A Geek History of Time - Episode 08- The Lost Cause and Professional Wrestling (Part 3)

Episode Date: May 18, 2019

In this episode, Damian and Ed actually start talking about wrestling! They discuss it from its earliest roots as one of humanity’s first sports up through the development of regional American styles, with some special attention given to how it helped Abraham Lincoln’s political career (no joke, seriously).

Like they they advertise one match when crashing a car into one of the wrestlers. Not a total victory of Russia, which now we're seeing. He goes on. He's a gigantic bag of flaccid dicks. Sorry, contidence. Which when you open them up, you find out that they're all cockroaches and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know if anybody else is ever going to laugh this hard at anything we say.

Probably. We can actually both look out my window right now and see some very pretty yellow flowers that I'm going to be eradicating. This is a geek history of time where we bring nerdery into the real world. My name is Ed Blalock. I'm a world history teacher at a middle school here in California. And I have been a geek since roughly the age of nine when I was introduced to first edition advanced dungeons

and dragons through of all things, a gifted, intelligent, weekend enrichment program. I'm Damien Harmony. I'm a Latin teacher, a former social science teacher at a local high school here in California as well. I've been a geek at least since I was about six, which puts me in the Reagan administration of Geekree, but really my first personal foray into Geekre was probably around the age of 10 or maybe 11 when I found some kids playing the old TSR Marvel at the local school that I had just moved to. I found my own quickly. Found your tribe. I did indeed. So yeah, I mean mean California is on fire which means that this

episode could be airing literally any month of the year. Yeah, just about. So hence our voices. Yeah, it could be recorded just about any month. Yep. And while we're at it, there's probably been a mass shooting next week. Yeah, yeah. So and our president has embarrassed us on the national stage again. Yeah, so this is a partisan podcast International stage. Yes. Yes. Yes. My cats can be left at the door. Mm-hmm or more likely they won't be left at the door Anybody wearing them will very rapidly turn around and leave We will we will tread on you. Yeah, well. done. Yeah, so hate to be so blunt. No, we really don't know.

No, thinking about it for a moment, not at all. Yeah, so this podcast kills fascists. Hopefully. Like Arlo Goughry. All right, so last time we left off, we had just finished talking about the Civil War, which as it turns out, was in fact about slavery. Yes, oddly enough.

Yeah, and then we started talking about how people very quickly ran to try to prove that it wasn't about slavery. And these were people called historians, and I say people called historians because... You say people called historians the way I like to use the phrase people calling themselves Christians. No true historian would do this. Yes, yes. Yes, as a guy who wears a kilter regular basis,

no true Scotsman is a thing. I will just point out that, yeah, this actually occurred to me today, thinking about this, and kind of getting ready to come over here to do this, is that I think what pisses me off the most about the lost cause historiography is that these are people who wear the mantle of being historians. They have the degrees. They have the degrees. Yeah, they have taken all the same coursework. They've done all the same stuff.

Gradually this is late 1800s. Oh, oh yes. This is like the Charles Adams School. Well, yes, we were talking about the Charles Adams School, but we're also talking about a whole bunch of people since those guys. We're talking about textbook authors, text editors all the way down to... Well, it's permeated the culture. Yeah, yeah, the one thing that the South has always done well is infect the pool. Yeah. Like, dye the water just slightly. Just tinted it, just to yeah. And so anyway, but the people who were the most dedicated about this, where the mantle of being historians, but what we're supposed to do as historians

were the small age since we're not professionally working in archives or anything like that. Oh, okay, I was gonna say, you are a professional historian, you were paid to history. I am paid to history, I like that. But as somebody who is not doing historical research, consistently on a regular basis,

adding original material to the record. But as somebody who is passing it on, the job of a historian is to look at the documents and then interpret the documents and then put that out there. Right. And the whole put that out there. And the whole historiography of the lost cause is literally built around ignoring a whole swath. Yes. Multiple swaths. Yeah. Necessitating a rack that to paraphrase Wayne Iraq Iraq. They willfully and consciously at the very beginning consciously weird, semi-spiritual, semi-matchin'-worses. It was a vindication of their culture is what it was. It was a, they would argue it was a vindication of their culture. Well, that's what they were attempting to do, yeah.

And what it was was a lie that has, that has completely infected American historiography ever since. Which goes back even further though into, I mean, John C. Calhoun calling it a peculiar institution. I mean, it goes back way further than even the civil war. Well, there's been euphemizing since the founding of the Republic. Right.

That's also a lie. Well, I'm going to argue there is, as the Catholic in the room, I'm going to argue that there is a difference in degree between John C. Calhoun knowing that there was something wrong in slavery and choosing to use a term like the peculiar institution. And all of the motherfuckers who sat there immediately after the Civil War and turned around and said,

no, no, slavery was not ever part of this. That's a 1984 or well level double speed bullshit. Well, would you say that's a difference in degree or is that a difference in kind? I mean, a difference in degree would put them on the same spectrum, but it seems like, okay, Calhoun knew it, acknowledged it somewhere in his adult, it wasn't adult, evil brain. And he was so bad by the way that Andrew Jackson had two regrets. One was that he didn't hang him. Like that's how bad it was. But so like-

And Jackson by the way, speaking of horrible human being. But so is that a difference in degree, or is that a difference in kind? Like we are talking about a holy different thing? About the same subject. I had not I That is that is a meaningful Epistemological epistemological Epistemological

Conversation to be had I think there's something to that. I think it is I think it is something I think it is something different Which I think still kind of goes back to the point I was making, which is that, you know, Calhoun was uncomfortable with it, was trying to find a way to make himself comfortable talking about it, with dealing with it, whereas Okay. Directed effort to to alter Right. The documented past. Right. You know, we talk about, and I

I gave you the cornerstone speech. Yeah, yeah. We as historians, as instructors, we tell our students to look at the primary source documents. Right. And this was a directed effort to say, no, no, that's, there are no documents. We're just going to ignore the existence

of these documents altogether. We're not going to include them in the record of what we talk about. We're going to willfully ignore them and we're going to put this other story out there in its place. We're going to put a false narrative. Yes, we're going to create a whole cloth, false narrative,

Okay. That like any good lie, Right. has a kernel of truth to it. Sure, sure. Because there was an element of the argument about states, right? So there in some ways, the difference is, John C. Calhoun is lying to himself.

Yes. Whereas these people are lying to others. Yes. These people are propagandists calling themselves historians. Yes. Yes. Newt Gingrich, right? Being an historian. Yeah. Yeah. Gerbils. Yeah. Would be so proud. Yeah. Well, maybe he got it from this. Well, so anyway, tangent., but that's, that is why when we were talking about this last time, I realized where my well spring of rage was coming from, it was causing me to pay into my, taking somebody on a floor the whole time

for reading that speech. He was stomping through the guy. Yeah. Yeah, no, I get you. Well, so we're gonna to take a decided shift. And I would argue is not a difference in kind, but a difference in degree. But it's going to seem so much like a difference in kind because you're going to have to make a case for it. Uh-huh. Okay. I'm going to talk to you tonight about professional wrestling. Okay, just so our audience understands.

When we were talking about starting this podcast This was one of the first ideas that Damian shared with me and I have been Squier so hard that we're finally getting to talk about this because yeah, I can't wait Are you a wrestling fan? Everybody watched it a little one. They're young, but I'm one of those people who watched it a little bit when I was young. When I'm talking about when I was young, this is when I was in the fourth, fifth, sixth grade. It's about right.

Third, third, third, third, sixth grade, roughly. Yeah. And that was Hulkomania. Yep. That was when the WWF really came. That was Cindy Loper era. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Rock and wrestling connection.

Yeah, and it became very mainstream. It was contemporaneous with MTV becoming a thing. It was this, I think it was part of the massive explosion of a certain brand or a certain kind, brand would be the wrong word to use. A certain kind of mass culture that I don't have the vocabulary right now to to enunciate what was different about it in the 80s, but there was something in the 80s that was this kind of energy where stuff like the WDW and MTV were all kind of. It was the same time fueled by the same kind of forces.

Well, here's what I think it was. It was, and then I'll start on my fandom of it. The 70s was a time of psychedelia, pastels and earth intones. The 80s was a time of... Of a cattle-cullard kitchen. Yeah. The plants. Golds through... You know, in the mirrors? In the mirrors?

Yeah. The 80s was a time of primary colors and bold, rounded lines. And synthesizers. And, well, and well yeah obviously the guitars and bringing in the guitar and also consumerism yes okay I think what you're referring to is that bold color revolution in some ways not the least of which is is interesting to me because Hulk Hogan wore yellow and red. Yeah, always. Yeah.

So, alright, so I grew up watching wrestling, my parents hated it, absolutely hated it, couldn't stand it. I remember the first match I ever saw was actually the AWA, which I will get into the history of later, but it's important to note that, and just for the wrestling nerds that are listening to this and That is a specific kind of geek re by the way is wrestling geek re it has become a thing and I'm so glad but I I watched it was Sean Michaels and Marty Genetti known as the midnight rockers going against playboy buddy Rose and pretty boy Doug Summers and Then I watched big Scott Hall and Kurt Henning take on, I forget who. Now, I mention this because there will be some people go,

oh my god, that's old, yes. And then I started watching WWF, because my neighbor came over and taught me about WWF. And the colors were so much brighter. The production value was so much bigger. The ropes were the American flag colors, the red, white, and the blue. And one of the first teams that I watched, again, I'm a sucker for tag teams. One of the first tag teams I watched was the heart foundation.

Dressed all in pink, almost entirely in pink. And they took on, I believe, the British bulldogs who were still wearing pastels because they're from a slightly earlier era but they also had been WWF-ized so they start their trunks are still like light pastel blue but they also come with the ring with these deep bold colors for the Union Jack now I'd also started watching Hulk Hogan and I marked out for him and it was great and body Piper was already a good guy But no actually he wasn't he was a bad guy when I was still watching So and then we had a rental store just down the street from us and I rented the

Third WWF WrestleMania then I rented the first WrestleMania then I rented the first WrestleMania, then I rented the second WrestleMania. I don't know why I didn't do them in order, but that was my first worry. For availability. Yeah, my own curiosity. My own curiosity.

My own curiosity. My own curiosity. My own curiosity. My own curiosity. My own curiosity. My own curiosity. My own curiosity. My own curiosity.

My own curiosity. My own curiosity. My own curiosity. My own curiosity. My own curiosity. My own curiosity. My own curiosity. My own curiosity. So yeah, I mean I watched Bauderic in five before I could watch her in ten. Thank you. So I Loved history if I ever get a PhD it will probably be Historically analyzing wrestling quite honestly Professional wrestling comes from a tradition of being one of the oldest sports ever. I mean you actually Look back into history and it's one of the first things. I I mean, you actually look back into history

and it's one of the first things. I mean, the Atrustkins did it to the death, but the Greeks did it, the Olympics. The other one is racing. Yes. And I find this fascinating because if you go back to your virtual world days, they have a red planet and battle tech,

so fighting and running. Yeah. Every culture has some variant of both of these things by the way. Every culture has how fast can you go and who's the strongest one-on-one. Very often it was actually used to train military folk to show off to each other but also to train them for speed and for durability. It should be noted here as the Asian history guy. When you're talking about the Etruscans and the Greeks and the Romans and all that, what I immediately want to interject is that all of the chronicles of samurai combat from the

very earliest periods of what we would refer to as The the actual existence of the samurai in Japan The descriptions of battles almost have a ritual quality to them and the culmination of a battle between two champions Always winds up ending they start by shooting arrows at each other from a distance. Yeah, they close by shooting arrows at each other from a distance. They close, they fight with spears, they fight with the longer sword, then they fight with a shorter sword, and they always wind up ending,

wrestling one another with a dagger. Wow. Okay. And so what we now know as Jiu-Jitsu has its roots in the same place that Sumo does. And I want to ask you, being the nipano file that I am one of the most fascinating things about Sumo in Japan, is it has a fandom not unlike professional wrestling,

but it also has very, very deep religious roots in Shinto, in Japanese folk religion. And so, not knowing as much about Western wrestling, as am I peculiar upbringing. Sure. Do you know if outside of the religious aspects of the Olympics, in the West, do you know did wrestling have the same kind of ritual fertility kind of connotation, religious... Well being the Romantophile that I am, the Romans never did anything original. So I'm not a Hellenist either, so I don't know

from Greek history as much. However, one of the constellations that I sky-watched with my kids now is Kastor and Pollock's. Pollock's is a famed wrestler and he gave his brother and I forget what Pollock's means by the way in Latin but the name Kastor in Latin means beaver which is funny but he gave his brother, and I forget what Pollock's means by the way in Latin, but the name Castor in Latin means Beaver, which is funny, but he gave his brother part of his immortality. But Pollock's is actually a Roman exclamation by Pollock's, you shall. Similar to by Hercules, and Hercules wrestled beasts to the ground. Okay. You go back to the Atrustkins,

and they had, it wasn't ritual, it was real, but it was for the funerals of important Atrustkins, they would have fights to the death. Not quite wrestling, but still martial combat, one-on-one. You go back to mythology mythology as I like to do and you find Gilgamesh and Enki do wrestling. Oh yeah. Yeah, yes.

You go forward to American mythology and folklore and you find Babe the Blue Ox and Paul Bunyan wrestling. So every culture has it. It's a thing, it makes sense. It's our first way of fighting each other. Then we figure out shit, that hurt. I'm going to find something to stab him with. So, but before the European Renaissance, wrestling actually lent itself to a very localized pride. There were local festivals each town had its own champion. And it worked independently of class,

by the way. No special equipment was needed. Betts could be made. Festival and market days were a plenty. Back then, they actually knew how to take time off. The Romans actually took roughly 180 out of 355. They had intercaler days. But they took every other day off on average. They didn't, but like they had like week-long breaks. And that went on

because people lived by the seasons. So you could crown a new champion every festival. So it's a this champion. It's a that fit champion. It's a this champion. Even the Catholic Church approved of it because it served as training for warfare, which I like that, you know, it's an institution. By the Renaissance, it was quite probably the most popular spectator sport there was, and it was somewhat organized in northern Europe. Now, I'm much more of a Europeanist, and you can bring in the Asian... Yeah, wrinkles to it. Local champions would have special matches against other local champions. So now you have a traveling champion going and challenging and stuff like that.

Now this usually took place in taverns. You could see where this is going. There were riots. People died all the time. But there was always wrestling. No matter what. So, and it wasn't the guys in the match that died. It was the spectator. So, it was the hooligans. Yeah. That was wrestling hooligans. Yeah. So, England, they start codifying wrestling by the 1500s. Different locales had different rules and different styles. And it's just kind of like house rules for D&D.

Yeah. Comberland and Westmoreland style started with your chin resting on your opponent's shoulder. So if you imagine a hug essentially, and you would gain a fall if you could get him to drop to the ground in some way. Cornwall style was called jacket wrestling. You couldn't do any holds below the waist. You had to stay upon a jacket. Lankasshire style was called Catch Catch Can. Please remember Catch is Catch Can. Now I'm mostly referring to England because that's what comes over to the US. But Albert Durer, you may remember him, he drew over a hundred drawings of wrestling holds. Yeah, yeah. Well, I do you know when he did his etchings or engravings of wrestling

holds was that just him choosing that as a subject or do you know where those were those commissioned as plates possibly by an instructor? That might be because as a chemist, you like snakes. Nice. As a practitioner of historical European martial arts. There you go. Clarify. The manual that I'm gradually trying to work my way through studying has a great many plates of engravings that have to do with stances and positions and strings.

Medieval combat? Yes, I used to have that book. I gave it to a friend for a birthday once. Okay, well there are several. There are several. The one I'm studying is by Meyer. There are several. There are several. The one I'm studying is by Meyer. And he published one volume, promised a second one, and then traveled in the wintertime. Cotton Emonian died before he was able to get the second one printed. We had that happen to a president. So bastard. I don't really mean that. He's, he's, of course, the spiritual father of my school. I'm sorry, Sensei, forgive me. Or I should say chef, forgive me. But anyway, yeah, just a question. No, yeah, I don't, I'm sorry, Sensei, forgive me. Or I should say chef, forgive me. But anyway, just a question.

No, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I kind of. I honestly, instructor, asked him, hey, I need to teach this. Because it could be one of two things. It could be, I need the money.

It could also be, I need to practice drawing humans. So what better way. The good way to handle figure exactly capture motion that would yeah. Yeah, but having Deer draw this is like having Thomas King Cade today drawing like hundreds of pictures of John Cena like that would be the equivalent because Deer was we say rock well instead of Thomas King Cade. Sure. Sure sure. Because I'm a stop. Go anyway.

Goane in Lance a lot. Yes. They wrestled in Mallory's book. They did. That'd be like if J.K. Rowling wrote about Harry and Ronald wrestling. OK, I can stick with that one. I'm not going to be a quibble over that one.

That'll work. So back in England, Henry VIII, he wrestled. Back before he was fat. Right, right, right, before he got gout and ballooned to, you know, in his thick feet. Before he peaked. Fell off the horse. In America, it took a while until wrestling came over

because it took a while for the English to come over. Now, that doesn't mean there wasn't people wrestling here already, there were Native Americans. So plenty of stuff going on there, but what I'm talking about is the roots of Professional wrestling so it's it's gonna be yeah, yeah And it's not like the the slaves that were kidnapped and brought over Didn't have their own martial arts. They absolutely did 100%

But I'm talking about the professional wrestling and its roots are very much rooted here so But largest because Appieratins didn't want anybody to have any fun. So, no. No, and it really didn't. That's one of those rare cases where a group of people have a reputation in history that is actually well deserved. Now the funny thing is they drank like fish.

Well, they had to, the water was all terrible. Well, yeah, but even beyond the water is terrible. They really drank a lot. Now they judged each other, they judged each other harshly for their drunkenness, but but they did a lot of judging each other for their drunkenness. I just yeah, and yeah, they really banned Christmas. Yeah, because it was a witchcraft. It was the Bastards banned Christmas. So it would take until the Irish came over with all their routiness before New England got into wrestling.

That's right. So yes. But in the South, wrestling was growing by the early 1700s as a recognized pursuit. Well, because the people who settled the Southern colonies weren't a bunch of pranks with sticks out their asses. Right.

They were there to have fun. They were there to make money. Yeah, if they could have fun while they were doing it. But because it was the South, they of course kept the lower classes from doing it. So it became a gentleman's thing. Yeah, well, you just, you've, the help has their wrestling is in that cute and then you've got real men's wrestling.

Uh-huh. And George Washington absolutely was huge into wrestling as a young man. He loved it. Several presidents including Zachary Taylor. It was like six four. He was six. Six, two. Yeah, I was six, two.

By the standards of the day, he was huge. He was enormous, yeah. But Zachary Taylor wrestled, Abraham Lincoln wrestled, both got into it as young men. Lincoln has said to have gotten into over 300 matches. He mostly did what was called Cornish style, which was side hold style. Oh. We'll get into that. Probably taking advantage of his tall, wiery friend piece, you know, using leverage.

My favorite story is that he fought this one guy named Jack Armstrong, okay, to a draw, which is cool, because he didn't win. After beating the rest of Armstrong's crew, he beat all of them, then he, and back then everyone, back then, even then, had honorages. But so this one was called the Clary Glove Gang. Okay. And just rolls off the tongue. And they would go, anybody who came to town, they'd test him out. Big, oh, well, we're gonna see if we can push this guy around. Now this is the frontier.

This is out west where all the scots are settled. So of course it's Rowdy and everybody's shitty to each other. Yeah. So, hence the matches. Yes. And now some people have it that Lincoln beat him by wearing him down, wearing down Armstrong. Others say that once it was obvious that Lincoln

was beating Armstrong, the rest of the game came in to mob Lincoln, which had no effect. He just laughed it off. I don't know what's the true story because back then, tall tales are a huge thing. But here's a quote for you. Armstrong's friendship came to mean much, including a family with whom to lodge from time to time, and someone in Hannah Armstrong to launder and mend his clothes.

The goodwill of the Clarie's Grove boys earned him Lincoln, the captain ship of the local militia unit, and a first taste of leadership when some months later he was summoned to the duty in the Black Hawk War. Wrestling got him this job. In addition to being captain of their company, Lincoln distinguished himself by upholding their honor in the obligatory wrestling matches that in live in the long and largely unaventful

bivouacs of the volunteers. Now some people say this is Lincoln's only defeat, and because of that, Armstrong and his game became Lincoln supporters, and would regularly toss out hecklers when Lincoln was stumping for office. Nice. So. It's a good thing to have.

Yeah. It's a good thing to have. So by the early 1800s, the overwhelming majority of manual laborers got into wrestling, shockingly utilizing their strength. At this point, the overwhelming majority of manual laborers got into wrestling, shockingly, utilizing their strength. At this point, the upper classes of the south and out west, western Pennsylvania, Kentucky, the borderlands essentially.

They saw wrestling as a kids' sport that grown men didn't get into. So you see this shift away from rowdiness. Those adults who work- Real adult men, of course course by that time were boxing by Queensborough. Exactly and again very class structured. Yeah. All right. Adults who were good at it were using different rules and here's why. Now so you've got all these different rules. I'm going to coalesce them eventually.

But the adults in the West, once or best of all, and you can talk to either Borderlands, the West, once or Pennsylvania, Kentucky, the Borderlands, lived on the frontiers. So the culture out there was that victory mattered more than the rules did. Lots of the white folks who inhabited these areas were Scots and Scots Irish. These are people who are not known for following the rules so much as making sure that they were one up on it. Well, they wound up where they were because the British had kicked them out for not following the rules. Right. And to them, anybody in force, anybody in force in rules was an illegitimate government oppressing them. Right. But they're also very clannish and I don't mean that pun yet.

But they're very clannish and loyalty to your gang or your clan mattered more. Victory of your gang or clan or kin mattered paramount and making sure that you were always one up on them. So you didn't just get even. No, no, no, you went one up. This ties in, of course, all the stories about the Hatfields and McCoys. Oh, 100% all of the other conglucuums. Hatfields and McCoy feud is the one that's most famous within our culture. When my folks were living in Milton, Florida back in the 1960s or early, very early 70s, I should say. There was still an ongoing feud between two families Who had started out as a moon shiners and have in the modern world of course moved into bootlegging other controlled substances, right? But it was I know I know up until the turn of this century was still an ongoing feud between those two families Oh, yeah, oh yeah, definitely yeah blood feudsuds are not an abnormal thing in that area,

much less in the culture that it came from. No. Oh, yeah, no. So because this style, as rough as it was, was what got people victories, it becomes a dominant form. So I want you to think about MMA. MMA used to be style versus style. And then one guy kept winning, Gracie.

Choking everybody out using Jujitsu. So then to win, you had to either be able to counter or engage in Jujitsu. Well, it's Jujitsu camps open up. Then somebody gets in there and starts knocking the shit out of people again. Then it's like, oh, we gotta be able to take a punch too. And so it ceases to be these formalized styles and turned into

yeah, and MMA has never become its own style. Absolutely. You get martial arts geeks going forever. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, as to whether or not it's legitimate. I mean, you get linguists going eyes to whether or not clinging on his legitimate language. It's very similar arguments. Yeah, it's the same.

It's the roots of the conflict. Yeah. The only agreed upon rule ever was no weapons, which doesn't mean they all agree upon it. But gouging, biting, fish hooking, which is where you take your two fingers inside their cheek and yank, nut shots, oil checking. Oil checking is where you take your thumb and shove it up their ass. That's, that is the most evocative using as a, yeah, I have heard in a very long while.

All of these things are fine by the way. Sweet Jesus. All of these things are fine. And the loser is the one who ends up giving up or is incapacitated. These matches that were wrestled out were Lincoln was were brutal. Winners would be forever scarred, missing all kinds of appendages from their face. Yours noses. Oh my god, their face would look like hamburger. Like losers would lose eyes, would have their cheeks ripped open from that kind of stuff. Body parts would be missing. Yeah, it was. Yeah, yeah. Carnage, literal carnage. As more people moved in with their sensibilities, this frontier style kind of falls

away. In the Midwest, thank goodness for gentrification. Yeah, you know, people, people to cry at, you know, historically, it works in Kentucky. Yeah. In the Midwest and the Mississippi Valley, they come up with a more judo like style. If you can throw your opponent, you're winning. You can still use all the holds you wanted,

so it's still no holds barred, but you don't get to gouge them, bite them, or punch them with knuckled fists. You can open hand palm strike them. And that absolutely feeds into pro wrestling. We'll get into that. Now this becomes the basis for catch-us-catch-can wrestling of the 18 hundreds. Now you might remember I talked about it earlier, right? You want to need a hold on to catch-us-catch-can. So it has trouble Come sing it. There you go. It comes via ship over to the Americas and because and it really starts in goes into the late 1800s and it was easily acceptable because it takes strength. Yes. So if you weren't that skilled,

you could still muscle your way through victories. But it also took skill. So if you weren't that skilled, you could still muscle your way through victories. But it also took skill. So if you weren't that big, you could skill your way to victories. It's something also that poor folks could do. Yeah. Again, no special equipment, right? Now, by this point, people in the Northeast begin to realize that exercise isn't bad for them, and that this puritanical scorn for fun gives away, gives, you know, falls away because there's Irish immigrants. And they're really have fun. Oh, yeah. And, and, and away, gives, you know, falls away because there's Irish immigrants. And they have fun.

Oh yeah, and and and eventually, yeah. Yeah, a whole bunch of forces at work, but yeah. Yeah. Now, I'm pretty sure there's a demographic shift that leads to a change in attitude really, is the more Irish you have, a critical mass. And they, you know, the Lord wants you to have fun. Live a vivacious life. That's, that's, that Lord wants you to have fun. Live a vivacious lifestyle. That's a big part of it.

I think there's also not a human to be made that after a certain point, no religious movement, like Puritanism can sustain itself. True. And eventually, people are going to want to be able to have a good time. Yeah, that's very true. So with waves of aisle immigration,

come other styles, right? So all the ones I mentioned before. Many of which meshed into the Northeast because that's where a lot of them come, right? So you have this catch is catch can, developing in the Borderlands and in the South, it's violent, it's bloody, there's very few rules, it's aimed at testing outsiders

and frankly driving them off, right? Because that's the plan. Exactly. Yeah. And it establishes local champions in the West and in the South. And again, the West is not California, the West is essentially Western Pennsylvania and Kentucky. Oh, hi, oh. Yeah. And this is something that the pores do to each other. So in the Northeast, you have more rules. You have more diverse styles. You have a focus on which technique is best because you have a Balkanization occurring in the Northeast that you don't have in the West.

In the West, everybody is all white. Long as you're not black or Indian, you're white, you're fine. And so it doesn't really matter what style you bring as long as you win. But in the northeast, are you Irish? Are you Scottish? Are you Welsh? Are you Cornish? Are you English? Are you... Which case the hell? Are you Catholic? Are you Protestant? Are you Presbyterian? Are you Lutheran? Are you Calvinist? I mean, just all these things. So there's a clear Dillination of are you this are you this and the same thing happens with styles. So it still is about getting styles And there's a folks like I said on which technique is best based essentially on the country of origin

However, you also still have a blending of styles because eventually an Irishman is going to see a thing that a Scotsman did and he's going to try it, he's going to adopt it, he's going to fold it into his and then when he teaches his son and you have cultural diffusion through literal contact, the style that kind of becomes the style of the Northeast is the Irish style. And this style is known as collar and elbow. Now I promise I will get to professional wrestling, but collar and elbow if you watch a professional wrestling match, it's how they lock up in the beginning. My arm goes

around your neck, my other arm goes towards your shoulder or your collarbone, your arm snakes along my arm, and your other arm goes around my neck. We lock up that way. That's how we start with jockey for a position. It's a mix of upright and ground wrestling. It's holds based, it doesn't rely on size, so much as it relies on speed and finesse. Make sense if you're Irish. Malnutrition is a thing.

And the Irish who move to Southwest Vermont are the ones whose style becomes the basis for professional wrestling. The Vermont Irish see the value in wrestling as a way of letting off steam because they don't want blood feuds. They know better. This is in start contrast to what's happening in the borderlands where they live for blood feuds and die for them. And it's a far bloodier wrestling and much more revenge-y type style in wrestling, right? So the roots of the pro wrestling drama are happening out there. The roots of the pro wrestling techniques are happening in the East.

Now, the Civil War happened, do you remember the Civil War? Well, I mean not firsthand. But it was fought because of slavery. Yes, because of this. So it happened. Because a group of people wanted to hold another group of people as property based on the cover of their skin. And the other people were like, you know what, I don't want to compete with that as an economic model. Yeah.

It wasn't like, hey, they should go free. Yeah, it was, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But at least they stood for something. Yeah. So it happened. The Vermont volunteers go into the army and they use color and elbow, beating out other

companies in the north all the time and you have companies. And again, it's no different than what I was talking about. They were so good at it that there were a few who actually made their living as traveling wrestlers. In other words, professional wrestlers. Northern companies had company champions in between battles they'd wrestle each other. Coloranelbo becomes the dominant form in the North. Here's what's happening.

I want you to notice what's happening. The North has a style that's mostly successful. And the South has its style that's mostly successful. The North style is dexterity, hold-based, technical skill oriented, and cares about the rules. The South style is bloody, violent. I'm going to say savage and based on strength. This matters. If there's rules,

then one has to accept a loss as a loss. If there's not rules, then your individual honor may demand being more savage to ensure victory. Okay. Now, let's go to the Civil War cultures and you kind of start to see it's not just a battle of grave versus blue, it's not just a battle of free man versus, you know, let's hold them in slavery. There is a cultural conflict that is also playing out. In a similar way that like World War 2 wasn't, the reason it was so bloody between the Russians and the Germans wasn't just because the Russians were facing an existential threat. It was also that communism and fascism were so diametrically opposed philosophically that it added fuel. Same thing is happening here. And it's wrestling. After the war, men go back to work. Plenty of northern wrestlers are trying to make their way in the world now.

This is what I did. I was good at it I'd like to keep going If only there was a rail system operating in the north that would carry people and carnivals from town to town to do this right and What happens right after? Exactly now the south Didn't have this system. No, thank you Sherman Sherman. Yeah. But also, and he destroyed. Big willy, yeah. Yeah.

He destroyed what was there, but it's not like they had much of a rail system. No, they didn't. They didn't. Not like what the North had. Well, yeah, because you know, simply put the more than industrialized economy relied on rail for all of its logistics. And so you have a logistical advantage. And now you have a logistical difference

in wrestling, professional wrestling, because these are people going town to town. And now this is all shoot wrestling. And there's a difference between shoot and work. And I'll get into it later, but essentially shoot is the real shit, work is the fake shit. So these guys are going around legitimately fighting people and wrestling.

And they're following rules. And they're bringing these rules with them. And they're on tour in the north. In the south, you don't have that happening. Sherman come through, like I said, wrecks havoc on all kinds of rail. Also, the local champions in the south, fewer and farther between.

You didn't have as many cities. you didn't have as many cities you didn't have as many villages yeah so the local champions are fewer and farther between like I said and and in the south you don't really see barn storming in the Midwestern and southern states until the rail lines get fixed yeah so they're further behind, which means their strength in their wrestling, the brutality is more localized, which means in some ways it's more remote from each other, which means when they meet it's going to be more brutal because you don't have constant contact and going, well this is too much shit, you know. In major cities populations quadruple, like the huge explosion, and those people had money and a need for diversions, so wrestling grows,

and you can have wrestling in different neighborhoods and stuff like that, and traveling carnivals grow, and they go from town to town to town. Newspapers and telegraphs are growing in use, so now you're getting notoriety in newspapers and people are getting newspapers going across and so did the legend of these various wrestlers. Now since the Civil War brought all these Northern immigrant styles together, more people became aware of color and elbow rules.

So Vermont has its head start, which lasts for a while, but eventually New Yorkers begin to grow in prominence. And in New York, you've got Italians in the Polish and Jews. And I mean, yes, of course, you've got the Irish as well, but you've got other groups coming in and bringing their, you've got a lot of Greek immigrants in Chicago, which, you know, wrestling, Greco, Roman wrestling, right? Now I want to highlight who the main benefactors were of all of this okay the growing Irish population in the cities they're benefiting from this because they're not allowed other jobs okay so should be noted this is also the

time period during which municipal fire departments municipal police departments become a thing yes and police departments, become a thing. Yes. And police departments, you know, the police referred to as the Irish Wales. Yes. And there's an argument to be made over whether the term patty wagon refers to the people who were driving it or the people who were being thrown into it. Right.

So often in the same family. Yeah, yeah. This is also, by the way, the point at which, although this happened on the other side of the pond, the term hooligan gets coined. Oh, really? Yes. There was a family in London, named Hooligan. That's awesome.

Who were, by all accounts, in the newspaper every other week, or more frequently for some act of mayhem. And they pressed suit against the newspapers for for you know Drag in their name through the mud mode. No, no, sure fact they were dragging themselves through the mud. Yeah, fights and whatever. And so the newspapers stopped saying hula hand. It's our goal. Change the word to a generalized term for a a thug or a worker of mayhem called a hooligan. And so that's where we get the term soccer hooligan comes from. Yeah, at least that's one story of the etymology of the term. It's a personal favorite of mine. And knowing what I know about the history I don't

entirely doubt it. I like that now that's two words that come from a family name that have absolutely invaded the lexicon. The other one being Caesar. Yes. You know that worked its way to five other languages too as meaning Emperor. So, so, okay so you've got these Irishmen who Who aren't allowed to take other jobs? Exactly, so a few get to prominence this way. So this means, by the way, to have a wrestling event, you need to have an audience, and to have an audience, you have to have somebody to pro- the event.

So, the first real promoters are urban, Irish, Jewish, and Italian. Who were at the time? The lower rungs. Not well yet, and barely considered white. Right. If they were. Right. It depends on who they're standing next to.

In the south and the borderlands, you don't have promotions. You might have one guy, and it's still isolated. It's still brutal Eventually calling out elbow in the north gives way to what people wrongly called Greco Roman Which it's just you know it that seems like therefore it is and it wasn't but it largely relied on strength and size Which frankly if you think about it is much more of a spectacle So you you have this spectacularness to it in the north, still different than in the south. Yeah, what time period are we talking about?

We're talking about the late 1800s. So we're talking about 1880s. Yeah, 1880s. We're talking about like round the time that Garfield gets shot. Okay. So 81 and what have you? Okay, so now the reason I ask that is because on top of everything else on a theater nerd and there is a quote from the music man in which the mayor of the town in which the mayor of the town backs his rep, Sotic, about a wrestling match that was the most thrilling thing he remembered, this is in Iowa.

That was the most thrilling thing he ever remembered seeing in all of the, you know, the barbershop quartet guys are all nodding along with him. As this just being this amazing thing where he names these two wrestlers who locked arms and stood there motionless for 12 hours yeah and I'm wondering if that's because clearly that's that's parody of something it's not too far it's really not no it's parody of something. It's not too far. It's really not.

No, it's some of the most famous matches of the early 1900s went on for five hours. OK. Yeah, so it's not not OK. However, the standing there, no, it's a lot of, but it's a lot of laying there, which is even less exciting. Yeah, so. Yeah, hearing you talk about that brought that to mind.

So, sure. Asking the expert. Now, as immigrants keep coming over from England specifically like sure yeah catches catch can keeps kind of like biting at the legs of Greco Roman foe Greco Roman catch wrestling could get a victory via submission or pinfall getting the guys shoulders to the the mat or getting the guy to say I give or in some way giving which makes it more exciting because you got options now, right? Now, color and elbow experts, they learn some Greco-Roman because they have to and they learn some catch wrestling. So they're blending the styles and eventually they move toward the more successful

wrestlers being more mussely. Again with the and when we get into the this is the 1880s when we get to the 1980s you'll see it writ larger. Yeah so by the late 1800s late 1880s there's a guy named William Muldoon. He's very gregarious, very Irish, very Christian wrestler, and the people start to accept wrestling publicly. So it wasn't just the, oh yeah, it's what the poor's do. It was like, no, people are really into this guy. He was about 250 pounds. He was a former police officer from New York and he traveled the country beating all sorts of people and all sorts of matches.

Interestingly, it was his personality that drove him, which again, we're getting, yeah. Now, Would you call him the original baby face? Yeah, yeah. Well, no, I'd call him the original attraction. He's not even a baby face. Doesn't have to be.

He's the Andre the Giant. You'd like him because he's huge, not because of his personality. Now, here's why his personality drives it. You have two giants, 250 pound guys, back then, that's enormous, pushing against each other for eight hours and it's just kind of dull. Catch wrestling becomes more entertaining because you've got smaller scrapier guys. There's more motion and it becomes more exciting. So Moldun, he's popular because he's exciting. Now at this point it's

mostly real. There's very few thrown matches, but also you have traveling shows and they're putting on exhibition matches where each guy gets to show off his prowess with a partner, which means I am gonna let you do this to me. And it's later on in Japan, you have this, where their pro wrestling is they There's a guy that called it and he says American wrestling is simulated combat that's trying to look real. Japanese Wrestling is real combat that's trying to look simulated. So yeah, they go like 90% and they just kind of let each other get out of the hold. Okay.

So, and that's kind of what these guys did. So, and the way the reason they do this is so that they could show something exciting, draw a crowd. And the way that get around fixing matches was to take on locals who had been scouted ahead of time by other people on the tour. So you have this tier system now. If they're good enough, they'd actually, you know, you, oh my god, you beat our main guy. Would you like to come on tour with us so that we keep our legitimacy and can keep making money.

And we're going to make money off of you. Now notice right now that all the money in wrestling is being made in the North, using Northern styles and of course because there's more money, the promoters have more money to spend on spectacle and what have you. Now if you're looking back at the lost cause More money, mm-hmm the north has all these advantages has all the resources has all the gistics has all the rules right Also, if you're wondering by the way black men are completely frozen out of the system. Yeah, yeah the war was about slavery but

Make no mistake that northern attitudes and Southern attitudes toward black athletes showing up white athletes were the same. Oh, yeah, you don't get to with the exception of Jack Johnson in boxing, which is for another 40 years from where I'm talking about. There's very little mixing in any professional sport at all. Yeah, by well and Jack Johnson had. Yeah, oh, oh Absolutely, yeah, yeah, I like that the 1920s is even 40 years later Yeah, like like that should have been better like looking back. Well, of course it wasn't better. Yeah, even a hundred years later So by World War one boxing had been shown to be shady people were throwing boxing matches by World War one Yeah, let's write in center wrestling had also been shown to be shady. People were throwing boxing matches by World War One, let's write in the center. Wrestling had also been shown to be shady by this point.

I tried to find where it shifted from legit to not. The best I could tell is around the turn of the century. But with the carnivals, it was a blurred line. It was a broad career. Well, because it started out as, we're doing this exhibition thing, that's 90% real, but we want everybody to be able to show off what they can do.

Right. And that's the slippery slope where they didn't cut a step. Right. And say, this is not what we're gonna do. Right. They didn't use the analogy you've used in other conversations about slopes. Yes.

They didn't say, no, no, okay, look, we're gonna do this thing. That's all, you know. And now that you're here, let's show you some of the full stuff now. Right. Also by World War One, baseball has been shown to be shady. Black stocks.

Yep. So this is at the same time as submission wrestling is growing in influence. Now submission wrestling is very easy to fake For obvious reasons, right? So would Makes it shadier. Also, there's this sense that some submission holds are more honorable than others Okay, right which is funny because I had to check with myself on that and I absolutely agree and I don't know why So like when I watch Emma when I used to watch MMA my favorite matches would be the ones that lasted about a minute and ended with a submission

Because I knew that both guys would go home to their family that night. No one is going to the hospital Yeah, my second favorite matches would be the ones that lasted around and still ended in submission second favorite matches would be the ones that lasted around and still ended in submission. After that, it's like, okay, then a match where a guy gets knocked out in the first round, I like that too, because he's not taking that many hits to the head. And so on. And I hated matches that went to the decision. It's fun, fast, or just like, just somebody fall. Or something that goes to submission in the fourth round.

I'm like, why couldn't you have done that earlier? Yeah. He still has to go to the hospital. Yeah. You know, but so there are and absolutely there are more honorable holds than others. I always thought that an arm bar was much more honorable than like a choke. I don't know why. It doesn't make any sense to me. I guess because you're not gonna end up getting a stroke from an arm bar. If you break an arm, that's reprobable. Yeah, I guess that's it for me. Having wrestled for one season in high school,

reprobable has degrees. Right. You know, I heard stories about some vomit-inducing stuff. Oh, yeah. Oh, things get turned the wrong way. Yeah, how? Now, interestingly, interestingly, the more honorable submission holds included chokes, strangle holds.

OK. There's a guy named Ed the Strangler Lewis. Guess what, he did a lot of. Did he own a panel van? No, he did his thing in late 1800s. He also was from... Yeah, panel Conestoga. He was from Wisconsin, which keep that in mind. Which is far enough west that the most brutal methods get employed. But it's still way far north. Right.

But demographically you have bigger people coming there. You have Swedes. Sweds, Norse. Right. Yeah, dates. So you have the big spectacle. But also you've got the catches, catch catch can phone coming through. He used everything and he was the main superstar by the end of the 1800s. Okay. The name like this

drain right. Yeah, which he then used as a work in his loss to a man named Farmer Burns. Okay. So he deliberately lost to Farmer Burns. Okay. And Farmer lost to farmer burns. Okay, and farmer burns used catch wrestling Okay Farmer burns trained a man named Frank Gotch Who was from Iowa? Okay Now again, I want you to see what's happening here late 1800s Eastern wrestlers are giving way to rest Western

Western wrestlers and Midwestern wrestlers Catch styles northern Midwest. Yes Yes to rest Western, Western wrestlers and Midwestern wrestlers. Catch style. Northern Midwest, to be known in the game. Yes. Catch style is becoming the main style. It's blending with submission wrestling though. You're seeing the Northern style emerge

and it tends to lead to a champion whom nobody can be and everybody loves. To drive up interest, he'll lose to someone in a worked fashion. A work is when you you you don't do it honestly. You massage it. Yep. You don't just massage it. You agree on it ahead of time. This is the end of this episode. And I haven't really even gotten to 1908, which say watershed year for wrestling. Okay. So what have you learned so far that you found what the fuckish?

A lot. What I find remarkable about the whole thing is the demographics being as big an issue which shouldn't be a surprise, but it still always winds up being like the wallpaper pattern. You don't notice in the back of the room until suddenly somebody points it out and like my god that's been there the whole time You know Kaiser Soze, you know, it all entails at the end of the film Spoiler lord I suppose Rocky doesn't win the first fight. Yeah, you know But I like spoiling really old. She gets on the plane. Nice to meet you.

I like it. The rocky thing is just, here is Journey. Anyway, so if you studied Campbell, you should know that. But actually, it's sliced alone, ripping off an actual professional boxer's entire life. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah, it's fun. It's fun. But the extent to which the demographic differences

are that stark is remarkable. And the regionalism of it being that delineated for that long is interesting. And it's gonna last even longer as it becomes more profitable. Yeah. All right. So yeah, I know I'm interested to see how

the Southern aspect of things is gonna fit into it. So yeah. Well good. So any pluggables, and by pluggables, I don't mean like shows at your honor or things that you're doing because we don't know when this will air. So instead, books that you're reading,

or books that you're recommending. Yes, I am currently reading how the Scots invented the modern world, how the poorest country in Western Europe gave rise to our modern world and everything in it. Which is a very, very long title. I'm sorry. The true story of how Western Europe's poorest nation created our world and everything in it. The book is broken down into basically two sections. The first section is referred to as epiphany. And that's where I am right now. I'm only in about chapter three,

but it talks about the Scottish Enlightenment. Okay. And how the religious wars that had torn Scott Lundapart in the 1600s led to the philosophical underpinnings of everything that he's going to wind up talking about going forward. Okay. I'm excited to start reading something called the True Flag, Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the birth of the American Empire. This is by Steven Kinzer.

Okay. That'd be Kinzer, I'm not sure. I heard him interview it on a podcast, and it was just absolutely fascinating about and it was essentially how the the war that we gloss over as teachers all the time because it's hardly in the curriculum at all. Spanish American War. How that actually defined the United States of America going into the modern world. Yeah. And and how not just our reach but also the language we used and the justifications we did and the self-lying that we did and things like that. But also he talks about

huge in large swaths, the debates that were being had and how well-educated everybody used to be. So I'm very interested in reading that. I highly recommend as a follow- up to that. Honor in the Dust by Greg Jones. Ah, you recommended that in our very first episode. Yeah, yeah. Because it's all about the occupation of the Philippines, which is the immediate aftermath of the Spanish-American war,

and the parallels between that event in the early 20th century. Right. And everything, and I'm really not exaggerating. I mean, everything that has happened in Iraq and Afghanistan with our Armed Forces there in the 21st. Oh yeah. Heroin.

Yeah. It's nice. History's kind of fun that way. Like, if you didn't get it the first time, don't worry. Yeah, no. You can do it again. You will get the remedial course whether you passed or not. Right. So, well, if you want to follow us on Twitter, I would recommend At Geek History Time for this podcast. For myself, it's At Da Harmony. And you? At the age belay luck.

Yeah. So I just hit 200 followers right and I'd like to get 205 and then stop there I would like to be selective okay not at all yeah no it's fine unlike my colleague I'm a whore I am I am follow me like seriously please I need the hits. I desperately, desperately need the validation of seeing that I have new followers and that people like my stuff because I needy, needy, needy, needy, little bastard. There you go. So, I know it. So, yeah. Well, we will catch you guys next time on a geek history of time. So, may all of your D20's roll crit and may all of your damage be maximum.

So may all of your D20s roll crit and may all of your damage be maximum.