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The G.O.A.T. 100 #60 | Wild Bill Longson
Welcome to the G.O.A.T. 100 where we will count down with PWM wrestling historian Peter Edge the 100 greatest wrestlers of all time, based on many different stats and criteria. A new wrestler will be added on Mondays and Thursdays every week. Here is a link to an introduction essay with Peter explaining his GOAT100 concept. At the bottom of the article you can find the GOAT 100 Portal with links to all profiles so far published, as well as a visual key... Enjoy learning more about the history of our great hobby!
Bad people are bad people, but most people just want to be good. But in the world of wrestling, the art of being bad is easier than being good. So easy that everyone wants to do it, to the point that it’s ruined careers. (Why is everyone looking at Becky Lynch right now?)
But the art of being a bad man in wrestling started in force not at the beginning of the story of wrestling but around 40 years into the book.
“Wild” Bill Longson was the first true heel to be the man to hold the World Heavyweight Championship. Yes, some men before Longson played the champion heel in title defences but no man was what Bill Longson was.
Bill Longson wasn’t a heel by choice or by any plan of the promoter/booker but by an extension of who Bill was. The old saying that the best gimmicks are those that are the true person dialled up to 11 has been prevalent in wrestling for ages, and Bill’s heel character was an extension of his rough-and-ready personality, that of a tough, aggressive guy.
In his early career, in matches against Dean Detton in the early 30s, Longson got the crowd riled up because he was so aggressive. He pushed the envelope of the laws of wrestling and from then on, Longson just followed his instincts and became “Wild Bill”... and one of the best to ever be bad.
No underhanded trick was too nasty to pull for Bill Longson. In a day when the referees were certainly stricter than Rick Knox, every rule would be broken and people paid to see-and-boo him and in the process, Longson became the no.1 box office attraction statistically from 1941 to 1947.
The “going to the outside” tactic that you see at the start of a match from a heel was invented by Longson but he did it when the babyface was making a comeback. Imagine one of the heels going to the outside during Hulk Hogan’s “Hulk Up”... well, Longson did it.
In Longson’s peak years as an attraction, buildings from Dallas to Montreal were packed, booing their hearts out as Bill put the boots to his opponent. But as you notice, Longson’s peak years were in wartime. It’s credited by researchers that Longson kept wrestling alive as America joined forces with Britain to fight against tyranny, and many of the reliable draws were in the fight.
But why did Longson not fight against actual evil instead of being a wrestler? It was wrestling itself that prevented Bill from serving. Longson suffered a broken back in a match against Man Mountain Dean in January 1937. The doctor wanted to fuse a bone from his shin into his spine where a large piece of bone had broken away but Longson refused, fearing it would definitely end his career even though those doctors were telling him that would happen without surgery, too.
Longson would spend months in traction and a full body brace, and rushed through intense rehab so he could come back before the end of the year.
He never again worked a match without pain but never complained about his predicament and few actually knew about what he was going through. All it would have taken was one bump that didn’t land right and Longson would have been paralyzed or worse. Times were different though. The medical advice he received wasn't what it would be if it had happened today.
Longson didn’t miss dates once he was back in the ring and went on to become a celebrated headliner. His matches with Lou Thesz were the most bruising matches wrestling had seen to that point. Matches against Buddy Rogers, the Duseks, Bronko Nagurski and Killer Kowalski weren’t far off.
This hated brawler could not have been foreseen when as a teenager, Bill was working on road crew putting in highways in Utah as the highway system of America was going through its golden age of construction. Longson also trained at the famed Deseret Gymnasium in Salt Lake City built by the Church of Latter Day Saints to spread the word of the teachings of Mormonism through physical fitness and competitive athletics.
Its wrestling club would become a pillar of the gym – along with a 30x60 swimming pool, an indoor track, not to mention basketball courts – with Longson as the star pupil of the gym. Longson would repeatedly win the AAU Intermountain Championship and get to the final four of the NCAA tournament in his weight division. Less surprising (considering his brawling acumen in pro wrestling) was his AAU Intermountain title win in boxing, with Bill having a 63-7-10 record in the amateur ranks
While Longson always wanted to go into pro wrestling. Boxing was an avenue that people in the gym thought he could have excelled in the pro ranks. He actually had a match against Heavyweight boxing’s Rushmore, Jack Dempsey, in a charity match in 1931.
Dempsey at 36, just 4 years after his last pro fight rocked Bill, 25 at the time, with a punch that buckled the knees of the recipient. Dempsey clinched him, told him “you’re not going down yet, kid” and despite Bill’s attempts at offence, Dempsey, who was voted 4th in the all-time punchers list by The Ring, KO’d Longson before the bell to end Rd 1 sounded.
His return from the back injury that almost ended his career in the late 30’s saw Bill go by The Purple Shadow under a mask in San Francisco, and he was over immediately. But within 4 months he unmasked by Bronko Nagurski on August 23rd, again losing the mask after losing to Jim Londos a month later in Sacramento with the patrons in the city completely unaware of what Nagurski had already done in another city.
Longson would then go to Texas, and he caught fire as an attraction quickly. With shades of a future Bruiser Brody, Longson was the first great brawler in wrestling and the first great heel, which wasn’t a coincidence
In a world where wrestling was grappling and technical wrestling, the antics of Longson were in complete contrast, so much so that it scared the masses that went to an event that featured Longson and fear helps hate flourish.
Longson would win the world championship – which was seen as the real deal title and the one that lineage is linked to the famed NWA Title that would be created in 1948 – on February 19, 1942, beating Sandor Szabo in St. Louis.This governing body was the National Wrestling Association, not to be confused with the National Wrestling Alliance of course.
St. Louis was now his base after taking an offer that was hard to refuse from Tom Packs, the promoter in St. Louis over an offer from Morris Siegel in Houston.
During this reign, Longson worked as Masked Superman II in Louisville and part of Missouri to set up a unification match against Orville Brown who had a claim at the championship. Longson won thanks to him taking off his mask and choking Brown out to set up the pin.
Wild Bill dropped the belt to Yvon Robert in Montreal in October, who was then dethroned by Bobby Managoff in Houston a month later and then Longson, 115 days into Bobby’s reign, beat Managoff to start his second and most acclaimed reign.
It would last four years until 1947 when he would lose it to Whipper Billy Watson. It was the longest reign for this particular belt since Jim Londos’ 1,847 day reign from 1930 to 1935.
The reason for such a long reign? He drew crowds like no other. From 1941 to 1947 Longson was the calendar year No.1 box office attraction. Only Jim Londos (13), Bruno Sammartino and Hulk Hogan (8) have more years as No.1 and only Hulk has more consecutive years on top with his 8 years from 1984-1991.
Longson would end up topping 133 cards in his 13 years in St Louis, averaging a gate of 9,000. The majority of those in attendance were there hoping to see him get his just deserts. Some fans took their displeasure with Longson too far. He got sliced on his leg in Indiana leaving a three inch scar.
So why did fans hate Wild Bill? Being a contrast to those from the past helped as mentioned previously, and when opponents rallied and tried to mount a comeback, he would vault over the top rope to get away from the foe, riling up the fans more. He popularised the piledriver and in the process made it feared. The Missouri State Athletic Commission “barred” the move on account of the danger to his victims, adding to its dangerous allure.
The 1,000 day+ reign had Longson defending the World Title against Lou Thesz, Warren Bockwinkel (father of Nick), Buddy Rogers in Texas, The Duseks and Billy Watson, who eventually beat Longson for the belt.
Bill was the most travelled World Champ in history to that point, travelling all over North America to Indiana, Toronto, Dallas and the state of New York defending the title 242 times (according to cagematch in that 1,463 day reign, making his defences average to every 6.0 days.)
Longson would get the title back for the third and final time, beating Lou Thesz in St. Louis before Thesz got his revenge in Indianapolis after an eight month reign for Longson, winning back the belt that he would merge with the Midwest Wrestling Association title that Orville Brown owned.
Longson was an important part of the story of Lou Thesz (spoiler alert – Thesz also features highly on this list) being Lou’s Everest with a victory over Wild Bill being a big deal for Thesz.
The third reign would end on a controversial circumstance though, with the match in Indianapolis on July 20, 1948 ending on count-out when Longson did his escaping from the ring trick to get cheap heel heat and “somehow” slammed his foot on an ice bucket “left accidentally” near the front row, with Longson ankle “so badly damaged” he couldn’t continue and got counted out and with the World Title being able to change hands on a count-out, Thesz was the champ once again for the third time.
Believed to be a work by many, (was it obvious with all the inverted commas I used there that I believe it to be a work?) there was interest in rematches, Longson was a good contender for Thesz’s World Title during his reign all over the U.S., and would take part in the odd memorable angle with others like the night he and Antonino Rocca brawled at ringside during a match that got so heated that the police were called.
A year later, he laid out Gene Kiniski in an angle at a Wrestling at the Chase TV taping in St. Louis, which would be Longson’s final hurrah as an attraction in pro wrestling.
Longson held shares in St.Louis after Packs sold his interest in the territory with the trio of Longson, Thesz (who was now a business partner with Bill) and Sam Muchnick (who came into the reckoning when Lou and Bill merged with Sam’s rival promotion in the city) taking the St. Louis circuit to become the most powerful in the country, with Muchnick’s power lasting till the 80s as NWA President, and with Lou as the face of the art of wrestling until the mid 60s.
As scary as Longson was when the bell rang, outside the ring, he was the perfect family man. His marriage to Althea lasted 55 years with his two children becoming successful in the field of education and manufacturing.
In retirement, brought on by suffering a broken pelvis after falling off a horse, he was still an irregular feature on Wrestling at the Chase, when he would play enforcer. When a segment at the taping threatened to get out of control, Longson was sent out to calm shit down.
The perfect way to illustrate how low-key Bill was outside the ring is that a) finding research material on Longson on the internet is really hard (thank god for Larry Matysik and John Molinaro’s Greatest of All Time books) but that the death of Wild Bill Longson is simply stated on Wikipedia as
Longson died on December 10, 1982, in St. Louis.
That’s it. No cause of death is mentioned, apart from “a natural death” coming up on that useless Gemini AI tool on the Google search I did.
Bill Longson’s legacy deserves more than that. He’s the OG of heels, and also of brawlers. The way wrestling is now, is because of Bill Longson. I’ll argue that with anyone. The seeds of heel heat came from Wild Bill, the seeds of how the style of brawling would evolve came from Bill.
Simply, Bill Longson is the game changer.
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