Wrestling historian Mike Chapman wrote, "In all of athletic history, there are a mere handful of rivalries between individual stars that have become almost as large as the sport itself. In boxing, such matchups as Sullivan-Corbett, Dempsey-Tunney, Louis-Conn and Ali-Frazier are a part of boxing folklore. In wrestling, there is only one: Gotch-Hackenschmidt."
After defeating Jenkins in 1905, Hackenschmidt held the world title and remained undefeated until he and Gotch finally squared off on April 3, 1908, at the Dexter Park Pavilion in Chicago. Showing his contempt for Gotch and for American wrestling in general, Hackenschmidt was not in the best condition. Refusing to train publically at the Chicago Athletic Club in spite of arrangements having been made for him to do so, he was barred from the club and spent his time either in his hotel room or taking long morning and evening walks along Lake Michigan. By neglecting his training, he lost his endurance, which had never been a factor in his previous matches because he ended them so quickly. Against Gotch, who was in peak condition, it would be decisive.
The American used his speed, defense and rough tactics to wear the champion down and then assume the attack. The wrestlers stood on their feet for two full hours before Gotch was able to get behind Hackenschmidt and take him down. While on their feet, Gotch made sure to lean on Hackenschmidt to wear him down. He bullied him around the ring, and his thumbing and butting left Hackenschmidt covered in blood. At one time, Gotch also punched Hackenschmidt on the nose. Hackenschmidt complained to the referee of Gotch's foul tactics and asked that Gotch be forced to take a hot shower to rid his body of an abundance of oil, but the referee ignored the complaints and told Hackenschmidt he should have noticed the oil before the match began. The match continued. At the two-hour mark, Hackenschmidt was forced against the ropes. Gotch tore him off the ropes, threw Hackenschmidt down and rode him hard for three minutes, working for his dreaded toe hold. Hackenschmidt had trained to avoid this hold, which he did, but the effort took his last remaining strength.
Hackenschmidt quit the fall. "I surrender the championship of the world to Mr. Gotch," he said, and stood up and shook Gotch's hand. The wrestlers then retired to their dressing rooms before coming out for the second fall, but Hackenschmidt refused to return to the ring, telling the referee to declare Gotch the winner, thereby relinquishing his title to the American.
Although he at first called Gotch "the greatest man by far I ever met," and explained how his muscles had become stale and his feet had given out, and that he knew he could not win and therefore conceded the match, Hackenschmidt later reversed his opinion of Gotch and Americans in general, claiming to have been fouled by Gotch and victimized in America, and calling for a rematch in Europe.
Hackenschmidt and Gotch met again on September 4, 1911, at the newly opened Comiskey Park in Chicago, which drew a crowd of nearly 30,000 spectators and a record gate of $87,000. The rematch is one of the most controversial and talked about matches in wrestling history, as Hackenschmidt injured his knee against Roller, his chief training partner. Years later, wrestler Ad Santel told Lou Thesz that he was paid $5000 by Gotch's backers to cripple Hackenschmidt in training, and make it look like an accident. However, according to Hackenschmidt himself, the injury was accidently inflicted by his sparring partner, Roller, when trying to hold Hackenschmidt down onto his knees in the down position. Roller's right foot struck Hackenschmidt's right knee, which in 1904 had developed "Housemaid's Knee," requiring treatment, and had acted up again in 1907. According to Hackenschmidt, his sparring partners for this match were Americus, Jacobus Koch, Wladek Zbyszko and Dr. Roller. Ad Santel is not mentioned in any account of Hackehschmidt's training by either Hackenschmidt or Roller, both of whom offered their insights and accounts. Whatever the case may be, Dr. Roller did not consider the injury to be serious and referee Ed Smith dismissed it as inconsequential. Hackenschmidt himself ignored it completely in declaring, the day before the match, that he was "fit to wrestle for my life" and was "satisfied with my condition and confident of the outcome." However, Gotch, tearing into Hackenschmidt with a vengeance, discovered the weakness quickly and took advantage of it. The Russian Lion was easy prey for the champion, losing in straight falls in only 20 minutes. Gotch clinched the match with his feared Toe Hold, which forced Hackenschmidt to quit.
Following his second defeat at the hands of Gotch, upon returning to England Hackenschmidt was preparing for a match with Stanislaus Zbyszko to take place the following June, but when he began working out he felt such pain in his right knee that it was painful even to walk. It necessitated surgery, but Hackenschmidt decided at that point to retire and pursue his other interests in philosophy, physical culture and gardening.
Hackenschmidt was a pioneer in the field of weightlifting. He invented the exercise known as the hack squat, whose name is a reference to his own. Hackenschmidt also helped to popularize many other types of lifts common within the modern training regimen, such as the bench press. During his career, he held numerous weightlifting records, all of which have since been broken.
He was a tremendously educated and cultured man who spoke seven languages. He went on to write several books, including Complete Science of Wrestling (1909), Fitness and Your Self (1937), Consciousness and Character: True Definitions of Entity, Individuality, Personality, Nonentity (1937), The Way To Live In Health and Physical Fitness (1941), and The Three Memories and Forgetfulness: What They Are and What Their True Significance is in Human Life. He also taught physical education to members of the House of Lords and served as a judge at the 1948 Mr. Universe show in London won by John Grimek.
Throughout his life Hackenschmidt paid strict attention to his diet. While a meat-eater earlier in life, he later consumed huge quantities of fruit, nuts and raw vegetables, as well as drinking 11 pints of milk a day. He also remained physically fit. At 56 he could jump over a 4-foot, 6-inch high board 10 times. Even through his mid-80's he would jump 50 times over a chair once a week, bench press 150 pounds and run seven miles in 45 minutes.
Hackenschmidt became a naturalized French citizen in 1939, and then became a British subject in 1946.
He lived with his French wife Rachel in South Norwood, London.
He was a great friend with famous magician Harry Houdini and George Bernard Shaw. As he aged, Hackenschmidt also expressed a high regard for his old opponent, Tom Jenkins, by then the wrestling coach at the United States Military Academy at West Point. Hack visited Jenkins in 1939 and the two got along splendidly, Hackenschmidt accommodating Hack in his home and giving him a tour of the West Point training facilities. In their mutual admiration society, they never publically expressed any credit to Frank Gotch, and Hack spent the rest of his life complaining about Gotch's foul tactics and his knee injury in explaining his inexplicable losses.
Hackenschmidt was already hospitalized at St. Francis Hospital in Dulwich, a suburb of London, when he died on February 19, 1968. He was 90 years old. He was cremated at West Norwood Cemetery, where his memorial plaque records him as George Hackenschmidt.
In his entire professional wrestling career, Hackenschmidt engaged in about 3,000 matches, losing only two. He remains among the top four men continually rated as the four greatest wrestlers of all time, they being 1) Frank Gotch, 2) George Hackenschmidt, 3) Stanislaus Zbyszko and 4) the Great Gama. Powerfully built, Hackenschmidt's measurements for his 1905 match with Alexander Munro were: Age - 28; Weight - 204 pounds; Height - 5', 9 1/2"; Reach - 75"; Biceps - 19"; Forearm – 15 1/2"; Neck - 22"; Chest – 52"; Waist - 34"; Thigh – 26 3/4"; Calf - 18". He also rose to prominence when the governing style of wrestling was the slower, more ponderous Greco-Roman style that emphasized muscle power more than speed, agility and ring generalship, and involved holds only above the waist. Being bulkier of build than his sleeker opponents, and slower of movement, Hack’s style and temperament were not geared as much to the newly popular catch-as-catch-can style.
Nor was he a natural showman. Honest, straightforward and serious, he would finish off his opponents quickly. His manager, C. B. Cochran, had to convince him to extend his matches and put on a show, which in turn ensured more bookings and sold-out shows. This did not mean the matches were fake. Excluding exhibitions, his matches were all on the level. But he might allow a local wrestler to last ten minutes and collect his £25 prize, and set up a highly publicized match for later in the week, where he would naturally defeat his foe handily. Which reveals one of Hackenschmidt's finest qualities. Unlike many other wrestlers, including Frank Gotch, Hackenschmidt was neither mean, vindictive nor unnecessarily rough in the ring, “contrasting his physical prowess and fighting skills with a quietness of spirit,” David Gentle explained. “George Hackenschmidt was the epitome of calm, self-assurance and inner peace, with full awareness of his own capabilities and thus like all masters of combat found NO NEED FOR MACHOISM or outward aggression. His tactic to win was skill and speed, born of confidence in his own ability and fighting prowess.”. He had, however, three weaknesses. Against a first-class opponent, of which he faced extremely few, he could be slow to adapt. Gotch reported after their first match that “every move the Russian made he telegraphed me in advance, which shows that he thinks too slowly.”
Hack was also given to Slavic depression and irascibility. When he came to Chicago to train for his first match with Gotch, promoter Jack Curley had arranged for Hack to work out every day before a paying public, which Hack refused to do. Barred from the athletic club, he spent his time before the match either exercising in his room or taking morning and evening walks along Lake Michigan, but no serious workouts. The more depressed he got, the more difficult he was to work with. This all worked against him because, for the first time in his professional career, Hackenschmidt faced a foe fully capable of defeating him.
Finally, and worst of all, in both matches with Gotch, Hackenschmidt was accused of lack of heart. Referee Ed Smith, following the 1908 match, said that “deep down in my own mind, I decided that George Hackenschmidt had quit – quit quite cold, as a matter of fact – because there was nothing about Gotch’s treatment of him in that first encounter that could by an stretch of the imagination call for a disqualification. There was some face-mauling, just as there always is…but at no time did the vaunted Hackenschmidt ever make a serious move toward slapping down his opponent, never showed much in the wrestling line during the entire two hours… Again, I say, that as the referee of that match, I thought that the ‘Russian Lion’ quit.”
Following the 1911 rematch, one newspaper described Gotch’s easy victory and then added that “In the parlance of the sporting world, Hackenschmidt is yellow… He quit when his position became dangerous.”
Perhaps the most frustrated was Hackenschmidt’s second, Dr. Benjamin Roller, who himself had lost several times to Gotch but had displayed the utmost gameness and courage. “Hack did not get started,” Roller explained. “That’s largely a matter of gameness.” Hack’s injuries had not been serious enough, Roller felt. “I have tried my best to make a winner out of him and put him into the ring in the best possible condition, but…gameness is something you can not put into a man.
Having already made his mark in body-building, Hackenschmidt caused the major surge in the popularity of wrestling in England, and he was considered unbeatable. But Hackenschmidt probably would not be so well remembered today were it not for two things: 1) His enormous standing in the world of physical culture, and 2) his two defeats at the hands of Frank Gotch. Hackenschmidt’s name remained in the public eye because he had become an icon in the world of physical culture, a legendary body-builder as well as health addict, and a world champion wrestler central to a movement that was now increasingly popular. He spoke and published widely on a wide range of subjects, but most notably on health and fitness. His most popular book was the classic The Way To Live, the last words of which befit this warrior: "Throughout my whole career I have never bothered as to whether I was a Champion or not a Champion; The only title I have desired to be known by is simply my name - George Hackenschmidt.”
But it was his matches with Gotch that ensured the growing popularity of catch-as-catch-can wrestling over the more laborious Greco-Roman that had previously dominated, and this is the style that enjoys popularity at all scholastic levels, private clubs and the Olympics to this day. Hackenschmidt was a major reason for this.
