Richard Schikat

Richard Schikat (* 1896 in Tilsit ; † 1968 ) was a German wrestler . He was world champion in professional heavyweight wrestling in free style.

Life

Richard Schikat grew up in Tilsit, East Prussia , and went to sea at a young age. He came to wrestling through friends. He went to Dresden and competed as an amateur in a number of competitions in the Saxon region without resounding success. Nevertheless, he made the decision to become a professional wrestler. It is not known who trained him to be a good freestyle wrestler in the early 1920s. The fact is that he appeared in the United States in 1923 and started a very successful professional career in the so-called catch-as-catch-can (freestyle wrestling). He was blonde, 1.85 m tall and weighed about 100 kg.

In the course of his career Richard Schikat, who called himself Dick Shikat in America, became world champion twice . The professional ring sport was very popular in the United States at the time and was structured much like professional boxing. Big events took place in such famous venues as New York's Madison Square Garden and drew up to 30,000 spectators. Before World War I , professional wrestling was even more popular than professional boxing in North America.

After Hitler declared war on the United States during World War II , Richard Schikat was interned in a camp. But in 1945 he fought again at various American ring events. In 1946 he went to Argentina and fought many fights there. But he saw the end of his career again in the United States, where he fought his last fights in 1953.

Athletic career

1923 to 1930

Soon after his arrival in the United States in 1923, Richard Schikat fought in New York on December 4, 1923, a fight against Wladek Zbyszko , whose real name was Wladek Cyganiewicz and who was a Pole. In a true marathon fight he was defeated by this experienced man after 1 hour, 9 minutes and 50 seconds of fighting time. On June 26, 1924, he fought in St. Louis against Stanislaus Zbyszko , the older and more successful of the Cyganiewicz brothers. To everyone's surprise, he won this fight. With that he became known in one fell swoop in the United States. Jack Curley and Charles Rose, two seasoned promoters, became its managers. From then on he fought countless fights in the United States. In some months he was in the ring up to five times. He hardly suffered defeats and fought his way up through many victories.

The most important victories he achieved were over Joe Zigmond on August 25, 1926 in Los Angeles , Stanley Pinta on October 20, 1926 in Los Angeles and Charlie Hansen on June 8, 1927 in Los Angeles. In 1929 he achieved many important victories over opponents who had all either already fought for the world heavyweight championship or were his competitors for a world championship fight. These were Mike Romano, George Manich, Joe Stocca, George Calza, George Hagen, Gino Garibaldi, Vanka Zelesniak and the Russian sailor Kirilenko.

On August 23, 1929, the world championship match between Richard Schikat and Jim Londos , a Greek who had been living in the United States for a long time , took place in Philadelphia . This fight was attended by 30,000 spectators, almost all of whom celebrated the German's surprise victory over Jim Londos because Philadelphia was the center of German immigrants in the United States. Richard Schikat was thus world champion .

In contrast to professional boxing, where title defenses were relatively rare, Richard Schikat defended his world title several times a month. So on January 27, 1930 in New York he beat the American sports student Jim McMillen after 1 hour and 45 seconds of fighting time. In revenge, he also won against McMillen on February 10, 1930 in 1 hour, 15 minutes and 12 seconds. Then he defeated u. a. Kola Kwariani, Gino Garibaldi, George Calza, the Hungarian Ferenc Holuban, Jim Clynstock, the Canadian champion who weighed 125 kg and his East Prussian compatriot Hans Steinke, who, like himself, had had a respectable career in the United States.

On April 7, 1930 Richard Schikat fought in New York against the Russian sailor Kirilenko. There is a description of the fight in the journal "Athletics" No. 29 of July 17, 1930. "At the beginning of April in New York the German world champion met his old adversary, the tough Russian sailor Kirilenko, who to everyone's astonishment initially took the lead; he caught the German with a murderous double Nelson, knew how to hold it for minutes and only under After all, Schikat managed to free himself; immediately afterwards he returned the favor with the same grip and at the parade of the Russian he almost fell out of the ring; Schikat had to hit the ground twice due to powerful head pulls and there Kirilenko put a pair of head scissors on him brought our compatriot within a few inches of defeat, for more than five minutes the Russian's muscular legs lay like steel clips in his neck, until Schikat, totally stunned, was free. " Richard Schikat won after 41 minutes of fighting time.

On June 6, 1930 Richard Schikat defended the world title against Jim Londos in Philadelphia . After a hard fight Richard Schikat lost after a fight time of 1 hour and 29 minutes. World champion was again Jim Londos.

1931 to 1936

Richard Schikat recovered from this defeat very quickly and continued his winning streak in the following two years. He again defeated Ferenc Holuban, the Russian Sergei Kalmikoff, the Czechoslovak Alexander Szabó, Hans Steinke, Richard Stahl, Rudy Dusek and Leo Pinetztki and others. v. a. All wrestlers who had fought unsuccessfully for the world championship against Jim Londos. Richard Schikat naturally hoped for another title fight against Jim Londos, but got no more chance from this.

The 40-year-old warrior Ed Lewis had meanwhile become heavyweight world champion for the fourth time after Jim Londos had been stripped of his New York world champion title. Lewis defended his world title against Richard Schikat on June 9, 1932 in New York and won this fight after 1 hour, 6 minutes and 7 seconds. A revenge match between Richard Schikat and Ed "Strangler" Lewis on March 6, 1933 ended in a draw after an hour of fighting.

In the following years Richard Schikat won, mostly fighting in New York or Brooklyn , against such strong wrestlers as Joe DeVito, George Zaharias, Paul Boesch, Mahmout Youssouf and Masked Marvel and Alexander Szabó . In an elimination for a world championship fight, however, he lost twice to Everett Marshall in October 1934 after 1 hour and 30 minutes and 43 minutes and 47 seconds of fighting time and thus again missed the chance to get a fight against the reigning world champion.

But on March 2, 1936, he got this chance. He fought that day in New York against the new world champion Danno O'Mahoney for the world title of the NWA and defeated it relatively quickly. Richard Schikat was world champion for the second time. But just two months later, on May 5, 1936, he lost this title to a wrestler with the stage name "Ali Baba", behind whom the 30-year-old Turk of Armenian descent Arkeen Ekizian was hiding.

1937 to 1953

In 1937 Richard Schikat won in St. Louis over the German-Russian Peter Sauer , who called himself Ray Steele in the United States and who was to become world heavyweight champion in 1940 against Bronko Nagurski . In the following years he continued to fight undaunted and until 1941 fought several fights a month, almost all of which he won. After his internment, he was back in the ring in Charlotte in 1946 and scored several victories. However, he suffered a defeat against the much younger Jack O'Brien. It turned out that at almost 50 years of age he could no longer be as fast and vigorous as he was 20 years ago.

In 1947 Richard Schikat went to Argentina and thrilled the masses there too. In 1948 he came back to a world championship fight. He fought against the Argentine Antonino Rocca for the WWF Haevyweight title. Rocca had even defeated Primo Carnera before and was therefore a very tough challenge for Schikat. Rocca won this fight.

From 1950 onwards Richard Schikat fought again in the United States, but naturally could no longer keep up with the top people. In 1953 he ended his great career.

swell

• Athletics (trade journal), numbers 19/1930, p. 3 and 29/1930, p. 3
• Website "www.wrestling-history.de"
• Website "www.genickbruch.com"
• Website "www.time.com"
• Website "www.twnpnews.com"
• Website "www.cagematch.com"
• Website "georgiawrestlinghistory.com"

Web link

• History of the world championships of professional wrestlers with photo by Richard Schikat