MODERN GLADIATORS
By J. S. COLLIS SCENE Blackfriars Ring on a Thursday evening. For some time I had meant to look in and see what all-in wrestling was really like. I was prepared to watch something rather primitive; and, on going at last, I was not disappointed. I may add that I have seldom seen anything more revolting, more consciously sadistic, or more significant of the long night of barbarisation that lies before mankind.
Entering the "theatre," I found myself in a packed crowd, the members of which were watching the ring with over-normal excitement. Two strikingly powerful men were engaged in the extremities of combat. One of them was unaesthetically fat ; the other was not fat—merely gigantic. As I came in I saw the fat man's opponent toss him head-over-heels into a corner and then jump on his stomach with both feet. However, the latter speedily rose and exchanged a similar courtesy. Followed a slashing blow in the face which again floored the first, who again rose, and this time knocked his opponent so violently against the ropes that the latter's foot got caught in them, and he hung upside down helplessly while the foot was seized upon and savagely twisted. But as thc ankle did not belong to an ordinary man, and as the referee seized the twister by both ears and dragged him backwards,' the other was able to break free, to regain his perpendicular, and to fetch the opposing tonnage of flesh such a blow that it crashed through the ropes out of the ring. The latter, on re-entering, evidently answered with a foul, for boos broke from the crowd, and the victim of the foul managed to twist the fat man's arm in such a way that he lay exposed on the ground while his opponent, as a gesture of contempt, plucked hair off his chest.
As an unknowledgeable spectator I found the rules of the game difficult to follow. It did not appear that there were many rules. All one could safely assume was that the man who was killed first, or had a limb broken or was otherwise laid out would be the loser. Yet I saw no limb broken nor actual death. That's the queer thing : no one was killed outright in the course of the evening. It is hard to understand ; I have never been a hundred per cent. footballer; but I used to play occasionally with internationals; and I'm quite sure from what I know of them that if a Cove-Smith or my brother, W. R. Collis, spent five seconds in the ring with one of these gladiators, each would return to his respective hospital, not as a doctor but as a patient.
For these men belong to a different species. After receiving a blow or a fall that would finish off a normal man, these wrestlers immediately rise to their feet and carry on with measurably increased violence. However, besides the somewhat obscure rules of the game, three things safeguard each fighter from the extremities of foul ferocity. First, there is the weight of public opinion : it is demoralising to have the crowd booing at you. Second, it is inadvisable to so outrage your opponent that a worse fate may be visited upon yourself. Third, the business of the referee is not to see that the rules arc observed, since there are few rules, but to come to the rescue of the man who seems in most need of it. The presence of the referee is not suffered gladly by the wrestlers and he is frequently knocked down himself or thrown bodily over the ropes out of the ring. But if he is good he attends to his business ceaselessly, and when one man having floored his opponent is about to bite off an ear, break an ankle, or execute something less mild, the referee, seizing him by the hair, hurls him backwards.
The first match over (I forget which of them won), another pair appeared who performed similar prodigies; of ferocity. Twice an arm was broken, twice it mended itself again. Three times one man was killed, three times he rose from the dead. Following these came two light-weights--one of them having an extraordinarily goodlooking body. They played clean from first to last. This was scarcely appreciated by the audience, who, feeling let down, shouted at them satirically, " Mind the Old School Tie ! " However, this unfortunate lapse was fully compensated by the performance of the fourth contest.
This last pair were the most interesting, and I was convinced that this sport was certainly the best method by which such men could satisfy their emotional and physical needs. Two giants strolled into the ring : one red-haired and very long, the other dark-haired and immensely well built and in fine trim. Before the fight began the latter—an out-and-out exhibitionist —took the stage, quarrelling and shouting at everyone. He playfully seized the referee and threw him across the ring ; he went up to his opponent to shake hands but knocked him down instead ; he raised his arm, Hitlerwise, addressing the audience, but what he said I don't know, for the uproar was terrific. At length the fight began. The two of them were locked in a deadly embrace, then suddenly the red-haired one threw the other over his shoulder and half out of tho ring. The latter retaliated by taking his opponent by the nose, then clinched him in a corner, got hirn on the ground, and was about to execute something excep- tional when the referee seized him by the hair and threw him backwards. In a second the pair were at it again, exchanging blows that would have felled a hippopotamus, tossing each other into the air like tennis balls, seizing each other's ankles and exerting every effort to remove the foot from the leg. But exhaustion was evidently foreign to the dark-haired man, for when the bell sounded for an interval he still had sufficient energy to knock down his second and to address the crowd with pronounced disapproval.
• It was an interesting evening and these moderns held attention. But the memory which carried away with me was less of them than of the • referee. He approached the sublime. He was a slim, medium- -sized man with black hair and a strikingly intelligent face. Becomingly dressed in a long-sleeved silk shirt and long trousers and grey rubber shoes on his extremely small feet, he stood in the centre of the fray, flashing with electricity. He also was an- out-and-nut exhibi- tionist, intensely enjoying himself:- Not that he was to be envied his pleasure. It was difficult- to see how he remained alive. His job, as I have said, was to divert mortal blows into other channels. In doing so he was dealing with wild animals and would be occasionally flung out of the ring into the crowd. But in a second he would emerge from there, like Proteus from the Deep, and be back again in time to prevent one of the fighters from biting off an ear or breaking a liMb. Sometimei these. offices were so little apprc- • ciated that he himself would engage the full attention of the most violent of the. combatants. On one occasion - the dark-haired man rushed at him like a rhinoceros : but the referee, ducking with a flash, dived through his legs and came out the other side Unscathed : again he was rushed 'at, and again he took the plunge to safety. When the match was over and the dark-haired man had lost (what constituted Victory, heaven knows) lie again -leapt towards the referee, but the latter, -springing to a pint, put his-back to it and holding the ropes with his hands raised both his legs up horizontally and met the oncoming figure with such a smack that he bounced backwards across the ring and fell to the ground. That referee was a flash of lightning, a genius.
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