History of Collegiate Wrestling - Wrestling in The 18th- and 19th-century United States

Wrestling in The 18th- and 19th-century United States

By the 18th century, wrestling soon became recognized as a legitimate spectator sport, despite its roughness. It was the major physical contact sport among men of all classes, as boxing did not catch on until the 19th century. Among those who were well known for their wrestling techniques were several U.S. Presidents. George Washington was known to have had a wrestling championship in Virginia in the collar-and-elbow style that was county-wide and possibly colony-wide. At the age of 47, before he became President, Washington was still able to defeat seven challengers from the Massachusetts Volunteers. Andrew Jackson and Zachary Taylor, who favored wrestling as an army sport during his days in the Illinois Volunteers, were also well known for their wrestling. Abraham Lincoln, as a 21 year old in 1830, was the wrestling champion of his county in Illinois. At this time, where working at a store in New Salem, Illinois, Lincoln had a famous bout with Jack Armstrong, also a county wrestling champion. Lincoln won decisively when, after losing his temper when Armstrong began fouling him, he slammed Armstrong to the ground and knocked him out. Two years later, while serving as a captain in the Illinois Volunteers during the Black Hawk War, Lincoln lost his only recorded match to a soldier in another unit by fall. Wrestling was also practiced by Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, Chester A. Arthur, and Theodore Roosevelt, who always had an inclination to anything that involved physical exercise and did regular wrestling workouts throughout his service as Governor of New York. William Howard Taft who was the heaviest of the Presidents at his "best weight" of 225 lb wrestled collar-and-elbow and was also the intramural heavyweight wrestling champion at Yale University. Calvin Coolidge was described as a "tolerable good" wrestler by his father until around age 14 when he took to "duding around and daydreaming about being a big-city lawyer."

Wrestlers such as Abraham Lincoln did not settle for the collar-and-elbow as much as in a free-for-all style of wrestling that was widespread on the frontier. Since "catch-as-catch-can" wrestling was very similar, it gained great popularity in fairs and festivals in the United States during the 19th century. The collar-and-elbow style was also refined by later Irish immigrants, and gained great ground because of the success of George William Flagg from Vermont, the wrestling champion of the Army of the Potomac. After the Civil War, freestyle wrestling began to emerge as a distinct sport, and soon spread rapidly in the United States. Professional wrestling also emerged in the late 19th century (not like the "sports-entertainment" seen today). At the time of the first New York Athletic Club tournament in 1878 professional championship wrestling matches "offered purses of up to $1,000." By the 1880s, American wrestling became organized, with matches often being conducted alongside gymnastic meets and boxing tournaments in athletic clubs. The first national competition took place in 1887, with L. Chenowith of the Pastime Athletic Club winning the only weight class at 134 lb. The next year the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) sanctioned its first national tournament, and soon became recognized as the governing body of American wrestling. The first college student-athlete to win a national championship was Winchester Osgood, a football player at the University of Pennsylvania, who won the 1895 National AAU Championship at the heavyweight division (then for wrestlers over 158 lb). Wrestling before the 20th century was dominated largely by independent athletic clubs and not by educational institutions. Prominent athletic clubs with wrestling teams included the National Turnverein of Newark, New Jersey, the Schuylkill Navy Athletic Club, St. George's Athletic Club, the Chicago Central YMCA, the Olympic Club of San Francisco, as well as various athletic clubs associated with ethnic groups such as the Chicago Hebrew Association. The National Turnverein produced George Nicholas Mehnert, who won six national AAU championships between 1902 and 1908 and lost only one of more than 100 matches to George Dole, then a student at Yale University. Mehnert was also a gold medalist at the Olympics of 1904 and 1908. Despite wrestling not yet being regulated by colleges and universities, hundreds of participants attended wrestling tournaments. The growth of cities, industrialization, and the closing of the frontier provided the necessary avenue for sports such as wrestling to increase in popularity.