Three Matmen Go West

The WAWLI Papers by J Michael Kenyon

THREE MATMEN GO WEST
by Jack Curley
Ring Magazine, September, 1936
Reprinted in The WAWLI Papers, Volume 2, Number 53

Three deaths within two weeks of famous matmen give the lie to those who would belittle the noble sport which has weathered the centuries, and is going stronger than ever.   I don't know when I ever felt worse about the passing of friends.
There is an old saying, and it seems to be a true one, that good things as well as bad things come in threes.   First came the death of Steve Znoski, a likable big fellow, of Polish descent, who was born in Connecticut.   Then came the death in a hospital in Rochester, Minn., of Jim Browning, former world's champion and one of the greatest wrestlers as well as finest men who ever lived.   To climax the trinity of deaths came the tragic demise in a ring at Washington, D.C., of the veteran Mike Romano.
Both Znoski and Romano had been in my office just before their respective deaths.   Mike, an Italian, as loyal as they come, visited me the afternoon before he died.   He was never more jubilant in his life.   He was enthusiastic over the prospects of meeting Dave Levin, the new world's champion, in the West.   Another thing that excited him was the receiving in the mail, a few days previously, of a church medal.
I guess Mike died as he would have wished, as they say in the West, "with his shoes on" or in other words, in action.   Mike had always given his best efforts to wrestling.   He was proud of the fact that he was a wrestler.
At times against Ed "Strangler" Lewis and other stars in the West, Mike had been one of the principals in bouts that drew up into the twenties of thousands.   Mike was a clean living man, but the strenuous work of tussling three or four times a week for fifteen years or more must have taxed his courageous heart to the breaking point.
Steve Znoski had walked in his sleep or in a delirium out of his hotel window in New York and dropped twenty-five feet.   The doctors who attended him said he hadn't been hurt by the fall, and two nights later he wrestled, only to be stricken that night with the dread spinal meningitis, which probably developed as the result of the fall.
It had only been a few weeks before that, that another one of our wrestlers, Jim Kendricks, a former Holy Cross star, died of the same disease, gamely and unknowingly entering bouts two or three nights before being stricken.
Browning had been ill for several months.   Letters from his farm at Vernon, Mo., told how he had dropped in weight from some 225 pounds to 140.   He was driven in an ambulance all the way to Rochester, Minn., for an operation by the famous Mayo brothers, but his long illness had so sapped his strength that he wasn't able to survive the shock of operation.
The past year or so has seen the passing of many good grapplers, such as Jack Shimkus, Charlie Hansen, Jack Hurley, Cowboy Russell, and several others whose names I can't recall just now travelled to the Great Beyond.   During the past six months two of our ace promoters, Joe "Toots" Mondt and Paul Bowser, withstood major operations.   In the course of a season dozens of wrestlers are badly hurt and out of the game for weeks at a time.
Grapplers give their all to entertain and amuse the public.   They are always trying their utmost to give the fans a run for their money.   Matmen are noted for the fact that they work just as hard when there is ten dollars in the house as when there is ten thousand.
The matmen stoically take the raps directed at the sport, more times unjustly than justly, without uttering a murmer.   And when a death comes in the ring as was the case with Mike Romano it is mute testimony that they all carry on -- even to the bitter end.
We have heard so much about crooked wrestling matches.   The ample proof that the wrestlers go into the sport with all they possess, and do their utmost to give the fans a run for their money is the vast number of injuries these wrestlers suffer in line of duty and the number of fatalities during the past four years.   The average fan hoots and hisses a grappler when he wrestles according to Hoyle, and therefore these men are forced to give acrobatic stunts and risk bodily injury in order to please the spectators.

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