Unit 4 · Wrestling Older Than the League

Beni Hasan is a row of rock tombs in Middle Egypt. The tombs are cut into cliffs on the east bank of the Nile River. Local governors were buried there about 4,000 years ago. Historians call that time the Middle Kingdom.

Painters covered some tomb walls with rows of wrestling pairs. One wall shows hundreds of pairs, one after another. Each pair is painted in a different grip. Painters used a darker and a lighter skin color so viewers could tell the two men apart.

The paintings do not tell us the rules. They do not say who won. But they are evidence, or proof, that wrestling mattered in Egypt long ago. Governors chose it for the walls of their own tombs, next to scenes of farming, hunting and soldiers.

Mesopotamia was the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Today most of it is in Iraq. People there wrote on clay tablets with a reed pen. One long story they copied is the Epic of Gilgamesh.

In the story, Gilgamesh is the proud king of the city of Uruk. The gods make a wild man named Enkidu to match him. The two meet at a doorway and wrestle. Neither can easily beat the other. After the match, they become close friends.

The Epic is a story, not a sports report. Gilgamesh may have been a real early king, but the match is legend. Still, the story tells historians something true. The people who wrote it knew wrestling well enough to use it as a test of strength.

In ancient Greece, many cities had a palaestra. It was a building with an open courtyard for wrestling. Young men trained there under a teacher. The word comes from pale, the Greek word for wrestling.

Greek writers said wrestling joined the Olympic Games in 708 BCE. The Games were held at Olympia every four years. Wrestling was also one of the five events of the pentathlon. Winners got a crown of olive leaves, not a gold medal.

The most famous Greek wrestler was Milo of Croton. Croton was a Greek city in southern Italy. Ancient writers said Milo won at Olympia six times in the 500s BCE. Many stories about his strength grew later and are legends.

Sumo is Japan’s best-known wrestling. An old book called the Nihon Shoki was finished in 720 CE. It tells a legend of a match between two strong men. One of them, Nomi no Sukune, is honored in sumo as a founder. Historians treat the tale as legend.

Records show sumo at the emperor’s court in the Heian period, which began in 794. Wrestlers came from the provinces for a yearly court festival. The contests were part of court ceremony, with music and officials.

Later, in the Edo period (1603 to 1868), sumo became a paid public show. Wrestlers joined stables called heya. Tournaments drew crowds in cities like Edo, now Tokyo. The rule that a wrestler loses by leaving the ring comes from this long history.

Mongolia is a country in Central Asia between Russia and China. Its biggest summer festival is Naadam. The festival has three main contests. They are horse racing, archery and wrestling.

Mongolian wrestling is called bökh. Matches take place on open grass, not inside a ring. There are no weight classes. Wrestlers wear a small open jacket and short trunks. Winners earn titles such as falcon, elephant, lion and titan.

Before and after a match, wrestlers perform a dance that many Mongolians call the eagle dance. It honors the festival and the other wrestler. In 2010, UNESCO, a United Nations body, listed Naadam as world cultural heritage.

Edirne is a city in the far northwest of Turkey. Every summer it hosts Kırkpınar, a festival of oil wrestling. Turkish oil wrestling is called yağlı güreş. Wrestlers cover themselves in olive oil before they meet.

The festival’s own history says it began in 1362. That would make it one of the oldest sports events still held. Historians note that early records are thin, so the exact start date is a claim, not a proven fact.

Wrestlers wear heavy leather trousers called kispet. The overall winner earns the title başpehlivan, or chief wrestler, and a golden belt. UNESCO listed the Kırkpınar festival as world cultural heritage in 2010.

In Iran, a zurkhaneh is a traditional gym. The Persian word means house of strength. The training area is a sunken pit, often with eight sides. Men train in it while others watch from around the edge.

A leader called the morshed sits above the pit. He beats a drum and rings a bell. He also sings or recites verses, often from the Shahnameh. The Shahnameh is a long Persian poem of kings and heroes by Ferdowsi, finished around 1010 CE.

The tradition is called koshti pahlevani, or heroes’ wrestling. It honors good character, like humility and helping others. In 2010, UNESCO listed the rituals of Pahlevani and the zurkhaneh as world cultural heritage.

The first modern Olympics were held in Athens, Greece, in 1896. Wrestling was on the program. There was only one wrestling event. There were no weight classes, so a small man could face a much larger one. Carl Schuhmann of Germany won.

The 1904 Olympics were held in St. Louis, Missouri. That year added freestyle wrestling, with several weight classes. Almost every wrestler was American. A weight class groups wrestlers who weigh about the same.

The 1896 event followed Greco-Roman rules. In Greco-Roman wrestling, holds below the waist are not allowed. Freestyle allows them. Both styles have been part of most Olympics since.

A federation is a group that joins many clubs or countries under one set of rules. Wrestling’s world federation was founded in 1912. For most of its life it used a French name, shortened to FILA.

In 2014, FILA changed its name to United World Wrestling. It sets the rules for Olympic and world championship wrestling. It decides the weight classes, the length of a match and how points are scored.

Women’s wrestling grew through the federation’s world championships before the Olympics. Women’s freestyle joined the Olympic Games in Athens in 2004. That was 108 years after men first wrestled at the modern Games.

Old wrestling happened on sand, grass or packed earth. School wrestling in the United States happens on a padded mat. A circle painted on the mat marks where the match counts. The padding was added for safety.

Before a school meet, each wrestler steps on a scale at the weigh-in. The weigh-in places each wrestler in a weight class. This lets students of many sizes compete fairly. It is a rule that Beni Hasan and Naadam never needed.

High school matches in the United States follow the rule book of the National Federation of State High School Associations, called the NFHS. Its matches have three periods of two minutes each. A clock is one of the newest parts of wrestling’s very long history.

The IHSA is the Illinois High School Association. It was founded in 1900. Member high schools agreed to follow shared rules for school contests. Before that, each school or town could set its own rules.

An association is a group of members who agree to work under the same rules. The IHSA decides who may play, which rules apply and how state tournaments are run. It also crowns state champions.

The IHSA did not start with wrestling. Its first state contests were in other sports. For example, boys tennis crowned its first state champion in 1912. Each sport joined the state series in its own year.

In 1937, the IHSA held its first state wrestling tournament for boys. It named a state champion in each weight class. A state champion is the winner of the last round of the state tournament.

The tournament used a bracket. A bracket is a chart that shows who meets whom in each round. Winners move to the next line. The last two wrestlers in each weight meet for the title.

The IHSA keeps lists of state champions in its records. Those lists begin with 1937 for wrestling. That is why historians of Illinois school sports use 1937 as the start date. It is a date for a school contest, not for a practice.

Illinois is not the only state with a high school association. Every state has one. In 1920, a few Midwest state associations formed a national group. Today it is the National Federation of State High School Associations, or NFHS.

The NFHS writes rule books for many school sports, including wrestling. State groups like the IHSA use those books. That way, a wrestling match in Illinois follows nearly the same rules as one in Ohio.

A shared rule book is a standard. A standard is a rule many groups agree to use. Standards let schools from different towns meet fairly. They also let a record in one state be compared with a record in another.

In 1831, young Abraham Lincoln moved to New Salem, a small village on the Sangamon River in Illinois. He worked in a store. In frontier villages, wrestling was a common way for young men to test strength and win respect.

Stories say Lincoln wrestled Jack Armstrong, leader of a local group called the Clary’s Grove boys. People who knew Lincoln told different versions later. Some said it ended in a draw. All agree that Lincoln earned the group’s respect.

Many stories about Lincoln’s wrestling were told after he became famous. Historians treat the details carefully. Still, the National Wrestling Hall of Fame honors Lincoln. The New Salem village has been rebuilt as a state historic site near Petersburg.

Professional wrestlers wrestle for money. In the early 1900s, one of the most famous was Frank Gotch. He was a farm boy from Humboldt, Iowa. His great rival was George Hackenschmidt, a strongman born in Estonia, then part of the Russian Empire.

In April 1908, Gotch and Hackenschmidt met at the Dexter Park Pavilion in Chicago. The pavilion stood near the city’s Union Stock Yards. Gotch won and was called world heavyweight champion. Newspapers across the country reported the result.

They met again in Chicago on Labor Day in 1911. This time the match was at Comiskey Park, the White Sox ballpark. A very large crowd came. Gotch won again. These matches show that Chicago was a wrestling city decades before 1937.

An amateur competes without being paid. In 1888, clubs across the United States formed the Amateur Athletic Union, or AAU. The AAU held national championships in many sports, including wrestling. Athletes from city athletic clubs entered.

Colleges also had wrestling teams. The National Collegiate Athletic Association, the NCAA, held its first national wrestling championships in 1928. College matches followed their own rule book, a little different from high school rules.

So by 1937, Illinois wrestlers could already compete in clubs, colleges and professional shows. The IHSA tournament added one more room: the high school. Each room had its own leaders, rule book and champions.

Historians ask what a date measures. The year 1937 measures when the IHSA first crowned wrestling champions. It does not measure when people first wrestled. For that, we look at artifacts like the Beni Hasan tomb paintings, about 4,000 years old.

It helps to line dates up. Beni Hasan is about 4,000 years old. Wrestling joined the ancient Olympics in 708 BCE. Lincoln wrestled at New Salem around 1831. The IHSA tournament came in 1937.

Each of these dates is true. Each answers a different question. Mixing them up is a common mistake. A careful reader always asks: first what, and in which institution?

For most of IHSA history, the state wrestling tournament was for boys only. Some girls wrestled on boys teams over the years. But there was no separate girls state title in Illinois.

That changed in the 2021–22 school year. The IHSA held its first girls wrestling state finals in 2022. Girls now had their own weight classes and their own champions. Other states had started girls tournaments too.

The gap between 1937 and 2022 is eighty-five years. That gap shows that a sport can exist long before everyone is let into its championship. Dates of new doors are part of history, just like dates of first titles.

A primary source is a record made at the time of an event. A 1937 program is one. A newspaper story from the next morning is another. Historians use primary sources to check what happened.

Each source shows something different. A program printed before a meet lists who entered. A newspaper report tells who won and how many people came. An IHSA champions list gives the names that the association made official.

Sometimes sources disagree about a spelling or a score. Then historians compare them. A careful record keeps the name, the school, the weight and the year together. Good records let people today find the wrestlers of 1937.

Every martial arts school has a safety routine. Students warm up and check the floor before they move.

1. Have a grown-up nearby who knows you are practicing.

2. Clear a space. Stretch your arms out and lift one knee. If you touch nothing, the space is big enough.

3. Bare feet are best on a mat. On a smooth floor, wear sneakers, not socks, so you do not slip.

4. Warm up for three minutes: march, swing your arms in big circles, and lift your knees.

5. Watch each move in the Dojo first. Try it slowly, then a little faster.

What helps: practice each move a few times on one side, then the other. Short, regular practice works better than one long try.

Stay safe: strikes and kicks go into the air, never at a person. Keep kicks at knee or belly height. Falls happen only on a mat or soft grass, with a grown-up. Stop if something hurts.

Wrestlers in every land have known that a low, wide stance is hard to push over. Horse stance, from Chinese kung fu and Okinawan karate, trains the same strong base.

1. Step your feet about twice as wide as your shoulders.

2. Point your toes forward and bend your knees.

3. Lower your hips as if you were sitting on a horse. Keep your back tall.

4. Hold for five slow breaths, then stand up and shake out your legs.

What helps: knees point the same way as your toes. Go only as low as you can hold with a tall back.

Stay safe: stand up if your knees or legs hurt. Practice on a flat, dry floor.

Wrestlers move all the time, but they rarely cross their feet. A step that keeps the feet apart keeps the base steady.

1. Stand with feet a little wider than your hips, knees bent, hands in front of your chest.

2. Slide your front foot forward a short step.

3. Bring your back foot forward the same distance, so your feet stay the same width apart.

4. Do four steps forward, then switch which foot leads.

What helps: keep your head over your hips. Imagine your feet sliding along two train tracks.

Stay safe: clear the floor ahead of you, and stop well before a wall.