20 Pro Wrestling Firsts You Need To Know

13. First Battle Royal

Wrestling Bladejob
WWE.com

Who doesn't love a battle royal? Dumping a load of wrestlers in a ring and letting them throw each other around is great fun to watch, and has provided us with a whole host of memorable moments over the years. In fact, the first wrestling VHS that I remember owning featured Davey Boy Smith winning a battle royal in the Royal Albert Hall.

In many ways, the battle royal was one of the first forms of combat competition, as it evolved out of unorganised free-for-all fights. It featured heavily on boxing cards, though the battle royal has a fairly grim history when it comes to slavery and violence as entertainment.

It isn't entirely clear when the first professional wrestling battle royal took place, but most point to promoter Johnny McGee in the Northeast, with a battle royal booked for a Thanksgiving show on November 29th, 1934.

Contributor
Contributor

Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.