Word: champion
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Christopher Theophilus ("Jim Londos"), who considers himself the world's champion wrestler and has a gold belt to prove it, last week advanced across a Manhattan ring and seized the left arm of Joe De Vito, a rubbery Italian with a pork-barrel torso and a door-knob ear. He gave the arm a vicious twist. De Vito, grunting with unreasonable surprise, retaliated by trying to pluck off one of Londos's toes. For 21 min. 42 sec. the two groveled, grunted, snorted, glowered, slapped, twisted and oozed. Once De Vito bowled over Londos with a butt...
...claimant to the world's championship, several more or less high-grade contenders for it. De Vito hitherto has belonged to a group controlled by Paul Bowser, which operates in Boston and the Midwest. The Bowser group also includes Gus Sonnenberg, Jack Sherry, Don George, Henri De Glane (champion). Londos is champion for the most profitable of the three groups, operated by Promoter Jack Curley in Manhattan and the Midwest. Some of his stablemates are Richard Shikat, Jim McMillen, Leon Pinetski, Gino Garibaldi, Sandor Szabo. De Vito was allowed to wrestle Champion Londos because he professed to have severed...
...third group, specializing in wrestlers of more advanced age like Ed ("Strangler") Lewis, Joe Stecher, the Zbyszko Brothers, John Pesek, is operated on the Pacific Coast by Billy Sandow, onetime circus strongman. Its champion, until recently, was Strangler Lewis, who last winter became an independent performer and engaged in a match against Champion De Glane in which he was disqualified for biting...
...apparently unnecessary contortions with which most professional wrestlers discharge their duties, have often caused the honesty of the sport to be derided. In New York State it is permissible to advertise wrestling events as "exhibitions" but not as "matches." Few wrestling critics, however, question the ability or sincerity of Champion Londos. His amazing agility, his wily endurance, his handsome appearance, have been largely instrumental in re-establishing wrestling as a well-patronized pastime in U. S. cities...
...Champion Londos is one of 13 offspring of a Greek olive picker. He got his nickname, for purposes of abbreviation, from a sportswriter who admired Author Jack London, when he started his wrestling career in San Francisco 17 years ago. During the winter, Champion Londos wrestles three times a week, makes about $250,000 a year. This season he has defended his title 207 times. He lives in St. Louis, eats enormously, maintains a library of 1,200 volumes, takes singing lessons, smokes a corncob pipe...