Part 2: The 1950s and the television boom
While the first three volumes of this series covering the mostly pre-1950s period consisted mostly of 1-3 minute clips with occasional exceptions, you’ll find that most matches are complete in the 1950s. In fact, if you’re looking solely at American wrestling, there are probably more complete matches available to us in the 1950s than in the 1970s.
There are many reasons for this. A major one is the exceptional Russ and Sylvia Davis Collection released by the Chicago Film Archives on YouTube. CFA has uncovered hundreds of never or rarely before seen matches from the time period in pristine quality. CFA still releases new matches occasionally, but most of the matches were made available in 2015. It should also be noted that quite a few NWA Chicago matches were already in circulation in trading circles prior to the 2015 release, so not every NWA Chicago match originated from the Davis Collection. Chicago was a frequent stop for NWA World Champion Lou Thesz and also gives us our earliest extended look at major stars like Verne Gagne, Dick the Bruiser, The Crusher, Buddy Rogers, Gorgeous George, Killer Kowalski, The Sheik and many other legends. While Chicago makes up the bulk of the American footage, we also have extensive complete matches from Los Angeles, along with some footage from Buffalo and Dallas. As the decade comes to a close, we also start seeing some footage from Capitol Wrestling, the precursor to the World Wide Wrestling Federation, which would eventually become WWE. Counting their history would be the only way Vince McMahon’s WWF could even enter the ballpark of accurately stating that they were “for over 50 years, the revolutionary force in sports entertainment” at the beginning of all of their TV shows in 1995.
Another reason for the increase in footage is the landscape of wrestling itself changing so much. The 1950s were when pro wrestling was introduced to Japan, with footage dating back to 1953. Rikidozan became a postwar cultural phenomenon. Most of the JWA matches that we have from the 1950s are somewhat clipped, but a few gems are not, most notably matches against wrestlers like Thesz and Don Leo Jonathan.
Finally, some French wrestling from the INA archives entered circulation in recent years and it has been a revelation. We’ll talk far more about that later, but needless to say, dozens if not hundreds of top-tier classics have been uncovered as the good folks of Segunda Caida make their way through the archive. The French footage really kicks into high gear in 1957, when it becomes the majority of available wrestling footage ech year.
The 1950s are a prolific decade for wrestling around the world.
