Bux the decision. Cannon declared that he would no longer remain in a place where such high personages could be guilty of mean, unsportsmanlike and unjust behaviour. He (Cannon) intended sailing to Ceylon and Egypt, where he hoped to pick up some matches and be treated better than he had been in India.

  Cannon stopped off briefly in Paris in 1896, where a wrestling manager of dubious reputation called Antonio Pierri hired him to referee a bout at the Cirque d’Hiver in Paris, between Yousouff, ‘the Terrible Turk’ and Ibrahim Mahmout. Preparatory to a tour of the USA, Pierri was trying to gain Yousouff a reputation as a wrestler who would stop at nothing to win. At one point in the bout Yousouff pretended to go berserk and attacked his opponent wildly. Adhering to the script, Cannon picked up a stick and beat the wrestler with it, before sending for the police.

  He then spent some years giving wrestling exhibitions in c
ircuses, notably Hengler’s in London and Liverpool, but soon was on the move again. In April 1897 the London Mirror of Life wrote that Tom Cannon ‘has elected once more to seek fresh woods and pastures new, where, by his indomitable courage and determination he will endeavour to subdue all aspirants who may oppose him for the proud title of champion’. The newspaper went on to say that a large crowd had seen Cannon off on the midnight train from Liverpool to Southampton, where he was due to catch a boat for South Africa.

  A year later Cannon was embarking upon another two-year tour of the USA, wrestling all over the country. In 1900, he secured a top-billed spot with a circus, claiming to be the world Greco-Roman champion. He lost credibility – and the job – when reporters pointed out that over the past twelve months Cannon had lost to Antonio Pierri, Joe Acton, Dan McLeod and a number of others.

  Time was running out for the ageing Lancashire man. He tried one more tour of Great Britain, taking on all comers at a Liverpool music hall, offering £10 to any wrestler, amateur or professional who could last fifteen minutes against him. By now he was in straitened circumstances and allowed himself to be matched against Madrali, the Terrible Turk, the latest overseas sensation to appear on the wrestling scene. A shadow of his former self, Tom Cannon was defeated easily in what was described as a grievous mismatch. It was 1906 and Tom Cannon was fifty-nine years old. Hopefully, he announced, ‘I was forty years old before I began to appreciate the finer points of wrestling.’