Ed Lewis was world heavyweight champion on and off across the 1910s and 1920s, in an era when the title changed hands by arrangement as often as by result, and when a champion's real job was to travel, draw and keep the gate moving. He was called the Strangler for the headlock he applied better than anyone alive, and he spent most of his career in a business that had no pension, no union and no off-season.
Lewis in a newspaper feature. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Lewis came up in the carnival tents, where a wrestler took on all comers and learned quickly how much of the work was performance and how much was real. He could wrestle, and he could also carry a match for an hour in front of a crowd that had paid a dime. Both skills were necessary. Only one of them got written down.
The headlock, 1924. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
By the late 1920s he had moved into the promotional side, and in the 1930s he managed Lou Thesz, the man most historians consider the best of the next generation. Lewis died in 1966, having spent four decades in a sport that had made him famous and left him with nothing much to show for it. That arc, from headliner to forgotten, is the oldest story in the business.
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
The photographs here are from the peak years: the ring portrait, the headlock, and a newspaper image of the man at work in the era when the sport was still printed on the front of the sports page.
Israel Joffe edits the Monday Night Wrestling history series. More of the archive is at israeljoffe.com.
More from the series: the 1908 match that made professional wrestling · Gorgeous George and the night television learned to boo · Mildred Burke wrestled for a living · Jim Londos filled buildings in the worst years