October 1956
Whipper Billy Watson, NWA World Heavyweight Champion
By the first week of October 1956, Whipper Billy Watson had been NWA World Heavyweight Champion for 203 days. He had taken the title from Lou Thesz on March 15 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, by count-out, with Jack Dempsey as the special referee, in front of a reported house of about 15,000. Thesz had carried the Alliance championship through most of the early 1950s. Handing it to Watson was both a booking decision and a political one: Toronto, under Frank Tunney, was one of the strongest boxes in the National Wrestling Alliance, and Watson was the city’s unquestioned drawing card.
He would hold the belt until November 9, when Thesz took it back at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis. October was the last full month of that 239-day reign, and it shows the champion exactly as the NWA system was designed to use him: a traveling titleholder working a corridor of member promotions, protecting the belt with disqualifications and short, heat-driven finishes, while the office in St. Louis prepared the return match that would put the championship back on Thesz.
Watson was forty-one years old that fall, billed around 5-foot-10 and 225 pounds, a scientific wrestler whose signature was the Irish whip and whose public image in Canada was closer to civic institution than carnival athlete. He had already held a version of the world title in 1947, beating Wild Bill Longson in St. Louis and losing it to Thesz two months later.
The 1956 reign was longer, wider, and more deliberately routed. By October he had already defended through Ontario, the Prairies, California, Texas, the Midwest, and the Northeast. The month itself was a tight loop: home dates in the Toronto office, two appearances for Sam Muchnick in St. Louis, and a run of Ohio towns under the Midwest Wrestling Association banner, with Buffalo and a handful of secondary Canadian stops filling the gaps.
The Toronto program
The month opened where Watson’s reign had the most meaning, in Ontario.
Monday, October 1st, 1956, Maple Leaf Wrestling presented a card at the Kitchener Memeorial Auditorium. Dick Hutton posted his $1,000 challenge bill. He kept it. Whipper Billy Watson kept the NWA World title. Referee was Bunny Dunlop.
Hutton took the first fall with an abdominal stretch. Dunlop was on the mat four times in four minutes, and the paper said the crowd thought he was leaning toward Hutton in the opening heat.
Watson had spoken before the match, telling the house he was the champion even though old television film still showed Lou Thesz with the belt. Watson was two weeks removed from a repeat win over Thesz in San Francisco, but the current newsreels that were shown in theaters and events still was showing Thesz as the World Champion. This must have been embarrasing for Watson.
