Vintage photos capture spectacle of Alabama bear wrestling
Published 1:42 pm Sunday, March 13, 2016
- In this 1996 photo, a man wrestles a bear named Terrible Ted at the Ponderosa Club in New Hope, Ala. Bear wrestling was, for many years, considered by many to be an entertaining test of one's brute strength. Others, however, criticized it as animal cruelty.
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (AP) — Bear wrestling was, for many years, considered by many to be an entertaining test of one’s brute strength. Others, however, criticized it as animal cruelty.
Curious crowds attended matches at bars, country fairs or community arenas pitting live bears against professional wrestlers or anyone willing to go a round with a 400 to 700 pound monster with names like Terrible Ted, Sampson, Victor the Bear or Ginger.
In fact, Alabama Crimson Tide coach Paul “Bear” Bryant who at just 13 was already 6-foot-1 and 180 pounds, got his nickname after wrestling a bear at a carnival promotion in Cleveland County, Ark.
Rumor has it he did it to impress a girl and for the money — a dollar for each minute he stayed in the ring — but the owner of the bear left town without paying.
The bears — some black, some brown some grizzly — were said to be natural born wrestlers. Even professional wrestlers would often speak of their opponent’s surprising skills and moves to take down an opponent. Still most of the matches were an absurd exhibition of trying to get away from the beast in the ring.
Huntsville TV celebrity Jamie Cooper, “the Country Rover,” wrestled Victor the Bear, one of the most famous wrestling bears live on Huntsville’s WAAY-TV in 1980 at the North Alabama State Fair. Victor obviously won the match.
Regulations, a fear over lawsuits stemming from something going terribly wrong and a heightened awareness of animal rights pretty much wiped out wrestling bears as part of professional wrestling. Here is another video of professional wrestler Kris Beyer Jones “The Destroyer” vs. Victor the Bear.
Tracy Smothers is another professional wrestler who in this video from Olde Wrestling talks about three bear wrestling matches he had in Alabama.
If you Google “bear wrestling Alabama” what you most likely find is that one of the state’s more curious laws banning bear wrestling was enacted back in 1996. The legislation followed a series of bear wrestling matches with Terrible Ted, owned by Richard Walker of Calhoun, Ga., at the Ponderosa Club in New Hope, Ala., in early 1996.
HB 497, making bear wrestling illegal in the state of Alabama passed the House with a vote of 89-2. In May 1996, the Alabama Senate voted 23-0 making it illegal to conduct bear wrestling for profit. The bill also banned surgically altering a bear or training it to wrestle people making it a class B felony.
The bill was sponsored by Rep. Joe Ford D-Gadsden and Sen. Tom Butler D-Madison. Butler said Ford had convinced him that bear wrestling was animal cruelty in its “purest form.” ”I don’t mind anybody who wants to fight a bear if they just go out in the woods and fight the bear on his own terms,” Ford said.
Nina Beal, founder and director of the Ark, a no-kill animal shelter in Huntsville wrote in 1996: “To allow someone to capture a living creature from its natural habitat, put it on exhibition for profit in smoky, loud bars for humans to wrestle so they can prove their machismo, does not in any opinion speak highly of the progress of our nation or Alabama.
“Other states have outlawed bear wrestling; we need to be as advanced. I feel the majority of the people of Alabama would vote for bear wrestling to be outlawed if given the opportunity. We are known for our Southern hospitality and our open friendliness. We should also be known for our humanitarianism toward other living creatures, and outlawing the wrestling of bears is a good start. Animals have no voice, no choice, no vote but those of us who fight for animal rights can choose, speak and vote.”
What most people do not know is that in an effort to do away with more than 300 of Alabama’s obsolete and outdated laws with Act 2015-70, the Alabama Legislature repealed the law outlawing bear wrestling effective April 21, 2015.
The practice is likely prohibited by other animal cruelty laws, both state and federal.
Recently discovered negatives found in The Huntsville Times archives revealed never before published photos of bear wrestling at a bar in New Hope, Alabama and led to interest in this story.
