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The G.O.A.T. 100 #68 | Joe Stecher
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!
The most difficult opponent Joe Stecher had to face was himself.
The word “demons” is used frequently by people talking about the wrestling business, including myself in this series. Demons are what people have to deal with. Addictions, mental health, family problems are the main demons that people in regular life have to deal with and pro wrestlers are no different, and Joe Stecher was the real first significant pro wrestler to have “demons”. Suffering from depression while in his prime, in an era when depression wasn’t diagnosed as such, Stecher travelled the country as the champion at the top of the world he worked in, but inside he was struggling with life, even while he was the best in the world at the art he loved.
His demons couldn’t deny Stecher’s abilities in the ring though. While some who researched the time period before World War II have said that Stecher struggled to keep the spectacle looking like it was legitimate, still there was no-one better up to this time than Joe Stecher as a technical wrestler.
He can best be compared to a Karl Gotch/Billy Robinson. They were shooters, had tempers and took their shooting very seriously. They also lacked the outward personality traits that would have made them stronger characters in the wrestling sphere. Despite that, Joe was a consistent box office draw around the USA and the world.
The son of Bohemian immigrants, Stecher was born on April 4th, 1893 in Nebraska on a 400 acre farm in the town of Dodge. As a young man, he excelled in many activities including swimming, tennis and golf, with his dad enrolling Joe and his two brothers (three of eight siblings) in a wrestling course at the local YMCA.
From the moment Joe hit the mat, he was a natural. At just 16, Stecher almost beat “Doc” Benjamin Roller, one of the best in the world in the early years of the 20th century, in an exhibition match when Roller was touring the midwest.
Joe and his brother Tony went into the pro wrestling world in 1912 and it was pretty obvious quickly that Joe was the better grappler and athlete with his greater height and mass being big advantages in the promoters’ minds. Tony had the savvy to deal with the business of wrestling and would quickly become Joe’s manager as he gained traction.
Part of the reason he got that traction quickly was that Joe had developed his leg muscles to a point no-one had ever seen before then. The exercises he did on the farm helped with that which included crushing sacks of grapes between his legs. This led to his leg scissors hold getting over – he became so acclaimed for the move that it earned him the nickname “The Scissors King”. It would be a moment in a fair that got the attention of Martin Burns, the mentor of the World Champion Frank Gotch, on his way to being the best wrestler alive.
Burns was hustling around the country, playing the game of suckering in area gamblers and marks for themselves with the old “come and face my strongman in a grappling contest” con. That strongman was Yussiff Hussane, one of the Terrible Turks who were feared in wrestling circles. Joe accepted the call from Burns and proceeded to outwrestle Hussane to the point that when the leg scissors hold got applied Hussane bit Stecher on the leg to get out.
The hype around Stecher as he made his way up the ranks was met with scepticism by his peers. “The Stecher Myth” would see wrestlers travel to Nebraska to face Joe and solve the mystery of the scissorholds that had started to gain a rep for being the most deadly move in wrestling.
Then in 1915, with the now retired undefeated Frank Gotch in attendance, Stecher beat Charles Cutler in Omaha, Nebraska to be declared the new World Champion – the youngest to win the World Title at the age of 22, a record that still hasn’t been broken. But with Gotch retired but still making himself visible to the masses, people were comparing Stecher to Gotch unfavourably. Stecher might be the world champion in name and in possession but Gotch had never lost the belt in the squared circle.
Gotch was persuaded to come out of retirement for the biggest match in wrestling history, Stecher vs Gotch which would take place on 18th July, 1916. But the match never happened, Gotch broke his fibula while wrestling Bob Managoff Sr. in a travelling circus show and by the end of 1917, Gotch was dead.
A career rival for Stecher was found in Ed “Strangler” Lewis though. Their first match on 20th October, 1915, went for two hours before Strangler was counted out after falling through the ropes and hitting his head on a chair on the outside, knocking him out. Despite being a loss, it was the match that made Lewis. The next match a year later went for five hours before being declared a draw. (Remember this before you complain about an hour time-limit draw.)
The match is known to be a stinker according to live reports, just like that first match. Accounts from many, including Billy Sandow, the manager of Lewis, stated that fans pulled their cars onto the grounds of Gene Malady Stadium in Omaha to shine their headlights onto the ring to still see the action as night fell. (By the sounds of it, they might have been better off driving away.)
From 1:30pm to 7pm, neither man left their feet and as the shorthand of the clock hit 7, the referee – with such a deadlock – called for the end.
At Madison Square Garden, another match between the pair would end in a draw and Lewis would gain notoriety for going until the curfew in what was a fast-paced, exciting draw according to people there. An understanding looked like it had been agreed to, and the seeds of a rivalry had been sown, one that would grow for years.
Lewis and Stecher would meet 19 times – Lewis won the feud 9-6 with 4 draws in the process. Some matches were better than others with one draw causing Lewis to be criticised for doing the wrestling equivalent of “parking the bus” that night. But an interesting stat is that by 1928, it was Stecher that was ahead 5-3 in wins. Then, when Stecher was down-cycled, Lewis would win 6 of the last 7 matches that had a deciding fall.
Away from Strangler, Stecher dropped the belt to Earl Caddock in 1917 so he could enlist for the Navy during the Great War by refusing to wrestle a deciding third fall. According to writer Marcus Griffin in the 1937 expose, Fall Guys, Stecher fixed the fight for his own profit.
Upon returning, Stecher had two years undefeated, including wins over Lewis and Wladek Zbyszko. Stecher then reclaimed the belt from Caddock in MSG which helped clarify the muddled claims to the world crown and merge some lines of lineage. Most notably the Olin line named after Johan Olin:
Back in 1916, the Finnish native had beaten Stecher by count-out after the pair started to brawl 2 hours and 40 minutes into the match. Olin went back into the ring but Stecher refused. Olin won the match by count-out and was given the belt by the referee. Stecher claimed that he had injured his shoulder in the fisticuffs. Olin’s promoters made more noise about Johan being champ than Johan himself, but the “Olin line” was born.
Olin lost the belt to Strangler five months later, which Lewis then dropped to Wladek. But Strangler claimed to still be champ. Caddock beat Wladek to unify Zbyszko’s part of the Olin line but Wladek still claimed he was champ. Ed Lewis’s victory over Zbyszko in New York on May 19, 1918 made him the undisputed claimant to face Caddock in the Olin line of the title lineage.
Craddock beat Lewis in Iowa the next month but Lewis still claimed he was champ. But he didn’t try to claim anything after Wladek beat him in MSG in March 1919.
Stecher’s win over Wladek got him possession of the Olin timeline but he still needed to beat Caddock to have the one line to rule them all – which he did on January 30, 1920.
Strangler Lewis would be back to beat Stecher and knock him off the perch on December 13, 1920 after getting out of the headscissors and then using a headlock to beat Stecher. Despite injuries and age loosening the dominant position that he had held for years, Stecher was still making money. But in the background came a promotional war between Stecher and his brother against the faction notorious as the Gold Dust Trio: promoters Billy Sandow & Toots Mondt, and their wrestler, Lewis.
The Gold Dust Trio were starting to promote a more showbusiness style of wrestling compared to the shooter style that Gotch and Stecher had made famous, much to the annoyance of Joe.
This is when Stanislaus Zbyszko, brother of Wladek, came to a deal with the Stecher brothers. Leading up to this, Stanislaus had come back to America after a decade of competing in Europe, having been recruited by the Gold Dusts. His defeat of Lewis saw a reign that was massively disappointing at the box office before Lewis won the belt back.
Wayne Munn, an ex-pro football player was going to be the next guy to be the face of Gold Dust and their circuit, and won the title off Lewis. Munn was scheduled to face Stanislaus for a defence of his title.
This was when the Stechers and Stanislaus came to their deal.
The deal was simple. Stanislaus would double cross the Gold Dust Trio by turning the Munn match into a shoot and taking the belt off him. A shooter against an ex-American Football player? The football guy was never going to stand a chance.
Eight minutes into the match, Stanislaus slammed Munn to the ground and pinned him. Sandow got into the ring in the earlier-than-planned rest period between falls and admonished Zbyszko, getting into his face. 4:53 after the bell sounded for fall two, it was all over in two straight. The referee initially refused to count a decision that was against the plan, but ended up having no choice because the winner was too obvious, just so a riot wouldn’t happen.
Stanislaus then dropped the title to Stecher 45 days later in St.Louis.
In the Stechers’ minds, since they had the World Championship now, they were clearly winning the wrestling civil war. But the World Title now meant less. The Gold Dusts refused to acknowledge Joe as champion, and for years the two camps waged war – but in the media instead of the ring (I wonder if Ed Lewis had a stupid Burberry Belt?) It wouldn’t be until 1928 that a deal between the two camps was made.
In the meantime, Stecher feuded with John Pesak. After two matches in 1926 (4/29 and 8/25) with the first being a Stecher win and the August match ending in a draw, the third match would happen on 10/6 at the L.A Olympic Auditorium, subbing for Ed Lewis, who had been scheduled to fight Stecher in a first attempt at a deal between the camps that ended up falling apart.
In the third fall, Pesek decided to go into business for himself and shot on Stecher, attempting to legit pin him on several occasions but the Stecher ally who was ref, refused to count. It is claimed that Stecher asked his fellow son of a Bohemian in the Czech language they shared what was going on, and Pesek emotionlessly replied: “Shoot.”
Stecher actually submitted to the headscissors he invented but again the ref refused to acknowledge what was happening, so Pesek tried a wristlock that got a submission and this time even the ref had to call the bell, it was too obvious to cover up.
Pesek high-tailed it – which ended up being his biggest mistake as the powers-that-be reversed the decision, claiming he was disqualified for the headscissors being a choke (first ever Dusty finish?). Pesek was black-balled, but Stecher had suffered major damage. His rep was harmed and his enthusiasm waned. It’s probably why he and his brother made the deal with the Gold Dust faction that they did: he was ready to cash out.
Stecher and Lewis would finally have the showdown that had been years in the making in St. Louis on Feb 20. There would be no shooting. Stecher was exhausted from his 3 years on top of the wrestling world, and from the humiliation from Pesek. Lewis’s win was nice and simple. He assumed the throne and Stecher went to the background. Stecher and Lewis wrestled again with Lewis winning again. He also had a high-profile match against Jim Londos in which Stecher again lost, enhancing Londos’ reputation.
But from this point, the demons Stecher had always struggled with would kick his ass. He retired in 1934 at the age of 41 and soon after his wife left him with their children, leading to a nervous breakdown. Depression would plague the rest of his life, becoming so severe that he spent the last 30 years of his life in a Minnesota hospital after being institutionalized. If all of this had happened these days, he might've been able to get some help.
In his autobiography, Lou Thesz talked about how sad the scene that met him was when he visited one of the original Hookers. Tony had arranged wrestlers to work out with his brother just to bring something to his life. Thesz noted that even though Joe just wasn’t the same person anymore, when instinct took over on the mat, he could still hold his own. Stecher died at the hospital that had been his residence for three decades on March 29, 1974.
Dan Severn wrote the following on Stecher:
Joe Stecher wasn’t just a wrestler – he was a pioneer of dominance in its purest form. Known for his devastating leg scissors, Stecher didn’t just beat opponents… he broke their will.
In an era with no shortcuts, no hype machines, and no easy paths to the top, he built his legacy the hard way – through skill, toughness, and relentless pressure.
Legends aren’t made overnight. They’re forged in struggle.
And it’s hard to argue that. When wrestling was different, Stecher was the best at the discipline of wrestling. Before wrestling became an art, Joe Stecher stretched his design over canvases all over the United States.
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