10 Most Unforgettable Exhibition Matches In Wrestling History
1. Ad Santel Vs. Judo
Judo, distilled from multiple styles of jujutsu by Jigoro Kano in the late nineteenth century, had exploded in popularity over the following two decades. Accepted as an exciting new competitive sport, it wasn’t long before it had spread from Japan to the western world - in 1904, one of Kano’s students travelled to the USA to teach President Theodore Roosevelt several of the techniques.
In the USA, however, wrestling held sway: more specifically, the fighters that made up the beginnings of what we know today as professional wrestling. Georg Hackenschmidt and Frank Gotch were the sporting heroes of the time… and wrestling was legitimate competition in those days, not the worked variety show that it’s become since.
Catch wrestlers, or ‘hookers’, were able to tie men of any size or experience up in agonising knots: it was a set of skills that had migrated through Europe and the US from England. When Tokugoro Ito (a fifth dan black belt from the Kodokan, the founding dojo for judo in Japan) came to live in the States, he began working as a professional wrestler himself, as it paid more than the teaching he did as a day job. That’s how he came across Ad Santel.
In making a name for himself in American wrestling, Ito had become dubbed ‘the world judo champion’ by barkers keen to put over their new foreign star. It only made sense that Santel, after thrashing Ito with a TKO victory on February 5th 1916, would now designate himself the world judo champion. Well, it’s what Vince would have done: wrestling’s changed a lot, but some things remain the same.
Ito returned the favour in their rematch, viciously choking Santel out four months later… but his competitive streak had been awoken, and he went to Seattle to challenge the Kodokan’s judoka representatives there, dominating Taro Miyake and Daisuke Sakai. In his one man war for bragging rights over the new form, Santel travelled to Japan in 1921 and publically challenged the Kodokan itself on its home turf.
Accepting such a base challenge from a gaijin was beneath the Kodokan, of course, and Kano ordered his judoka not to become involved with Santel’s antics. Naturally, pride being a wonderful thing, several men chose to ignore Kano’s demand and accepted.
On March 5th, Santel slammed fifth dan Reijiro Nagata and earne a TKO victory; the very next day, he went to a time limit draw after an hour of scintillating grappling with fifth dan Hikoo Shoji.
Santel’s competitive instincts had finally been satisfied: but Shoji was, if you’ll pardon the expression, hooked. He travelled to America to learn the horrible skills that Santel had spent years honing, and although freestyle wrestling didn’t immediately catch on in Japan when he returned, his influence was instrumental in providing a basis for Rikidozan’s founding of puroresu in the 1950s, which led to the creation of the Japanese pro wrestling that we know and love today.