WRESTLING.

Taranaki Daily News, 25 November 1926, Page 4

WRESTLING.

While professional wrestling is enjoying a boom in Melbourne, contests of a similar type are unknown in England, though amateur competitions are held regularly and here and there professional events under one or other of the codes practised in England—catch-as-catch-can, Lancashire, Cornish, Cumberland or Westmoreland. “Wrestling,” says London Sporting Life, lost caste in this country for a time, owing to the exploitation of bands of foreign fakers of the Graeco-Roman school— Rumanians, Turks, Greeks, Indians, and such like—whose skill generally was in inverse ratio to their weight. The people who flocked to see these man-mountains pull and haul each other about endured the fake for a while, but when the revulsion came it was complete. The worst of it was that native wrestling suffered with the foreign, particularly in Lancashire and London, and the sport has had to fight long and hard in the effort, to win its way back to favour. Wrestling is not only one of the oldest and manliest of British sports, but is as tense and exciting as one could wish to see. Wrestling is indeed a pastime well worth reviving and keeping alive.