Oldest Wrestling match known to man found (1920) Vid inside!

Lion_Heart · 12-22-2008, 01:13 PM

Well it did take me a while to find this (Don't say I just looked it up on you tube I found it on an old old site where I added the you tube code to their code.) but I was wondering what was the oldest peice of recorded footage from anything to do with wrestling in the world and I found it.

It is dated in January 1920. Madison Square Garden New York City (Apparently don't quote me on it). And here is the video in the bad quality it is don't expect DVD quality cause the video is obviously old and when someone uploaded it, it wouldn't be in the best condition.

Anyway without any further introduction here is a Very interesting piece of history here! Rare footage from the Earl Caddock vs Joe Stecher match on January 30th 1920. The match took place at the second Madison Square Garden in New York City. Stecher pinned Caddock in 2:05:00 using a wristlock and his finishing hold, the body scissors.

Now you guys can actually say that you saw a match from 1920!

I had a feeling some of you old school wrestling junkies would like to view this peice of wrestling history and well yeh, thanks.
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 20 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

Also on a side note, I may be wrong but was this back when wrestling used to be real?

John Smith · 12-22-2008, 01:37 PM

Difficult to tell, because I think the 20's were around the time the shoot/work switchover happened. The first ever professional wrestling match was in 1875 according to Guinness World Records. Obviously it had to be extremely realistic because at one time fixing wrestling matches was a criminal offence.

Amazing the endurance of the guys back then, there were often stale mates that went on for hours, the longest recorded wrestling match lasted 11 hours apparently. As far as I know it all started when they thought up ways backstage to try and avoid hurting eachother too much in the ring.

Around this time there would be predetermined and real wrestling shows going on around the world. Fascinating footage, they trained like Olympic athletes in those days, they could break the likes of John Cena in half.

Lion_Heart · 12-22-2008, 01:45 PM

True even though it was pre-determained. They had the skill and endurance of a gladiator. And I may not have worded myself properly but I know there have been earler wrestling matches before 1926 but what I mean't to say was that this was the first fight that was caught on video and you can not find an ealier fight on the internet anywhere in the world because before that there were obviously no video cameras.

King Steventon · 12-22-2008, 02:09 PM

Meh, wrestling never really took off until the 60's anyway >_>. Interesting though.

John Smith · 12-23-2008, 05:55 PM

Wrestling never really took off till the 60's? I think a sold out Madison Square Garden might dispute that.

King Steventon · 12-26-2008, 01:51 PM

I mean in terms of quality.

John Smith · 12-26-2008, 08:31 PM

Over 2 hours of hold for hold wrestling not quality enough for ya?

It'd be good if they did that nowadays, Joe Legend went an hour and a quarter in Germany afew years and Chris Hero & CM Punk went for an hour and a half on an indie show afew years ago too, that was the longest match in recent history apart from a Japanese guy who had a 2 hour match on an island some place.

BDK · 12-26-2008, 11:51 PM

Well..Hero and Punk's hour long match definitely isn't the longest in the states in recent memory considering Joe vs. Punk happened after it.

King Steventon · 12-27-2008, 10:44 AM

And Aries/Danielson from Testing The Limits.

With a few exceptions (Punk/Joe, Rock/HHH, Kawada/Kobashi), most hour long singles matches bore me because they milk rest holds for five minutes at a time, so I can't imagine myself ever sitting through a two hour singles match. Considering there have been a few hour long broadways this year that all turned out to be pretty bad, I can't see the desire to work an hour long match for the sake of it.

Oldest Wrestling match known to man found (1920) Vid inside!

This is a discussion on Oldest Wrestling match known to man found (1920) Vid inside! within the General Pro Wrestling : Classic & General forums, part of the Wrestling Forums category; Well it did take me a while to find this (Don't say I just looked it up on you tube ...