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Topic: Bear Wrestling Retrospective (Read 5537 times)
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jzn
Talks to the animals
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A story has been circulating around lately about this fellow, Lance Palmer, who performs exhibition matches with his wrestling bear, Caesar jr (or rather, Ceaser jr, if you believe what you read in the news). Below is a video clip of a wrestling match the two had. Be advised: This video contains raw, unadulterated actual Bear Wrestling. It is not for the weak of heart.
If you viewed that harrowing footage, please take a moment to collect yourself.
It may surprise you to learn that there is nothing new about what Lance is doing. In fact, there is a tradition of wrestling bears in this country that reaches back more than a century (at least). I warn you: some of the history is uglier than even the above video. For working bears like Gorgeous Gus, and Victor, fame came a heavy cost.
Our story will encompass bear wrestling both professional (the legendary Terrible Ted), and purely recreational (as practiced by Doug Seus).
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« Last Edit: May 13, 2006, 01:51:51 PM by jzn »
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jzn
Talks to the animals
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The origins of bear wrestling lie shrouded in myth, because I can't find out much about them on the internet. However, I think it's safe to assume that somebody, somewhere in the 1800s found a bear cub, raised it, and played with it for a while, before it was too large to be dangerous. In play, they would have discovered the bear's natural inclination for tussling.
In that century, wrestling was the great american pastime. By the late 1800s, there were multitudes of carnivals traveling around the country, suckering people out of their money. There wasn't much to do in those days, so going to a travelling carnival was a pretty regular thing in all but the most remote towns. Wrestling was a big part of the carnivals of the time. Real wrestling I mean, pretty far removed from the improvistional theater stuff. The carnival would have a strongman that would take all comers, offering a cash reward to the person that could pin him. By the turn of the century, at least one carnival was advertising some kind of matches between human and bear.
There are two good reasons a carnival would want to offer to spectators a cash reward for pinning a bear on it's back. First, it will draw tremendous attention to the circus, and bring in good cash that way. Second, even though a brown bear can look rather small (on all fours, they stand 3 feet or so at the shoulder), it will absolutely kick any human's ass that gets near it. So, the carnival will never actually have to give anyone the cash that it is putting up.
The problem would be that a bear would totally maul anyone attempting such a ridiculous deed. Even if you rip all the teeth and claws out of the the poor thing, you couldn't safely put it in a match with a human. With strength and weight alone, a mid-sized bear could badly hurt a human if it thinks it is in a real fight.
So, in comes the fellow who raised the tame bear cub. He has a bear that is far more amenable to this kind of human contact than a wild one. With a muzzle and perhaps a declawing, he sees the opportunity to make some money, and the carnival bear wrestling match is born.
Make no mistake, once a bear becomes a tool for profit, the bear is going to suffer for it. There's no way that carnival animals of that era had a nice life, or a long one. Once bear wrestling got going, (and it was never anything but a fringe event) we can be pretty sure that the majority of the bears involved spent their lives in small cages, malnourished, and psychologically weird.
The life of the carnival wrestling bear had to be pretty fucked up. But, not by the actual wrestling exhibitions. Wrestling with a bear in and of itself does not connotate a cruel act. The tussling behavior is a natural one for a bear, and one that it likes to do.
There certainly are bear exhibitions which require cruelty. Cruelty is when you condition an animal to behave in a very unnatural, physically compromising way. Achieving something like the behavior in this linked video, is very likely done through torturing the creature. The most horrific exhibition of this type is the indian dancing bear.
An exhibition that requires a bear to perform painful movements, or to wear very uncomforatable apparatus is condemnable by the nature of the act. In constrast, exhibitions that are not physically traumatic, are only as repugnant as the bear's owner is abusive. It seems ironic to think that a wrestling match is not a physically traumatic event, but as long as nobody tries to injure the bear, it isnt. A wrestling match can just be good exercise.
In addition to the natural, healthy behavior that wrestling represents for a bear, wrestling bears have another advantage over their dancing-bear counterparts. Once you achieve dominance through torture, you can't safely hug the bear. You have to remain dominant and at a set distance, because otherwise the emotionally scarred bear will freak out and mess you up.
The above scenario of the origins of bear wrestling are just an educated guess. I don't know if the first bear matches were taking all comers, or if the first ones were just exhibitions of the bear's keeper play-wrestling with his charge. But, by 1900, E.K. Fernandez, "the P.T. Barnum of the pacific", was exhibiting a bear named "Alice Teddy" as a wrestler. By the mid 1900s, Bear Wrestling was a not-unheard-of attraction. The first nationally famous wrestling bear was the amazing Victor.
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« Last Edit: April 16, 2009, 10:38:15 AM by jzn »
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jzn
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the story of Victor the Bear
Some extremely strange  went on at old carnivals, and they often exhibited animals as part of the show. There was once a wrestling Orangutan, a poor beast locked in a cage with the 'will take all comers' gimmick. It is painful to think of an orangutan exploited in this way, but we can take some heart in the fact that Orangutans are extremely smart, and will always try to make the best of a bad situation:
When Bruno Sammartino came over from the old countrly he went to the carnival with a bunch of other Italian immigrants, all stonemasons and builders. One of his friends said "Hey Bruno, I hear they'll give you a hundred bucks if you can stay in a cage five minutes with a monkey.
"A monkey for a hundred dollars?" Bruno said. "What the hell can a monkey do? I'll kill him."
Well, Bruno was as strong as they came, but he didnt know the difference between a monkey and an orangutan. When they faced off, the orangutan started ripping off Bruno's clothes. Bruno was going bar to bar, with the orangutan grabbing his neck, hitting him in the balls. But he couldn't go anywhere because they were in a goddamn cage. By the time he got out, Bruno was practically naked.
In 1949 wrestler named Tuffy Truesdale was making a living "wrestling" an alligator in a carnival. Tuffy was a talented wrestler who was simply too short to draw much money in the united states. After an injury, he came up with the alligator idea as a way to make some money.
We had a guy named Toughy Trusdale[sic] who'd wrestle an alligator. When the creature died, they didnt have a replacement, so Toughy went into the tank with the dead alligator to give the people their money's worth. He was rolling around, twisting the alligator's arms and head, and pretending that it was fighting back. It wasn't a spectacular performance by any means, there isn't too much you can do with a dead alligator. But toughy is the only one who really knew the difference.
After the carnival was over, Toughy threw the alligator in the merricmack River. The next day, there was a big story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: ALLIGATOR FOUND IN LOCAL RIVER. The reporter thought it had come from Florida or someplace, and managed to swim all the way to the midwest.
Sometime after that last match with the alligator, Truesdale somehow procured a young bear, named him Victor, and forced him into controlled physical confrontations. He taught Victor that in a certain situation, victor was to face a human, and try to force him or her to the ground, sit on them, and don't let them get up. It wasn't hard for Victor to do. In addition to the 'pinning game', he apparently was taught some physical cues to do a few trained tricks, such as throwing an opponent over his shoulder if the hair on the back of his neck was tugged I have no idea how you train a bear to do that, but, I know it was achieved with positive reinforcement, as you'll see.
Tuffy exhibited Victor in any way he could. From the innocuous stunts, like one he performed
on the Ed Sullivan show, to dangerous taking all comers matches, to the fake improvisational matches of modern professional wrestling.
Victor the bear was more professional than 90% of the human wrestlers
For Victor, the fake wrestling matches were, sometimes, far crueller than the real wrestling matches.
In Amarillo Texas the advance was great and we expected a sellout. On Wednesday, the day before the
show, the local game warden, Woody Pond called the wrestling office and said, Victor was an Alaskan
Black Bear and a protected game animal. We were informed that an Alaskan Black Bear could not
wrestle in Amarillo.
My father was not to be denied a good house. He called Gorgeous George Jr. and told him to go down
town and get a dozen cans of brown hair spray and bring it Thursday night. We changed the publicity and
booked, "Boris, the Russian Brown Bear."
For years, victor wrestled all over the country. He worked matches with Dick Beyer (aliases Dr. X and The Destroyer) several times, and Mr. Beyer has posted two of the film clips:
I was pretty amazed by this match. I was expecting to see a bear and a guy pushing each other for the whole time, but there is really some action. The bear comes across as a competent technical wrestler (although the Destroyer's performance is partly to thank for that)! At one point, Victor uses his head for leverage and spins around his opponent's back like a seasoned Olympic amateur. Another thing that impressed me is how he knew to back away a few steps when the signal is given to 'break it up'. Keep in mind that the punches thrown by the Destroyer are fake. It was considered a very bad idea to make the bear angry by trying to legitimately hurt it.
After the match, you'll see some interesting stuff between Victor and Tuffy. Victor gets a reward in the form of some kind of drink, reportedly root beer (or possibly booze). He is given a physical cue by Tuffy, and performs a celebratory champion's arm shake. He seems relieved as he bolts from the ring immediately after another cue.
You can check out another match here, with Tuffy Truesdale playing a referee. Here, Victor really shows off his 'throws' (most of which are largely the wrestler hurling himself onto the mat).
Later in the 70's, Victor retired to a very large cage in the Chief Saunooke Complex, and Tuffy with him. He certainly wasn't done performing, however, and Truesdale offered to allow any visitor to have a legitimate go at him. Luckily for Victor, he was peerless in the ring.
. Back in the 1970s, you could pay a small fee and go into the old wooden amphitheater (which later burned down and was replaced) and see Victor. He was located on ground level in an iron cage about the size of a circus ring. If you really wanted to do so, at no extra charge you could go into his cage and wrestle Victor.
You’d suppose that few people would want to wrestle a bear, but in Cherokee in those days there was always a line of guys at the cage door waiting their turn. Most lasted about half a minute.
When my turn came, I pulled off my shirt, underneath which I had a t-shirt that had a picture of Superman on the back and S-U-P-E-R-M-A-N spelled out on the front. The crowd went wild, but as I was entering the cage the bear’s owner and attendant, whose name was Tuffy Truesdale, leaned over and whispered in my ear: “The bear can’t read.”
Victor’s only move (his specialty) was to grab the opponent, throw him down on the mat, and sit on top of him until Tuffy gained a verbal submission. That’s exactly what happened. It was all with over in about 35 seconds.
Victor bodied me down on the mat and sat on top of me. Tuffy sauntered over and asked: “That about it, Superman?” I agreed that it was apparently all over.
He gave Victor a command to “Stand,” which he did, and Tuffy helped me up and led me to the cage door. He next gave Victor a Brownie drink as a reward. Tuffy then let the next “opponent” into the cage.
I would love to know what happened to poor Victor. A rumor has it that Victor died on the road, before a wrestling event in Baltimore. Another rumor has it that Tuffy's cherokee exhibit was eventually shut down by animal activists, and Victor died of old age. It is possible that there was more than one Victor over the years, but if there wasn't, he had a very long career. Truesdale stayed in Cherokee, ending up running a sketchy bear exhibit.
Cherokee, NC -- Tuffy & Barbara Truesdell, dba "Baby Bear Habitat"
02/17/95 -- Found guilty and assessed a civil penalty of $2,000 and had their license suspended for 60 days for failing to:
* maintain animal housing facilities in a structurally sound condition and in good repair
* maintain facilities and cages in a clean and sanitized condition so as to provide for the health and comfort of the animals
* remove wastes and control pests
* and maintain complete and accurate records of the acquisition and disposition of animals.
Victor's life may have been pretty dismal. I don't know what kind of relationship he had with Truesdale. Although there are no indications that he was beaten, he was certainly declawed, and he seemed to wear his uncomfortable muzzle on a fairly permanent basis. He had to endure both the physical advances of the local rubes, and the occasionaly atrocity (see the hair spray thing above). But, a life is a life, and Victors was an exceptional one.
I used to train with [Victor] when I was preparing for the judo nationals... I used to wrestle Victor both in and out of his muzzle. At the sportsman shows, he wore a muzzle because he had a tendency to grab a guy with his teeth. When I wrestled Victor without the muzzle, there would be blood all over the place and every last ounce of it was mine, but I knew that deep down inside, Victor loved me.
When he wrestled kids, he just played with them and never hurt them, but if a man came and grabbed him hard, that was Victor's cue to be aggressive. When guys clamped a tight headlock on Victor, he just threw them up in the air then smashed them and smashed them hard. Tuffy always encouraged all of those would-be challengers to..."Get him in a headlock" Truesdale advised the crowd, "and he'll just fall right over". Of course all the wrestlers who earned a few extra bucks Tussling with the bear knew better.
...I had this buddy of mine named Bob with me who was a real egomaniac. He saw me wrestle Victor for a little while and, of course, Victor liked me so he rolled around with me a bit. You could say that Victor was making me look good. So, that made my budy think that bear wrestlign was easy. "I saw you wrestle that bear" he told me, "and I know that I could throw him just like you did."
He was real arrogant about it so I said, "Be my guest, but remember to hold him really tight when you grab him in a headlock".
...Bob grabbed Victor really hard, just like I told him to, and that bear just picked him up several feet in the air and threw him so far that he missed the mat. Bob hit that cement with a thud and you could just hear his ribs crack. It was wonderful. I had a camera but I cried so hard from the laughter that the salt in my eyes burred my vision and I couldn't focus the lens. I took about 20 shots and only two of them came out because I was laughing so hard. I was in hysterics as I was watching Victor crush that guy, but Truesdell had had enough. "We've got to get the bear off of him" Tuffy said, "He's hurt!"
...Finally we coaxed Victor off of Bob with a bottle of Coke, which was pretty hard for me to do because I was splitting a gut laughing so ard. Tuffy the trainer didn't laugh. He said, "Gene, you are a sadist."
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« Last Edit: April 29, 2006, 06:51:13 PM by jzn »
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jzn
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the story of
Terrible Ted Terrible Ted with Nick Adams
When I was researching Terrible Ted, the stories that kept coming up made him seem like a much more relaxed beast than Victor. His claws were cut short, but he was not 'declawed' like a cat. His muzzle was removed quickly after each match, and he didn't always wear one (in many places, it was a legal requirement).
 Terrible Ted in the ring. The loose fitting muzzle might suggest decent treatment.
Gene Dubois (aka Dave 'The Canadian Wildman' McKigney) aquired a young Ted from a bankrupt carnival sometime in the 1950s. It seems likely that Ted's life with Gene was actually preferable to the carnival. Both because he spent large chunks of the year in a backyard enclosure, and because Dubois spent lots of time playing with him on a daily basis. Unlike Victor, Ted also had some actual bear companionship, later in his life, as Gene eventually had 3 bears living in the backyard. Ted was never able to run free, but neither is a city dog. Ted's life may have been somewhat akin to a city dog's. He was cared for, exercised, and by many accounts, loved.
the bears were treated in such a wonderful manner - Old Teddy used to even come into the house and lay out on the floor and watch tv - the youngsters would do the same...
Also I saw Dave written as an ' animal trainer ' he was not ... those bears were his family, he lived for them and spoiled them like he would his children- one doesn't train a bear - one gets a bear used to people and play as for the bears to them it is just play - the wrestlers did all the hard work of making it look like wrestling. There was no cruelty involved and if Teddy or Smokey were in a mood, he would not work with them. He always respected their moods - they came first.
 Dubois with Ted in an early photo
For years, Dubois travelled all over the united states and canada, exhibiting matches with Ted. Dubois was a very energetic fellow. In addition to exhibiting Ted in established wrestling promotions, he would produce his own shows, and plaster the town with posters advertising the wrestling bear (and whatever other wrestlers he was able to get for the show).
In his success, he aquired more bears. Terrible Ted had become such an old hand at the wrestling game, that Dubois loaned him out to trusted other wrestlers, like Nick Adams. During which time, Dubois would work with one of the other bears.
Now it was time to test his endurance as he chased me around and around the cage until finally I gave up laid down in near exhaustion and let 'Gentle Ben' get me I figured all he would do is lay on me and the ringmaster would yell 1, 2, 3 but not quite the same for me as that bear rolled out his foot long tongue through the muzzle and stuck and licked me in the eyes, ears, nose and throat while at the same time almost crushing me with his weight.
For one summer, Ted lived under the back porch of Stu Hart's wrestling family, prompting this memoir:
When I was a young boy around five years of age my dad had a wrestling bear living in a cage. Under the back porch steps. I’d let my Revel ice cream drip on my bare toes and dangle my feet between the wooden steps so the bear could lick it off. Us Hart kids thought that was pretty cool. I figured it was a good way to keep my feet clean - and it kind of tickled too.
Terrible Ted died in an automobile accident in 1977.
After which, a series of tragedies befell Dubois. One morning in 1978, Smokey escaped from his cage and mauled Dubois' girlfriend to death.
The incident where Smokey the Bear attatcked & killed the Wildmans' girlfriend occured
around July 1/78 and was front page news across Canada and the lead on most national news broadcasts.
The Wildman (Dave Mckigeny) had been cleaning out the bear cages at his home in Richmond Hill, Ontario when for some reason Smokey entered the house and attatcked & killed Lynn Orser. The Wildman actually fought the bear and was badly injured himself, and was arrested.
Supposedly, the government took Gene Dubois' bears away. Wildman kept wrestling until his own automobile accident death in 1988.
 Gene Dubois, aka Dave "Wildman" McKigney, in his later years, shows off an old poster
All references I find to Gene Dubois paint him as an exceedingly kind and amiable man. It's really horrific, how his bear wrestling lifestyle ended. It's tempting to think 'it was bound to happen', but, before you re-imagine smokey as a mindless killing machine, lets hear once more from Mary Mahsinter-Pollard:
Smokey did what he did for a reason - I will not go into it, but I could see an accident waiting to happen ... the way she treated the animal and the way she treated Dave, Smokey was not used to loud and aggressive people ..... he knew the differance between play and real!
Dave went downhill after that - he was never the same man. I miss him terribly..
Teddy died, which left Smokey - shortly afterwards we rescued a little bear from a roadside ' zoo ' This one was ' baby Ben ' He was still very much a cub at the time when Smokey attacked Lynn. I don't know where Ben ended up, perhaps with Smokey at the African Lion Safari Park
Dave changed so much after the accident - he missed the bears terribly and of course felt guilty because of Lynn's death - but it was not his fault. There is much to tell about why Smokey did that - but I will not be the one to tell it.
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« Last Edit: April 29, 2006, 06:51:41 PM by jzn »
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jzn
Talks to the animals
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Anyway, thats the story of bear wrestling. I still think it needs a chapter about Doug Seus, but perhaps this will suffice:
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« Last Edit: May 13, 2006, 01:55:34 PM by jzn »
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jzn
Talks to the animals
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A few months after posting this, I recieved a couple of wonderful letters from the daughter of Sven Johnson, "The Grandfather of Hot-Sawing". As a youngster, she saw one of the victors quite a bit. Here are her memories:
My Dad's name is Sven Johnson. If you have the time you can google him + lumberjack or hotsaw and you will find him. He was a competitive lumberjack, and actually still competes a little still, in his 70's. He used to do exhibitions at Sport Shows and fairs when I was growing up, so I got to see all kinds of interesting acts. My Mom would bring me to some of the shows on weekends, so I could hang out. Anyway, George would choose a child out of the audience at every show to give Victor a soda. So, if I was visiting my Dad, he would often choose me. I think I was between 6-8 years old at the time. And I would go onstage and hand Victor a glass soda bottle, and he would very gently take it between his two paws and he would drink it. I always thought it was Coke, but my Mom said she thinks it was Kool-aid in the bottle. The bear was very sweet and gentle with children, and he knew the difference between children and adults. I probably saw him wrestle 100 times. Like I said, it seemed normal at the time, but now I can't imagine it. Who would insure a wrestling bear? I guess they didn't have to worry about stuff like that, then. George would ask for volunteers from the audience to wrestle the bear, and guys would always think they could win, but they never did. I never saw anyone get hurt, though. The really cool part was, some times a guy would go up there, and maybe he was a big guy, but if he was a little mentally challenged, or childlike, the bear wouldn't really wrestle. He would put his arms around the guy's neck and sort of dance. The whole show would end with a choreographed match (much like professional wrestling) between George and Victor, with Victor throwing George into the pool. The Victor would go hang out in the dressing room until the next show..... It was Tuffy's Victor that had the funeral my Dad told me about. My parents said they didn't attend, but they sent a card.....  I can tell you that Victor was well loved and well taken care of. He wasn't mean or vicious, as people might expect a caged-up wild animal to be. He was an extremely well-trained performer, much like the animals we see in movies now. People had a different philosophy back then about what was acceptable for animals. |
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jzn
Talks to the animals
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another update: a great description of his match with a bear can be found on the website of Rock "Mr. Wonderful" Riddle.
I had never wrestled a bear. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. But, I had an open contract, which meant that the promoter could match me up with anyone (or anything) he wanted. I went down the hall and knocked on the bear’s dressing room door. “Come on in, Rock,” the trainer said. “I’m Tuffy Truesdale. Let me introduce you to my protégé. This is Brutus.” I found myself staring at a 550-pound live bear. “Brutus has been touring California for the past few weeks,” the trainer continued. “It’s been raining there, and Brutus doesn’t like the rain. He’s been a little irritable. He was supposed to wrestle the German guys tonight, but they wrestled him last week and they got hurt. They refused to get in the ring with him again, so tonight’s your lucky night, Rock” “Great,” I thought, “The bear has been hurting wrestlers in the ring, and now it’s my turn. Oh, joy.” Tuffy continued, “Brutus can do just about anything a human wrestler can do, only Brutus does it better. When you tie up with him, make sure you keep your hands in a fist. If you get a finger near his mouth, he’ll bite it off. He’s not being mean. It’s instinctual.” “Great,” I thought. “Make a note to yourself, Rock. Make fists when tying up. Good point.” “Now, when the bell rings,” Tuffy continued, “be aggressive. Brutus loves it when you’re really aggressive. If you hold back, he gets bored. Rock, he weighs 550 pounds. If he gets bored and decides to leave the ring, we can’t stop him.”
It was time. I entered the ring. I looked at Brutus … and I smiled. I was home now … the bear was on “my turf” … and, somewhat surprisingly, I felt absolutely no fear. In fact, I was anxious to get the match underway. The bell rang. I was aggressive – very aggressive. Brutus loved it. He quickly backed away, lifting his legs as I attempted to hook them. When he stood up, he was considerably taller than I. He grabbed me under my left arm, lifted me several feet off the mat and threw me more than half way across the ring. I put a reverse headlock on him, and he threw me over his back to the mat. No matter what I tried, he had a dramatic counter-move. Brutus was great. His trainer was right; this bear was a better wrestler than many of my human opponents. We had an amazing match. We both enjoyed it immensely. After about ten minutes, Brutus cocked his head to the side and smiled. Then he took me down hard, pressed his 550 pounds on my chest and shoulders . . . and licked me in the face as the referee counted one … two … three. I believe both Brutus and I left the ring happy, content and with mutual respect for a new “friend.”
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bear wrestler.jpg
