Danny Levine, Benny Schwartz, Eli Fischer and Sammy Greenstein, the Jewish wrestling stars whose bailiwick includes every dinky arena in the metropolitan area, are limited to a number of burping plants that don’t pay well for excessive efforts. Abie Coleman, the Californian bone crusher, master of the art of grunts, groans and grimaces, used to be head man around these parts some time ago. But he passed out of the picture last May.
The little rassling Litvacks in the East today are all silhouettes of good torso-tossers. There really isn’t one decent Jewish heave and belch man left in New York.
However, Curley’s stable, from whence issue orders that make or break a rassler, reveals that Coleman is due back in New York next month. This should put the minds of flying tackle fans at ease. With the arrival of Abie Coleman, the other Jewish rasslers will not be worth a dime a dozen.
A year ago in November Abie came East for the first time and started blazing his way towards the championship. Then, around Spring, he proved a flash in the pan and Curley helped his wanderlust by dispatching him to the districts where East Lynne still packs the theaters.
ABIE USED HIS HEAD AND RASSLED THE CURLEY CROP
The method Curley uses to get all New York, from Brownsville to the Bronx, conscious of this sport called rassling is akin to the chain gang of the St. Louis Cardinals. First, the boys fight in the two bit palaces, such as the Grove, the Star Casino, or the Coliseum. Then, if a lad proves he has the stuff, he is advanced to the big money. That is, he is raised from fifty dollars weekly for five fights to seventy dollars a week for three. Not bad money considering the fact that some of the burpers do their stuff only eight minutes an evening.
Well, Abie used to be one of the best horses in Curley’s riding academy because of his splendid work around town. He made a name for himself every time he would release one of his flying butts to the button. He was in the lead but evidently stumbled coming down the home stretch. The fix-it boys matched him against Gentleman Jeem Londos. His old repertoire of tricks, the flying mares, the airplane spins, the full nelsons and crotch holds that he used to dish out with so much relish and gusto, were nothing but siwash in his last fight in Brooklyn. That was the kid’s last stand.
His batting average before he was run out of town was #000—no hits, no runs and four errors.
BUT NOW HE’S COMING BACK IN GRAND STYLE
For some time after Coleman left these shores thirteen rumors a day would emanate from the Curley stables. Some had it that he had thrown discretion to the winds (according to kibbitzers, the only thing he had thrown for months) and had gone off to marry.
When Abie left town we said that this fellow had the stuff in him to make a comeback. We were sorry to see him go because his rassling antics in New York kept us in laughs. We said he would make up for his failures.
Coleman’s strength, his brawn and the fact that he can be a wrestling walloper when he wants to are the chief facts that make us so interested in this Jewish behemoth.
Abie beat the whole herd of Curley burpers and lost only to Londos before his big flop. He would give the fans a run for their money, with clean, hard-fought fights that made the burp fans, those dear old die-hards, throw orchids instead of Bronx razzberries at the end of each tussle. And that was why we rooted for the Coleman pride.
Abie recently threw Rowdy Rudy Dusek with so much ease in a cattle town out West, that those old cynics, the gentlemen in the working press boxes, claimed they hadn’t had so much fun since the year of the big wind, when Primo Carnera played to a full barn of seventy-three people. Hans Kampfer and Jagat Singh have been bowled over with ten-strikes that could be heard in Peoria. Bull Komar was thrown with a grace and ease that would make the man on the flying trapeze envious. And so on right down the list. Rubi, Zelesniak, Blackstock, Steinke and Yousoff have been so much pocket change for little Abie in his sensational come-back and he is due back in New York next month
A CASUAL STROLL ALONG ST. NICK TERRACE
With a weather eye cocked at the initial tilt against St. Francis on Saturday, Nat Holman, coach of the crack Lavender basketball teams, is putting his City College charges through the final stages of their month and a half drill.
Holman has been holding practice four times a week since October 10 and has his squad of fifteen in tiptop shape for the opening clash against the Saints. This game marks the first of thirteen in the most ambitious schedule ever attempted by a Lavender five.
The first team is adequately supplied with replacements for the first time in years. Twelve of the fifteen on this year’s squad are Jewish.
VIOLET GRIDSTERS ARE VERY MUCH BEDRAGGLED
New York University’s football team is the kind of an outfit that can lick the tar out of C. C. N. Y. and then rest content for an entire season. The Violet has taken it on the chin in every game but the Johns Hopkins and C. C. N. Y. tussles. Rutgers was the latest school to whip the boys from the Hall of Fame.
With the Fordham game remaining as the last tilt of an already disastrous season, it does not look any too good for Siegal, Machlowitz, Eisenberg, Fischer and Co.
MADISON HIGH SCHOOL HEADED FOR TITLE
Milt Torgan’s men from Madison seem headed for the big city title. Playing without the services of their stellar backfield man, Marty Glickman, the Golden Tornado rode roughshod over a badly disorganized but fighting New Utrecht eleven. The score was 45-0.
Madison is in line for the city title clash, which will be played against Roosevelt on December 1.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
