Across a wrestling ring in Manhattan's Madison Square Garden last week two men growled and glowered at each other. Squatting in one corner, wearing a fancy ruby-colored robe with turban to match, was Arteen Ekizian, 30-year-old Turk, one time fish-peddler, U. S. sailor and Hollywood "extra." To 5,000 raucous spectators he was Ali Baba, the Terrible Turk of whom posters asked IS HE MAN OR BEAST? Ali Baba's head resembled a speckled ostrich egg. His upper lip was hidden behind a sweeping pair of handle bar mustachios. His teeth were jagged and irregular. His short legs which sup ported his 205 Ib. wabbled like an ape's.
In the other corner was his opponent, Dick Shikat. One of the few professional wrestlers whose repertoire includes some genuine wrestling holds, Shikat was diligently working up a great hate with which to defend his "world's wrestling championship" against the Terrible Turk for the second time. Two weeks before, Baba had trounced him in Detroit in what was billed as a world championship bout. This billing was not recognized by the New York State Athletic Commission which demanded another bout, this time in Manhattan, to prove the Turk's rightful claim.
As last week's bout began, both wrestlers yammered, screamed, snorted, grunted, growled, moaned. Shikat's nose dribbled blood from Baba's crushing headlocks and resounding slaps. Each diligently tied the other into knots. Shikat stood the Turk on his head, bounced him up & down. When, after 53 minutes of mauling, Shikat began to lose enthusiasm and the shoe polish from Baba's mustache dripped onto his hairy chest, the latter pinned Shikat with what Announcer Joe Humphreys identified as a flying crotch hold and body press. With this hold, Ali Baba became the fifth person in the U. S. currently claiming the World's Wrestling Championship.
Last week's match appeared genuine if for no other reason than Shikat's an nounced aversion to "fixed" bouts. This testimony was revealed last month when one Joe Alvarez, who claimed to be his manager, sought an injunction to keep Shikat from wrestling Baba in Detroit. Shikat frankly admitted that before three recent bouts, a man had pushed his way into his dressing room, instructed him to "lay down," lose the match. These orders he had faithfully executed until last March. Then, indignant at having to lose all the time, he disobeyed his dressing room order by pinning Champion Danno O'Mahoney in a world championship match. At this testimony Promoter Jack Curley, who with five others rules the wrestling world today, exploded. Such a thing as a "-fixed" match, he yelped, was unknown to him.
High-minded sportswriters who sputtered indignantly at these revelations forgot what revolutionary changes had occurred in a sport which now grosses $5,000,000 a year from the U. S. public. In the days of Farmer Burns and Frank Gotch wrestling was, indeed, an exhibition of skill and strength. When Ed ("Strangler") Lewis, Stanislaus Zbyszko and Joe Stecher began to trade their "world championships" with peculiar regularity, U. S. fans became perturbed. In the 1920's the sport sank deep in the doldrums.