Post by lwffantrav on Aug 11, 2011 23:15:04 GMT -4
The Man in the Mask
World Class Wrestling
In 1915, some fight promoters organized an international wrestling tournament at the Opera House in New York. A rising American star named Ed “Strangler” Lewis headlined a roster of other top grapplers from Russia, Germany, Italy, Greece and other countries. These were some of the biggest matches to be fought in New York City that year.
The was just one problem: almost nobody went to see them.
Ho-Hum
Wrestling, at least as it was fought back then, could be pretty boring for the average person to watch. As soon as the bell rang or the whistle was blown, the two wrestlers grabbed onto each other and then might circle round…and round…and round for hours on end, until one wrestler finally gained an advantage and defeated his opponent. Some bouts dragged on for nine hours or more.
Wrestling could also be hard to understand, which made it even more boring. In baseball, an outfielder either caught a fly ball or they didn’t. In football, the person with the ball either got tackled or they didn’t. Wrestling was different – when two grapplers circled for hours, who could tell at any point in the match who was winning? Did anyone even care?
Even by wrestling standards, 1915 was a particularly boring year because the world’s youngest and best wrestlers were all off fighting in World War I. Those that were left were often past their prime and not very entertaining. Not surprisingly, the organizers of the tournament at the Opera House were having trouble filling seats. For the first day or two, it looked like they were going to loose a lot of money.
For the first day or two.
Mystery Man
Things were about to change, thanks to one spectator. He was huge, but he didn’t stand out just because of his size – he stood out because he was wearing a black mask that covered his entire head. There was no explanation for what the man was doing there or why he was wearing the mask. He just sat there watching the matches each day, and when they ended, he left as ilently as he came.
Then, a few days into the tournament, the masked man and a companion suddenly stood up and loudly accused the promotion of banning the masked man from the tournament. He was the best wrestler of all and the promoters knew it, they claimed. That was why he was being kept out of the tournament, and they demanded that he be let back in. Security guards quickly hustled the pair out of the building, but they came back each day and repeated their demands, generating newspaper headlines in the process. By the end of the week, much of New York City was demanding that the masked man be allowed into the tournament.
Oh, All Right
Finally, on Saturday, the promoters gave in to the pressure and agreed to let him compete. Just days earlier, some of the world’s most famous wrestlers had battled one another in a nearly empty Opera House. No one card. Now throngs of New Yorkers ponied up the price of admission to watch the mysterious masked man fight, even though – or more likely because – they had no idea who he was or whether he even knew how to fight.
Sure enough, the Masked Marvel delivered – although not quite as much as he promised, because he lost one match only wrestler “Strangler” Lewis to a draw. But he whipped everyone else he wrestled, bringing the packed tournament to a thrilling end. Considering the amount of excitement that led up to those final bouts, it’s a good bet that the people who saw the masked man fight remembered the experience for the rest of their lives.
Mystery Revealed
The following year, the Masked Marvel was officially unmasked after losing a match with a wrestler named Joe Stecher. He turned out to be…Mort Henderson, a railroad detective from Altoona, Pennsylvania, who made his living throwing hobos off trains when he wasn’t in the ring. Henderson had wrestled for years under his own name, but he lost many of his matches and had gone nowhere in the sport. Even when he wasn’t wearing a mask, nobody knew who he was.
So how did Henderson do so well at the Opera House? The whole thing was a setup – the promoters planted him in the audience hoping that he would generate publicity and sell tickets. The other wrestlers were in on the scam, too; that is how he won so many fights.
Many New Yorkers realized that they’d been had, but nobody seemed to mind. The Masked Marvel was fun.
From Spectacle...To Sport…To Spectacle
Wrestling had long been full of colorful characters. After all, legitimate professional wrestling traced its roots back to the days when carnival strongmen traveled the country offering cash prizes to any locals who could pin them to the mat.
By 1915, wrestling had matured into a legitimate sport, a test of strength and skill, not quite as exciting as boxing, but still a sport that took itself serious. Mort Henderson could not have realized it at the time, but on that day he donned the mask for the first time in 1915, he changed professional wrestling forever. It was “at this point”, Keith Greenberg writes in Pro Wrestling: From Carnivals to Cable TV, “promoters began copying techniques from vaudeville to keep spectators interested.
For more on the story, pick up Uncle John’s Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (The 15th Bathroom Reader)