The Unbreakable Legacy of Ed "Strangler" Lewis: A Wrestling God Who Defined The Sport

You guys ready to talk about a straight-up beast—a man who didn’t just wrestle but dominated the squared circle like a force of nature. Ed "Strangler" Lewis wasn’t just a wrestler; he was a damn institution. A colossus of the early 20th century who made the world believe in the raw, unrelenting power of professional wrestling. If you’re ready to dive into the story of a legend who crushed opponents, revolutionized the game, had the endurance of a superhero and left a legacy that still echoes today, strap in. This is the tale of the one, the only, Ed "Strangler" Lewis. 💪

Born to Rule The Mat

Picture this: June 30, 1891, in Nekoosa, Wisconsin. Robert Herman Julius Friedrich enters the world, a kid who’d grow into a mountain of a man—250 pounds of pure strength and power with a chest measuring a monstrous 56 inches. This wasn’t just a guy; this was a gladiator in the making. By 14, he’s already tossing grown men around in Louisville, Kentucky, under the name Ed Lewis, a nod to 1890s star Evan "Strangler" Lewis and a sneaky way to keep his disapproving parents in the dark. Smart move, young champ. 😎

But where’d that "Strangler" nickname come from? Some say it was a tribute to Evan’s legacy. Others point to a wild story from a match in France where Lewis slapped on a sleeper hold so vicious the crowd thought he was choking his opponent out for real. Either way, the name stuck, and it fit like a glove. This man wasn’t just wrestling—he was shattering the competition’s hopes and dreams.

The Gold Dust Trio: Carving The Industry That Leads To An Ever Lasting Legacy

Lewis wasn’t just a grappler; he was a visionary, a mad scientist if you will. In the 1920s, he teamed up with promoters Toots Mondt and Billy Sandow to form the Gold Dust Trio, a game-changing crew that turned wrestling from one-off barroom brawls into a full-blown spectacle. These guys didn’t just book matches; they created events. Undercards, storylines, feuds that had fans losing their minds—this was the birth of modern pro wrestling as we know it. Lewis was the star, the muscle, and the brains behind it all. He didn’t just win titles; he built an empire. 🏆

And win titles he did. Lewis snagged his first World Heavyweight Wrestling Championship on December 13, 1920, by outclassing Joe Stecher. He’d go on to hold the world title five times (some say up to ten, depending on the record books), ruling the sport for nearly two decades. Over a career spanning four decades, Lewis wrestled in over 6,200 matches—legit shoot fights and worked bouts alike—and lost only 33 times. Let that sink in. That’s not a record; that’s a myth. The man was untouchable. He could go with anybody at anytime he wanted.

The Strangler’s Grip: A Style Like No Other

What made Lewis so fucking terrifying? His catch wrestling prowess. This wasn’t flashy flips or choreographed drama—this was pure unadulterated pain. Lewis was a master of "hooking," using brutal holds to make opponents tap or nap. His signature move? The Strangler’s headlock, a proto-sleeper hold that could put anyone to sleep—permanently, if he wanted. Lou Thesz, Verne Gagne, and others called him the greatest ever, saying he’d only lose when he chose to, to push a storyline. That’s power. That’s control. 😤

One of his wildest moments? September 20, 1934, at Wrigley Field. Lewis faced Jim Londos in front of 35,275 screaming fans, pulling in a record gate of $96,302—a mark that stood until 1952. Or how about 1936, when he took on Lee Wykoff in one of wrestling’s last legit shoot matches? Lewis, nursing a separated clavicle, still fought to a draw. The man was a warrior, plain and simple. Even in 1937, wrestling in New Zealand, he went 4-2 against top talent, only falling to Canadian champ Earl McCready. No one could keep him down for long. 

Rivalries and Real Talk

Lewis’s biggest rival? Joe Stecher. These two titans clashed in and out of the ring, even sparking one of wrestling’s first promotional wars when Stecher ran his own shows against Lewis’s Gold Dust Trio. Their most epic battle? A five-and-a-half-hour marathon on July 4, 1916, ending in a draw because neither man could break the other. That’s not wrestling—that’s war if there ever was one. Their feud hit a peak in 1925 when Stanislaus Zbyszko, a Gold Dust Trio star, double-crossed Lewis' camp by legit beating their handpicked champ, Wayne Munn, to humiliate them. Wrestling was wild back then, and Lewis was at the heart of it all. 🥊

But not every match was a classic. In 1933, Lewis faced Ray Steele (a legit wrestler himself) at Madison Square Garden for the title. The two circled each other, barely locking up, and the fans got bored. Sometimes, even legends have off nights. Still, Lewis’s ability to draw crowds, even in controversy, was unmatched. He was the Babe Ruth of wrestling, rubbing shoulders with the Yankee slugger and Jack Dempsey, the era’s biggest stars. Hell, there’s even a photo from April 16, 1935, of Lewis putting Ruth in a headlock. Iconic.

The Later Years: Blind but Unbowed

By 1935, Lewis was semi-retired, frustrated with wrestling’s shift toward “slambang” entertainment over real grappling. But the fire never left him. In 1942, at 51 years old and legally blind from trachoma, a brutal eye condition common in wrestlers, he stepped back into the ring. Think about that—a blind man wrestling. And he kept going until 1948, retiring at 57. That’s not just heart; that’s soul and the will to keep fighting. 💥

Even after hanging up his boots, Lewis’s influence lived on. He trained legends like Lou Thesz, his protégé, along with Danny Hodge, Dick Hutton, and Judo Gene LeBell, passing down his hooking secrets. Thesz became a world champ, carrying Lewis’s torch. The Strangler didn’t just shape his era; he shaped wrestling’s future. 

The Final Bell

On August 8, 1966, Ed "Strangler" Lewis passed away in Muskogee, Oklahoma, at 75. Newspapers across the country hailed him as a pioneer who made wrestling a global phenomenon. His health battles—especially the blindness that plagued his final years—never dimmed his spirit. He’d earned millions in the ring and spent it like it was nothing, living life as big as his legend.

Today, Lewis is immortalized in every major wrestling hall of fame: Wrestling Observer Newsletter (1996), George Tragos/Lou Thesz (1999), Professional Wrestling (2002), WWE Legacy Wing (2016), and International Professional Wrestling (2021). His name is synonymous with greatness, a reminder of a time when wrestling was raw, real, and ruled by legit grappling warriors.

Why Does The Strangler Matter

Ed "Strangler" Lewis wasn’t just a champion; he was a revolution. He took a gritty, underground sport and made it what we see today. He fought through injuries, blindness, and changing times, never backing down. He trained the next generation, ensuring his art would live on. In the 1920s and ‘30s, he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey and other greats, not just as an athlete but as a myth.

So, next time you watch a wrestling match, remember the man who laid the foundation. The man who strangled doubt, crushed rivals, and built a legacy that’ll never tap out. Ed "Strangler" Lewis—the original powerhouse, the ultimate might. 🏋️‍♂️

What’s your favorite Strangler story? Drop it below and let’s celebrate this crazed SOB together! 💬

Be amazingly awesome and learn the valued history of the great sport of Catch As Catch Can Wrestling.

Getting Back To Basics

           Basic exercises are the true measures of what can be done in fitness whether it’s weights or bodyweight the principles still apply…

Presses

Pulls

Squats

Grip

            It’s important to use these principles with the best intentions because you’ll get the best results using these elements, you can add in supplemental exercises for extra variety but the more consistent you use these four the more you’ll get out of it.

            Sometimes we progress to higher stages of development that we move on without thinking too much of how we got there in the first place. Yes it’s important to progress and advancing yourself to harder types of training but in the end it all comes back to the basics and how it gives us the foundation to bring us higher and higher to where we want to go.

            The single most important ideal for being a great trainee is to not copy someone else’s program but to create your own with the basic principles and there are endless ways of doing them. Doing what works best for you is the journey of finding one’s self and that although you can get ideas on how to do things you’ll want to learn how you can create something on your own that you enjoy and making it challenging for you and you alone.

            There are countless attributes but the best ones stay within the realm of the basic principles and that’s…..

Strength

Stamina

Speed

Agility

Reflex

            All five of these attributes should be planted into your brain at all times not because it’s just a few words but when it comes down to it you’ll need them in whatever you’re doing whether it’s in sports, training for conditioning or whatever. For some who have read, I like saying to have fun and although it’s important to have that, there’s also times to get down to brass tacks and get the job done whether it’s for a specific goal, in competition, in training and in life. Do what you can but never be satisfied, keep moving, keep driving and keep achieving the things you want to do. No matter how tough things are, come back to the basics and use them to bring you back up because they will always be there when you need them. 

Why Is Conditioning Important?

 Being in condition for anything you want to be good at is as important as anything else is but what makes it important? First off having the strength to do something awesome is great but how you keep up that strength in the long run is up to you. The importance is that to get good at something, you condition your body or in other words practice the type of condition you want to achieve whether it’s Juggling Kettlebells, doing Handstands, playing sports or whatever you want to teach your body to withstand that particular subject. Even conditioning your mind is important because the stronger your mind is, the easier it is to find how to condition the body henceforth connecting the Mind/Muscle together.

 It doesn't matter if you’re in a sport, a workout, a meeting or whatever, you want to be as strong and aware when you first started and still have that amount left in the end. It’s called being in the clutch, still having what’s left in the tank for that one final moment or that one moment towards the end where you’re just as strong as you walked in as much as you want to walk out. Being prepared for a situation that still gives you that awareness and realize that you’re not still sticking with the other guy but chances are he’s gotten weaker.

 The type of people who taught conditioning the most were the most successful take John Wooden of NCAA Basketball fame at UCLA, a man who has taken the Bruins to 10 NCAA championships and produced a couple future hall of famers along the way including Bill Walton and Lew Alcindor aka Kareem Abdul Jabaar. He wouldn't let his players play unless their conditioning was top notch. Another would be the great Dan Gable who coached more NCAA champions in the sport of wrestling than any other before or since at the University of Iowa, he even coached a mentor of mine for a couple years by the name of Matt Furey. Gable made it a habit that his wrestlers are able to be ready for anything on the mat and some of them won matches by a landslide and others won or lost when it was time to be in the clutch. Probably one of the most important teachers on conditioning was the late Karl Gotch (1924-2007) who made it the number rule of all because if you’re not in condition and you lose your touch within the first couple minutes you might as well die in the dirt. If you have the right tools you can get in the best condition of your life but it doesn't just start in the muscles, it starts in the mind.

 Being in serious condition makes you tough and makes you want to get better, one of my favorite Pro Wrestlers is Ricky The Dragon Steamboat who had some of the best technical and scientific type matches and quite a number of them would be one hour draws against the likes of Ric Flair, Harley Race and others and I don’t give a damn the matches are fixed and who wins or who loses, to be able to wrestle and entertain a crowd for an hour straight is a feat in an of itself and the closest I can think of that caliber would be Lou Thesz, Verne Gagne, Ric Flair and Harley Race. Not that making this all about wrestling but the fact of the matter is if you want to master something, condition yourself to get to that level. It takes practice, it takes patience and it takes will, if you don’t have the will you won’t find the way.

 Some guys just don’t have the heart to condition them, are they tough enough, maybe not for that particular thing but in some way or another they’ll be in great condition at something. Being able to handle it is up to the person doing it. If you want to be able to handle such training or competition, your mind has to be more conditioned than your body, once you master that than your body will do the rest. One of my favorite stories of being tough to go through something is the Verne Gagne wrestling camps at his barn or office building in Minnesota, you have a number of guys going through the drills doing push-ups, squats, sit-ups, running and sprinting left and right and getting hammered in the ring, in the end there would be only a handful of guys left who made it when the majority quit. Being tough is not about how strong or fast you are, it’s about going that extra mile and even if you have a little left in the tank, you push through till the end. Being in condition is a bit of the same thing just the difference on developing your strengths to keep going and you’re just as strong if not stronger in the end.

 Learn to handle what you can and progress, that’s all you can do and have fun with it. If you’re too serious about conditioning you’re going to miss having a good time with it, enjoy it, challenge yourself and make it work for you.  

Who Are The Best Conditioned Athletes?

Sports.....Its our culture and our drive to compete to be the best. We see some of the greatest athletes in the world. We see heroes like Hulk Hogan, Walter Payton, Barry Bonds, Dan Gable, Otto Arco, Frank Gotch, Babe Ruth ect. These men are the best at what they did/do and how they got there (minus the steriods from a couple of the guys on this list) is no accident and pushed themselves to levels no one can fathom. Their conditioning is without question amazing and unreal but is it the best? Lets face facts athletes in any major sport at the highest level are well trained and can do things average folks can never do. Smack a homerun 500+ Feat, run well over 10,000 yards in a career, Win a gold medal without allowing a single point in a tournament, Slam a 500 pound giant and retire undefeted as a world champion. All those men achieved those goals because in order to achieve those things they have to go through many hours of training but again are they the best conditioned? Truth is their amazing conditioning is due to their sport. The training they go through is through that sport and in it alone.

We all strive to be the best we can be and become great when it calls apon us. I feel the best conditioned athletes are not the ones that are most conditioned for their sport no. I feel the best conditioned athletes are the ones that strive to master many different endeavors. In the early 20th century some athletes in the physical culture world were not only conditioned in their respected field but were conditioned in many other areas. Example would be Otto Arco, he was a hand balancer, wrestler, gymnast, weightlifter and strongman at a bodyweight of no more then 150 pounds at 5'3. To me the greatest athletes are men and women that are the master of multiple sports. Take another example would be the great Jim Thorpe. Arguably the greatest athlete of all-time. He was a great football player, a decathlete in the olympics and if I read correctly he played some baseball. So lets count here he was an athlete in about 12 different sports he perticipated in and nearly excelled in all of them. Thats a defenition of a well conditioned athlete, being able to transfer different movements at will and be incredible at it.

All in all there really is no greatest athlete but the athletes that excel best are the ones that can transfer from sport to sport without letting up and brining 100% a good portion of the time.

Towel Bar Pull-ups

Grip strength is important in many aspects whether through fitness, sports, emergency situations or weightlifting. I have been able to work up to some good strength from bending steel to ripping phonebooks or simple enough to deadlift a 120+ pound dumbbell with a 2 inch thick handle and hold for a 10 sec. isometric hold. I personally believe that if were one were to increase his/her gripping power pull-ups can do just that, they don't just work the back an biceps but grip as well. I have been experienting a variation that I came up with (nothing's new but I havent seen anyone do this). This variation was an inspiration that I got from Mr. Dinosaur Brooks Kubik not from Dinosaur Training but from his bodyweight book. He shows variations of pull-ups that are insane especially for thick bar training. Since I can't afford a thick bar I thought about what I can do to get the same benefits of thick bar training. I decided to try using a towel. Pretty simple, instead of looping over the bar I'd wrap the entire bar around the towel. Take each end and put it over the top, now roll the towel until it reaches its peak. If you have a slippery bar then it'll take a little time but its better then spending a couple hundred bucks. To create resistance just roll enough of the towel to where its comfortable enough to hang. Just hanging alone would be enough for most people. Once you can do a good amount of reps then roll and make the towel thicker. I attempted the thickest and after 4 sets I only managed a total of ten reps (3 pull-ups, 3 chin-ups and 2 sets of 2 mix grip). My forearms are still sore today and Im happy lol. The harder you make an exercise the more chances of muscle and tendon strength are being built. I may not be a weightlifter anymore but can hold my own when it comes to really tough bodyweight exercises. Try them sometime and give me your thoughts on them.