Down wrestling’s memory lane

Press, 11 November 1983, Page 17

Down wrestling’s memory lane

There was a researcher with a difference in Christchurch last week. John A. Patterson of California, who is with the United Agency for International Development in Lusaka, Zambia, was on a brief visit to the parts of New Zealand his father used to know. Jacob Patterson, known as Jack Patterson, was a professional wrestler on the New Zealand circuit in 1933, fighting such as George Walker and “Whiskers” Blake. John A. Patterson was, looking for newspaper clippings of his father’s bouts, and went away armed with a heap of photostat copies.

He left Christchurch to visit Ashburton, Timaru, Dunedin, Wellington, Masterton, Gisborne and a few more of the places at which his father had fought.

Patterson senior must have been an accomplished

Cerformer, for he was in the taited States wrestling squad for the 1928 Olympic Games at Amsterdam, and he had three bouts with the great Jim Londos, losing two and drawing one. In New Zealand, Jack Patterson was cast as the bad man, his son said. He drew a few, but never won a bout in New Zealand. The son has in his possession a telegram to wrestling officials saying that the folice would not allow atterson to “work in Christchurch” again, because he was too rough. Being the bad man required more than an ability to lose with bad grace. The father told the son that he used to have a little bag of ox blood in his mouth. When a hit on his face seemed to argue an appropriate moment, Patterson would bite the container, and the “blood” would course over his chin.