The Strongest Men on Earth

by Graeme Kent

  He was merely whistling in the dark. He was home again, exhausted and impoverished after his recent unsuccessful tour. Originally a Greco-Roman wrestler, his style had been regarded as boring in the USA and he had adopted the more freestyle and fluid catch-as-catch-can form of the sport. Now his luck had turned for the worse to such an extent that he even started working again in the pits he had left with such relief all those years ago.

  Cochran heard of Cannon’s plight and for his own ends deliberately set out to resurrect the Lancashire man’s grappling career. He issued a public challenge to Cannon on behalf of the much younger Hackenschmidt. The had-been local wrestler could hardly believe his good luck in being offered an unexpected payday when he thought that his ring career was over. He accepted the challenge at once and went into training. Using all his publicity skills, C. B. Cochran set out to persuade the inhabitants of Liverpool that the forthcoming contest would turn out to be the most exciting ever witnessed in the northwest.

  For once the promoter did not have to go out of his way to garner publicity. Events conspired to provide the delighted manager with as much precious newspaper space as even he could desire. Wrestling was seldom witnessed on the stage – apart from the exhibitions provided by Jack Carkeek and a handful of others – and Cochran could not persuade any of the city’s music hall proprietors to stage the proposed bout. Theatre owners even doubted if the sport really constituted a variety act.

  As a last resort Cochran decided to promote the contest himself. He secured a three-month lease on the derelict Prince of Wales Theatre in Clayton Square and announced that after the inaugural Hackenschmidt–Cannon match there would be more bouts on succeeding evenings, many of them featuring the Russian Lion. Suddenly Cochran was confronted by the horrified owner of the theatre, fearful of losing his licence should such a degrading spectacle as professional wrestling be featured in his establishment. He insisted that the contest, now being billed as the European championship, be cancelled.

  Cochran ignored the proprietor. He sent out hundreds of men bearing display boards advertising the match. The distraught theatre owner retaliated by dispatching his own sandwich-board men, announcing that the bout most certainly would not take place. Feelings between the rival factions reached such a pitch that whenever the opposing board carriers met in the street, fights would sometimes break out between them.

  The resultant publicity was tremendous. On the opening night the hall was besieged by would-be patrons demanding admittance. But the enterprising theatre owner was not yet beaten. Before the spectators could start surging into the theatre, all the lights in the building went out. The gas pipes had been cut, almost a reflex action in such situations. Cochran rose to the occasion. While he sent his minions out to scour the city for gas fitters he addressed the mob. Hoarsely he assured the crowd that if only everyone was patient the fight would assuredly go on.

  In a short time the required technicians were rounded up. As an added inducement Cochran promised the leading fitter that if the lighting could be restored, the man could act as timekeeper for the main event. The incentive worked. Eventually the lights fluttered into life and the show began.

  The opening night turned out to be highly successful. The Russian Lion had little trouble in disposing of the ageing Tom Cannon but Hackenschmidt’s impressive strength and physique awed the audience. Later Hackenschmidt described the contest:

  The English champion now something of a veteran, had had a very wide and exceptional experience, and was able to bring into play some very skilful, if somewhat painful moves, which he had picked up from Turkish wrestlers.

  Hackenschmidt won the bout by a single submission after thirty-three minutes, having placed Tom Cannon in a hammerlock. But the dogged owner of the Prince of Wales struck again. He had discovered in the fine print of the contract a clause stating that the lessee had to vacate the theatre by midnight after every performance. On the night of the second performance at his theatre he saw to it that the police escorted Cochran and Hackenschmidt from the hall. As soon as the lessees had been ejected, the proprietor led a gang of hired thugs into the building and locked and barricaded the doors from the inside.

  The following morning, a determined Cochran stirred his wrestling troupe with an impassioned address and led them into Clayton Square to storm the theatre. After a frantic struggle the wrestlers wrenched one of the outer doors off its hinges and rushed up a narrow flight of stairs. At the head of the stairs the proprietor and his men were waiting. They turned a fire hose on Cochran and his followers, driving them back. In A Showman Looks On, Cochran told how three times he’d led a charge up the stairs and on each occasion the concentrated jet drove the gasping attackers back. At the fourth attempt the bedraggled grapplers reached the head of the steps. The men manipulating the hosepipe lost their nerve at the sight of the approaching horde of soaked and vengeful mammoths. They turned and fled.

  Throughout the hectic battle for possession of the stairs, Charles Cochran had been urging on his men with great vehemence but somehow, in the excitement of the final successful surge, he had lost contact with the main body of wrestlers. He found himself hurtling round a corner on his own. He stopped when he saw half a dozen of the owner’s hired hands waiting for him in pleased anticipation. The men leapt on the promoter, hustled him to the head of another flight of steps and hurled him down them with such velocity that he skidded on his back out into the street.

  Bruised and winded, the young showman dragged himself to his feet and staggered back into the Prince of Wales. By this time the main conflict was over. Only a few minor skirmishes were still being conducted. The local hard men had been no match for the professional wrestlers. Once again C. B. Cochran was in charge of the theatre.

  It turned out to have been a pyrrhic victory. The proprietor had not been idle overnight during his tenure of the theatre. During the uproar not only had the gas pipes been severed again but most of the seats in the auditorium had been removed as well. There would be no more wrestling in Liverpool that month.

  Nevertheless, the publicity engendered by what the newspapers termed the Battle of Clayton Square had been invaluable, for both Cochran and Hackenschmidt. Other cities began to clamour to see the Russian Lion in action, although in a more peaceful context.

  Acting quickly, Cochran signed a contract for Hackenschmidt to appear in Manchester, at £150 a week. At last the manager persuaded his charge to polish up his act and introduce more razzle-dazzle and showmanship into his music hall appearances. Former opponent Tom Cannon was recruited for the tour to train the Estonian in the art of presentation. With an eye to the future, the Lancashire wrestler introduced Georg Hackenschmidt to the intricacies of catch-as-catch-can wrestling, which was soon to eclipse the staid old Greco-Roman form in the public’s favour.

  Cochran also took on a German wrestler called Schackmann to play the part of the group’s resident ‘heavy’. Schackmann soon became an indispensable part of Hackenschmidt’s music hall routine. Night after night, the shapeless German would loom up out of the audience loudly challenging Hackenschmidt to a bout. The Russian Lion would feign amazement and then fury at such effrontery and the contest would be on. From the outset Schackmann would break every rule in the book. He would elbow Hackenschmidt, head-butt him, stamp on the Russian’s toes and even throw the referee out of the ring, before finally being subdued by his squeaky-clean opponent, to great public approbation, night after night.

  Cochran, who, like Hackenschmidt, was still learning on the job as far as screwing every last penny out of the music hall patrons was concerned, finally settled on an acceptable range of tariffs for his wrestler, which would sound agreeable when announced from the stage. His rates were to be taken up by many other music hall grapplers. The Russian Lion offered to pay £25 to any challenger who could last for fifteen minutes against him in a challenge bout. A generous £100 would be handed over to anyone from the audience who could gain a fall over the brawny professional. As a sign that no
one was banned, Hackenschmidt and Cochran also promised to pay £50 to any challenger who could show that Georg Hackenschmidt had failed to meet him in the ring within twenty-four hours of being challenged.

  If challenges from the audience were slow in coming, there was always the reliable old Tom Cannon on hand to step into the breach by pretending to go the distance with Hackenschmidt, thus securing a return match later in the week for a ‘sidestake’. With the heading of ‘Evergreen Cannon’, the Montreal Gazette reported on 22 November 1900:

  Tom Cannon, who for sixteen years held the championship of the world, lasted the time with Hackenschmidt, won £25 and the right to challenge him for £60 later in the week.

  As he further burnished Hackenschmidt’s act, which now by public demand included the obligatory exhibitions of weightlifting and muscle flexing, as well as wrestling, Cochran saw to it that the now conciliatory Hackenschmidt allowed a few hopeful challengers from the body of the theatre to last the full fifteen minutes with the champion and thus secure the cash prize. A heavily publicised return match would then be arranged at the hall for another night. This time Hackenschmidt would win without exerting himself, while C. B. Cochran pocketed any sidestake which had been arranged, or else bet a substantial sum on Hackenschmidt to win with enthusiastic but misguided fans of the local hopeful.

  Within twelve months, Georg Hackenschmidt was famous all over England with his music hall act. Like many of his contemporaries he started writing books and articles on physical culture. Where he differed from most of the others eager to sell their postal courses, was in his frank acceptance that regular training with heavy weights was essential in order to build substantial strength and muscle. In Hackenschmidt’s The Way to Live, he also advocated the beneficial effects of running:

  Run as much as you can and as often as you can, and whenever you come across a hill run up it. This will force you to inhale deep breaths and will also accustom you to breathing through your nose. Beside the chest and lung development resulting there from, you will soon appreciate the benefits which your leg muscles will develop.

  Hackenschmidt became so well known that the popular song ‘In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree’ was rewritten in his honour:

  When Hackenschmidt grappled with me

  He pulled like the roots of a tree.

  He gave me a punch where I just had my lunch

  And he mixed up my dinner and tea.

  Georg Hackenschmidt’s music hall strongman and wrestling act had become so popular that he attracted grapplers from all over the world to Great Britain hoping to emulate the Estonian’s success, just as weightlifters had flooded into the country in the wake of Eugen Sandow. They came in all shapes and sizes, but their intention was not to wrestle one another, although they would do so as a last resort. The grapplers realised that the big, steady money lay in securing lucrative music hall or vaudeville tours. First they had to attract the attention of the bookers, next they had to work up interesting stage acts, involving a combination of strongman stunts, wrestling, drama and humour. Once they had accomplished this they could stay on the twice-nightly entertainment circuit for years, even decades, without ever again having to risk life and limb in genuinely ferocious wrestling matches.

  Managers and agents started importing wrestlers they hoped to be able to turn into professional strongmen. ‘The whole country went wrestling mad,’ gloated C. B. Cochran, who held a trump card in Georg Hackenschmidt.

  For most of the first decade of the twentieth century there was a craze for ethnic grapplers who could offer the public glamorous backgrounds and suitably embellished exotic biographies. The first group to arrive came from India, a country with a long tradition of wrestling. Most princes of the different states had their own palace wrestlers, who were treated very well as long as they continued winning.

  The Indian wrestlers were assembled and imported to Europe by a promoter called R. B. Benjamin, who toured with a wrestling circus, offering to take on all comers. A Bengali millionaire called Shavat Kumar Mishra met the expenses of the tour. He was eager to see how the best Indian wrestlers would fare against European professionals.

  The impetus for the visit was the emergence of a wrestler many considered to be the best ever to come from the Indian continent. Gulam Mohammed was born in 1888, the son of a wrestler, and began grappling at the age of five, embarking upon a gruelling training regime designed to improve his strength and stamina. Eventually he reached a weight of 230lbs at a height of about 5ft 8in. Raised by his grandfather and an uncle, he began wrestling competitively at the age of fifteen. In 1906, he had won so many contests and displayed such skill that he was appointed a court wrestler. Three years later, he claimed the championship of India.

  R. B. Benjamin’s wrestling circus had a mixed time of it in Great Britain. The promoter made a great fanfare of the titles possessed by his troupe – Gama, the Indian champion, undefeated in two hundred matches; Imam Bux (Gama’s younger brother), the champion of Lahore; Ahmed Bux, the champion of Armritsar; and Gamu, the champion of Jullundhur. As a codicil, Benjamin added to the posters the reassuring information that the visitors from such a far-flung part of the Empire were all loyal British subjects.

  At first all went reasonably well. Benjamin, the promoter, secured a bout for Gama against Dr Benjamin Roller, ‘the Pride of Seattle’, a leading American wrestler. Roller was a genuine practising medical doctor and an interesting man: a former college athlete who had played American football for the Philadelphia Phillies, claimed a hotly disputed world record for throwing the discus, lectured at Washington University and had written a chapter on anaesthesia for a textbook on gynaecology. He had taken up wrestling to pay his way through college, but after a bout with wily old Jack Carkeek, allied to a minor betting coup, earned him enough to purchase his first house outright, he began to contemplate a long-term career in the sport.

  In an effort to make the big bucks, Roller once wrestled twenty-one times in a month, claiming to have lost only five of the contests. As befitted his medical background, his wrestling speciality lay in claiming in most of his bouts to have sustained spectacular injuries to parts of his body that laymen could not identify on an anatomical chart if they tried, but then battled on through transparent agony to conquer.

  The Great Gama defeated Roller by two falls secured in very quick time, impressing the wrestling public. Those inside the sport were less easily won over; lurking in the background was the form of the Machiavellian and unscrupulous US promoter Jack Curley, who had accompanied Roller across the Atlantic. It was rumoured that Curley was considering importing Gama to the USA and that the Pride of Seattle, who was known to be amenable to surreptitious deals when the price was right, might have gone into the tank in order to gather publicity for Gama on the far side of the Atlantic.

  True to form, Benjamin Roller claimed to have broken two of his ribs in the contest, but no one was really bothered. A more immediate result of Gama’s first victory was that R. B. Benjamin’s Indian Wrestling Circus secured an engagement at the Alhambra Theatre. The experienced manager worked out a convincing routine for his grapplers, including exhibition bouts between the Indians, challenges to anyone in the audience and displays of strength, including lifting heavy rocks. The highlight of the performance consisted of the Great Gama going through a modified training routine, lifting members of the audience above his head with one hand and bursting asunder a potato held between his fingers while Benjamin gave the audience an account of his regular physical regime. As a Muslim, Gama eschewed meat and ate a specially prepared vegetable broth six times a day, supplemented by copious draughts of milk. He spent most of his time preparing his body for his wrestling career. He would perform endless stretching and bending exercises. He also performed thousands of deep knee squats, often holding a heavy stone above his head, as well as push-ups and self-resistance exercises, in the course of a day. To strengthen his grip he would manipulate handfuls of thick clay between his fingers for thirty minutes a
t a time.

  Hackenschmidt was doing well with his music hall tours, where he was now clearing £200 a week after covering the wages of his supporting acts and paying all expenses, but he ignored Gama’s challenges. This led to Benjamin overplaying his hand. He matched Gama against Stanislaus Zbyszko, a top Polish wrestler, a squat, dour character with a reputation for erudition, who had been winning many matches on the Continent. His real name was Stanislaw Cyganiewicz but he had changed it to Zbyszko after a fictional Polish knight. Zbyszko was 5ft 6in. tall, bald and later was to attain a weight of almost 300lbs. He had started his career as a professional strongman and weightlifter. One opponent said that he resembled ‘a cross between a gorilla and the egg of some gigantic prehistoric bird’.

  The match, sponsored by the magazine John Bull, turned out to be a disaster. It took place at the Shepherd’s Bush Stadium in September 1910 for a sidestake, it was claimed, of £250 a side. Zbyszko trained in a gymnasium at Rottingdean, while Gama fitted in his preparations between London music hall appearances. Twelve thousand people attended, to be greeted by demure Japanese women in kimonos, handing out flowers. The spectators seemed lost in an arena capable of holding almost seventy thousand.

  From the start, Gama revealed his inexperience of modern western wrestling techniques. Almost at once he allowed Zbyszko to take him down to the mat. The Russian then squirmed over on to his stomach, with Gama lying ineffectually on top of him, and there the pair of them remained for over two hours.

  It was a bizarre encounter, officially timed at two hours and thirty-five minutes. Long before the end of that time, spectators were heading for the exits. For almost the entire duration of the bout, Stanislaus Zbyszko lay obdurately on his stomach beneath the Indian wrestler, like a supine tortoise, refusing to depart from this cautious, ultra-defensive strategy. Sometimes he rose on to his hands and knees but always he returned to the safety of his prone position on the mat, as Gama tried in vain to prise the Russian loose. In the end, while the handful of remaining spectators cheered ironically, the referee Jack Smith declared the so-called contest to be a draw.