Why did the lighter weights die off in America?

[David Mantell]

Bounced from the French Catch thread:

Quote

What I wonder is what went wrong with lighter weight wrestling in America?  There was George Bothner in the early years of the C20th, he later referreed Caddock- Stecher and ran legendary shooter gym Bothner's Gym in New York.  After that you get the odd name like Ad Santel or Benny Sherman but by the start of the 30s there was virtually nothing left below Light Heavyweight and that title was also exiled to Mexico in the late 30s.

Why did the three lighter weight titles get bounced off to Mexico in the late 1930s with the NWA World Light Heavyweight Championship following in the late 1950s?

Why was America unable to come up with its own versions of George Kidd. Rene Ben Chemoul, "Le Petit Prince" Daniel Dubail, Johnny Saint etc etc.  Was George Bothner a household name and pals with Babe Ruth like Strangle Lewis was?

Why did Europe, Mexico and Japan managed to make stars in the lighter weights but not America?

[ohtani's jacket]

I don't know the exact reasons, but there was clearly an emphasis on size in America and a larger focus on heavyweight titles. Where that emphasis originated from, I don't know. Lightweight wrestling wasn't the only form of wrestling that fell by the wayside. Women's wrestling and minis wrestling was also marginalized after being fixtures of the Golden Age of professional wrestling. I don't think lightweights ever completely disappeared from the sport, but certainly by the time the 80s rolled around there was a lot of pressure on lighter weight wrestlers to bulk up. I don't think that pressure ever completely disappeared. If you look at the Mysterio that broke through in the WWE, he is far more jacked than he was in ECW or WCW. Japanese and Mexican wrestlers are generally of smaller stature than their American counterparts, so that likely played a role in the development of their wrestlers. However, in both countries, the lightweight wrestlers tried to climb the weight divisions. Fujinami, for example, was one of wrestling's great lightweights, but harbored a desire to wrestle in the heavyweight class. In the US, where weight classes mattered less, small wrestlers also aimed for the world title. 

I suppose the true answer is that until Mysterio arrived on the scene, there wasn't a Petit Prince level talent working in the States. Some very good workers, but no-one spectacular. 

[Timbo Slice]

Danny Hodge was a star, especially in the Oklahoma territories, after finishing his amateur career and was highly regarded even though junior heavies weren’t highly featured in the 60s and 70s. He’s probably the best analogue for the majority of the French footage we have, but he was an outlier for the time. 

[strobogo]

Post WW1/2 nutrition might actually be a legitimate factor in this

[Timbo Slice]

And Hodge crushing too many apples with his double-tendoned hands only made fewer pieces of fruit for folks. 

[El-P]

My answer : 'murica, fuck yeah !

Ya know, "bigger is better" mentality and such things.

(the posterboy of it being, well, that Hogan guy in the 80's)

[PeteF3]

3 hours ago, El-P said:

My answer : 'murica, fuck yeah !

Ya know, "bigger is better" mentality and such things.

(the posterboy of it being, well, that Hogan guy in the 80's)

I mean...yeah, fair, but it's not like the lighter weights completely died off in boxing. Even if the heavyweights were the main attractions, Sugar Ray Robinson, Archie Moore, Sugar Ray Leonard, Hitman Hearns, up through Floyd Mayweather were all big stars. Same with UFC. 

[El-P]

1 hour ago, PeteF3 said:

I mean...yeah, fair, but it's not like the lighter weights completely died off in boxing. 

Of course. My answer was obviously half-way in jest.

[David Mantell]

14 hours ago, Timbo Slice said:

Danny Hodge was a star, especially in the Oklahoma territories, after finishing his amateur career and was highly regarded even though junior heavies weren’t highly featured in the 60s and 70s. He’s probably the best analogue for the majority of the French footage we have, but he was an outlier for the time. 

IiRC he was a junior heavyweight. The kids today use "Cruiserweight" and "Junior" to mean anyone not elephantine but back in the day it was used to mean the equivalent of Mid Heavyweight in the UK. Some wrestlers were champions even at Light Heavyweight (#3 division) as a preparation for an eventual heavyweight push - case in point Verne Gagne.

This also happened in Britain - most extreme case in point Dynamite Kid going from beating Jim Breaks in 1977 for the same British Lightweight Championship that Nino Bryant holds today to being a roided-up WWF World Tag Team Champion just 9 years later. Slightly less extreme example Danny Collins' progression from white meat blue-eye British Welterweight Champion Danny Boy Collins in 1984 to heel British Light Heavyweight Champion Dirty Dan Collins by 1997 - had accumulated injuries not taken their toll and led to a slowdown (and five year sabbatical 2002-2007) he might have made British Heavyweight Champion by 2000 and has indeed in later life been World Heavyweight Champion for the Knight family's WAW and several UK New School promotions.

[David Mantell]

On 7/25/2025 at 10:58 PM, ohtani's jacket said:

If you look at the Mysterio that broke through in the WWE, he is far more jacked than he was in ECW or WCW.

From what I can see, in WWE he is treated as a makeshift heavyweight (A lot of Jim Cornette's criticism of Marko Stunt is based on Stunt being likewise passed off as a heavyweight against all plausibility.). Previously in WCW Mysterio was classed as a Cruiserweight, a term borrowed in the 90s from Boxing originally meaning the equivalent of Junior Heavyweight in American Wrestling up to the 80s, Mid Heavyweight in Traditional British Wrestling and Poids Moyen Lourds in Traditional French Catch. Cruiserweight was adopted by 90s WCW because some workers and fans considered "Junior Heavyweight" to be emasculating!

[ohtani's jacket]

The WWE acquired the WCW Cruiserweight title when they bought WCW and used it to replace the WWF Light Heavyweight title. The Cruiserweight belt was Smackdown exclusive and lasted from 2001-2007. During the early part of Rey's run in the WWE, he competed in the Cruiserweight division while sometimes having matches against bigger opponents. After Eddie Guerrero died, they gave Rey a push where he won the Rumble and became a world champion at WrestleMania. He was never positioned as a heavyweight. He was treated as an underdog with a huge heart. He definitely added muscle, though. After they retired the Cruiserweight belt, and Rey had already been a world champ, they basically had him work against whomever. 

[El-P]

205 Live baby.

The X-division is basically what kept the tradition of WCW cruiserweight alive in the US. But it's not about weight limits, you see. It's about... no limit.

[JRH]

WCW would also have the cruiserweights wrestle "normal" size (and bigger) wrestlers.

[El-P]

The funny thing is that, junior wrestling in Japan really has never been considered at the same level as heavyweights either, with a few exceptions, the original Tiger Mask being the biggest star this side of Inoki for a while. But even Liger, when he was at his peak, would almost never mix it up with the heavys and thus would never get the top spot in the promotion despite being one of its biggest star (and let us forget the disastrous short Liger "heavyweight" stint). Like Hiromu today, which I think is ridiculous and actively hurting NJPW today, this guy should be pushed ahead of any of the new generation heavies and be in the G1 (how's that for a fresh idea, uh ?), he's the closest thing to Naito they have still. With the style getting much more homogenized, the weight division difference feels like something of an outdated concept. A guy like Kosei Fujita is better than anyone from his generation, on every level. But being slotted as a junior prevents him from ever being a main event star unless he "graduates". The term itself tells everything you need to know. Makes no sense when really, El-Phantasmo is the exact same he was as a junior, for instance.

[Dav'oh]

Well, if promoters could have made money off of lighter-weight wrestlers, they would have.

I don't mean to be dismissive or flippant. I think it's really that simple.

I also don't think it's necessarily "America fuck yeah". Wrestling is a circus, a zoo, a freak show - universal attractions. We don't go to the zoo to see the Etruscan shrew, we go to see the giraffe. The flea-trainer is great and all, but the lion-tamer is where the money is. John Merrick wouldn't have drawn a dime if he had a bung eye and a cleft palate.

Lighter-weight wrestlers are "normal". No-one's paying for normal in the exaggerated world of pro-wrestling.

[David Mantell]

7 hours ago, Dav'oh said:

Well, if promoters could have made money off of lighter-weight wrestlers, they would have.

I don't mean to be dismissive or flippant. I think it's really that simple.

Yes but why? I want to drill down deeper as to what it was in that part of the world that stopped people buying into lighter weights.

7 hours ago, Dav'oh said:

I also don't think it's necessarily "America fuck yeah". Wrestling is a circus, a zoo, a freak show - universal attractions. We don't go to the zoo to see the Etruscan shrew, we go to see the giraffe. The flea-trainer is great and all, but the lion-tamer is where the money is. John Merrick wouldn't have drawn a dime if he had a bung eye and a cleft palate.

Lighter-weight wrestlers are "normal". No-one's paying for normal in the exaggerated world of pro-wrestling.

If it was that simple, lighter weights would have failed all over the world, not just in America.  Mexico, Europe and Japan didn't spit them out, far from it.

Few 16 year olds could do what Danny Collins and Kid McCoy could do and few wiry smaller guys could do what Le Petit Prince or Johnny Saint could do.  (Jim Breaks would have made a great sneaky heel manager in America.)

[David Mantell]

14 hours ago, El-P said:

But even Liger, when he was at his peak, would almost never mix it up with the heavys and thus would never get the top spot in the promotion despite being one of its biggest star

People kept to their weight division, yes.  Didn't stop middleweights Mick McManus and Jackie Pallo and their heel Vs heel feud becoming THEEE marquee feud of 60s Britain.

[David Mantell]

15 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

The WWE acquired the WCW Cruiserweight title when they bought WCW and used it to replace the WWF Light Heavyweight title. The Cruiserweight belt was Smackdown exclusive and lasted from 2001-2007. During the early part of Rey's run in the WWE, he competed in the Cruiserweight division while sometimes having matches against bigger opponents. After Eddie Guerrero died, they gave Rey a push where he won the Rumble and became a world champion at WrestleMania. He was never positioned as a heavyweight. He was treated as an underdog with a huge heart. He definitely added muscle, though. After they retired the Cruiserweight belt, and Rey had already been a world champ, they basically had him work against whomever. 

Cruiserweights aren't quite lighter weights though. Nelson Royal, Denny Brown etc were not headlines but they were still propping up the undercard of NWA territory shows in the mid 80s. The NWA World Junior Heavyweight Championship did not get pensioned off to Mexico like the Lightweight, Welterweight and Middleweight titles were by the end of  the Thirties and the Light Heavyweight Championship two decades later.

American Promotions in the Nineties/Noughties just used "Light Heavyweight" as a synonym for Cruiserweight or Junior Heavyweight without thought as to its correct usage as the number 3 weight division.

[ohtani's jacket]

8 minutes ago, David Mantell said:

Cruiserweights aren't quite lighter weights though. Nelson Royal, Denny Brown etc were not headlines but they were still propping up the undercard of NWA territory shows in the mid 80s. The NWA World Junior Heavyweight Championship did not get pensioned off to Mexico like the Lightweight, Welterweight and Middleweight titles were by the end of  the Thirties and the Light Heavyweight Championship two decades later.

American Promotions in the Nineties/Noughties just used "Light Heavyweight" as a synonym for Cruiserweight or Junior Heavyweight without thought as to its correct usage as the number 3 weight division.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. It's schematics The Cruiserweight division from the 90s onwards was synonymous with light weight wrestlers. Unless you're trying to argue that the great European lightweights were lighter than an American cruiserweight, but even that seems irrelevant. 

[ohtani's jacket]

20 minutes ago, David Mantell said:

People kept to their weight division, yes.  Didn't stop middleweights Mick McManus and Jackie Pallo and their heel Vs heel feud becoming THEEE marquee feud of 60s Britain.

McManus and Pallo's popularity had little to do with their weight, or even their wrestling skill. It was about their gift of the gab, which ironically is very American. Their FA Cup bout is decent, but not a technical masterpiece. As many people have echoed in the past, the Jacky Corn vs. Billy Howes bout from the same tape is a vastly superior bout technique-wise. 

[El-P]

9 hours ago, Dav'oh said:

I also don't think it's necessarily "America fuck yeah". Wrestling is a circus, a zoo, a freak show - universal attractions.

It sure was and definitely played a big part, the whole carnival thing (which came from a very exploitative and dehumanizing place). Thankfully that aspect has vanished for the most part, as the performances is what is valued in modern pro-wrestling for the most part.

Which is why also, in the end, the smaller guys were the one with the most influential style worldwide as pro-wrestling matured as a craft/from of art, because they always were forced to be *good*, since they weren't pushed on size/appearance. 

[Dav'oh]

4 hours ago, David Mantell said:

Mexico, Europe and Japan didn't spit them out, far from it.

Those countries didn't have a wealth of people the size of Watts, Hogan, Ladd, Kowalski, Taylor, Vader, Studd, Mulligan, and the list goes on and on and on and on and on and on. It's the Land of the Giants. Everything's bigger in America, especially Texas. We might be underestimating how pervasive "Supersize me" is.

You can only work with what you've got. If those countries had an abundance of super-heavyweight super-workers, we would've seen 'em.

[David Mantell]

6 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

McManus and Pallo's popularity had little to do with their weight, or even their wrestling skill. It was about their gift of the gab, which ironically is very American. Their FA Cup bout is decent, but not a technical masterpiece. As many people have echoed in the past, the Jacky Corn vs. Billy Howes bout from the same tape is a vastly superior bout technique-wise. 

Agree totally but their size wasn't the BARRIER it would have been in the States.

6 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

I'm not sure what you mean by this. It's schematics The Cruiserweight division from the 90s onwards was synonymous with light weight wrestlers. Unless you're trying to argue that the great European lightweights were lighter than an American cruiserweight, but even that seems irrelevant. 

90s/C21st Cruisers are lightER but they're still a lot heavier than LPP/Saulnier/Kidd/Saint/Grey/most TBWs - or the bunch of lower weights that got dumped down to Mexico in the late 30s.

1 hour ago, Dav'oh said:

Those countries didn't have a wealth of people the size of Watts, Hogan, Ladd, Kowalski, Taylor, Vader, Studd, Mulligan, and the list goes on

Just Britain for example - Daddy. Haystacks, Kirk, Muir, Daly, Elrington, Rex Strong, Judd Harris, Crusher Mason, Gargantua, Dave Taylor, Docker Don Steadman, The Klondyke Brothers (and hell Klondyke Kate) and the list goes on

However you could well have hit on something in terms of a society's mentality with your comment about America "the land of the giants" that served as a barrier to an American Le Petit Prince or George Kidd getting their breakthrough.  In Britain, the narrative is that Kidd was very much the mould-breaker in terms of where public interest in the weights lay.

[G. Badger]

2 hours ago, Dav'oh said:

Those countries didn't have a wealth of people the size of Watts, Hogan, Ladd, Kowalski, Taylor, Vader, Studd, Mulligan, and the list goes on and on and on and on and on and on. It's the Land of the Giants. Everything's bigger in America, especially Texas. We might be underestimating how pervasive "Supersize me" is.

You can only work with what you've got. If those countries had an abundance of super-heavyweight super-workers, we would've seen 'em.

I agree with Dav'oh. Those guys all or most played American football at a high level like college or pro. To play at those levels you have to be physically huge. And there's no shortage of young guys who want to play football across the U.S.

Promoters weren't necessarily getting guys from amateur wrestling or boxing backgrounds. I think most promoters in the U.S. probably had a football background of some sort as well. Even Verne Gagne, who is a wrestler's wrestler & promoter played collegiate football at the University of Minnesota. So it's a more natural transition to get big guys who were used to getting tossed around a beat up.

As far as fans, American fans eventually got used to seeing these big guys and as time went on this was just accepted. To be a wrestler you HAD to be big. Additionally, American wrestling became less about wrestling and more about brawling (in general). So, people didn't know what they were missing in terms of quick technical wrestling. And I think everyone just had to get bigger once Vince McMahon got going.

I think the comment about post War nutrition and everything else everyone said is true as well 🙂 but WHY it was popular was American Football and American audiences wanting to see big guys beat each other up (and not wrestle). This becomes especially true once the territories die out once Vince goes national & international.

[El-P]

It's crazy how people who where considered "small" in WWE in the 90's weren't small at all. Even the Hardy Boys. Look at them next to the MCMG, the Rascalz or the Young Bucks. They are much bigger.

The size difference between Japan and the US average wrestler gets really interesting when you see a guy like Ishii in AEW, which is not exactly a land of giants. The guy looks *tiny* (and yet doesn't lose one ounce of his aura, but that's another matter).