NO WRESTLING?

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 772, 19 September 1929, Page 11

NO WRESTLING?

M.P.’s Suggestion Meets With Derision INDIGNANT COMMENTS “Ridiculous!” “I'll sure be sorry when they start putting skirts on men." These were some of the statements made by men prominent in the wrestling world when shown the report that Mr. H. G. R. Mason, Labour M.P. for Auckland Suburbs, had given notice in the House of Representatives yesterday to ask the Minister of Justice, the Hon. T. M. Wilford, whether he would consider steps to prohibit public exhibitions in which the infliction of pain to the limit of endurance seemed an essential element. Mr. W. E. Grant, treasurer of the New Zealand Wrestling Association, was speechless for some moments after he had read the report referred to him. Then words came in a torrent. “Hoes he want everybody put in cot.ton wool, I wonder,” said Mr. Grant. “Surely the time has not arrived when our athletes have to be padded in wool. The founders of our Empire took their shirts off and went the limit. Britons have prided themselves on their physical fitness on the fields of sport and in the ring, and if you eliminate fitness and endurance you have certainly sounded the death-knell of sport. The men who built our Empire until we are justly proud of it today, were men who cultivated their muscles and fortified their brains for the purpose of defence and attack. What would Britain be without her sport? “As far as the statement about the infliction of pain to the limit of endurance is concerned, the rules governing sports are so carefully embodied that at any period during a contest a contestant can signify that he has reached the limit of his endurance and call a halt. Especially is this so in the wrestling game, when a man has but to tap the mat to show that he has been caught in a hold from which he cannot escape and wishes to forfeit a fall. “It is not essential to inflict pain to get a fall,” concluded Mr. Grant. “A certain amount of punishment must necessarily enter into sport, but it is part of the sporting game to learn to take hard knocks in good spirit. During 30 years of experience of wrestling I have not known or heard of a wrestler, even among the world’s best, who has been permanently injured.” “Farmer” Vance was the man responsible for the statement that he would be sorry to see skirts on men. “It will be a great task, for me to come down to skirts, and be as refined as this man evidently thinks wrestling should be,” he said. “I have been wrestling for 14 years and I have never been injured to the extent of having to lay off for more than one match. When I have been injured it has always been my own fault, as I could have called enough.” Vance went on to say that he was engaged in training men at Camp Lewis, Washington, for duty in the Great War, and he put them through the toughest exercises he knew of, which were part of a wrestler’s training. . ; “In America wrestling is taught m the schools, where it is recognised as one of the greatest body-building sports in the world,” he continued. “Even the Sunday schools recognise its value and in my home town, Portland, I taught wrestling to a Sunday school class of boys between the ages of seven and 21. I also taught boys in Kansas City. “It is up to the wrestler to signify if he i; getting hurt at all. In my last match, Naranjan Singh knew I had caught him in a hold from which he could not escape and that he was getting hurt. What did he do? Like a sensible man he tapped the floor. Further, boxers are nearly all through at 30 years of age, but some of the best wrestlers in the world are men between 50 and 55. They are in perfect health and are fine specimens of manhood,” concluded Vance. Even the rather taciturn Walter Johanssen was moved to a few words on the subject. “What does this Mr. Mason know about it?” he asked. Johanssen contended that wrestling was not half so cruel as boxing. “It looks fierce,” he said, “and some holds stop the circulation, but that soon gets going again and there is no pain to it. Nobody has gone away from here with broken legs that I know of. In boxing you can find men who are injured mentally, but not in wrestling. I don’t know of any cases, anyhow. Wrestling is one of the oldest sports in the world and I have never heard anything like this before.”