Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Wrestling

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why wrestling is secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5Get tickets to see us LIVE at the London Podcast Festival this September: https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/whats-on/comedy/secretly-incredibly-fascinating/

Hey, it's us, Alex and Katie. And before this episode starts, we want to say we're doing a live show in September in London, London, England. Bangers and mash. Yes. Put down your plate of that and listen. Listen. And there is a link in the episode description where you can buy tickets, Pip Pip and Cheerio. Katie, it's too relatable to them. They'll be too excited. Yeah, sincerely. Sunday, September 8th, the London Podcast Festival. It's going to be amazing. It's our first ever live show in the same place together. I'm so excited. Aluminium and water closet.

That too. Yeah. See you there, Britain. Wrestling. Known for being grappling. Famous for being sports grappling. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why wrestling is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host, Katie Golden. Katie! Yes. What is your relationship to or opinion of wrestling?

You know me, I'm pugnacious. I like to get a good wrestle in. You know, like I like to square up. Number one is squaring up to your opponent. Right, right. And then number two is you sit on a little stool in the corner of the ring, and some old guy, like, rubs your shoulders,

offers you a towel, and goes like, come on, you can get him. You can get him. Get in there and split some cheeks open. I didn't mean that to sound oddly sexual. That was not my intention. I meant punch them so good their face rips open.

Didn't mean to, look, you can talk to HR if you want. I didn't mean, I really didn't mean it to come off that way. Anyways, and then after that, you know, I got some boxing gloves on, or maybe not. Maybe we're just going with our hands and then

you know, getting in there, doing a half Nelson, a half double Nelson, treble Nelson. And that's wrestling, folks. There's a lot of good stuff from partly boxing. And it's great. And, you know, that's a corner guy is boxing. That's boxing stuff. Yeah, yeah. I feel like boxing is just like wrestling, but with your fingers and fists.

We'll kind of say that on this show. So that's very exciting. Well, I just did. So we definitely will. And yeah, thank you very much to DaCoopBear on the Discord for suggesting this. Many people picking it in the polls. And support the show and join our Discord if you want to pick topics, too. And two programming notes about the topic of wrestling.

One is that it is so vast. Basically, every culture has a wrestling tradition. We'll talk about some of them. And because it's so vast, we're going to skip the separate discipline of pro wrestling, which is its own valuable and dangerous and competitive thing. That is art. Yeah. And there's so much wrestling, wrestling. Pro wrestling could be its own thing. And I think it also just has like more podcasts around it. It's sort of considered obviously incredibly fascinating to many people.

So we're going to do the grappling that is a little less celebrated. My main relationship to wrestling is that my mom is from Iowa. I grew up in Illinois, but it will turn out... The home of grappling. It turns out pretty much, and we'll talk about why later. It's a huge center of wrestling. Well, it's on the state flag. It's on the state flag, and the flag has a couple

of goons trying to grapple each other in a double twist. Farnsworth, Nelson, Bart Simpson, and a triple Bart Simpson hold. Boy, inventing wrestling holds would be a good improv game. Boy, inventing wrestling holds would be a good improv game. Maybe we'll do it as the show goes on. But I know the actual Iowa State flag, and I'm imagining Dan Gable just taking out that eagle on it. It's very exciting to me. The eagle's so mad, it's tapping out. It's really hard for eagles to wrestle because they don't got those arms, man. Yeah, they're more of a stab animal they are they're kind of a stabby

clawy kind of thing i think you need like robust legs or arms uh for wrestling right like you don't need arms and you don't need legs but you need at least one of those things we won't focus on it but also turns out there's a lot of uh like visually impaired wrestlers on high school and college and competitive teams. You don't need a ton of vision to do it. It's really just the grappling. Yeah. I mean, that seems like a very tactile situation. Yeah.

I'm an expert. You're quadruple farnsworth-ing this so well. Yeah. Yeah. I'm an expert. You're quadruple farnsworth-ing this so well. Yeah. Yeah. On every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, that's in a segment called... I just want some stats to get me counting numbers and math alive. Bip, bip, bip, bip. to get me counting numbers and math alive. Ba-bap, ba-bap.

And that name was submitted by Zach W. Thank you, Zach. We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make him as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit through Discord or to sifpod at gmail.com. This week's first number is 11 or 12 tablets. That is the length of a rediscovered Sumerian epic poem about Gilgamesh. Oh yeah, that guy.

11 tablets or 12 tablets, depending on which version. Didn't he fight some leopards or something? He fought a giant and a bull. And the key, key thing is he wrestled a new friend. Oh, okay. That's kind of where this story really gets going. Right. He wrestled like some kind of like extremely like man, kind of man beast guy, right? Yeah.

And this number deserves its own mini takeaway number one. The oldest human literature that we know of is about a wrestling friendship. Yeah. It is the friendship of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, the wild man of the forest. Enkidu is like, he's kind of like a Sasquatch, Bigfoot, Yeti situation. Yeah, there's a few sources for this. Almost, yeah. Yeah, there's a few sources for this.

One of them is a book called Gilgamesh, the Life of a Poem, which is by literary historian Michael Schmidt. Hey, wait a minute. Back up there. Nepotism. The other fun thing is easily the most famous Schmidt athlete is third baseman Mike Schmidt of the Philadelphia Phillies. So it sort of feels like Mike Schmidt wrote about Gilgamesh. It's pretty good. Man, if your parents had named you Mike, you'd be writing baseball history. Yeah. You know? Yeah. But Alex is a podcaster's name. It really is. And so Michael Schmidt says that the Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest long poem in the world. There might be older ones, but we don't have any text of it left, you know.

And it's a unique literary challenge because we're both interpreting and reconstructing the story. We've got fragments of tablets from various versions, a lot of different Babylonian, Acadian languages. But every version has a lot of the same story parts. And the beginning of the story is a king called Gilgamesh, who might be based on a real king from about 4,500 years ago. But Gilgamesh ruled a city called Uruk. And he was this cruel, tyrannical king, as well as somewhat superhuman. And the people of his city prayed for the gods to save them from this horrible king Gilgamesh. And they sent the wild man of the forest, Enkidu, to go to the city.

And they wrestled all across the city. They're wrestling like shook and destroyed buildings. That's a bit of a Gilgamesh. And Keanu said that to camera while making a Jim Halpert face. Yeah. And yeah, and then basically through the process of specifically wrestling each other,

they become friends and it especially changes Gilgamesh's personality. Through friendship, he becomes more of a thoughtful, philosophical human being. I think it's hard to come into contact with another man's abs and thighs so much without becoming friends afterwards, right? Wrestling is very intimate. It's essentially hugging aggressively and competitively. The physical element is really, really in the story because because the other key thing is to make Enkidu come out of the woods and become more of a person on his end.

The gods have Enkidu have sex with a woman. Well, and like this tames Enkidu and makes him capable of befriending Gilgamesh. That's essentially how Jungle Book ended, except that it was just like a weird thing where it was like, oh, a girl. And then the little kid is like, well, see you, family. Which, you know, just goes to show you. I don't know what it shows you, but something. It's Disney's Gilgamesh to me now.

But with Baloo singing about the bare necessities. Yeah, great. But yeah, and in this story, there's a climactic moment when Gilgamesh finally defeats Enkidu in the wrestling match. moment when Gilgamesh finally defeats Enkidu in the wrestling match. And another source here is former UPenn professor, O.K.W. Schoberg, who curates Sumerian tablets at the Penn Museum. And he says that we have stone carvings of a specific Sumerian belt wrestling sport. That is probably what's written in the story. Like, the story is not just describing guys fighting each other. It's like a specific sport that was written in the story. Like the story is not just describing guys fighting each other. It's like a specific sport that was known at the time.

So it's like some kind of straight up wrestling thing or when you say belt wrestling, what does that mean? Yeah, that's a great question, especially because the term belt wrestling makes me think of WWE belts that you wave around. But this is it's sort of like sumo that we'll talk about later. This is both competitors wearing a belt or girdle, and possibly no other clothing. But the goal is that you can hold your opponent by their belt. And you win the Sumerian wrestling by lifting your opponent into the air and touching one of your knees to the ground. That's the victory condition. I see. I see. Interesting. So it's like, that's like kind of a ballet lift ending to a wrestling match.

Yeah. And very physically intimate in its way. And the text of the Gilgamesh story in most versions we've got, there's a specific climactic moment of Gilgamesh touching his knee down. And then that's like in that instance, he becomes a more rounded human and has a more like thoughtful perspective on the world and a greater friendship with Enkidu. It's also interesting because it's also like associated with things like gentle things, like swearing fealty to someone or a marriage proposal or something. It's almost like a surrender, but you are also the victor. Exactly. It's so meaningful. And so it was clearly a big part of Sumerian culture to be in this big story. And then we in modern times pretty much forgot this story. The text was rediscovered in the early 1800s AD.

So almost 4,000 years after it was first written. And it's now taught and shared across the world. The other fun number is 1991. the world. The other fun number is 1991, because 1991 is when Star Trek The Next Generation aired an episode where Captain Jean-Luc Picard retells the Gilgamesh and Enkidu story. Yeah, I remember that one. That was very early Star Trek, when the alien costume was very janky. It was pretty funny. Yes, and not that early. I really love that tradition where it can

be pretty weird. That was like the next generation. Pretty glued on. Yeah, pretty glued on. Yeah. That was a great episode, though. Yeah, Darmok and Jalada, Tanagra, you know? Good old Picard using his brains instead of his bullets to

work it out with them aliens. Yeah, temba his arms wide, Picard his brain open. Yeah, it's good. Yeah. And the next number here is 73. 73. That's how many men have officially held the top sumo wrestling rank of Yokozuna. Hmm.

The Yokozuna, there's just one of them at any time. It's the grand champion of Japanese sumo wrestling. Oh, cool. Yeah. Is there like one, is there sort of one kind of league for sumo wrestling? Or is there multiple kinds of leagues or competitions? Great question. And there's pretty much just one. It turns out sumo is done in many countries now in the modern day, but there's been a, through various forms, one Japanese organization of tiers and rankings of sumo wrestlers that's still the main one. I see. I see. It's like spread. It's the originator and spread it. Yeah. Turns out the sport is more than a thousand years old.

And from the 700s AD to the late 1100s, Japanese emperors were patrons of it. But after that, some shoguns banned it. And then around the year 1600, they revived and promoted it. And since the 1600s, it's been this system. So the Yokozuna's stretch back to the 1600s. I see. Can you kind of briefly describe what defines sumo wrestling? Yeah. And I think people just know what the guys look like. Yeah. But in the basic rules of it, you win by either pushing your opponent out of the ring or getting any part of their body

besides the bottoms of their feet to touch the ground. Right. And you're allowed to push each other and then that famous belt they wear, you can grip them specifically by the belt, grip your opponent. I see, yeah. I think I also like they tend to be very, very bulky

with both like body fat and muscle. That's right, especially since it's so strength-oriented. It just makes sense. Right. But are there different weight classes for sumo wrestling, or is it just sort of one class? There are not weight classes, no. I see, yeah. And speaking of that, it turns out that this Yokozuna title and the sport is so old, I see, yeah. actively assigned it to a few guys before that era. And the official first Yokozuna in the

record book and everything is a guy named Akashi Shigenosuke. And Akashi Shigenosuke was from the early 1600s if he was real. But according to the accounts, he weighed 340 kilograms, which is almost 750 pounds. And he was also more than two and a half meters tall, which would be about eight feet, three inches. You know, relatively large guy. There's not a lot of people who are eight foot three, if nothing else. And so this is probably a legendary mythological figure. And there's a lot of art of him like dwarfing opponents and stuff. So it's fun, but likely a legendary Paul Bunyan type figure. How tall and heavy was Andre the Giant? Because he was quite big,

but I don't even think he was that big. Yeah, quick Google says Andre the Giant was seven foot four. And 236 kilograms. Yeah. So still quite large, but not that big. ceremony. Another number here is 1993, because the year 1993 is the first time a person born outside Japan became Yokozuna. Oh, wow. Yeah. And it was an American named Chad Rowan from Hawaii. That's so American. Chad Rowan. And the Rikishi, the wrestlers, they adopt ring names. Their ring name is their Shikona. So he wrestled under the name Akebono. And in 1993, he won a grand championship to become the new Yokozuna. And since then, one other American and five Mongolians, including the current Yokozuna, have won that title. have won that title. Yeah, I mean, that's, it's kind of nice that it's something that can be an international sport. Other people can play it, especially I feel like sometimes Japan has a

reputation for being kind of xenophobic. So that it is so that people can join in on this sport, I think is really nice. Yeah, yeah, it's one of the more open things about it. And then one of the ways it's the most closed is gender. I see, yeah. The next number here is 2019. 2019 is the first time when a female sumo federation organized a tournament for women. And according to The Guardian, there have been women sumo wrestling in school clubs and like local rec leagues, but they've been barred or ignored in any attempt to wrestle professionally until women made their own federation and got a tournament in 2019. societal expectations of women. The idea of getting really bulky and big and then, you know, being pushy and chubby is not something most societies, like, encourage in women. So it is nice to see that there's some progress on that.

And even the men are pretty famously not very covered. And then the women wear full body outfits, like there's very little skin showing. This gender divide is also one of the main reasons sumo is not an Olympic sport yet. Because with people doing it in other countries and with it definitely being so athletic, you'd think that would put it over the top for the Olympics. But if there's resistance to a women's division, that hurts your case. Sumo tradition is so male specific that women are not just not allowed to wrestle in tradition. They are not allowed to touch the ground of the ring. It is like ceremonially conditioned to be a male space for male wrestling. Hey, listen, guys. We don't like...

Women don't have spooky powers. I feel like this is a misconception a lot where it's like women have spooky powers. I know that in the Mediterranean, there's often this... There was this idea of women, when they're on their periods, should not bake bread

because that will somehow cause something spooky to happen. It's like there's nothing spooky. Ghost bread. Yeah, ghost bread. Like we cannot shoot ghosts out of our fingertips as much as I wish that were the case. Yeah. And I am concerned this might sound like picking on Japan specifically. I'm glad you brought up other cultures where there's also spooky women beliefs, because this is very gender driven, this sumo thing. I don't think there's a single culture.

Well, maybe there is, but I've never heard of a culture where there's not some kind of weird mysticism about women being spooky and ruining things. Yeah. Like with the sumo thing, there's been issues where at a sumo event, the local elected official is supposed to present the award, but like they elected a woman. And so she can't do it from the ring. They have to find a different location.

Can she just use stilts? Cause they're like, Oh, you can't touch the ring. So could she walk on there with like stilts? Like, I'm not touching it. I like the creativity. Yeah.

And the biggest weird case of this is that in 2018, there was an exhibition tournament in a town where the town's male mayor was in the ring just speaking before it started. And then he had a stroke and collapsed. Oh, no. Women, including nurses, were present and rushed to his aid. And the referee got on the PA system and started telling the women to get out of the ring. Like they're giving medical aid to a guy. And he's like, that's the sumo ring. You can't be there.

Yeah. Well, you know, they might shoot ghosts into this guy having a cardiac event with their lady fingers. So you never know. Yeah. He could be harmed, right? Yeah. Something bad could happen to him. The same spooky curse. Yeah. So it's a really extraordinarily specific thing within that wrestling and one of the biggest wrestling cultures in the world. It's sometimes described as Japan's national sport. And Japan is also a home of the martial art judo. Judo is often called jacket wrestling due to the focus on grappling. And then they wear jackets.

Ah, there you go. Yeah, I was like, okay. Yeah, and like pants and stuff, yeah. Because like there's the judo variant that's the pantsless kind, and it's called nudo. I was busy thinking about Porky Pig, but nudo is really good. Yeah, a full jacket and shirt, but no pants. That's the Nudo way. Porky Pig took down Winnie the Pooh for the first Nudo championship. Yeah. Yeah. And a related thing to that is the number is the 1920s. That is when members of

the Soviet Union's military developed Samocha Bez Oruya, another jacket wrestling sport better known by the anglicized acronym Samba, S-A-M-B-O. And so there's a specific form of like grappling jacket wrestling developed by the Soviet military and security service. That's a big sport now. Which is different from samba, which is the dance. Yeah, Red Army guy pinning you. Yeah. Yeah. With a rose between his teeth. That's tango. Now, is tango a form of romantic wrestling? In some ways. Yeah. It's a very physical episode. Boy, here we are. Yeah.

Going back to sumo and especially the Mongolian champions recently, that's very interesting in the context of Mongolian wrestling. Hmm. Because takeaway number two, a Mongolian princess might be the most influential and misrepresented wrestler in world history. Oh, wow. I am intrigued. Yeah, a Mongolian princess named Kutulun lived in the late 1200s, early 1300s AD, and she changed history and art with her amazing life and wrestling skills. Hmm. This is not a damsel in distress princess. She is a wrestling princess, which is an unusual archetype.

Yeah. And some accounts have even tried to leave that out just because it's considered unfeminine in some cultures. Yeah. I mean, that's so weird that she's a princess and she wrestles and with all that power, it's still like, well, we got to cover this up. This, no one would think it is cool that a princess also wrestles and is also great at Minecraft. We have to leave that out of history. But those of us on her server will share the truth.

The truth. Switching to Discord, posting the truth. The key source here, it's an amazing piece for Lapham's Quarterly by Macalester College professor Jack Weatherford. Also an Atlas Obscura piece by Sarah Dern. It turns out Kudalun is an icon of Mongolia's national sport, which is a kind of wrestling called Bok, or often just called Mongolian wrestling. And I don't mean to lump it in with sumo too much, but it's wrestling where you can grip your opponent by a special garment, and you want to push them out of the ring or make

them touch the ground. The rules kind of match sumo. They're pretty similar. And the competitors often look sort of like sumo wrestlers. And that's part of why Mongolians are recently succeeding a lot in Japanese sumo. It's transferable skills. Yeah, that makes sense. Also, they had a princess. So what was the story with her? Did she kind of originate the sport or was she just really good at it? What don't the government want you to know? She was really good at it? What don't the government want you to know? She was really good at it. They have been doing a national tournament of a few Mongolian sports since the 1200s. Genghis Khan founded this tournament.

And Kutulun was a great-great-granddaughter of Genghis Khan. And some facts of her life we are kind of fuzzy on, but she was definitely real. Some facts of her life we are kind of fuzzy on, but she was definitely real. And the general story is that she grew up with 14 brothers who she defeated in the main Mongolian sports of horsemanship, archery and wrestling. I mean, that just explains everything. If you have 14 brothers, there's no way you will ever have an Oreo in peace unless you learn how to wrestle. Yeah, I was thinking of the laundry, too. Yeah, snacks and laundry.

That's a bad house. Yeah, you'll never have a snack in your life. Goldfish crackers, count those out, unless you really learn seriously how to wrestle. Yeah, or like all 14 of your brothers don't like chocolate or something. You'd really need to get lucky. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. No, it's not happening.

And yeah, and then after she beat all of them and that stuff, she either in disguise or as herself just dominated sporting and military competitions. And a limited number of Mongolian women fought in their armies. She did that. And because she was a princess, she had many suitors. But she decided she'd only marry a man who could out-wrestle her. And then beat everyone. She's like, man, maybe I should lower my standards because I'm going to be single for a long time. Yeah, and in one account of it, the suitors had to bet an amount of horses as like an entry fee. And at one point, a man bet 1,000 horses.

Oh, nice. And in the story, her family tells her, can you just lose on purpose? Because then you have a husband and then we really are a lot richer. And 1,000 horses, yeah. And the story says that she agreed, but in the match, her competitive instincts took over and she just had to win. She's got, you can't, she balled too hard. You know what I mean? Like you really, you're trying to hold back, but it's like, I know, I know how that feels in Minecraft.

Just had to build it. And again, some of this could be legendary, some not, but she definitely existed. And one telling of the kind of way this marriage plot resolves is her father's enemies start claiming that Kudalun is doing this because she and her father have a sexual relationship. Okay, guys. And so she says, that's not true. And to solve this, I am just going to choose my own husband. And so she wins by choosing a husband from one of her father's followers. And then that ends the problem, solidifies the government.

And then hopefully, like, just bent those guys that were talking about her and her dad, just like folded them politely in half and tucked them away, you know, in a pile. My mind just started playing the voice of WWE's announcer Jim Ross, like shouting about how many princes and suitors are being thrown through a table. Hollywood is not brave enough to do this story, right? Like we can do Mulan, right? I feel like sword fighting is still enough, like dancing and elegant enough. It's like, okay, we can have a woman sword fight, but like, show me a woman who is built like a tank doing this kind of wrestling, just fighting suitors until they

crumple. I think Hollywood's too cowardly to do that story. I think Hollywood's too cowardly to do that story. Yeah, apparently she is a side character in a recent TV show. There's a Marco Polo TV show on Netflix. There's a Marco, huh? From my Googling, they have cast a thin model to play her, which is fine. But she probably wasn't built like that if she was defeating all comers in wrestling. I'm going to disagree that it's fine.

I feel like, look, no offense at all to this actress. She might do a great job, but like, it's like, here's a role in which it would be perfect to hire a fat or more bulky actress, right? And it's like, no, we can't do that. Because, you know, like women in acting just don't get that kind of princess to look a certain way that one would expect her to look. And then we'll never change those expectations because we're never going to cast anyone else. Yeah, and that plays into two ways her story has been really garbled beyond just the difficulty of history. One is that one of the main people telling Cthulhu's story in Europe was Marco Polo, who traveled the Mongolian

Empire in her time. And by the way, her marriage crisis, this was going on where she's a princess of the largest empire on earth at the time. It's really politically and globally significant. Yeah. And Marco Polo generally played with facts. So it's hard to get a clear story from him. I know. It's hard to find him in the pool. He's always getting away from you. Slippery guy. But tell me about Coup de Lune. He's just got a snorkel on like, woo. And then the other problem for getting a clear Kudaloon story is a French scholar in the 1700s. Ah, these guys, these French scholars. It always comes down to a French scholar.

His name is François Petit Delacroix. Yeah, it is. He published a collection of Asian stories and literature, including an account of the life of Kudalun, but he changed everything. He renamed her Turandot, which means Turkish daughter. He made her the daughter of a Mongolian emperor of China.

And he made it so instead of challenging suitors to wrestling, she challenged suitors to riddles. But... Which is not as good. No, it's not. Because that's the classic Sphinx thing. Like, you know, and that's fine. I'm more of a riddler than a wrestler myself. But listen, you only get so many wrestling princesses. And it's just it is unfathomable. Well,

it's very fathomable that a French guy, you a French intellectual at the time period would be like, oh, this lady must be a riddler, not a wrestler. That must be a mistranslation. That's not what French people sound like. But anyways, you get the idea. You know, like, can we just have one princess built like a house trampling guys? The people want it. Yeah, a looming giant lady would be great. Yeah.

This Delacroix book, it also ended up being really artistically and culturally influential because his book was a hit. It becomes the basis of a stage play written by Friedrich Schiller, directed by Goethe, and then the hit play and book Become an Opera by Giacomo Puccini. Basically had this leap from the actual Coup de Lune to a story about a Chinese princess asking riddles and singing Italian opera, which is its own meritorious artistic thing and totally different.

It makes it hard to know what really happened with Coup de Lune. I've been to an Italian opera and it was good. It was a Puccini opera, actually. The opera would have definitely been improved with more wrestling. If we had the final act been a big wrestling match, it would have been much better. Yeah, it would have been much better. Yeah, it'd be great. It would add some movement on the stage and stuff.

Listen, Opera, you're trying to get the young people interested in opera. Just throw in some wrestling. That's all we're asking. You know, folks, we've got a ton of numbers and two big takeaways. We're going to take a quick break and put this on a stage. And then we'll be right back with many more numbers about grappling.

Grappling, the musical. Cats would have also been improved with a lot more grappling. Like, I'm Grapple, the grappling cat, and I like to grapple. You can grapple my hat. Way too normal of a cat's character, honestly. Makes too much sense. Folks, as you know, this podcast can only exist because of direct listener support. It is simply impossible for something like advertising to fund any podcast like this, where there's research, effort, editing, and also some care about what sponsors we select and what brands we're willing to work with.

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free croissants in every box and $30 off your first box when you go to wildgrain.com slash sifpod. That is wildgrain.com slash sifpod, or you can use promo code sifpod at checkout. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. I'm the next bullseye for MaximumFun.org and NPR.

Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace,

because, yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. And we are back and we're hit Broadway producers, but we're back with numbers about wrestling. The next one is the 1880s. And the 1880s is the decade when Irish sports organizers codified rules for what's now called Gaelic football. Oh, okay. And it's one of many sports with roots or influence from wrestling, from grappling.

I am unfamiliar with this, despite my mom always telling me like, hey, your great, great, great grandparents came over here during the potato famine. Ooh. grandparents came over here during the potato famine. Yeah, I have no reason not to believe that. But I do not know anything about Gaelic football. I don't know it well, but it is tackling and physical challenging each other. It's different from American gridiron football, and it's different from rugby. But if you know those sports, there's some elements there. One of the key influences on Gaelic football was an amazing sport to me called Cade. And that's spelled C-A-I-D. Cade.

It was played in various varieties from the 1300s all the way to the 1800s in Ireland. And it's pretty much two entire church parishes or towns wrestling each other over one ball. Like everyone in town. That's so fun. That's amazing. This had some sport elements because there was one ball and a general goal of bring the ball back to your town or church. ball back to your town or church. But beyond that, it was just, they picked a time, they dropped the ball, and then two teams of anybody each town could wrestle up would just kind of attack each other and play across fields and through hedges and just the whole region as the field, you know?

Right. And so the Gaelic Athletic Association partly developed Gaelic football to turn kata into more of a specific sport in a limited field. But I like the chaos. The chaos is like part of the fun. But OK, that's fair enough. Yeah. And tons of world sports have some at least elements of grappling wrestling something that influenced it and probably had some origin and just people wrestling each other for fun so that's a big one that one yeah yeah that's i feel like that's community building again you're you're getting out you're getting out all your grievances uh in one big hopefully not too bloody festival and then and then you feel a lot better.

Yeah, that just feels great. Yeah. The next number here is 1726. 1726 is when women in London proclaimed a first ever city champion of female pugilism. Female pugilism is not a disease, guys. It is probably female wrestling, I'm going to say. Yeah. And according to J. Store Daily, it took until the 1800s for British society to develop relatively specific rules for combat sports like boxing.

And the rules both constrained what you can do in boxing and pushed women out for the most part. Right. And so before that, big cities like London had thriving informal combat sports scenes. And what they called boxing was really a mix of punching, kicking, gouging, and lots of wrestling, grappling. Right, right. It's basically mixed martial arts or ultimate fighting. Just no kicking in the nards, which again, if you just let women wrestle, would not typically be a problem. Yeah, and apparently in London's scene, women were equal stars to men.

It wasn't men and women fighting each other, but in the separate competitions, both of those two genders, people could become local celebrities. Hey, you know what? Was this like before or after women had gained the right to vote? Before. Before. Okay. Hey, you know what? Priorities.

Right. And I think a lot of men lacked it, too. Right? It was only rich guys. Yeah, that's true. So they were just like, let's just all hit each other then. All right. Maybe punch up.

Punch towards the ones who weren't letting you vote. But I get it. Right. Let's get one Lord in there. And then everybody in their sackcloth garments will pin him. Am I? And another number here is April 2023. There's a little of an experimental number, but stay with me.

April 2023 is when mixed martial arts fan and UFC color commentator Joe Rogan said that wrestling skills are the most important. Yeah, who's that? Who is that? But on a podcast episode, he said wrestling skills are the most important foundational technique if you want to do mixed martial arts. Okay. I don't know enough about anything to know whether that's correct or dumb or not. Yeah. And I bring it in because for one thing, he might be right. He's never done MMA professionally, but he's a paid commentator at the top level and definitely a fan. And there's debate in the MMA community about which training journey is the best start.

People come from boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai, Jiu Jitsu. But it seems like one of the biggest sources of UFC champions is people from traditional wrestling. And wrestling has kind of gained a new prominence as a springboard for kids who like UFC and MMA and want to get into that. And so it's like a starter skill that they go with. Right. I mean, is this like a controversial opinion? Is there a lot of arguments against what Joe Rogan is saying? There's basically no like science or whatever but i'm gonna link the first two blogs i looked at which both agreed with rogan and like it totaled up recent ufc champions and claims they started in wrestling stick a fork in it it's done two

blogs agreed with them no i i i kid that's two more blogs than he uses so sure yeah i kid but i i really have no idea uh that it's the one thing that joe rogan i think actually can speak with some authority on of all the things he has ever said with confidence this is the one thing that he may actually be able to speak with confidence everything else right completely on completely unearned. He does not know what he's talking about. But this one thing, yes, he might actually know what he's talking about. Yeah, I got kind of a perverse little thrill out of like, he's probably helpful here. Let's bring him in. Yeah. Great. Broken clock wrestles once or twice a day.

Just pinning the clock's arms and counting out the clock. It's got little, it's got, it's got little like boxing gloves. I know boxing gloves aren't a wrestling thing. Leave me alone. I think they, some of them have little gloves and mixed martial arts.

They have gloves. Right. It's not a big red boxing glove, but yeah. Right. And for wrestling, there's also the helmets, which are usually sort of like a square apparatus that's shielding your head and your face.

That's a perfect transition to the next number, actually. The next number is the 1400s. That's how early Europeans recorded accounts of native people in North America wrestling each other. Yeah. Basically, as soon as Europeans visited and invaded, they said, oh, I see Native people wrestling for fun. Cool. Yeah. And the source for that Native accounts number is the U.S. National Wrestling Hall of Fame, which is a hall of fame of traditional wrestling.

And we're short on details of a lot of those early Native competitions. Also, Native people are still here and there's many really prominent U.S. wrestlers like the brothers Jack and Jerry Briscoe and also Cliff Keene who are Native people and it turns out Cliff Keene, like I don't wrestle so I didn't know this, but Cliff Keene was not only a huge wrestler and coach, he also pioneered a lot of safety gear. Oh, wow. Including those like helmets, like the head coverings that you see in the Olympics. Because they're not like just like bike helmets. They're very like specific looking square type helmet that looks like it's protecting both the skull, but also like the jaw

and the face. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that hasn't been around the whole time. And to this day, one of the main companies making that stuff is the Cliff Keen Company. Wow. This native person has a huge impact on all world wrestling. Are there like specific sort of like tribal leagues or versions of wrestling? Or is it all sort of under the same one general wrestling thing in the US? That's a good question. Because native and non-native

people, there's all sorts of schools, conferences, just different things. And then the top is the Olympics, pretty much. I see. Over the couple of centuries of US history, there's been a lot of sort of condensing wrestling to the two Olympic styles of Greco-Roman and freestyle. I see. I see. Apparently, before that, Americans did what's called catch as catch can, which is just a neighborhood style of any holds that was a big influence on freestyle wrestling. Like the pants flipper. The pants flipper. The ankle gooby. Oh, yeah.

If you can Farnsworth them, then you can go straight into an ankle gooby. Right. Shin snippers, you know. Yeah. And another one, actually, there was an English style that colonial people did called collar and elbow, where the starting position is one of your hands on the back of the opponent's neck and the other hand on the back of the opponent's elbow. Both people do it. And so it apparently without that, people would just bull rush each other and smack into each other really hard. So if you just start holding on to each other.

And then make it sound like two coconuts, right? Yeah. Like a fun clonking sound. Little tweety birds over their heads. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, right. And the quick number for collar and elbow wrestling is 1750. Because in 1750, George Washington won a local wrestling championship. You can't stop me from imagining George Washington in the wig with the wooden teeth,

but just, you know, naked from the waist up wearing a little shorty shorts, you know, just like he looks on money, but, you know, naked. You know, just like he looks on money, but, you know, naked. I guess he'd wear, what's that pro wrestler, Teddy DiBiase? Like all that dollar bill stuff that guy wears, but it's George Washington, too. Right. Like little tiny shorts with GW on the butt cheeks. And then John Adams is his manager.

They don't have the corner guy like boxing, but they often have a creepy manager character, you know? He's the pervert in the corner, John Adams. Yeah. Yeah, Thomas Jefferson probably said that in life. Yeah. Pervert in the corner. From there, that sort of developed with modern Olympics and also more organized, especially collegiate sports, into kind of more refined U.S. wrestling. And the next number there is 1916.

And 1916 is the year when Iowa State University formed a wrestling team. And they did it five years after the University of Iowa formed a wrestling team. There are two big public universities in Iowa, the University of Iowa, Hawkeyes, and Iowa State Cyclones. I see. So then I would imagine they had to wrestle with each other? Yes. To determine who gets to wrestle. I don't know.

I don't understand how this works. Yeah, wrestling teams, they'll hold meets where all the different people go at it with each other, men or women or whoever. And the formation of an Iowa State team, they immediately became the University of Iowa's rival. And that rivalry has become one of the biggest phenomena in modern wrestling. It's called the Cy-Hawk rivalry because Iowa State Cyclones, Iowa Hawkeyes. Okay. I mean, you know, I was unaware of this, but it sounds intense. Sounds like there's probably a lot of tea to be spilled about this particular feud. It's like a feud and dominates the rest of the country usually. Those two colleges have produced 32 national champions and 11 Olympic gold medalists so far.

Man, Iowa just has a lot of outsized influence. Like it gets early on in the primaries. Yeah, yeah. A lot of polling, a lot of corn. They're hoarding all the corn and they're hoarding all the wrestling. I think it's unfair. It's also an interesting rivalry because there's a key figure named Dan Gable. And Dan Gable is arguably the greatest wrestler and coach in American history.

He was a wrestler for Iowa State and then coached Iowa. And so now there's a trophy named after him for the rivalry because he was maybe the best wrestler for one school and maybe the best coach for the other school. So it's kind of a Romeo and Juliet situation, but with just one guy? Yeah, and his own feelings about himself, I guess. Yeah.

He plays all the characters, right? Like in Shakespeare's day, it was all men. And Dan Gable's play, it's just Dan Gable a bunch of times. It's just himself smooching himself. Switching hats, red and yellow, you know? Right, right. I hate you. I love you. I hate you. I love you. And the next number here is 62 because that is the total number of Olympic gold medals in wrestling won by the Soviet Union. The most of any country. Wow. You know, they did come up with that Samba wrestling system. So maybe that helped out.

It did, actually. Yeah. Yeah. There's a big, apparently especially military driven, like wrestling and combat sport tradition in the Soviet Union. And that helped. Also, also the squat that Russians do, you know, this where you like squat down to sit. That really builds up the glutes very fast. Yeah, sure. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about? The squat. Is it the sailor dance thing where they're kicking too? No. Well, yes, that also really helps with the glute. But it's like, have you seen sort of the Slavic squat?

It's like where someone's like to just like hang out. You just like squat. Oh. And sit there. I like it. That takes a lot of butt strength. I've tried it. It didn't go well.

Okay. Yeah. We'll never be Soviet wrestlers now. I can't do that. No. For a few other reasons as well. Okay. Yeah. We'll never be Soviet wrestlers now. I can't do that. No. For a few other reasons as well, less important reasons. Yeah. Because it turns out the Soviet Union is the all-time leader in Olympic gold medals for wrestling, not counting Russia. Just the entity of the Soviet Union remains the leader. They were that good in a short time.

Well, you know, they really seized their opponent's means of production, if you know what I mean. There's a number here, but this brings us to our last mini takeaway number three. The all-time leaders in modern Olympic wrestling are the U.S. state of Iowa and the former Soviet Union. Hey, you know what? I knew that was going to be the final matchup. Iowa versus the former Soviet Union. The final bracket. If they ever made like a wrestling Rocky, that would be the most plausible matchup. Yeah. As an Iowan and a Drago wrestler. Yeah. Yeah, that would be the most plausible matchup. Yeah. As an Iowan and a Drago wrestler.

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Sources here are NBC Sports, also the Olympic Committee's website and other things too. The Soviet Union won 62 wrestling gold medals in just nine Olympics. Wow. There were only Soviet Summer Olympic teams from 1952 to 1988. And with some gaps as well. Wow. And then also they were recovering from World War II in the 40s. And so there were only a few Soviet Olympic teams, actually. They didn't do it that long. But they really racked up the points quick.

It's probably that they probably buttered themselves or something, right? Like, there's no way that we lost this in the Cold War. They had to be buttering themselves. Allegedly, there was a lot of Soviet-like doping, but I like the idea that it was just lubricants in wrestling. Just butter. Why do you need doping? You just butter yourself up. I mean, and you'll find this repulsive.

The Soviets really did love mayonnaise. Talked about that on a past episode. And what better lubricant, right? Like, unstoppable. I hate this conversation. Let's move on. Yeah. And so 36 years later, since the 1988 Olympics, the Soviets are still the gold medal leader in wrestling, which has been a sport since the first modern Olympic games. And if there's somebody who's going to catch them, it's the U.S., mostly due to this Iowan culture,

and also because the U.S. has been one political entity for the whole Olympic period. We got to dig up. Now, okay, stay with me. We got to dig up Ronald Reagan's body. It's probably a lot of bones by now. But use that body, the bones and the DNA to create a sort of like cybernetic, mutated

super Reagan who could wrestle so good he does actually defeat the former Soviet Union and then also defunds all our schools and social programs. Yeah, I listened to most of that. Sounds good.

Yeah, the US has 57 wrestling golds all time, just five behind the Soviets. And there's a 2024 Paris Olympics this summer. There'll be 18 men's and women's wrestling categories. This could be the year we catch them in gold medals and finally do it. When we finally win the Cold War,

we get a medal that you can get from Michael's that's made out of plastic and it has a baseball player on it, but you can change the text to say number one wrestling country. I like that those shops definitely have a little gold wrestler, but we should get baseball guys for it for sure. Yeah, I know. I mean, you know, like I think I once won a writing competition and the little

guy was playing baseball and it was like, well, sure. He's holding a big pencil. It's a big pencil. Good job. Congratulations. The pen is mightier than the sword, but the baseball bat could definitely break a pen into little bitty pieces. Folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, the oldest human literature that we know of is about a wrestling friendship. Takeaway number two, a Mongolian princess named Kutulun might be the most influential and misrepresented wrestler in history. Takeaway number three, the all-time leaders in modern Olympic wrestling are the U.S. state of Iowa and the former Soviet Union. Plus so many stats and numbers about sumo, judo, sambo, Irish kata, native wrestlers, their impact on safety

for all wrestlers, mixed martial arts, women fighting in London, and hey, thank you Joe Rogan one time. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumFun.org. Members are the reason this podcast exists, so members get a bonus show every week

where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week, there's two stories in the bonus. We're talking about the oldest record of a bribe in wrestling, and we also talk about amazing inter-great ape animal wrestling. Visit sifpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than 16 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of MaxFun bonus shows. It is special audio. It's just for members. Thank you to all of you who are watching this podcast. many digital resources about modern wrestling, such as PBS, the Olympic Committee, NBC Sports,

the Iowa State University Sports Hall of Fame. Also reported sources like the Japan Times, the Smithsonian Magazine, the Guardian, Atlas Obscura, History Ireland Magazine. Also want to shout out the book Gilgamesh, the Life of a Poem by literary historian and Royal Society of Literature fellow Michael Schmidt. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skadagoke people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here.

That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. By the way, our episode sources also include a link to the Cliff Keene Sports Gear Company, founded by that amazing native wrestler and coach Cliff Keene and making safety gear to this day. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord. And hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 109. That's about the topic of barcodes. Fun fact, the first ever barcode design was circular and based on an inspiration on Miami Beach. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast,

Creature Feature, about animals, science, and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members

and thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.