[1920-01-30-New York, NY] Earl Caddock vs Joe Stetcher

[Loss]

Earl Caddock (c) vs Joe Stetcher
World Heavyweight Championship
January 30, 1920
New York, NY
The World's Championship Wrestling Match Between Joe Stetcher And Earl Caddock

 

Related

 

[Loss]

While clips of older matches certainly exist, I am fairly certain that this is the oldest match that exists on videotape where we get a significant portion of the match instead of a minute or less of highlights. It’s difficult to provide too much critique of this match not only because I have no grasp of the normal working style at the time, but also because the footage is grainy and shot from a distance. The match pre-dates the National Wrestling Alliance as we know it just as it predates the television-fueled wrestling boom of the 1950s, where the template was created for what pro wrestling looks like today. Like much older footage, it also appears to have been slightly sped up, and distinguishing the wrestlers from each other would be virtually impossible. I realize this isn’t really a review, but it’s difficult to review a match like this. I think the mere preservation of the footage is an accomplishment on its own, and it has immense value as a historical clip. How cool is it that we have footage of a match that is nearly 100 years old? I found a few brief clips of President Woodrow Wilson during this time period when searching YouTube, but nothing approaching 25 minutes of film. Hopefully, 100 years from now, it’s much easier for our wrestling fan successors to watch footage from this era.

[shoe]

Awesome

[peachchaos]

So we have an entry point. Very cool.

[dgrblue]

When was this, two years before moses? Back when the trunks were high and very woolen, and the holds were long!

[Gutenberger]

Now, that's what I call a classic!

 

In all seriousness though, this was tough to watch. I needed 4 or 5 attempts to motivate me to watching this beyond the first 2 or 3 minutes. There isn't really anything I can say about the match, despite it resembling classic amateur wrestling a good bit, naturally, and having no idea who won and who lost. The picture quality is what it is, I don't think one can critisize it, it IS almost 100 years old after all.

 

But yeah, it's really neat to just have something like this and beeing able to access it so easily. Would I recommend watching it? No, definitely not, except you're a super wrestling nerd who has the desire to suck up everything like a sponge.

[fxnj]

Better quality version

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=18wMsQsLMGI

 

I'm not convinced this wasn't a shoot. I agree that it looks like an old school amateur match.

[Gutenberger]

Thanks for the better quality, but I'm not gonna sit through that one again.

 

It looks pretty shoot-y, but often times when you read about these times it seems that everything was shoot, so I'm just gonna attribute that to the general feeling of realism that existed back then.

[Zero]

Just had this on in the background while I worked, couldn't really believe we have 20+ minutes of a 100+ year old match. 

[GOTNW]

I first watched this before going to sleep after not being particularly impressed with the earlier prowres clips, wanting to get it off my bucket list, thinking this wasn't gonna be nearly as good as the stuff from the 1930s. I ended up quite enjoying it, so I rewatched it to give it a closer look.

First thing's first, any description of this as a potential shoot is thoroughly unjustified. This is very clearly a worked pro-wrestling match with cooperation. No trained amateur wrestler is grabbing Side Headlocks like this in a real contest.

Now, for the match itself. I've seen this match described as inaccessible, and I wouldn't necessarily agree with that. If you want to watch this with an understanding of what's going on instead of just staring into blank space, you're going to need two things:

1) good eyesight

2) an appreciation for and a very solid understanding of real grappling (preferably with personal experience, preferably with that experience being something akin to folk-style or submission wrestling)

Luckily, I have both, so let's get into things. Any style of prowres has its tropes. It has its base positions. A lot of traditional prowres uses a Side Headlock as a sort of starting position from which you get shot onto the ropes, get into the matwork etc. Shoot style uses neutral positions like the 50-50 Leg Entanglements as they offer opportunity for mutual attacks, counters and, well, „working“. The styles have their ways of creating intricacy (is he going to do this or that?) as well as drama (he almost had him; this doesn't have to be via nearfalls).

The base positions here are a bit different. You have the lock-ups, but not the lock-ups of today where two guys just automatically simultaneously grab each other, there is a lot more gripfighting here. Now, in most pro-wrestling analysis, creating additional struggle would seem like something worth celebrating, but we're gonna have to stop here, because everyone who has watched modern IJF Judo competitions will tell you that is absolutely untrue. Gripfighting with the most struggle in the world can be (and usually is) incredibly boring. Wrestling luckily doesn't have jackets which could slow the action down and make breaking grips mission impossible, but still, if you've watched enough legitimate grappling competitions, you probably have enough data to realistically reconstruct why the early pro wrestling crowds weren't crazy about the matches beginning with endless standing gripfighting. With that said, I thought the lock-ups were very well done here, there was enough dynamic movement to keep the action varied and interesting. They used a lot of footwork to try to off-balance one another and were constantly fighting for inside control. The lock-up is also used as a reset position after scrambles, so they always return to it. But it being such a basic position actually made it much more interesting than the lock-ups of today, because they were constantly going for Snapdowns, Leg Trips, Russian Ties, Single Legs etc. So the intricacy of a lock-up is much greater and closer to something you'd see in UWF.

The second base position is the turtle position. Stecher's finisher is The Scissors Hold. Translated to modern terminology, it is a basic Back Mount from which he would turn his opponents into pins. This basically means much of the bulk of the match is built around the threat of Stecher's finisher. We go from standing grappling to matwork, from lock-ups to the turtle position, over and over. The turtle isn't just about turning over the guy for the pin, it is also about riding him, or, on the other hand, him getting up and resetting the position. So there's more than enough things for them to address and create intricate sequences around.

By now you should've realized this match is essentially worked Catch-as-catch-can, which is why it could get easily confused for something unscripted. And if you like the aesthetics of something shootier, there is plenty of things to enjoy here. The highs of the action here are the takedowns and the scrambles, and we got a lot of quality in both departments here, some really nice takedowns like the Judo-esque Leg Trips, a blast Double, a Double Wristlock takeover (I told you this match was a work), and the Single Leg is struggled over so much it could even be argued it is another base position. The scrambles you could copy/paste straight into UWFi matches like Tamura/Anjoh and they'd fit right in.

This was a really good match. I'd rate it a 7 or an 8 out of ten, the video quality and the lack of points of references make it harder to draw definitive conclusions. It's hard to judge how dramatic it was – there were some nearfalls near the end, but the actual drama of whether someone's shoulder were going to be kept above the ground seems stronger in the 1913 Fristensky vs Smejkal bout. Here the escapes are more dramatized, but I'd say this stuff certainly doesn't look as exciting as the matches that that came in the later 1920s and the 1930s,  which is when the theatrics and the elaboration clearly started gaining ground. But the meat of the match is really good.

[fxnj]

I'm gonna go against the grain here and say I've actually come around to thinking this likely a shoot. Mark Hewitt, who's studied this era as much as anyone, laid out a pretty solid circumstantial case on a podcast from last year (Earl Caddock talk starts 54 minutes in). The core of his argument is a story that he heard from Caddock's family about how Caddock and Stecher were offered by the promoter the opportunity to do a worked series of matches across the country in the aftermath of this one, but they both refused on principle of not wanting do works against each other. He backs this up by mentioning how this was the last time they'd wrestled on record despite there clearly still being a lot of money in this matchup. He also brings up Caddock's bitterness about the industry's switch to worked matches, which extended to his family initially being reluctant to allow him to be inducted into a pro wrestling hall of fame. Hewitt and the podcaster also theorize that Caddock eventually giving in and doing worked matches for the money might have contributed to his depression later in life. 

As for the work itself, I don't see anything that really gives it away as a work either. The heavy focus on gripfighting and them trying to ride each other when the other guy goes in turtle position looks a lot like a slower paced version of modern amateur wrestling. Hell, if this was a work, wouldn't leaning your weight on the other guy to wear him down be something that you'd try to avoid in a 2 hour match? The escapes are also quick and to the point. It's kind of hard to tell with the dogshit video quality, but I didn't really see anything akin to a shoot-style match where they're clearly leaving deliberate openings for the other guy to work a counter. The grounded side headlock sequence and maybe some of the throws would look suspect if you saw them in modern grappling or MMA, but, if a basic body lock being treated as a cutting edge maneuver wasn't enough of a tip off, you have to remember that this is far less developed than the type of shoot fighting that we're used to watching. Lower level fighters naturally means being able to get away with stuff that would be idiotic today against guys who know their stuff.

[GOTNW]

On 5/20/2024 at 12:32 PM, fxnj said:

Mark Hewitt, who's studied this era as much as anyone, laid out a pretty solid circumstantial case on a podcast from last year (Earl Caddock talk starts 54 minutes in).

 

Thank you very much for this great piece of audio, I would advise everyone interested in this era to give it a listen, some very intriguing stories. I will just note, for clarity, that no suggestion is made anywhere that this match was a shoot

As far as the (un)cooperative nature of this match goes, I think the work speaks for itself and don't really have the will to break down several individual sequences. I will note two important things which have to be taken into consideration if you're seriously going to make that argument.

First, it is true that there has been an incredible development of submission grappling in the last century. However, it's important to note in what areas the development has taken place. I'm not an expert in Amateur and Folk-style, I'm sure many improvements have been made there, just like they have been in Basketball, Tennis and every other sport. However, if we're talking about a revolutionary kind of improvement, it has only really been made thanks to new emerging rulesets which allowed competitors to spend a significant amount of time in positions where they are pinned and/or open to being punched. Caddock and Stetcher probably didn't have an amazing Z-guard and De la Riva guard, since there was no reason to develop them under the rulesets in which they competed at the time. If you look at something like a Mount or a blast Double, sure there have probably been additional set-ups with which people have come up over time, but generally, it's the same thing you see today. If anything, I would say modern MMA has largely proved Catch Wrestling is the best base for the sport, the emphasis on bottom play isn't a good idea for real fights, and contemporary Grappling has been way more "revolutionary" as its own niche with super specific rulesets where things like the Worm Guard can exist than at showing what is possible to do in a real fight, even if "real fighting" as a sport has only existed in significant fashion for the last 30 years and expanding what is possible should be happening regularly and naturally for both striking and grappling once they are mixed-up.

As far as these guys being lower level fighters, I'm just going to shake my head. Fighting ability isn't acquired through theorizing, but through sparring. You can watch all the Danaher instructions in the world, consistent mat time beats it any day of the week. These guys had spent their whole lives on the mat. Do you really think they weren't very proficient wrestlers, who knew better than not do grab silly Side Headlocks, follow up their Takedowns, or escape positions and holds in ways which were energy efficient instead of intentionally showboaty? Even with all the improvements that have been made in the grappling sports, wrestling itself isn't exactly a young sport, it's been around long enough that I seriously doubt you would see an honest-to-God piggyback, which you can spot here around twenty minutes in.