Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Ballyhoo!: The Roughhousers, Con Artists, and Wildmen Who Invented Professional Wrestling

Ballyhoo!: The Roughhousers, Con Artists, and Wildmen Who Invented Professional Wrestling

Langmead, Jon

Hardcover

Series: Sports and American Culture

FictionWrestling20th Century United States History

Publisher Price: $36.95

ISBN10: 0826222994
ISBN13: 9780826222992
Publisher: University of Missouri Press
Published: Jan 19 2024
Pages: 316
Weight: 1.39
Height: 1.01 Width: 6.29 Depth: 9.22
Language: English
Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2024

Ballyhoo! The Roughhousers, Con Artists, and Wildmen Who Invented Professional Wrestling is a history of professional wrestling's formative period in the U.S., from roughly 1874 to 1941, and the contested interplay of wrestlers and promoters who built the sport as we know it. During this period, the major conventions that would define wrestling to the present day were perfected and codified, as wrestling morphed from a rough sport practiced on farms and at town gatherings to melodramatic mass entertainment that reliably drew large crowds in cities across the nation.

The narrative uses the life and career of Jack Curley--a boxing promoter whose fortune took a turn for the better when he began promoting wrestling matches--as a compass as it charts the development of wrestling. By the late 1910s, Curley's shows were selling out Madison Square Garden monthly. Ballyhoo chronicles his competition with the other promoters, as well as the lives of colorful athletes like Strangler Ed Lewis, Frank Gotch, the Masked Marvel, Jim Londos, Gorgeous George Wagner, Farmer Martin Burns, and Dynamite Gus Sonnenberg.

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