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Show SOME NOTABLE IT STRUGGLES IN 191S Visit of Stecher an Event; Yokel-Brown Go an Endurance En-durance Test. While the wrestling game in Utah has lost a good deal of tho wild enthusiasm which attended it in the days when Mike Yokel was up aud coming, the year 191b was notable for several matches of importance. The crowd which attended the bout between Jack Harbertson and Mike Yokel at Ogden filled the immense Al-hambra Al-hambra theater, aud the attendance at the Brown -Harbertson match in the same city also drew a tremendous house. The most remarkable match from the standpoint of a display of physical endurance, en-durance, was staged at the Satl Lake theater on AyrQ 1-t, when Mike Yokel and Pet Brown of Texas wrestled three hours and forty-three minutes without a fall. The work was gruelling throughout, through-out, and when the police finally stopped the match both men were so exhausted that they could barely stand npright. While the match at Ogden on March 16 between Brown and Harbertson was awarded to Harbertson by the referee ou grounds of alleged rough work on the part of Brown, wrestling fans generally deemed the verdict hasty and uncalled for, and continued to regard Brown as the world's middleweight champion. Brown further cinched that title on December De-cember 8 at Houston, Tex., when he threw Mike Yokel in their fourth meeting. meet-ing. A wrestling event of note was the visit to this city on March 1 0 of Joe Stecher, accounted the world's champion cham-pion heavyweight wrestler since the retirement, re-tirement, of Frank Gotch. Stecher gave an exhibition of the. potency of the famous fa-mous leg scissors, with which the young Nebraska giant wins practically all of his matches. In Salt Lake three oppo-1 nents went against Stecher. He threw John Kilonis, middleweight, in 3k1 min- utes; George Nelson, heavyweight, in 7'n minutes, and Mike Yokel, middleweight, middle-weight, in 7 minutes. Henry Jones, a welterweight of Provo, made strides toward the front during the year, being uniformly successful against men of his weight and often gaining victories over heavier opponents. oppo-nents. Peter Visser, the Ogden heavyweight, heavy-weight, also moved upw-ard with rapidity. rapid-ity. Visser made a trip to the Pacific coast, where he was acclaimed a young wrestler of much promise. He gained much experience during the latter part of the summer with a circus, when he gave daily exhibitions with the giant Turkish wrestler, Yussif Hussane, or with opponents from towns where the circus gave performances. Davy Jones of Malad, Idaho, continued to gain experience, ex-perience, thereby fitting himself for championship matches in the near future. |