Last Updated on: 22nd August 2022, 08:01 pm
It’s pretty rare to come across wrestling video from the 1930’s at all, and it’s even rarer to find it with sound and full commentary.
According to the video description, this match between Jim Londos and Bronko Nagurski took place in Philadelphia on November 18th, 1938 and was for the Los Angeles version of the World Heavyweight Championship.
Here is part 1,
and this is part 2.
It’s amazing to see how much wrestling has changed through the years. One thing that sticks out right away is how believable the style was compared to most of what you see now. There’s a reason why people have started saying that the MMA of today is more closely related to the pro wrestling of yesterday than the pro wrestling of today, and that reason should become obvious fairly quickly when you watch this, or most old wrestling up until about the last 25 years when WWF exploded and started killing off all of the traditional territories.
On another note, trying to explain how all these different world titles worked would take me forever, but if you’re interested in this sort of thing or in classic wrestling in general, the Karl Stern shows on theWrestling Observersite are a really fun listen. There’s even a full show on the history of the different world titles done a couple of years ago that you can find in the archives if you’re a subscriber.