Restrictions on Wrestling

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 288, 1 September 1931, Page 11

Restrictions on Wrestling

Sir, —Wrestling in one form or another is as old as the human race and of international origin. To overcome an opponent by the application of grips and holds and by the scientific exhibition of superior strength conforms to a natural human instinct. The appeal of the sport as a spectacle is as old as human history. The combination of the old Lancashire style with the Japanese art of jiu-jitsu, which we now call catch-as-catch-can wrestling, has in the past few years made an irresistible appeal to sport levers of every country. The catch-as-catch-can code has developed a class of specialised athlete who is essentially a product of the physical culture school, robust, rugged specimens of manhood who are shining examples to the youth of any country of the heights of physical perfection to be obtained by clean living and healthy exercise. In New Zealand at the present time the sport is labouring under some disabilities which do not exist in other countries, where apparently wrestling is regarded as a robust and not an effeminate occupation. In this Dominion the cry of brutality has been raised and many restrictions have been placed upon competitions by the police and those in control. Writing as a medical man who holds the unorthodox position of a manager of wrestlers I make an appeal for the exercise of reason and common sense. If wrestling is really a brutal sport, why do wrestlers last longer than any other athletes? Farmer Burns, aged 69 years, is still th? world’s foremost tutor; Zybysko, aged-60, is still one of the world’s foremost contenders Sam Burmister, who under reasonable conditions I consider the best wrestler in New Zealand today, is a husky panther-like youth of 45These men have competed since early youth in the hard unrestricted arenas of other countries. In wrestling, even where the greatest latitude is permitted, the fatalities and serious injuries incidental to boxing are practically unknown. To suggest that a diving tackle on a standing opponent who may incidentally get butted is more brutal than the same diving tackle and the same butting on an opponent in full career on the football field is: manifestly absurd. That a stationary opponent thrown over or through the ropes during the heat of an encounter provides a brutal spectacle, whereas the opponent travelling at high speed and entirely unbalanced suddenly hurled across the line on the football field is a spectacle calling for clamorous acclamation is quite unreasonable. In football it is not regarded as an offence to fend off vigorously a tackler with the open hand nor to bump him off with the shoulder, even though the force of both these manenvres is augmented by the fact that the players are travelling at top speed. It is regarded as quite laudable to fall on a player in possession of the ball, and if heads bump in rucks and scrums both player and spectator regard it as one of the incidentals to the game. All these things in football occur on the inhospitable surface of Mother Earth. Yet if they occur in a well-padded wrestling ring they call forth reprobation and even disqualification.

Wrestling is a rugged and virile sport engaged in by professionals fitted physically by years of training to withstand the buffets inseparable from their calling. It is singularly free, from the injuries and fatalities of other sports. It is conferring an immense benefit on the youth of this country. It has caused gymnasiums to spring up like mushrooms throughout the land and has filled them with youths eager to attain that standard of physical perfection that wrestling alone can give. It is earnestly to be desired that those in authority will cease harkening to the voice of the physically unsound Puritan and give wrestlers that reasonable latitude granted in all other countries which is necessary for the preservation of the sport as a spectacle attractive to an eager public.—l am, etc., RONALD MACQUEEN, M. 8.. M.S. (Syd.). Wellington, August 26.