DragonKingKarl Pioneer Era Pro Wrestling Omnibus Book Review

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By: “DragonKingKarl” Karl Stern (Patreon / Facebook / Email)

Webmaster & Writer - When It Was Cool

Podcast Host - Wrestling Observer, When It Was Cool

I am very excited to release my new book, DragonKingKarl’s Pioneer Era of Pro Wrestling Omnibus: The Bible of the Pioneer Era of Pro Wrestling. I have put years of work into this project which, I believe, is the most in-depth and detailed exploration of pre-1900 professional wrestling ever undertaken.

The Pioneer Era Pro Wrestling Omnibus: The Bible of the Pioneer Era of Wrestling is sourced from hundreds of pro wrestling researchers, newsletters, books, magazines, newspapers, and years of firsthand research, and I have documented every major event in pro wrestling before the year 1900.

Wrestling legend Frank Gotch changed the sports world. But Frank Gotch didn't appear out of a void and create pro wrestling. Professional wrestling had flourished in America for over 50 years before Frank Gotch debuted. This is the story of those pioneers of pro wrestling. This is the origin and evolution of pro wrestling in the 1800s!

Major pro wrestling stars you will read about in DragonKingKarl’s Pioneer Era Pro Wrestling Omnibus include William Muldoon, Col. James H. McLaughlin, John McMahon, Evan "Strangler" Lewis, Homer Lane, Andre Christol, Tom Jenkins, Farmer Burns, Dan McLeod, Clarence Whistler, Duncan C. Ross, Donald Dinnie, Prof. Thiebaud Bauer, Prof. William Miller, Greek George, and many more.

The DragonKingKarl's Pioneer Era Pro Wrestling Omnibus book was compiled from a research project at the When It Was Cool website and podcast network. The timeline used in the DragonKingKarl's Pioneer Era Pro Wrestling Omnibus chronicles every major pro wrestling show known from the 1800s, title changes, births, deaths, arrests and run-ins with the law, major angles, and business details.

I have published pro wrestling newsletters, podcasts, and research for almost 40 years and have hosted the DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Audio Show at the Wrestling Observer website for over a decade and am a long-time voter in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame.

I have been researching the pioneer era of professional wrestling for a long time. While the bulk of my wrestling research (and fandom) is tied to the 1980’s, my favorite time period to read about and research is the pioneer era.

I consider it as such due to how dramatically Frank A. Gotch changed the wrestling landscape during his time as a pro wrestler. He became an iconic sporting figure in the United States and retired as the undefeated and undisputed World heavyweight wrestling champion.

The era before Frank Gotch has long been nebulous. It was full of unsubstantiated claims and shadowy figures. It was also, for many decades, believed by the majority of people who even cared to think about it in the first place, to have been a dangerous frontier of mixed styles and shoot (legitimate) matches. As it turns out, I believe the truth to be a little different but more on that shortly.

I first became aware of the pre-Lou Thesz era of pro wrestling in the pages of a 1980’s pro wrestling magazine of all places. While I don’t remember the specific issue, I am sure it was one of the “Apter Mags” called that by insider fans because of Senior Editor Bill Apter who was sort of the Stan Lee of that world. The magazines were actually the Stanley Weston family of magazines which included, among others, Pro Wrestling Illustrated, The Wrestler, and Inside Wrestling. In one of these kayfabe (or storyline based) magazines the writers put together a fantasy card of the greatest wrestlers of all time against each other. I was unfamiliar with one of the names listed inside: Stanislaus Zbyszko.

So, I began researching Stanislaus Zbyszko which led me down a rabbit hole, deeper and deeper into the mysterious recesses of pro wrestling history ending up in the American Civil War and before. By the late 1990’s I had published my first piece on the time period called The Pioneers of Wrestling Special, a companion of my DragonKing Press Newsletter which focused on the history of pro wrestling.

That was now over twenty years ago and much more information is now available. Multiple books have been written on the era and a vast collection of millions of pages of historical newspapers are now online. All one has to do is dig to uncover the history of, well, just about anything.  

I have researched, firsthand, thousands of various old newspapers and manuscripts. I now think the totality of all the information paints a much clearer, and different, picture of the origins of professional wrestling, especially in the United States.

It is here I should make a distinct clarification. Wrestling and professional wrestling as a developing sport/pseudosport is far older in Europe. The pieces of what became modern entertainment style professional wrestling in the United States started first with the regional variations of wrestling styles in Europe and were brought to the United States by immigrants and jelled here during the American Civil War. I have elected to focus mainly on the development of pro wrestling in the United States and to leave the European history to those far wiser and more well studied than myself.

The conclusion I have come to is that professional wrestling in the United States has been worked (predetermined) since literally day one.

I will tell you in advance that many historians differ greatly from me in that opinion and I leave you, the reader, to make that ultimate decision for yourself and your own research. However, I firmly believe that with the research you have before you in this book and in my 1000 Hours Podcast Series the case can be made that much of wrestling has always been “worked” (or predetermined, or hippodromed, and from here on I will use the term “worked” in this book).

Was every match from the mid-1800’s worked? No. There were plenty of legitimate matches. Were there a LOT of worked matches since the mid-1800’s? Yes.

The newspapers have openly questioned the legitimacy of wrestling since at least the mid-1800’s. Spectators at matches were chanting “fake, fake” as early as the 1860’s. While pro wrestling today is worked for entertainment purposes in the same way a movie fight is choreographed- to give the viewer the most exciting fight it can and to further enhance a story, pro wrestling in the 1800’s became worked for an entirely different reason- to cheat gamblers out of money.

Professional wrestling originally became predetermined in order to throw betting odds by those in attendance. It became a traveling scam show much like the crooked carnival games and traveling snake oil salesmen of the era. The wrestlers, their backers, and their promoters, would travel from town to town working the same scam. In the days before the internet, radio, or television it was easy to outrun the newspaper to the next town and gather up their money on a crooked sport. That is how pro wrestling became “worked”.

In the pages of DragonKingKarl’s Pioneer Era of Pro Wrestling Omnibus you will see the story unfold for yourselves. While some of the entries may seem superfluous or unattached to future events, I have decided to include them in hopes of giving names and places that might stir future researchers and historians to investigate them. Many entries have been removed due to space limitations but they are published on our Patreon page at WhenItWasCool.com in the weekly newsletters we published.

I have started in 1831 because one of the most famous wrestlers had his most famous match in that year, future United States President Abraham Lincoln.  I have put considerable research into the fact and fiction of Abraham Lincoln as a wrestler. I dare to even suggest I am probably the foremost expert on the matter of Abraham Lincoln as a wrestler, so I have included that research here for you. This will also serve to illustrate how much wrestling changed from what it was pre-Civil War to what it became post-Civil War.

It has also become evident to me in my research that the reputation of wrestling in America has gone through a number of cycles. In the Lincoln era and before, wrestling was seen as a noble sport in which to test the strength and skill of young men and was viewed as an indicator of vitality. Clearly, it was also viewed this way in Europe.

However, by the 1850’s just prior to the American Civil War, wrestling had gained a reputation of an undesirable thing. Common fights among drunks, criminals, and rowdy types were often referred to in the newspapers as “wrestling” making it hard to research and distinguish a sporting wrestling match from a common street fight. 

Letters were being written to newspapers decrying “wrestling” as a sinful pastime and often lumping it in with gambling and drinking. Newspapers would often run stories of men being badly injured or killed in “wrestling” matches and warning others against the foolishness of participating in such sinful or vice-like activities. Take, for example, this excerpt from the October 7, 1853 edition of the Vermont Standard newspaper which was running an editorial on a potential temperance law for Windsor County, “For under the operation of any of our former laws, we should have been disgraced with a dozen rings of wrestling, as many regular fights, and a copious sprinkling of drunken loafers...”

As I have done in my previous books, I will include various DragonKingKarl Notes which will serve to add interesting trivia, facts, and context to the almanac of facts and the timeline before you. I hope you enjoy and learn more than you ever knew about the origins and evolution of entertainment style pro wrestling. Order Now!

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