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

Webmaster & Writer - When It Was Cool

Podcast Host - Wrestling Observer, When It Was Cool

The Pioneer Era of Wrestling Verses The Modern Era of Wrestling: They Are Closer Than You Think…

Frank Gotch was not the first major U.S. Wrestling Champion. The First Major U.S. Wrestling Champion was crowned 30 years earlier.

I do a podcast called 1000 Hours which focuses on the pioneer era of professional wrestling which I describe as the era before Frank Gotch or the year 1900. I am also currently working on a new book which I hope to release before fall titled DragonKingKarl’s Pioneer Era Wrestling Omnibus which I hope will be looked at as the Bible of pioneer era pro wrestling. I have spent years in research for this book and have examined in excess of 1000 newspapers from the 1800s in an effort to put together a timeline and narrative of the pioneer era of wrestling.

Over the last twenty years or so, roughly the amount of time I have been heavily researching the pioneer era of wrestling, I have come across many stories and tales which I now believe to be inaccurate or outright untrue. There have been many tall tales about the wrestlers of the pioneer era and that whole time frame which were written about in books, magazines, bulletins, newsletters, and websites which, unfortunately, are not backed up by any good evidence. Sadly, it goes far beyond just getting a few dates wrong. Tales were told about the pioneer era wrestlers which were written in books decades after the fact and told in hyperbole or were outright kayfabed. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Unfortunately, I too have helped spread misinformation over the years not knowing any better.

Col. James H. McLaughlin won the 1870 Detroit International Tournament which was the first major pro wrestling tournament in the United States. It set the standardized rules for years to come.

Twenty years ago, we did not have access to the quantity of 1800’s era newspapers that we do today. Unfortunately, we told stories printed by others, retold them, tried to clean up what we thought was wrong and sent them out into the world. In many cases, those stories were wrong. I am trying to correct all of that with my upcoming book.

What I have discovered, however, is that the pioneer era of pro wrestling and the modern era of pro wrestling are a lot closer related than has previously been told or known. Here are a few bullet points that you may find interesting about the pioneer era of pro wrestling:

  • False: The pioneer era of wrestling is closer kin to modern MMA and UFC than pro wrestling such as WWE and TEW.

    • I hate to burst the bubble of wrestling historians and researchers who have put in good honest work over the last few decades, but the pioneer era of pro wrestling was almost entirely worked. There were certainly some real matches but not nearly to the degree we have previously thought and, I firmly believe, that over half at least, was worked or rigged. The Greco-Roman wrestling of the pioneer era had virtually nothing in common with Olympic Greco-Roman wrestling as we know it. It was imported as an entertainment exhibition by French wrestlers and was largely seen as nothing more than fictionalized entertainment by 1878.

  • False: The styles of wrestling in the pioneer era such as Collar & Elbow, Catch-as-Catch-Can, and Greco-Roman were predecessors to modern MMA and UFC, not modern entertainment style pro wrestling.

    • Catch-as-Catch-Can may be an ancestor of modern amateur wrestling and, to a degree, modern Catch wrestling. Of the three main pioneer era wrestling styles, it probably had the most in common with modern martial fighting systems. There were still a large degree of rigged matches even in Catch-as-Catch-Can. Pioneer era Greco-Roman wrestling was almost entirely a show style meant for entertainment and a large number of the Greco-Roman wrestling matches were billed as exhibitions, even in the 1800s. The person largely responsible for popularizing Greco-Roman in America was Prof. Thiebaud Bauer who was a conman through and through and was even arrested for throwing matches. Collar & Elbow style may have had a higher percentage of legitimate matches than any of the other styles but by 1878, it too was firmly in the camp of being rigged a lot of the time.

  • Debatable: William Muldoon was the most significant figure of the pioneer era of pro wrestling with Evan “Strangler” Lewis and Farmer Burns gaining greater influence toward the end of the 1800s. I would argue, and strongly so, that Col. James H. McLaughlin had more lasting impact and was more important to the development of professional wrestling in the United States than was William Muldoon. Muldoon got a heavy degree of publicity in the New York newspapers and was a celebrity pro wrestler. However, the groundwork laid by McLaughlin in Collar & Elbow and even Prof. Thiebaud Bauer in Greco-Roman was more significant in the development of pro wrestling in the United States than anything William Muldoon did. This point still has more research ahead and I reserved the right to change my opinion here.

In any case, and I bear this out every two weeks on my 1000 Hours Podcast and will strongly lay out the case in my upcoming DragonKingKarl’s Pioneer Era of Pro Wrestling Omnibus book, but modern pro wrestling is a direct descendant of pioneer era wrestling in America and modern-day wrestlers Cody Rhodes, Roman Reigns, Kenny Omega, and Will Ospreay owe their origins to Col. James H. McLaughlin, Prof. Thiebaud Bauer, and William Muldoon.

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