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Brought back from the brink of extinction, over a million of these reptiles survive today. Now the main threat to alligators is habitat destruction, caused by such human activities as draining and developing wetlands.

American alligators live in the wild in the southeastern United States. You're most likely to spot them in Florida and Louisiana, where they live in rivers, lakes, ponds, swamps, bayous, and marshes. These reptiles are kind of clumsy on land, but they're built for life in the water. Great swimmers, they are equipped with webbed feet and strong tails that propel them through the water.

An average male American alligator is 10 to 15 feet (three to five meters) long. Half of its length is its massive, strong tail. An alligator can weigh as much as half a ton (1,000 pounds), but an average male weighs between 500 and 600 pounds (227 to 272 kilograms). Females are usually smaller than males.

As big and ferocious as the female alligator may look, she is a gentle mother. A mother alligator makes a nest on shore, where she lays her eggs. Then she guards her eggs until they're ready to hatch. At that point the babies start to make noises, and their mother hears her little ones' peeps as they break out of the eggs. She gently carries them-in her mouth-to the water nearby.

Newly hatched young are only about six to eight inches (15 to 20 centimeters) long, and very vulnerable. Their mother protects them from predators, which include raccoons, bobcats, birds, and even other alligators. The young alligators stay with their mother for up to two years. After that, they're able to fend for themselves.

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American alligators once faced extinction. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service placed them on the endangered species list in 1967. Fortunately, the legal protection worked. Just 20 years later, American alligators were taken off the list. Brought back from the brink of extinction, over a million of these reptiles survive today.

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Nigel Marven: How to wrestle an alligator | Watch

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How do You Wrestle and American Alligator?

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How do You Wrestle and American Alligator?

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RoadsideAmerica.com Guide to Florida Alligator Attractions

The Seminole and Miccosukee Indians have been wrestling gators in Florida since before there were tourist attractions or federally-funded roads. You can still watch them at it if you feel like driving miles into the Everglades to a place such as the Miccosukee Indian Village. Alternately, you can also see a good wrestling show only yards from a fast food drive-thru and satellite TV.

"Wrestling" is a poor choice of words; the humans and gators don't roll around on the ground, grappling -- unless, of course, the human has been "banged" (bitten) and the gator is trying to sever a limb. Gator wrestling is instead a series of careful stunts, such as coaxing a gator to open its mouth ("The Florida Smile"), tucking the gator's head against your neck ("Bulldogging") and holding a gator's mouth open with only your chin while your arms are outstretched ("The Face-Off"). It takes strength, but also finesse, which is why women now wrestle alongside of men. "You need long, strong legs to straddle and hold down an eight-foot gator," explained Mike Hileman, the entertainment director at Gatorland. "Otherwise it'd just carry you around like a horse."

When we arrived at Gatorland, Mike was drilling a pair of rookie wrestlers in the art of bullwhip cracking. "Just pretend you're throwing a baseball!" he cried, exasperated. Mike told us that it's difficult to find wrestlers with the right combination of skills. "We've had people who can handle alligators like nobody's business -- really do some pretty crazy stuff -- but they can't say their name into a microphone while they're doing it. A good wrestler is tough to find."

"You have to have your heart in it," says Jimmy Riffle, who has been wrestling gators at Native Village since he was twelve. "You have to be very patient. It also helps to have a low IQ."

Gatorland, again at the bleeding edge of gator entertainment, has begun inviting kids into the wrestling pit (at $10 apiece) and dropping them on the back of a live gator whose snout has been taped shut. For another ten bucks they'll take a picture, and print it on a T-shirt for a few dollars more.

The taped snout is no mere lawsuit hedge. Even small gators have tremendous crushing strength in their jaws, and all gator wrestlers get banged. Scars are a part of their resume. Jeremy Possman, at Everglades Gator Farm, described it as "like having your hand slammed in a car door with 82 nails." Jimmy Riffle remembered an occasion when he was banged on the hand by a gator who then hung on for eight minutes. "He wouldn't let go. We had to pry him off with a crowbar."

Native Village, where Jimmy Riffle works, stands out for its wrestling. Gatorland is good for people with young kids -- and they do have Gator Jumparoo -- but its wrestling show is a little too sanitized for our tastes. Native Village has that 16th century feel -- Old Florida -- with palm leaf crap all over the ground, and everything kind of half-fallen and shadowy. The help goes around barefoot, while you worry about something parasitic burrowing through your shoes.

Jimmy Riffle and his wrestling crew are agreeable hosts, and will drag a gator out of the pit to suit an audience. "We use the friendly alligators for the kids. The killer alligators we save for the adults," Jimmy explains. There is no stadium seating here, so visitors are mere inches from the action.

Jimmy's mom was the one who encouraged him to wrestle, and he carries that generational enthusiasm into his work. "I love it," Jimmy says. "You don't wake up one morning and say, 'I wanna wrestle an alligator.' You take it one step at a time, and hope that today isn't the day that you get your arm ripped off."

Update: Native Village closed as an attraction, but Jimmy Riffle parlayed his gator wrestling expertise into a co-hosting gig on the Animal Planet series "Gator Boys."

Back to: Gators! Main Page

Gators! | Size Matters | The Feeding Show | Wrestling Gators

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The Seminole and Miccosukee Indians have been wrestling gators in Florida since before there were tourist attractions or federally-funded roads. You can still watch them at it if you feel like driving miles into the Everglades to a place such as the Miccosukee Indian Village.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alligator wrestling is an attraction, that later evolved into a sport, that began as hunting expeditions by Native Americans. It has been described as " alligator capturing techniques."[citation needed ]

Southeastern Native Americans hunted alligators as a food source for thousands of years. At the turn of the 20th century, showing off alligators as roadside attractions helped Native Americans generate revenue. Long before the first Europeans explorers wandered into the Florida Everglades, alligator wrestling existed. For tribes like the Seminole and Miccosukee, learning how to "handle" the reptiles was part of their existence.

We had to live off whatever Mother Nature provided us in the Everglades ... We'd eat the tail, the meaty part. Later on, when the alligator skin had a value, we would hunt and skin the gators and bring the skin to trading posts and trade for things we couldn't grow.

A common symbol of Florida in popular culture is the American alligator ( Alligator mississippiensis). The St. Augustine Alligator Farm was one of Florida's earliest themed tourist attractions that opened for business in 1893. At the St. Augustine Alligator Farm and other tourist attractions such as Gatorland and the Silver Springs Nature Park, "taming" or hypnotizing alligators was a popular trick, along with other performances such as alligator wrestling. Alligator wrestling is a common spectator activity for people to do in Florida and is most common near the Everglades' so-called Alligator Alley.

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Alligator wrestling is an attraction, that later evolved into a sport, that began as hunting expeditions by Native Americans. It has been described as " alligator capturing techniques."[citation needed ] Southeastern Native Americans hunted alligators as a food source for thousands of years.

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American Black Bear ( Ursus americanus)
Also known as Black Bear or North American Black Bear
Species Code: URAM

What they look like: The American Black Bear is the most common bear native to North America. The coat of a Black Bear is shaggy and usually black but it can also be dark brown, cinnamon, or yellow-brown. Eyes are brown (blue at birth). Skin is light gray.

The black bear is about 4 to 7 feet long from nose to tail, and two to three feet high at the shoulders. It has small eyes, rounded ears, a long brown snout, a large body, and a short tail. Males weigh an average of 150-300 lbs.

Where they live: American Black Bears are found in the forested areas of Canada, USA and Mexico. They once occupied nearly all of the forested regions of North America.

Black bears live in a variety of habitat types. They are mainly found in forested areas with thick ground cover and an abundance of fruits, nuts and vegetation. During the winter they hibernate in dens.

Click on a range map to see where black bears live in Washington.

What they eat: American Black Bears are omnivores. Most of their diet is plant based. American Black Bears mainly feed on vegetation including herbs, grasses, roots, buds, shoots, honey, nuts, fruit, berries and seeds. They will also eat fish, small mammals, insects, dead animals and garbage.

In northern regions, black bears eat salmon that they catch in a stream.

Behavior: Most bears become active a half-hour before sunrise, take a nap or two during the day, and bed down for the night an hour or two after sunset. Some bears are active mainly at night to avoid people or other bears.

Black bears are considered highly efficient hibernators. They sleep for months without eating, drinking, urinating, or defecating.

Reproduction: American Black Bears are solitary animals except for mothers with cubs, during the breeding season or when they come together at feeding sites. Solitary animals live alone.

Black bears mate during the months of June and July. Cubs are born in January or February after a gestation period of 215 days. There are usually 2 - 3 cubs per litter, but litter sizes can be as large as 5.

Did you know?

Most of their diet is plant based.

Cubs stay with their mother for about 2 years to learn how to hunt and survive.

Lean bears are fast. They can run up to 30 miles per hour.

American Black Bears are good swimmers.

American Black Bear Photo by Alan Wilson, Natures Pics

Animal silhouettes available to purchase "Photos: Natures Pics
Sources:

ADW: Ursus americanus: Information
Information about the American black bear from the Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan Museum of Zoology.

Black Bear Facts - WDFW - Living with Wildlife

Black Bear Facts - North American Bear Center

Home | About Us | How to Participate | Biodiversity Modules | Projects | Maps | News | Resources

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American Black Bear ( Ursus americanus) Also known as Black Bear or North American Black Bear Species Code: URAM What they look like: The American Black Bear is the most common bear native to North America. The coat of a Black Bear is shaggy and usually black but it can also be dark brown, cinnamon, or yellow-brown.

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Bear Wrestling at the 1972 Iowa State Fair

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Bear Wrestling at the 1972 Iowa State Fair

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Toggle the table of contents

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The usage of animals in professional wrestling has varied through the profession's history. Animals that have been used as opponents to humans in matches include bears, tigers, cheetahs and orangutans.[2][3][4][5]

Bears

Bears have long been a part of professional wrestling.[6] Usually declawed and muzzled, they often wrestled shoot matches against audience members, offered a cash reward if they could pin the bear. They also wrestled professionals in worked, often battle royal or handicap, matches (usually booked so the bear won). Wrestling bears enjoyed their greatest popularity in the Southern United States, during the 1960s and 1970s. The wrestling bear Terrible Ted was used many times for Stampede Wrestling and briefly lived at Stu Hart's home in Calgary while working for Stampede, where Stu's son Bret Hart and his other children would sometimes play with him.[7][8] Hercules, another celebrated wrestling bear, appeared with Terrible Ted in Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. After quitting the sport, Hercules moved to Scotland and took up acting; he appeared in 1983 James Bond movie Octopussy and was named "personality of the year" by the Scottish Tourist Board.[9]

Others

Wrestling promoter and wrestler Stu Hart would wrestle tigers in his Stampede Wrestling territory.[10][11][12] His match with the tiger Sasha "Chi-Chi" was performed partly as a publicity stunt for the Calgary Stampede and was on the behalf of the Calgary Fish and Wildlife Association.[13] Hart's daughter Diana also stated that he had a cheetah who he had borrowed[a] over to their home, the Hart mansion which he may have planned to wrestle.[14] WWF champion Bruno Sammartino wrestled an orangutan in a match.[15] The match lasted for fifteen minutes with Sammartino earning 25 dollars for each five minute. Sammartino has expressed that he was under the impression that the ape would be a monkey and that he only took the match because he was relatively desperate for money at the time as a young newly debuted wrestler. He also stated that the match was very painful and unsafe as the animal was not trained to perform.[16]

Teddy Hart, grandson of Stu Hart has expressed interest in using animals such as cats and dogs in his matches. He has on many occasions brought his cats with him to the ring.[17][18] On the matter Hart stated:

I'm training cats to come out to the ring with me, and I'm also trying to train animals to get involved in matches. I'm trying to get safety animals, like a dog, to basically pull the referee's leg before the count of three, little things like that. Or my dog will be carrying a weapon for me, and I would get it off his neck. Potentially if I had a female manager, and she has a cat, and the cat is maybe a good way of getting couple kids out of the audience, and I lure the kids out of the audience and the kids cause a disqualification to happen so I don't have to lose the belt, or something like that.[19]

A " Pig (or Hog) Pen match" is a match that takes place in a pig pen full of pigs, placed near the stage.[20]

In 1999 the Big Boss Man wrestled Al Snow for the WWF Hardcore Championship in a Kennel from Hell match at Unforgiven '99. The match consisted of a standard steel cage with the cell placed atop it, with the object being that the wrestler would escape from both the cage and cell while trying to avoid guard dogs that were placed between the ring and cell door. This specific match has been called one of the worst gimmick matches in history,[21][22] as the dogs showed no hostility toward the competitors and proceeded to urinate, defecate and even mate outside the ring.[22]

As of 2006, bear wrestling is banned in 20 U.S. states.[26]

Hart was close friends with wildlife conservationist and pro wrestlers ^ Al Oeming who owned a Cheetah named Tawana, Oeming and Hart had founded Stampede Wrestling together in the 1940s.

1. ^ Mihaly, John (October 2009). "Hart Exhibition, on page 3". via InfiniteCore.ca. WWE Magazine.

2. ^ Eveleth, Rose (November 18, 2013). "There Are People Who Wrestle Bears, And They Say the Bears Could Win If They Wanted To". smithsonianmag.com.

3. ^ Ryan Dilbert (August 13, 2015). "Exploring the Strange History of Pro Wrestlers Battling Bears". Bleacher Report.

4. ^ Gipe, George (October 25, 1976). "Bear Wrestling Took Hold 100 Years Ago, But Lost With Lena's Revenge". Sports Illustrated. CNN. Archived from the original on June 16, 2010.

5. ^ "CANOE - SLAM! Sports - Wrestling - Bret Hart : Positive heroes key for kids". SLAM! WRESTLING. canoe.ca. April 17, 2004.

6. ^ "CBC Archives". CBC.

7. ^ "Tribute after Hercules the bear's owner Andy Robin dies". BBC News. December 6, 2019.

8. ^ "HART OF A TIGER". Slam! Wrestling. Calgary Sun, via Canadian Online Explorer.

9. ^

10. ^ Andy Marshall (2016). Thin Power: How former Calgary Mayor Rod Sykes stamped his brand on the city ... And scorched some sacred cows. FriesenPress. ISBN 9781460283974.

11. ^ Marsha Erb (2002). Stu Hart: Lord of the ring. ECW Press. p. 165. ISBN 1-55022-508-1.

12. ^

13. ^ Keith Elliot Greenberg; Classy Freddie Blassie (June 15, 2010). The Legends of Wrestling: "Classy" Freddie Blassie: Listen, You Pencil Neck Geeks. Simon and Schuster. p. 15. ISBN 978-1-4516-0426-9.

14. ^ G, Eric (October 11, 2010). "Bruno Sammartino speaks on Chris Benoit, the Iron Sheik, and more". The Camel Clutch.

15. ^ "Ted Hart's cat relaxes on the turnbuckle at the Hart Legacy Wrestling debut show". Canoa.ca.

16. ^ Moaullen, Omar (March 23, 2016). "The Rise and Fall of Wrestling's Weed-Dealing, Cat-Breeding Phenom". Rolling Stone.

17. ^ ProWrestlingHistory.com. "WWF In Your House Results (5)".

18. Bazar, Nick. ^ Top 10 Worst Gimmick Matches. 411mania. March 12, 2012. Retrieved June 9, 2012.

19. ^ Oz, Drake. a WWE's 15 Absolute Worst Matches in Company History. Bleacher Report. November 23, 2011. Retrieved September 28, 2013.b

20. ^ Shoemaker, David (2013). The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling. Penguin. p. 231. ISBN 978-1592407675.

21. ^

22. ^

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Animals in professional wrestling - Wikipedia

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Toggle the table of contents From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The usage of animals in professional wrestling has varied through the profession's history. Animals that have been used as opponents to humans in matches include bears, tigers, cheetahs and orangutans.[2] [3] [4] [5] Bears have long been a part of professional wrestling.[6] Usually declawed and muzzled, they often wrestled shoot matches against audience members, offered a cash reward if they could pin the bear.

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Exploring the Strange History of Pro Wresters Battling Bears

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Exploring the Strange History of Pro Wresters Battling Bears

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JAMIE-ANDREA YANAK/Associated Press
With muzzles over their mouths, their claws removed and their front teeth taken out, surrounded by the ring ropes and a curious crowd, bears once found themselves in the thick of pro wrestling promoters' drives to increase ticket sales.

It's a story that played out again and again from as early as the 1800s. In a world already populated by giants and sideshows of the human variety, promoters thought to add to the menagerie of oddities in the ring by pitting bears against wrestlers.

And suddenly, a showcase of athleticism and theater became something more dangerous, more exploitative, more unsettling to watch unfold.

The animals are said to be natural wrestlers. The stories Bobby the Brain Heenan and Classy Freddie Blassie tell of their own experiences with the massive beasts speak to how surprisingly well the bears took to the mat game.

Man-versus-bear matches were still an absurd exhibition, but the bears learned more moves than one would expect: the full nelson, flying mare, collar-and-elbow tie-up.

Today, you won't often see that kind of bout unless it's in some backwoods, unofficial capacity. Regulations, a heightened awareness of animal rights and likely a fear over lawsuits stemming from something going terribly wrong has all but wiped out that niche from pro wrestling.

The phenomenon's first take off isn't that surprising when you consider wrestling's circus roots. Early wrestling contests were often a part of traveling carnivals. The powerhouses of the squared circle worked alongside bearded ladies, trapeze artists and any number of animals.

It didn't take long for some promoters to start envisioning large paying crowds encircling the ring to see those animals climb inside with the men.
Note: In addition to the books and newspapers quoted throughout the article, the following pieces proved invaluable as well: "The Twisted and Terrible History of Men Fighting Bears," which Sarah Kurchak wrote for Vice Sports, and Peter Blecha's HistoryLink.org article entitled, "Barackman, Mervin (1894-1977) and His Wrestling Bears." Earliest Days
Back when pro wrestling was a more stripped-down affair, when men wore plain black trunks and grapplers executed nothing remotely close to a moonsault, promoters looked for ways to add spectacle to the sport.

Bear wrestling had first been a popular spectacle in Europe. The Europeans watched bruin take on man the mid-1800s, but it wasn't until later that century that the Americans welcomed bears into the ring.
Credit: R. H. Trueman. Library and Archives Canada (https://www.flickr.com/photos/lac-bac/)
In taverns in New York, promoters put on wrestling exhibitions with semi-tame bears. The showdowns eventually moved to country fairs and carnivals and, in 1877, to New York's French Theater.

That year, Thiebaud Bauer was set to clash with a bear named Martin.

A Frenchman with a thick, midnight-black mustache, Bauer was not only one of the first wrestlers to ever don a mask (he was known as the Masked Wrestler of Paris), but as David Shoemaker notes in Squared Circle: Life, Death and Professional Wrestling, Bauer was also "one of the pioneers of the man vs. bear match."

That December night, $250 was on the line in a 2-out-of-3 Falls contest. Tim Corvin wrote in Pioneers of Professional Wrestling: 1860-1899 that Martin "was muzzled and had mittens on his front paws."

The bear tried to throw the Greco-Roman specialist to the mat. And after 15 minutes' worth of tussling, Bauer earned the victory. The path to that point is not what most would expect.

Blecha wrote, " Bauer reportedly swore up a storm while chasing Martin, finally succeeding in grasping the exasperated animal and flinging the poor creature to the floor."

1877 appears to be the boom year for bear wrestling. Brooklyn's Daily Eagle wrote about a wrestling card that year that featured a "Pyrenean Bear, who wrestles all comers under the rules." The Gilmore Gardens promoted a fight between Pete the Wrestling Bear and his trainer, Adrian.

That was also the year a businessman named Emil Regnier brought in two bears to wrestle at New York City's Athletic Hall.

Wrestler William Heyster fought a bear in what ended up being a standstill. The animal's disinterest in the combat for show led him to neither attempt to throw Heyster nor allow himself to be thrown.

Regnier himself then took on another bear with a more decisive result. George Gipe described the climactic scene for Sports Illustrated: "As the crowd cheered and the sawdust from the stage filled the air. Regnier finally managed to roll the animal over on its back and hold its head and shoulders to the platform."

Eventually, New York was not the only bear-wrestling hub. In the Pacific Northwest, Mervin Barackman, a man sometimes billed as "Bear Trainer," made his name and money on the backs of animals such as Billy the Bear and Big Andy.

In the '30s, Barackman, a wrestler himself, traveled from town to town to exhibit his wrestling bears.

Grapplers from that area, including Cyclone Mackey and Dr. Karl Sarpolis were among those to face the animals between the ropes. The act slid from Walla Walla, Washington to Seattle to as far as Texas at one point.

Big Andy, one of Barackman's bears, eventually made the headlines outside of the ring. In 1933, as the Seattle Times reported, the bear "was discovered on a woman's front porch snacking on a kippered herring." Still apparently in a fighting mode, Big Andy took a swipe at the police officer trying to corral him.

Years later, the phenomenon wasn't just continuing, it was spreading. Audiences in California, the Midwest and beyond witnessed wrestlers charged with working with these muzzled opponents.
The Bearman
Eventually, bear wrestling became popular enough to attract celebrities. In 1943, for example, comedian and actor W.C. Fields got into the act. As noted in the Milwaukee Journal that year, Fields had his doubts about whether he could up hold physically in the contest.

He said of his pre-match training, "Wrestling with that bear's going to be a cinch compared to making an athlete out of me."

And while there were cases of novelty acts taking on bears, it was an endeavor legitimate star wrestlers endured as well. Bears were a big enough attraction to have promoters ask talented rising athletes to risk themselves in there with a beast.

One of these most famous beasts was Terrible Ted, a behemoth billed as being 7'0" and 680 pounds. Ted became one of the most prolific bears in the ring. The Leader Post noted in 1959 that the bear had "competed in more than 500 matches."

That number jumped to a purported 1,500 by 1969, as seen in a report for the Windsor Star.

Dutch Mantell (known to WWE fans today as Zeb Colter) once had Terrible Ted fight his battles for him. In 1987, Wendell Cooley sought to challenge Mantell for the Continental Championship Wrestling title. The champ proposed that the would-be contender go through a fearsome opponent first:

Ted was how promoter Dave McKigney (aka the Bearman) made his mark on the business.

McKigney plucked him from a bankrupt carnival. The bear would go on to face a variety of foes, including Bunny Dunlop in Toronto, the rotund Great Antonio and McKigney himself. A pair of men who eventually made their way into the WWE Hall of Fame, Bobby Heenan and Superstar Billy Graham, both tangled with Ted-or at least another bear going by the name.

While working in San Francisco, Graham found motivation to leave that territory after being asked to take on a bear. He lamented in his autobiography, Superstar Billy Graham: Tangled Ropes, that the ridiculous nature of getting pushed around by a bear killed his heat as a heel. These were comical shenanigans to the outsider despite the danger

He doesn't remember the experience fondly.

Graham said, "I can still feel the beast's coarse, wiry fur, smell its foul breath, and hear it snorting through its muzzle as it looked me dead in the eyes. Ted wasn't a happy bear, and I wasn't a happy wrestler."

The run-ins with the bear Heenan discusses in Bobby the Brain: Wrestling's Bad Boy Tells All paints a vivid picture of what the animal could do in the ring.

He was asked to tag team with Baron von Raschke against Ted. Heenan says, "You're not going to believe it, but the bear could work."

Heenan wrote that Ted could perform a monkey flip and a flying mare. At the end of one bout, he wrapped a towel around the bear's neck and pantomimed choking him. The bear, amazingly enough, would lie down, selling the move like any other wrestler.

Like Graham, the man who would go on to manage Andre the Giant wasn't happy with how things unfolded, though.

As Heenan tells it, the bear matches often occurred in winter. The bears, who would much rather be sleeping, would sometimes feel the ice under the padded floor of the arena. That often led to the animal urinating.

The wrestler would then find himself soaked in urine, adding a new layer of humiliation.

Blassie's own battles with bears sound a lot like Heenan and Graham's. In "Classy" Freddie Blassie: Listen, You Pencil Neck Geeks, the hard-nosed grappler admitted he was "scared to death" facing off against the large animal. He describes it as rancid-smelling and diseased, noting how matted its hair was.

The truth is blurry about how long McKigney led the original Terrible Ted to arenas around the country.

As Andrew Calvert and Greg Oliver wrote for Slam! Sports, "McKigney looks to have started the wrestling bear angle around 1958 with the first mention on July 7, 1958, in Cobourg listing Terrible Ted versus 'Some Foolish Wrestler'-likely McKigney."

Nearly 20 years later, Terrible Ted took on Tracy Smothers.

It's a strange sight made stranger by how seriously renowned wrestling commentator Gordon Solie called the action: He wasn't playing it like some sideshow; he tried to make it sound like a battle of two gladiators.

Solie described Ted as "550 pounds of supple muscle." Earlier, he had credited the bear with countering one of Smothers' moves, Solie treating Ted as he would any other oversized participant in the squared circle, like a showman and an athlete.

Flash ahead to 1995, and Carlon Colon is supposed to be tangling with Terrible Ted in this grainy video. That would make him at least 41 years old-the tail end of the lifespan of a bear in captivity.

Regardless, that name is famous as it comes in the world of bears in the wrestling ring. Years later, Dean Ambrose would refer to himself at this generations's Terrible Ted in a promo for Florida Championship Wrestling.
Severed Thumbs and Honey-Smeared Trunks
The only ursine grappler with a more famous list of foes than Terrible Ted was Victor the Wrestling Bear.

Billed as being anywhere from 400 to 800 pounds, Victor reportedly went on a winning streak that would catch even Andre the Giant's eye. As Lodi News Sentinel claimed in 1976, the bear was said to have won over 10,000 matches.

And George Ellison of Smokey Mountain News noted that at least two of those came against wrestling legends Gorgeous George and Wahoo McDaniel.

The Destroyer (real name: Dick Beyer), a member of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame, was among Victor's most notable opponents, one of the unlucky men to experience Victor's mat acumen firsthand.

As the masked man locked up with the animal, the crowd appeared to be unsure of how to react. Perhaps they feared for the Destroyer's safety; perhaps they were simply stunned this exhibition was actually taking place.

In terms of in-ring action, there's little to discuss. Victor just seemed to be toying with the wrestler.

Even so, a trainer came to reward the beast. He handed Victor a bottle of Coca-Cola, which the bear happily chugged down.

Gary Hart, who became famous as the manager for the Great Muta and others, faced Victor as well. This time, the action was mostly on the mat, with Hart trapped under the bear's girth. Like so many of these matches, it's slow, and compared with the action-packed collisions wrestling fans are used to, surprisingly boring.

Don't tell that to Danny Hutchins, though.

Lexington, North Carolina's Dispatch detailed an incident in 1981 that the wrestler would never forget. Victor had already taken on four other comers that night in Chesapeake, Virginia. Hutchins' night ended with him in the hospital.

As he tried to slip out of a hold, Victor rolled onto him. Hutchins said, "The bear put all of his weight on me. It was like he snapped or something." Victor's weight broke the man's ankle and damaged several ligaments in his kneecap.

As one would guess, this was not the first time that Victor had hurt someone.

Charles G. Smith, an Army corporal, accidentally slipped his hand past the bear's muzzle. It takes no psychic to figure out what happened next. As David Pincus wrote for Deadspin, "The bear chomped down with his back teeth and bit most of his left pinky finger clean off."

Freddie Blassie had seen his own share of danger in a match against a bear. He recalled in his autobiography that his massive opponent fell atop him as well.

Blassie said, "During a previous match with a wrestling bear, another guy had accidentally slipped the muzzle down. Once the bear was able to use his teeth, he bit the wrestler's thumb off. I was thinking about this when the bear sat on me-eight hundred pounds of dead weight."

Still, wrestlers agreed to do these matches. Some of them were the struggling low-card nobodies who would take on any assignment. But some were bigger names, from Graham to Blassie. Hall of Famer Roddy Piper once ventured into this odd world.

The late Piper battled Victor as well. He told IGN, "Oh, I hated him. It wasn't a good night for Rod."

Hot Rod went into more detail about that matchup in an appearance on the Electric Morning Show on 92.9 WBPM-FM. He talked about the bear sitting on his hind legs, drinking a pint of Wild Turkey.

The trainer had taken the animal's front teeth, but Piper was still apprehensive about challenging him.

That feeling worsened when he realized the trainer had smeared honey onto the back of his trunks. So when the action began, he had to worry not just about angering the bear and avoiding an injury but also about the bear pulling off his shorts and trying to find more honey somewhere between his cheeks.

These bouts faded away not long after Smothers' encounter with Ted and Piper's run-in with Victor.

John Cena isn't being asked to tangle with a bear. Those animals aren't a part of WrestleMania or Ring of Honor.

Bear wrestling is not something one will see in a sanctioned wrestling environment. It's instead an underground, antiquated enterprise.

As a barometer of how much society has changed in that regard, read the fine print of the video hyping Smothers' most recent bear match. The retired wrestler is billed as going back into the bear-grappling business for a 2015 event dubbed "Olde Wrestling Extravaganza!"

In the YouTube clip in which Smothers promotes the bout, part of the description reads,"A real, live, bear will not be wrestling. The act is illegal under the Ohio Revised Code (sec. 959.15) Olde Wrestling is a theatrical production featuring fictional characters and professional wrestling bouts, a live bear will not be present."

One has to imagine Piper, Blassie and the others who faced the real thing would have loved for this to have been the case during their time.

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Exploring the Strange History of Pro Wrestlers Battling Bears

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JAMIE-ANDREA YANAK/Associated Press With muzzles over their mouths, their claws removed and their front teeth taken out, surrounded by the ring ropes and a curious crowd, bears once found themselves in the thick of pro wrestling promoters' drives to increase ticket sales. It's a story that played out again and again from as early as the 1800s.

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Terrible Ted made the rounds in WWA fighting, taking on some of the most famous names in wrestling, and almost always coming out on top.

On April 1, 1950, wrestler Terrible Ted debuted in Asbury Park, New Jersey. He defeated renowned fighter Tony Galento, after which he fought him again in a rematch. Despite being a newcomer to the wrestling scene, Terrible Ted proved himself a worthy adversary of more famous heavyweights.

It may have had something to do with the fact that Terrible Ted was a bear.

A Canadian American black bear, to be specific. Born in 1949 (or early 1950 by some accounts), Terrible Ted was seemingly destined for a life of wrestling. As a cub, his teeth and his claws were extracted, making him relatively harmless to tussle with, as the risk of being mauled was greatly reduced. Though, as a 600-pound bear, he was still rather imposing.

His first, second, and third wrestling matches were against famed wrestler Tony Galento, which rocketed him to wrestling fame. After that, he was purchased by Dave McKigney, a wrestler who fought under the stage name Gene DuBois.

For the most part, McKigney dragged Terrible Ted around carnival shows and small town fairs to have him wrestle trained performers. Almost all of the shows had a predetermined outcome, as did many wrestling matches at the time, which resulted in Terrible Ted coming out on top in almost all occasions.

Occasionally, however, McKigney would challenge a brave member of the audience to wrestle Ted. Should they win, he promised, they would receive a large sum of money. Though many attempted to pin the bear, only one man, a welder named John Szigeti, was able to successfully do so.

Unfortunately, when it came time for him to claim his prize money, McKigney reneged on his promise. Instead of paying Szigeti the $3,000 he was promised, McKigney skipped town. When Szigeti sued for the $3,000, Ted was arrested and held in the county jail as security until McKigney appeared in court.

Despite his prison stint, Terrible Ted remained a fan favorite in the world of pro wrestling for several years. Between 1969 and 1974, Ted wrestled multiple big name wrestlers including Superstar Billy Graham (future WWWF Champion), Jerry Lawler (WWE Hall of Famer), Fritz von Goering, Bobby Heenan (WWE Hall of Famer), Baron von Raschke, and Rocky Johnson (father of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson).

In 1973, he began wrestling professionally for the World Wrestling Association. While with the WWA, he faced his first female opponent, wrestler Tanya West, whom he beat twice - once in a six-person tag match. The WWA transported Ted all around the United States and Canada, arranging performances for him from San Francisco all the way to Halifax, Nova Scotia.

In 1974, he faced his final opponent, wrestler Sam Bass. After defeating him, Terrible Ted officially retired from professional wrestling and settled into a quiet life at home with his trainer, McKigney.

Along with Terrible Ted, McKigney also kept another bear as a pet, a black bear known as Smokey. Unlike Ted, Smokey still had all of his teeth and claws and was not as used to humans as Ted was.

In July of 1978, McKigney left Smokey's cage door open when he went to answer the phone. Smokey managed to find his way out of his cage and into DuBois' home, where he mauled McKigney's girlfriend, Lynn Orser, to death. Smokey was immediately taken by the Ontario Humane Society, and though he wasn't involved, they seized Terrible Ted as well.

Despite the fact that neither bear showed signs of rabies and the fact that bears often act unpredictably during mating season, the bears were never returned to McKigney, and to this day, their fates remain a mystery. The average lifespan of a black bear is between 10 and 30 years, and though he would have been 18 at the time of Smokey's attack, it's unlikely that he survived to be 68 years old.

Though for a bear that survived declawing, de-toothing, wrestling with world-famous WWA competitors, and a jail stint, perhaps an unusually long life doesn't seem so out of the question.

After learning about Terrible Ted, the black bear who wrestled some of the 20th centuries most famed wrestlers, read about Timothy Treadwell, the man who spent 13 years living among grizzly bears, only to be killed by them. Then, read about Hugh Glass, an explorer and frontiersman who also had an unfortunate run-in with a bear.

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The Story Of Terrible Ted - The Pro Wrestling Bear Who Grappled With The World's Best [VIDEO]

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On April 1, 1950, wrestler Terrible Ted debuted in Asbury Park, New Jersey. He defeated renowned fighter Tony Galento, after which he fought him again in a rematch. Despite being a newcomer to the wrestling scene, Terrible Ted proved himself a worthy adversary of more famous heavyweights.