Professional
boxing, professional football, professional basketball, professional
wresting. One of these things is not like the others. Pro wrestling is
performance art, following a script for the audience's entertainment. It
wasn't always like that. In the early 20th century, wrestling was a
legitimate competition like any other, with rules and challengers hoping
to beat the champions. And it wasn't nearly as fun as the modern
version.
But professional wrestling began to change
in a way unlike anything ever seen in sports history. While boxing had
known to be fixed from time to time, and the “Black Sox Scandal” had
briefly tarnished Major League Baseball, no legitimate sport had ever
made the full transition into what the WWE now calls “sports
entertainment”—fully scripted, predetermined matchups, with chosen
champions.
That change didn’t happen overnight. But wrestling
historians look to one match, which completely altered pro wrestling’s
history: Lewis vs. Munn, Kansas City, Miss., Jan. 8, 1925.
“That
really kind of put the stamp on it,” [National Wrestling Hall of Fame
director Kyle] Klingman said. “This completely changed the landscape of
professional wrestling.”
So what happened at the
match between champion Ed “Strangler” Lewis (pictured above) and college
football star Wayne “Big” Munn? Read the story of
the wrestling match that changed everything, and how it played out over time, at Atlas Obscura.
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