10 Wrestlers That Changed The Business Forever

4. Jim Londos

Jim Londa The €˜Golden Greek€™ as he was usually billed, was not an especially imposing figure in the ring, but he was incredibly charismatic, in perpetually great shape and, moreover, he was very handsome. Not many men would see a chiselled jawbone, high cheekbones and a shock of jet-black hair as a passport to anything more than a notchy bedpost, but to Londos, it was a gateway to tremendous success in the wrestling business. Inventing the €˜Beauty vs. The Beast€™ concept, Londos ensured that he was booked against his era€™s ugliest stars, the uglier, the better. He looked like a bona-fide movie star and audiences responded to him in kind, flocking in their tens of thousands to see the Greek hero banish yet another misshapen monster. If that seems extremely outdated and superficial, you obviously haven€™t been paying attention to wrestling lately. As I wrote earlier, a wrestler€™s look is practically a third of his overall commodity, probably more. In large part, we owe this to the enduring influence of Jim Londos. Consider the handsome babyface stars of more recent years like Shaun Micheals, The Rock, Bret Hart, John Cena and so on and you€™ll begin to realize just what Londos started. Londos was the star that your girlfriend wanted to go and see. In many ways, he was the Brad Pitt of his day. However, despite attracting record numbers of Women to wrestling shows, Londos was also well loved because he represented what Americans like to euphemistically call €˜the little guy€™. He also almost single-handedly kept professional wrestling afloat during the Great Depression. When profits were lean and times where tough, Londos could still draw crowds of 10,000 or more (and he was even breaking attendance records when he was well into his 60€™s). Immigrating to the US when he was just 15, the boy born Chris Theophelos began working on the railroads in the Utah area. He was successful as a wrestler and carnival attraction throughout the 1920€™s, but only became a World Champion in 1929, the same year that the stock market crashed. By 1930, however, he was a World Champion in his second reign, routinely drawing 20,000 wrestling fans to Madison Square Garden (the previous average was about 4,000). Amazingly, between five of the harshest years of the Great Depression, Londos brought in an estimated $5Million in gate receipts. In his homeland of Greece, a Jim Londos bout drew an incredible 65,000 fans (to put that into perspective, this years€™ WrestleMania XXX show, with a jam-packed, star laden card, was attended by 70,000). After being (legitimately) screwed out of his world title (losing it to Joe Savoldi) in 1933, Londos embarked on a quest for revenge. In 1934, the Golden Greek defeated his real-life rival Ed €˜The Strangler€™ Lewis in front of 25,000 screaming fans in New York, capturing his third World Heavyweight Championship in the process. The €˜Golden Greek€™ was not only a hero to people for his good looks and great build, however. He was also a very charitable soul and was eventually honoured by King Paul of Greece (for his work with orphans), President Nixon (for his financial contributions to various charities) and several other organisations for his Humanitarian work. Londos made a lot of money in his lifetime, but he understood hard times and, as such, he gave a lot of his wealth away to worthy causes. At the time, immigrants were badly treated by the general population (and alas, history seems intent on repeating itself today) and American Greeks got it as badly as anyone. However, in Londos, the downtrodden of all races and cultures had a champion. They found a star that they could look up to, a hero they could empathise with and a man they could emulate and that, at its core, is the essence of what professional wrestling is all about.
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I am a professional author and lifelong comic books/pro wrestling fan. I also work as a journalist as well as writing comic books (I also draw), screenplays, stage plays, songs and prose fiction. I don't generally read or reply to comments here on What Culture (too many trolls!), but if you follow my Twitter (@heyquicksilver), I'll talk to you all day long! If you are interested in reading more of my stuff, you can find it on http://quicksilverstories.weebly.com/ (my personal site, which has other wrestling/comics/pop culture stuff on it). I also write for FLiCK http://www.flickonline.co.uk/flicktion, which is the best place to read my fiction work. Oh yeah - I'm about to become a Dad for the first time, so if my stuff seems more sentimental than usual - blame it on that! Finally, I sincerely appreciate every single read I get. So if you're reading this, thank you, you've made me feel like Shakespeare for a day! (see what I mean?) Latcho Drom, - CQ