Excerpt from Chapter Three of Play-by-Play,
"Body Slams"

The first professional wrestling match was broadcast on a radio station
in Wichita, Kansas, in 1922. That wrestling debut followed
KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the first station to broadcast regularly
after it was licensed in November 1920. Before KDKA was licensed,
its founder was playing music on a little transmitter in his
garage. The Westinghouse Corporation discovered as many as a thousand
people were listening daily to his music on their simple crystal
receivers. In 1920, Westinghouse signed on KDKA, and the first regular
broadcast was the reporting of the presidential election returns.
Radio excitement was growing all over the country, and in 1922, several
hundred stations had been licensed across the country. All of the
stations shared the same and only frequency, 833 kHz. In Wichita,
The Lander Corporation put WEAH on the air in March 1921, principally
to broadcast market reports. In May of the same year, WAAP
was founded by Otto W. Taylor.

WAAP then made local history by broadcasting a church service.
Doesn’t it follow that this same station would step forward to broadcast
the first-ever professional wrestling match? This story appeared
in a Wichita paper. Michael Kenyon, the broadcast historian, sent me
this clipping:

Wichita KS: March 3, 1922 (Forum, att. 4,928, _17,000 . . . (World
Title) Ed (Strangler) Lewis beat Stanislaus Zbyszko (2-1) . . . Dick
Daviscourt drew Cliff Binckley (30:00) . . . Promoter Tom Law . . .
NOTE: Zbyszko, with a body scissors and arm lock, took the first fall
in 41:30. . . . Lewis answered with headlocks at 18 minutes and three
minutes. . . . Jack Herman, manager of the defeated champion, screams
foul. . . . Zbyszko received $7,000 for the bout; Lewis $5,000 . . . THIS
WAS SAID TO BE THE FIRST MATCH EVER BROADCAST ON
RADIO. . . . Tickets priced at $10.00 up. . . . The following morning it
is reported, Zbyszko ate scrambled eggs, milk, toast and not much
more for breakfast. That’s how sore his jaw was where Lewis popped
him in the heat of battle.

J. Michael Kenyon, the noted broadcast historian, provided the
Wichita clipping. Orin Friesin of the Journal Broadcast Group concurs
that it was probably WAAP that made the historic ‘‘grunt and
groan’’ broadcast. This was professional wrestling on the cusp of the
cutting edge of radio broadcasting as it was to become when television
made its appearance—a point in history. The famous, or infamous,
goat gland doctor, John R. Brinkley, bought WAAP and moved
it to another location in Kansas long before he got in trouble with the
medical profession and moved his popular operation to Mexico.
WEAH, on the other hand, was purchased shortly afterward and
licensed by a Wichita hotel. The call letters changed to KFH and it
remains on the air today. Sports events, church services, and live
music programs were tried by the various new stations popping up
around the country after 1920. The WAAP radio sports pioneering of
wrestling was certainly feasible.

By the time I noticed radio in Muskogee, Oklahoma, in 1930, it
was becoming sophisticated. A month before I was born in 1926, the
first Rose Bowl game was broadcast live to a country with few radio
receivers. It was a historic game pitting a Southern team, Alabama,
against the powerful Washington Huskies. Alabama won 20 to 19.
Radio was off and running.

There were networks with programs of all kinds and sports broadcasts.
However, it was still difficult to pick up stations unless a family
was blessed with a lot of money to spend on the best radio receiver
around. My family had a little Crosley that demanded a lot of antenna
adjusting to hear WLW in Cincinnati, a powerful station. When
there was lightning, rain, or any kind of bad weather, it took even
more patience and adjustment to bring in programs.

Entertainment after the Depression settled in, in the 1930s demanded
some creative work. Movies for children were ten cents.
Some weeks, we couldn’t afford that dime for my Saturday cowboy
movie fix. Adults paid a quarter and everyone tried to squeeze into a
movie house when they had Bank Night or Grocery-Give-Away night
to lure the patrons in, hoping for something they couldn’t afford to
buy every day, like groceries. High school football and an occasional
Minor League Baseball game were about the extent of our entertainment.
There were magazines and newspapers, and all were relatively
cheap. A paper was a nickel. For free, there were picnics, fishing, and
parking downtown to walk around, people watch, or window-shop
the department stores. My family was addicted to radio, and that was
probably true of more than 90 percent of the people in the country. It
was free.

I came home from school to listen to the Air Adventures of Jimmy
Allen, the Lone Ranger, and all those kids’ shows where we could get
free decoder pins for eating the right cereal. But my main interest was
sitting with my father and listening to every sports event broadcast.
Late at night, after my folks went to bed, I tuned in to Don Dunphy
and the fights from St. Nicholas Arena in New York or Madison
Square Garden. Dunphy broadcast more than two thousand fights
and was indeed the greatest of boxing announcers. Clem McCarthy,
with his gravelly voice, handled many top events, including the second
Joe Louis–Max Schmeling fight.

My first foray into broadcasting was the re-creation of Minor
League Baseball games in my room in the farmhouse in Muskogee
when I was just twelve years old. I discussed that in the baseball chapter,
but for some oddball reason, I had it in my young mind that I
could broadcast sports. I recall telling my dad that I could do as well
as some guys I heard—pretty fresh for an uneducated kid. I was a very
shy and tried to play sports, but I wasn’t that successful, and I wasn’t
as good a student as I should have been, especially in high school. I
guess the start of World War II put all of us guys into a bit of frenzy
figuring we were going to fight—and just about everybody did starting
in 1941 and continuing through 1945. My time came in 1943.
I learned early on that a person didn’t have much say about occupations.
I didn’t plan on being a signalman in the Navy; they made
the decision. I didn’t plan on being a teacher; it just evolved. In 1951,
I also didn’t plan on being a wrestling announcer, but the radio station
management at KMUS in Muskogee said it came with the sports
broadcasting package of baseball, football, boxing, and basketball.
This was my first ‘‘big’’ job as a sportscaster, so why not?

(read the next excerpt on Tuesday, August 14 or buy the book by clicking the link below!)

(click here to read excerpt 1 from the book)
(click here to read excerpt 3 from the book)
 

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