The "athletic show" was the top attraction of many an old-time carnival. "AT shows", as they were called, featured wrestlers and boxers taking on challengers from the crowd. Large circuses also carried "AT shows" as part of their sideshow and as added attractions. The tradition goes back to the Middle Ages when wandering wrestlers faced opponents in the ancient fairs and bazaars. In America, the "AT show" dates to the post-Civil War era and ran right up until the early 1960's. The athletic shows, often including female grapplers, also appeared on the old vaudeville stages and in burlesque theaters.
By the early 1900's, the "AT show" was a regular part of the county fair circuit. In the spring, a showman would gather a troupe of capable wrestlers and fighters and send them out barnstorming. Barnstorming is an old term used to describe touring entertainers and athletes that performed anywhere and everywhere. Arriving at the fairgrounds, the "AT show" group pitched its tent along the midway with a stage out front called the "bally" and a regulation ring inside. Large, colorful banners were displayed depicting wrestling scenes and boasting such slogans as "We Challenge the World" and "No One Barred".
The show involved meeting all comers from the audience, offering from five dollars on up to the challenger able to stay the time limit with the carnival man. An "AT show" operator couldn't afford to pay out too many forfeits, so the wrestlers and boxers had to be both highly skilled and as tough as nails.
In its heyday, the athletic show produced a hardy breed of grappler; rough, ready and able to dispose of any challenger who stepped up from the spectators. The challenger or "mark", as he was known in the business, could be anything from a husky farmer to the local bully. George Drake, who worked "AT shows" out West in the 1940's, remembers his challengers as being "cowboys, wiseguys, drunks, college wrestlers and football players".
"AT show" bouts were time-limit handicap matches, with the "comer" attempting to stay for usually five minutes of wrestling or three rounds of boxing. Often, as part of the show, one of the carnival wrestlers, referred to as a "stick", would be planted out among the crowd. The stick would be worked into the program as all the "marks" were met and defeated in the beginning of the week. Athletic show grapplers faced from two to a dozen or more challengers a day! As the "marks" were weeded out, the stick would stay the limit with a couple of "AT show" men. Then the big end of the week match would be the stick versus the carnival mat star in an exciting finish contest. Other times, a local wrestler or amateur champion would be built up as a worthy contender.
Many of the top pro wrestlers of the past would take to the carnival circuit during the summer months, when the arenas closed. Before the advent of air conditioning, the "AT show" was the only game available to matmen in the summertime. Farmer Burns, George Bothner, Frank Gotch, Ed "Strangler" Lewis, "Tigerman" John Pesek, Jack Sherry, Ray Steele, Sputnik Monroe, Red Bastien, Bull Curry, Wild Red Berry and Angelo Poffo are among the many grappling greats of the past who worked "AT shows" during their careers.
The late Mildred Burke, world champion woman wrestler for twenty years, started out wrestling in carnivals in 1935. Any man within twenty pounds of her weight who could pin her in ten minutes would be awarded twenty-five dollars.
Sputnik Monroe wrestled and boxed in carnival "AT shows" from 1947 to 1954, using the name 'Pretty Boy Rocque, the Hollywood Dandy'. Monroe toured all over the western and mid-western United States with athletic shows. Commenting on those days, Sputnik said, "I worked carnivals for 'Lover Boy' Barnard, Red Durham and, the daddy of athletic show operators, Jack Nasworthy ... I wrestled as high as thirty times in a day ... We tried to have as many shoots as we possibly could, and we always tried to get those handled on Monday or Tuesday, because the crowds would build towards the end of the week, and we'd have our own people there for the big crowds. But anybody that'd come up, I boxer (or) wrestled ... Shooters or 'marks' that challenged got paid one dollar a minute for three three-minute rounds of boxing or five minutes of wrestling. None ever stayed with the 'Pretty Boy'."
Among the wrestlers Monroe worked "AT shows" with include John Pesek, former world champion Everett Marshall, Jim "Goon" Henry, Buck Fanning and Jacob Levell Cagle.
Describing the challengers from the crowd he often faced, Monroe said, "That's the hardest kind of a guy to wrestle ... the guy that doesn't know how to wrestle, because if you wristlock him or something, he does the exact opposite of what you've trained yourself and learned to do in your career. So there's a specialty in wrestling idiots. You'd always try and give him your head or your hand ... You used 'marks' for referees, so they won't count the hometown boy out ... You always had to make them submit."
Red Bastien started out at sixteen years of age, taking on all comers in a carnival tent for Bodart Shows. Red was taught grappling while working in a Minnesota lumber camp by an old-time mat man named Henry Kolln. He was then recruited to work the carnival circuit in the late '40s. He toured all over Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. Wrestlers Red worked with in the "AT shows" included Gene Laska, Swede Oberg, "Dirty" Dick Evans, Joe Snyder and Frankie Colburn, who also boxed.
Red, and three or four others, would be out on the "bally" while the barker challenged the midway crowd. After several "marks" stepped up onto the stage, they would be interviewed. Then tickets would be sold, and the show would begin inside the tent. The first night, the "AT show" wrestlers made short work of the "marks". By the second night, Red recalled, the town bully would usually be brought around by the locals. The "AT show" men would put him off for a while as if they were afraid, knocking off some more "marks" in the meantime. As the excitement built up and the crowd grew, the final "AT show" match would pit the local "tough guy" against one of the carnival wrestlers. Then, it would be on to the next town.
In reference to the "AT show" men, Red said, "Most of them were middleweights, but they would wrestle anyone ... These were old-time wrestlers ... They'd been around the mat world for years, so it wasn't likely that they were going to be beat, no matter how big the guy was. They had what they called submission holds, and if he didn't give up, he'd get his leg broken."
Another veteran of carnival wrestling is Al Costello, of the world famous "Fabulous Kangaroos" tag team. Al, a grocer's son in New South Wales, Australia, started his pro mat career in 1938. To gain experience, he began wrestling and boxing all comers in the carnivals. Al took on as many as twelve challengers a day. He toured carnivals all over Australia with both Jimmy Sharman and with Roy Bell. In 1945, he had his own Variety Boxing and Wrestling Entertainment Troupe. The show featured, besides himself, three boxers and a half-aborigine wrestler known as "The Bronze Bomber". Al remembers carnival wrestling as "a tough life and very little money ... but a ton of experience."
Al Costello recalled an incident that happened in Adelaide when he took on a big Dutch seaman in a two-out-of-three falls contest with a ten-minute time limit. Al, an expert grappler, pinned the sailor for the first fall in thirty seconds. He was about to repeat the performance when a shipmate of the Dutchman rushed onto the mat and kicked Al square in the head. The seaman disappeared and Al was left with a fractured jaw.
A few wrestling bear acts still makes the rounds of American carnivals and country fairs. I've heard that there's an "AT show", with wrestlers taking on all comers, operating in Blackpool, England; and that one last boxing troupe still tours the Australian outback, offering twenty dollars to anyone able to stay three rounds with one of its fighters.
The athletic show and its wrestlers, who literally "took on all comers", is a thing of the past. Its legacy lives on, though. Much of the showmanshipo associated with professional wrestling stems from its carnival roots. Old-time carnival wrestling is an important, but largely forgotten chapter, in the sports' history.
The next time you stroll a carnival midway, let your thoughts turn back to an earlier day. Imagine a large, colorful tent with four tough-looking hombres on a stage in front of it, and a fast-talking barker declaring the prowess of his men. Listen, as the "AT show" grapplers taunt and aggravate the spectators, daring them to try and stay just five minutes. Feel the excitement, as the whole country turns out to see their hometown hero try to best the carnival wrestler under the canvas tent. Watch as "Pretty Boy Rocque" comes to grips with his challenger. What's that the "AT show" wrestler says, standing over his defeated opponent? "Nobody stays with the Pretty Boy. Who's next!?"
