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This article by Eddy Portnoy, originally appeared in the Spring 2006 edition of Guilt & Pleasure. In it, Portnoy complains (sorry, had to work that in somehow) that Jewish wrestlers didn’t get no respect as did the Jewish boxers of the era (mostly in the 1930s-50s).
He hails in particular Jack Pfefer, an alternately respected and despised manager. who “commanded one of the fiercest gangs of professional grapplers in the industry and was a major player in the wrestling world for nearly fifty years.”
Pfefer was most responsible for upping the spectacle quotient in the American wrestling ring. “I’ve never seen an honest wrestling bout in my twenty years in the game,” he said in a 1938 interview. “Maybe there was one, but I wasn’t there.” When Pfefer’s competitors tried to shut him out, he began to provide sportswriters with the results of wrestling matches before they took place. For this, the press loved him, but within his own industry he was regarded as the ultimate double-crosser.
Then there were those colorful monickers: Blimp Levy, a 625-pound sideshow “freak”; Abe “Hebrew Hercules” Coleman, who died in 2007 at the age of 101; Hymie “Ivan Rasputin” Fishman: Herby “Jewish Sensation” Freeman; and Rafael “The Rasslin’ Rabbi” Halperin. “Working-class heroes all,” Portnoy writes, “their Jewish fans would have preferred a couple of teeth knocked out to a noggin full of Bashevis Singer any day.
Thanks goes to A.J. Jacobs, supergenius, for alerting the Korner to this story.
Abe Coleman
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Great story–
Paul Boesch not being Jewish, I never knew this, imagine a Pro Wrestler pretending to be something he isn’t.
Proof,yet again, that nothing is sacred !!