Exposure To Wrestling
For four years as a teenager, Watson sold the Toronto Daily Star at the corner of Danforth and Dawes Road. He was convinced by his brother George to play hooky from piano lessons one Saturday to attend a wrestling session at the All Hallows Anglican Church gymnasium. The event changed Watson’s life. He furthered his wrestling training with Phillip Lawson at the Bowles Athletic Club and later the Central YMCA.
In 1936, wrestling as Bill Potts, Watson appeared on cards at British Consols Stadium in Toronto that were advertised as amateur wrestling shows. In June of that year, he went on a tour of the United Kingdom along with fellow Toronto wrestlers Tommy Nelson, Al Korman, and Ken "Tiger" Tasker and their manager, Harry Joyce. The wrestling of England often involved hard-nosed shooting and he was sidelined for six months with a fractured shoulder and numerous broken ribs. It was on this tour that William Potts became Billy Watson. Booked by former Olympic Gold Medalist George de Relwyskow, Watson traveled through England and Ireland. He was one of the best wrestlers in the world.
Read more about this topic: Whipper Billy Watson
Famous quotes containing the word wrestling:
“We laugh at him who steps out of his room at the very moment when the sun steps out, and says: “I will the sun to rise”; and at him who cannot stop the wheel, and says: “I will it to roll”; and at him who is taken down in a wrestling match, and says: “I lie here, but I will that I lie here!” And yet, all laughter aside, do we ever do anything other than one of these three things when we use the expression, “I will”?”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)