In one of my previous posts I mentioned a pro wrestling match between American wrestler of German descent called E. Roeber and Olsen 'The Big Dane' for the 'Worlds Greco-Roman Heavyweight Championship' which happened in NYC in March 1900. Yes, that match was officially sanctioned by the National Police Gazette of NYC, and the winner was recognized by that pro sports promoting newspaper the world champion wrestler. I am glad to share with everyone couple of match reports which appeared in local American newspapers. That match remained somewhat 'controversial' in opinion of many fans and journalists for its 'unprecedented finish' the victory was awarded not a clean back fall but based on the unable to continue conditions of one of the two wrestlers. And some newspapers even 'dramatized' the actual finish of the match, tried to make it appear as 'deliberately brutal', and made the Danish pro wrestler look like a complete "villain" not a sportsman at all, who enjoyed 'intentionally hurting and choking his opponent to death', and made Roeber an "innocent victim" of the dirty techniques of the barbarian Viking. All these sounds very familiar, is not it? There are plenty of such "rhetoric" reports available online and on various digitized newspaper archives. I tried to find some another kind of reports though, I would call them "less emotional" and more "down to earth", which describe an actual match without "fantasizing about it" and what and how it all has happened.
Enjoy the read my friends.
Rather confusingly the article tells us Olsen is from Copenhagen but refers to him as"the Swede"