10 Most Unforgettable Exhibition Matches In Wrestling History
4. Frank Gotch And The White House
US President Theodore Roosevelt, the most overwhelmingly macho politician since Ancient Sparta, was a sports and exercise fiend, forever taking harmless outdoor activities and pursuits like hiking and tennis and turning them into murderous Running Man style events.
So it’s no surprise that the man was a martial arts obsessive for years, about a hundred years before it became fashionable. Small and asthmatic as a child, he learned to box to fend off bullies, but later on in his political career he grew devoted to wrestling, hiring the American middleweight champion to train with him four times a week.
Roosevelt couldn’t help but consider the immense popularity of America’s professional wrestling sensation Frank Gotch, and invited the champion to the White House on two occasions. On the second, the Japanese ambassador was also present… and so was a Japanese jujutsu expert. Devoted to jujutsu after learning a few techniques from a wrestler friend, Roosevelt couldn’t help himself. He had to know which style was superior.
The President challenged Gotch concerning his knowledge of jujutsu, and when the Iowan grappler replied that he was more than familiar with it, he asked whether he believed he could beat the jujutsu champion sitting in the next room. Gotch wasn’t one to back down under any circumstances, especially not a once-in-a-lifetime request from his Commander-In-Chief, and the match was on.
The furniture was cleared out of the White House’s East Hall, and in the following few minutes, Frank Gotch made the unnamed Japanese champion submit three times in quick succession, his notorious cruel streak brought to bear on the poor man.
The date of the impromptu match is lost to history, but realistically it must have come towards the end of Roosevelt’s second and last term in office. Ominously, fate would have the last laugh. Within the decade, both Gotch and Roosevelt - supreme physical specimens who lived and died by their conditioning - would be dead, the former of kidney failure through uremic poisoning, and the latter due to a blood clot that travelled to his lung.