New World Record Set For Longest Pro Wrestling Match Ever

[air_raid]

Surely anything involving a group of men grappling in spandex going longer than 60 minutes, is full-on homosexual behaviour?

 

Should probably warn WWE that CM Punk doesn't fit in with their PG guidelines due to his torrid affair with Chris Hero.

[Carbomb]

Surely anything involving a group of men grappling in spandex going longer than 60 minutes, is full-on homosexual behaviour?

 

If it was a full 60 minutes of a full-nelson or a waistlock, I suppose the evidence would stack up in favour of that conclusion.

[Dr Reefer]

That

[Taylorslade]

Early prize fights could easily go 4 or 5 hours . Rounds ended with a knockdown and the fight only finished when one man was unable to get off his stool and stand in the middle of the ring at the 'scratch' which is where we get the phrase "up to scratch".

 

The record for the longest bareknuckle fight is listed as 6 hours and 15 minutes for a match between James Kelly and Jack Smith in Melbourne, Australia, on October 19, 1856. If 2 men punching each other in the head with bare knuckles can go 6 hours, I don't see why 2 evenly matched greco roman wrestlers couldn't fight for twice that.

 

London Prize ring rules. A lot of those fabled fights with a ridiculous amount of rounds can be attributed to being contested under that set of rules.

 

However, the longest glove fight on record, under MOQ rules, is seven hours and twenty minutes, between Andy Bowen and Jack Burke from 1893, a lightweight fight held in New Orleans, lasting 110 FULL rounds, and probably would've went longer had the referee not ruled an end. Bowen's very next contest after this just over 1 month later, went 85 full rounds, lasting over five and a half hours, which he won. Bowen had several more tough, gruelling fights, and sadly but not at all surprisingly, died a year later, apparently from injuries sustained in an American lightweight title fight in which he was KO'd in the 18th round of a fight scheduled for 25 rounds, but you have to think the accumulation of punishment from other fights were as big a factor as his last.

 

It's worth noting, that the style of pugilism during the time you referenced, was vastly different to that of the modern era, and by today's standards, quite alien. These contests consisted of a lot of holding and grabbing and throwing, with punches inbetween assaults, or "milling" as they said then, and under LPR rules, a knockdown resulting from a throw could be counted as a knockdown, but whether it was inforced or not was a different matter. While this was the standard and more accepted trend of that time, it was starting to drift out a little as time went by and certain fighters developed a more scientific approach slowly but surely and forcing the sport to evolve, so the often crude approach of "milling", style-wise, belonged more to the fighters that were active a few decades before the Kelly Vs Smith fight. For quality operators like Tom Cribb, Bill Richmond and Tom Molineaux, milling was the order of the day.

 

It continued to be quite standard in the years that followed, even lasting right up until the 1890's and the transition to the gloved era, although different variations of all kinds of rules were used in key contests until the original Marquess of Queensbury rules were practically universally accepted.

 

Here in this photo, you can clearly see the grappling nature of this "milling", most of the action that took place was initiated from this position, and they would also use this position as clinches are today as somewhat of a rest period or hanging on for dear life. This photo was taken during the John L. Sullivan Vs Jake Kilrain fight from 1889, which was the last true world title fight under London Prize Ring rules and thus, the last bare knuckle bout of such. Sullivan's trainer for the contest, wrestler William Muldoon, the "Solid man" can be seen in the photo at ringside

 

 

 

And here's another, of the two fighters being carried by their seconds to their corners between rounds ;

 

After looking almost certainly like he was going to lose, especially during the 44th round when he began to vomit uncontrollably, the champion got a second wind from somewhere and dominated after that, eventually forcing Kilrain's manager to retire his man in the 75th stanza.

 

 

Sorry brothers, but I was seriously bored, and saw the opportunity to ramble on, upon which I pounced. Please forgive me.

[HeavyT]

Sorry brothers, but I was seriously bored, and saw the opportunity to ramble on, upon which I pounced. Please forgive me.

Interesting stuff. The amount of young deaths from this musta been huge