King Kong (standard:non fiction, 1047 words)
Author: Juggernaut	Added: Apr 28 2013	Views/Reads: 2751/1924	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
The first play book on wrestling was written in ancient India. It was a simple plan, create a hero and a villian. To date same formula is used in wrestling.

KING KONG 

Subba Rao 

India was known to be the birth place of wrestling. As martial 

art, wrestling goes back to thousands of years in India, it is more 

like Jousting in Europe in middle ages or duels fought in other parts 

of the world.  In Hindu mythology, wrestling was mentioned as noble 

sport with high stakes like winning or losing kingdom or a wife or 

both. In the epic story of Mahabharata, the righteous prince Bhima and 

his wicked cousin Dhuryodhan learned wrestling together from the same 

master and yet went to kill each other at the end of a glorious 

wrestling match. Similarly in the epic story of Ramayana, vanara or 

monkey kings Vali and Sugriva wrestled for days with none giving up, 

Lord Rama intervened to end the match by shooting Vali to death with an 

arrow.  The Indian epics created villain and hero wrestlers and made 

the first playbook in sports. 

In modern times, Gama nickname for Ghulam Muhammad was 

undefeated in his long career and became a folk hero as father of 

wrestling for the entire Indian subcontinent.  He was the gold standard 

in wrestling.  An expression like “there is nobody like Gama,” became a 

standard phrase in Indian lexicon. In 50s to and 60's, King Kong and 

Dara Singh became famous wrestling duo in India.  Born in Hungary, 

Emile Czaja came to India to learn wrestling and assumed the name King 

Kong after a role he played in an Indian movie.  King Kong and Dara 

Singh wrestled each other often attracting big crowds all over the 

country. Posters of mean looking King Kong and serene looking Dara 

Singh in various wrestling poses were posted all over the city few 

weeks before the bout.  Colorful murals depicting the humongous body of 

King Kong in many wrestling poses were painted on abandoned building 

walls to advertise his wrestling events with Dara Singh. The promoters 

psyched up the crowds as a fight between the evil King Kong and 

righteous Dara Singh. 

In the school, students argued on how much food King Kong and 

Dara Singh had for breakfast, lunch or dinner. If a student said King 

Kong had one dozen eggs for breakfast, others countered by saying Dara 

Singh ate two dozen; If King Kong were to eat  half of a goat in one 

sitting, Dara Singh ate the entire lamb for dinner. It was mind 

boggling for Juggernaut born into vegetarian family even to visualize 

how much a person can eat that too animal flesh. It was all pure 


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