Baba & Behemoths

Across a wrestling ring in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden last week two men growled and glowered at each other. Squatting in one corner, wearing a fancy ruby-colored robe with turban to match, was Arteen Ekizian, 30-year-old Turk, one time fish-peddler, U. S. sailor and Hollywood "extra." To 5,000 raucous spectators he was Ali Baba, the Terrible Turk of whom posters asked IS HE MAN OR BEAST? Ali Baba's head resembled a speckled ostrich egg. His upper lip was hidden behind a sweeping pair of handle bar mustachios. His teeth were jagged and irregular. His short legs which sup ported his 205 Ib. wabbled like an ape's.

In the other corner was his opponent, Dick Shikat. One of the few professional wrestlers whose repertoire includes some genuine wrestling holds, Shikat was diligently working up a great hate with which to defend his "world's wrestling championship" against the Terrible Turk for the second time. Two weeks before, Baba had trounced him in Detroit in what was billed as a world championship bout. This billing was not recognized by the New York State Athletic Commission which demanded another bout, this time in Manhattan, to prove the Turk's rightful claim.

As last week's bout began, both wrestlers yammered, screamed, snorted, grunted, growled, moaned. Shikat's nose dribbled blood from Baba's crushing headlocks and resounding slaps. Each diligently tied the other into knots. Shikat stood the Turk on his head, bounced him up & down. When, after 53 minutes of mauling, Shikat began to lose enthusiasm and the shoe polish from Baba's mustache dripped onto his hairy chest, the latter pinned Shikat with what Announcer Joe Humphreys identified as a flying crotch hold and body press. With this hold, Ali Baba became the fifth person in the U. S. currently claiming the World's Wrestling Championship.

Last week's match appeared genuine if for no other reason than Shikat's an nounced aversion to "fixed" bouts. This testimony was revealed last month when one Joe Alvarez, who claimed to be his manager, sought an injunction to keep Shikat from wrestling Baba in Detroit. Shikat frankly admitted that before three recent bouts, a man had pushed his way into his dressing room, instructed him to "lay down," lose the match. These orders he had faithfully executed until last March. Then, indignant at having to lose all the time, he disobeyed his dressing room order by pinning Champion Danno O'Mahoney in a world championship match. At this testimony Promoter Jack Curley, who with five others rules the wrestling world today, exploded. Such a thing as a "-fixed" match, he yelped, was unknown to him.

High-minded sportswriters who sputtered indignantly at these revelations forgot what revolutionary changes had occurred in a sport which now grosses $5,000,000 a year from the U. S. public. In the days of Farmer Burns and Frank Gotch wrestling was, indeed, an exhibition of skill and strength. When Ed ("Strangler") Lewis, Stanislaus Zbyszko and Joe Stecher began to trade their "world championships" with peculiar regularity, U. S. fans became perturbed. In the 1920's the sport sank deep in the doldrums.

An upturn was provided in 1928 by Gus Sonnenberg and the flying tackle he used as a Dartmouth footballer. His first opponent, no halfback, was unable to dodge, was carted unconscious from the mat. The success of this new tactic quickly boosted the sport. With addicts neither so naive nor so particular as before, refinement soon disappeared entirely. Eye-gouging, hair-pulling and kicking became common practice. Assault & battery on the referee proved a popular diversion. Lately one wrestler introduced the new fad of trying to garrote his opponent with three feet of chicken wire. Though even the most bloodthirsty addicts frown on its use, chloroform has been employed on several occasions to down an adversary.

Quick to see that rough & tumble entertainment is the first prerequisite of a big gate, wrestling promoters have scoured the country for freaks & oddities. One first-class drawing card is 320-lb. Man Mountain Dean (ne Leavitt) whose incredulous career is matched only by his size. Born on Manhattan's tough West Side, he unsuccessfully dabbled in boxing, served as a sparring partner for Jess Willard, went abroad with the A. E. F. Discharged from a high-toned production of Shakespeare's As You Like It because he tackled the leading man, Frank Leavitt drifted to Miami to become a member of the police force. Expelled because he was alleged to have accepted a glass of champagne from Al Capone, he turned up in a whistle-stop town in Georgia. There Eugene Talmadge, now Georgia's Governor, saw him flatten an opponent, sent him north with letters of introduction. At first Frank Leavitt was an indifferent success, drifted to England where he was hired to double for Charles Laughton in the wrestling scenes of the cinema Henry the Eighth. Because his false whiskers kept falling off, he grew a genuine pair, adopted the name Man Mountain Dean. A wretched wrestler, he does provide customers with the amazing spectacle of much human flesh on the move.

His counterpart, Leo Daniel Boone Savage, is even more eccentric, still more genuine. Born in the Kentucky backwoods, he hitchhiked to Beaumont,, Tex. last year, walked around the streets looking for someone to "scuffle." Immediately snatched up by a wrestling promoter, he soon proved Texas' No. 1 drawing card, not only by his tremendous mop of black hair and beard, but by his eccentric habit of walking barefoot around Houston streets with a lantern, afraid that the street lights would suddenly blow out. In his hotel room he keeps his pet opossums under the bed, once completely flustered the management by bringing in a rooster to wake him up in the morning. Unscientific in the ring, this 250-pounder has nonetheless thrown some of the best U. S. wrestlers. "Last time I counted," said Leo to a newshawk, "I had eight brothers and sisters, and every one of them, 'n' my mom 'n' pappy are agin my scufflin'."

High on a long list of recent foreign importations is Russia's Sergei Kalmikoff, who weighs 235 lb., sports a straw-colored beard, a closely-cropped skull. Out of the ring, his .favorite pastime is to parade down Broadway, dressed in a gold-braided Cossack tunic with cartridge belt, boots, an astrakhan hat. In the ring, his customary procedure is to stroke his beard pensively, glower at spectators. His favorite hold is the Russian Bear Hug, nothing more than an earnest attempt to squeeze the living daylights out of his opponent. Last week Wrestler Kalmikoff, an ardent Communist, took his $25,000 earnings, shaved his beard, sailed back to Russia.

Chief Little Wolf (ne Tenario), a Navajo tribesman who started as a welterweight (145 lb.) and worked up to heavyweight, is the current red-skinned attraction. The Chief trains on raw meat, spends his spare time weaving blankets, fashioning bracelets and necklaces. Considered the Beau Brummell of the wrestling world, he sports huge sombreros, checked suits, fancy vests, embroidered boots. If his specialty, the Navajo war whoop, fails to prostrate his opponent, he employs the Indian Death Lock, a crushing leg hold.

Another in the new crop of Western sensations is beautifully built Dean Detton, better known as the Mormon Flash, who attributes his success to religious adherence to the tenets of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Inexplicable to many is the ability of wrestlers night after night to heave each other around, bounce outside the ring onto concrete floors, go through seeming agonies. Rough & tough anyway and reinforced by several layers of fat, wrestlers have learned how to fall, when to fall, how to fake, when to call quits. Consequently they escape with few injuries beyond strains & bruises.

Responsible for most physical pain and damage have been the four famed Dusek brothers, who have meticulously adhered to their slogan, "Never a Dull Bout with a Dusek." Last week in Manhattan the four Duseks appeared on the same card, made themselves thoroughly unpopular by savagely thumping & kicking their way to victories in three out of four matches. Only 215-lb. Emil, lightest and mildest of the four, was unable to win.

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