Snowden - Shooters: pro wrestlings real life tough guys

William Muldoon was built like a Greek God. In an era that saw women afraid to reveal even their ankles beneath a long skirt, the Solid Man wasnt afraid to show a little skin. Even as far back as the 1880s, at the dawn of professionalism in sports, wrestlers already needed gimmicks to sell bouts to the masses. Muldoon, for his part, was leading the way. He was a gifted wrestler but a better salesman. His gimmick was dressing as a Roman gladiator. Before bouts he was photographed in a loincloth and sandals, often naked from the waist up.

He was a man who knew gimmicks, and with the gladiator getup, he was taking iconography to the next level. Donald Mrozek, author of Sport and American Mentality 18801910, thinks Muldoon was onto something that resonated with his audience. Muldoons costumes suggested that he was something more than a mere man. His sculpted body was the proof:

Closely tailored and spare, Muldoons costume emphasized his good proportions and well-developed physique. It not only had the practical advantage of freeing him of encumbrances for wrestling; it was a way of calling great attention to the attributes of his body apart from his physical performance. As much as it constituted an aid to Muldoons performance in the ring by its sparsity and an assist to his image by flattering his impressive physique, Muldoons costume was the feathering of a peacock, the uninhibited flaunting of the body in general and the male body in particular.

Muldoon had first learned to use that rock solid body in the Union Army during the Civil War. Just a boy when he enlisted, Muldoon had essentially grown to manhood in raucous Army camps. The Union in particular often whittled away long hours with impromptu as well as organized wrestling contests. Its said that wrestling was such a big part of life in the Army that General Ulysses S. Grant had to apologize to Confederate leader Robert E. Lee when Lee came to Appomatox to surrender. Grants tent, it seems, was in disarray:

Pay no attention to things, Bob, the General said, me and some of the boys were having a wrestling match in here last night.

Muldoon was one of the very best grapplers in the Union Army and never gave up the sport. Not ready to give up the soldiering life either, he volunteered on the French side during the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. It was there that he was introduced to Greco-Roman wrestling. Developed in France and quickly spreading throughout the European continent, it was a style well suited for a man with Muldoons physical gifts. Never the quickest or most skilled, what Muldoon did have going for him was size and strength. Greco, which prohibited holds below the waist, was the perfect style for a man of his statuesque proportions.

When he returned to New York in 1876, he settled into a career as a police officer. Even as he progressed to the rank of detective, wrestling was never far from his thoughts. His home base was Harry Hills saloon, known for comely barmaids, nefarious characters, and equally nefarious prizefights. Muldoon became acquainted with boxing at Harry Hills, but it was wrestling where he made his mark. The boxing matches were illegal, so it was easier to strip to the waist and grapple especially for a police officer making a few extra bucks. For a prize between $5 and $10, Muldoon would wrestle anyone who dared.

Muldoon soon took his act on the road, the first step towards wrestlings demise as a legitimate sport. At these vaudeville shows, often contested on the same stages that housed plays and other high art, the goal was to entertain and to convince the audience into putting their money down on side bets. Professional wrestlings secret isnt that it once featured real contests and later shifted towards entertainment. The real secret is that, from Muldoons time forward, professional wrestling was never a legitimate sport. Very early on, powerful promoters took hold of the sport, and money became the primary motivator. Even before Muldoons reign as champion, fans and critics were already decrying a sport that was anything but pure. The Brooklyn Eagle contends that wrestling bouts were being scripted all the way back in the 1870s, singling out a match between Frenchman Thiebaud Bauer and Professor William Miller:

There is probably no sport before the public not even excepting professional billiard playing in which there has been so much regular hippodroming and crookedness practiced as in the wrestling arena within the past two or three years. There has scarcely been an important contest in which the result has not been known beforehand. A system of humbug has been carried on in the form of creating a supposed bitter rivalry between prominent wrestlers, in order to get up an excitement, and matches have been arranged which have been alleged to be for thousands of dollars a side, when not a dollar has been put up on either side, the contest being one for the gate money alone, and that is equally divided, the betting deciding as to which party should win. The men have been found guilty of it and in one case the knavery was publicly exposed out West. But still the people are being gulled by these so-called championship wrestling matches. The latest contest in the wrestling arena was that between Miller and Bauer at Boston last night, in which Miller was defeated, Bauer winning in one fall. The usual $1,000 challenge followed, and another profitable gate money match will be arranged. Pools were sold at Boston on the match, in which Miller was the favorite with those not behind the scores, he being the strongest man and the best wrestler. The fact is nothing has been such a blight on honest sport as the curse of the pool box. It has almost killed professional billiards in the Metropolis; has broken into the healthy life of baseball; driven professional oarsmen out of the arena, and brought odium upon every sport with which it has been connected. But for the pool rooms of Chicago and St. Louis encouraged by the local press there there would have been no such crookedness in the Western baseball nines, which recent developments have disclosed.