A Youtube History of the NWA World Heavyweight Title - Lou Thesz vs Hans Schmidt (date unknown)

And now we're back on schedule. Thank you for your patience, faithful reader. Time for our champ to take on one of the legendary brawlers of the era, Hans Schmidt.






More of the shitty Chicago announcer. I hate this guy so much. We get it, you're too smart for pro wrestling, you clever, clever man.

Heavy clipping early, which doesn't bother me because a) Schmidt is not afraid to just lay there with the headlock and b) Schmidt is perfectly willing to drop a heavy forearm. So, sure, skip to the good stuff.

Thesz hits that stepover toehold counter to the body scissors into the Thesz elbow spot, as if just for me, albeit 20 years before I was born. He's not the Super Malenko/Proto-Han that I always want him to be, but Thesz is a masterful technician within the context of the style he wrestles. And I really love this 50s pro wrestling style. I love the pacing of it. Dave Meltzer and others have argued that Flair and Choshu turned up the speed on the slow 70s style, but I've seen a ton of Flair and Choshu matches and they don't wrestle any faster than 1950s Lou Thesz. And Rice and Longson and Don Leo Jonathan are as athletic as you could ask for. (Schmidt maybe a little less so, though he's no slouch.) But one of the complaints I have about a lot of today's wrestling - especially on the indies - is it's too fast. The Young Bucks are a great example. They have some awe inspiring moves, but you can't always appreciate what they've done because you're trying to catch up. There's no time to savor a moment. Part of the psychology of wrestling is knowing when to build to a moment, to let the audience anticipate something about to happen or to savor something that just happened. You need that ebb and flow instead of just go go go all the time, or none of it means anything. Thesz can wrestle as fast as anyone I've ever seen, but he knows when to put the brakes on, too, and that's a much more difficult and important skill.

If I haven't mentioned it before, I really like Thesz's double wristlock takeover into the head scissors. And Schimdt does some good work inside and escaping the head scissor, too. The butt bump escape from the full nelson is something you don't see too often. And, honestly, that's just as well. 

Schmidt is a much better brawler than Longson or Rice, if you ask me. Which, by clicking on this post, you did. I get a genuine sense of menace from his strikes and chokes. Lots of hairpulling. Knees that look filled with ill intent. And Thesz does his part, too, getting some good bounce off those whips to the corner. 

Odd second fall, in that Thesz is unquestionably in the ropes, right in front of the official. Nice backdrop to set it up, though. And I'm glad Schmidt got a fall. He deserves it. Given how much Thesz gives him in the match, I think the champ agrees. Even uses the double near fall, last second shoulder raise for the third fall. Schmidt needs to work on his bridge.

Although, now that I think about it some, if it had been a better suplex, the finish might not have worked as well as it did.

Huh.

Now I have to decide if Schmidt screwed up or if he's actually good enough to have screwed up in that way on purpose.

Huh.

Let's all think about that one for a little bit. Next week is a barnburner - Thesz takes on AWA founder Verne Gagne in one of my favorite matches of the 50s.

For more on Lou Thesz, read his autobiography Hooker. For a cross section of Thesz and the other legitimate pro wrestlers of the past and into the present, you can do no better than Jonathan Snowden's Shooters: The Toughest Men in Professional Wrestling. For an in-depth look at the NWA, I recommend Tim Hornbaker's National Wrestling Alliance: The Untold Story of the Monopoly That Strangled Pro Wrestling.