Jim Londos

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

Microstatistics said:

"Weird that he wasn't nominated last time though I'm assuming lack of footage was the primary barrier. Arguably the biggest draw of all time and a compact technician to boot. There are a few Londos matches out there, the notable being the famous, world-class Nagurski match."

[elliott]

Other than the Nagurski match, what should I prioritize for Londos?

[conker8]

Rewatched the Londos-Shikat (at the time I was watching everything about Dick Shikat, he was fascinating) and Londos looked good here.

All the footage are imcomplete (the Nagurski bout is listed as a 47 minutes match in the NWA book).

[elliott]

Can anyone make a real case for Londos based on the existing footage? I've tried to watch what I can find but the vast majority is like 90 second clips. The Nagurski match is 47 minutes? Of which was have under 15 minutes? Is there a complete match? 

[Jetlag]

He looks amazing in the clips. His offense in the Nagurski match feels inventive by 2021 standards (check out the armbreaker in the ropes and those freaky spinning slams). Maybe if time travel becomes a thing in the next 5 years?

[elliott]

The clips are amazing and I'm glad we have them over nothing. But if we don't even have one full match this feels like a nominee for a different project. Is there even 60 minutes of clips. I was hoping there was gonna be more out there. 

I would recommend watching whats out there. Its interesting and Londos looks great. He had a signature finisher back in the early 30s which is cool. I would love to consider him for this but couldn't in good faith. 

[ohtani's jacket]

I don't see a problem with voting for Londos based on the Shikat and Nagurski footage, as well as the newsreel clips. There should be a place for historical candidates on the list. 

[GOTNW]

Wrestling has always been about freak shows. Starting a post about Jim Londos with that probably sounds weird, but I think I haven't missed the mark. I think I get it. The appeal of Jim Londos is that he is a human ant - a small, but freakishly strong dude who goes and slams the bigger wrestlers. He even uses his size as an advantage, working a gimmick with the premise that his low center of gravity, alongside his incredible core strength and positional awareness makes him incredibly hard to take down. Maybe it won't win him a Nobel prize, but it is a very commendable amount of thought and creativity put into the basis of his working psychology, almost unimaginable in the era of "six star matches" and the "greatest wrestling ever".

Now, for a word on the historical evolution of the dominant wrestling style. I am weary of making big claims like "Jim Londos invented Battlarts" and "Jim Londos invented cool wrestling", but I am not convinced they are untrue. Watching the available pre-1920s footage of pro-wrestling, obviously a big point is how amawres inspired it is, but to me the biggest takeaway is how much it feels like an exhibition. At this point prowres essentially feels like amateur wrestling flow rolling, with the only difference being that pro-wrestling had Snapmares. From what I've gathered, the 1920s are the decade of transformation, while in the 1930s the new working style is already formed. You could point to this era as the time that the first highspots, like the Tackle and the Dropkick, were introduced - but the main difference lies in the style itself. Strikes are added, matches feel grittier, more intense and violent. Essentially, what seems to have happened is that pro-wrestling evolved to make matches feel more like fights and less like grappling exhibitions, and it did so by increasing the violence and dramatizing the struggle of the grappling, instead of copying the logic of real fights which is "escape the hold as soon as you can and immediately improve your position". And by doing that it actually acquired the tools to mimick great real fights, where moves and styles are connected to individual fighters, given meaning, played up in the build-up and so on.

Londos is at the forefront of all this. He is the legendary champion having great matches we at least have clips of on tape in a style that I absolutely adore watching. The rabbit punches/slaps/forearms we get intentionally have no wind-up, which is like the inverse of 80s American brawling, you can easily miss some of them. It's basically a paradox - they are doing it for flash, but in a way that is as realistic and unflashy as possible. But in turn, it makes the whole thing feel more organic, it glues you to the action and makes this wonderful pastiche dramatic and exciting without going overboard in the silliness. Maybe only paradoxical logic could have worked in a medium that was a paradox itself? Anyway. I'll have to figure how to compare him to those born in times of affordable widely available advanced video technology, but there's no way I'm submitting a "best wrestlers" list without Jim Londos on it.

[fxnj]

39 minutes ago, GOTNW said:

Wrestling has always been about freak shows. Starting a post about Jim Londos with that probably sounds weird, but I think I haven't missed the mark. I think I get it. The appeal of Jim Londos is that he is a human ant - a small, but freakishly strong dude who goes and slams the bigger wrestlers. He even uses his size as an advantage, working a gimmick with the premise that his low center of gravity, alongside his incredible core strength and positional awareness makes him incredibly hard to take down. Maybe it won't win him a Nobel prize, but it is a very commendable amount of thought and creativity put into the basis of his working psychology, almost unimaginable in the era of "six star matches" and the "greatest wrestling ever".

Now, for a word on the historical evolution of the dominant wrestling style. I am weary of making big claims like "Jim Londos invented Battlarts" and "Jim Londos invented cool wrestling", but I am not convinced they are untrue. Watching the available pre-1920s footage of pro-wrestling, obviously a big point is how amawres inspired it is, but to me the biggest takeaway is how much it feels like an exhibition. At this point prowres essentially feels like amateur wrestling flow rolling, with the only difference being that pro-wrestling had Snapmares. From what I've gathered, the 1920s are the decade of transformation, while in the 1930s the new working style is already formed. You could point to this era as the time that the first highspots, like the Tackle and the Dropkick, were introduced - but the main difference lies in the style itself. Strikes are added, matches feel grittier, more intense and violent. Essentially, what seems to have happened is that pro-wrestling evolved to make matches feel more like fights and less like grappling exhibitions, and it did so by increasing the violence and dramatizing the struggle of the grappling, instead of copying the logic of real fights which is "escape the hold as soon as you can and immediately improve your position". And by doing that it actually acquired the tools to mimick great real fights, where moves and styles are connected to individual fighters, given meaning, played up in the build-up and so on.

Londos is at the forefront of all this. He is the legendary champion having great matches we at least have clips of on tape in a style that I absolutely adore watching. The rabbit punches/slaps/forearms we get intentionally have no wind-up, which is like the inverse of 80s American brawling, you can easily miss some of them. It's basically a paradox - they are doing it for flash, but in a way that is as realistic and unflashy as possible. But in turn, it makes the whole thing feel more organic, it glues you to the action and makes this wonderful pastiche dramatic and exciting without going overboard in the silliness. Maybe only paradoxical logic could have worked in a medium that was a paradox itself? Anyway. I'll have to figure how to compare him to those born in times of affordable widely available advanced video technology, but there's no way I'm submitting a "best wrestlers" list without Jim Londos on it.

Have you seen the extended clips that the UofSC posted of Londos/Steele some years back? For me it's probably the most tantalizing bit of clipped footage that exists out there. Keep putting off an extended write-up of it, but "Jim Londos invented Battlarts" sounds right as a quick summary. The newsreel clips of their other matches also look quite great.