WRESTLING FIASCO.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 50, Issue 262, 19 August 1930, Page 3

WRESTLING FIASCO.

CONTESTANTS COUNTED OUT. (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, August 18. Pennies, crumpled-up programmes corks, bric-a-brac of various kinds and even beer bottles, found their way into the ring during the wrestling fiasco which occurred to-night at the Town Hall. They were contributed as marks of appreciation by the audience, who would have dispatched vegetables, too, had they been at hand. No match of the same type has ever been staged here before. The wrestlers were "Scotty" MacDougall (14st 21b and Walter Hogg (14st). MacDougall won with falls jn the third and fourth rounds, but could have won as lie liked The match was slow and did beyond measure, and it soon reached the stage where any satisfactory ending seemed impossible. It was watched by a fair house, whose dissatisfaction began to simmer in the first ten minutes ot the first round, rapidly becoming vocal and eventually vociferous. Remarks couched in more or less urgent language and calculated to awaken the statuesque grapplers as thev lay practically inert on the mat, were soon very nearly converging on the ring from all parts of the house. . After the first minute or two tlie audience were noisy. They became increasingly so as the match wore on, except for a few seconds' silence at the end of round one, when they were trying to convince themselves that they had been watching wrestling. Frequent countings-out gave most of the audience an opportunity of making appropriate noises. The more blase ones whiled away their time with bursts of song and everyone made random observations.