Draft:Simo Antonic

Simo Antonić (various spellings Simon Antonitsch, Simon Antontich, Simon Antonich; Serbian Cyrillic: Сима Антонић; Caribrod, Serbia, 15 February 1881 - after 1937) at the turn of the 20th century was the undisputed champion in Greco-Roman wrestling for a decade. He entered his first professional competition in Greco-Roman for the Gold Belt Championship in 1903 in France. Simo Antonich travelled and participated in many tournaments around the world with far more experienced wrestlers (winning often) and, in 1908, in Vienna, won the World Championship in Greco-Roman wrestling. From then on, nothing seemed to stop the 27-year-old giant who stood nearly seven feet tall and whose talent, combined with extraordinary strength and technique, had projected him in the space of a few years into the world elite of Greco-Roman wrestlers. He is best remembered as the first Serbian heavyweight world champion of modern times.

Biography

Simo Antonić was born in Caribrod, Serbia, near the Bulgarian border, on 15 February 1881, and was baptized at the Serbian Orthodox Monastery of Saint Dimitrije. He went to primary and secondary schools there. Uncommonly tall (210 centimeters) and physically strong, he decided to take up the sport of Greco-Roman wrestling, which became very popular at the time in Serbia during his high school years. The man who made the sport in Serbia was Sava Rajković. In 1900, Simo Antonić read in a Serbian physical culture magazine called Srpski Soko citing the French sporting newspaper L'Auto that had sponsored "a world Greco-Roman Championship tournament" at the Casino de Paris, where George Hackenschmidt won the first golden belt in the first professionally organized world Greco-Roman wrestling tournament. That triggered his imagination and motivated him to train and prepare himself for the sport of professional wrestling.

Career

Soon, Antonić's physique and strength peaked, and he was ready to take on all comers. In wrestling he seldom lost a match in Europe and then he began travelling with an Italian troupe to different international tournaments overseas with the likes of Paul Pons, Laurent le Beacairois, Kara Ahmed, Georg Hackenschmidt, Stanislaus Zbyszko, Raoul le Boucher, Hans Kava, the Austrian Hercules, Jess Pedersen, Ivan Poddubny, Nikola Petroff, Jacob Koch (1870-1918), and his training partner Giovanni Raicevich.

Antonić, with three friends, Emilio, Massimo, and the youngest Giovanni Raicevich(his peers), began preparing for the 1905 European Greco-Roman wrestling championship, intensively training for several months in Trieste (which was then part of Austria-Hungary. In 1905, he placed third in a competition.

In 1908, five years after wrestling professionally, Antonić achieved the pinnacle of his career in Vienna at the Fifth great international wrestling match, for which a prize of 10,000 Kroner was determined and in which the world's most famous wrestlers participated, among them the previously undefeated world champion Jacob Koch of Germany. The 40-day struggle, from 3 June to 15 July 1908, was billed as the "Championship World Heavyweight Title" and held at the Olympia Arena in Vending in Vienna, Austria. There, Simon Antonić fought 22 matches in 40 gruelling days without losing a single one. In the last wrestling match, after a persistent struggle of one hour and 18 minutes, 47 seconds, the Serbian Antonić won the title of "world champion in wrestling". The German Koch won the second prize while Alphonse Steurs of Belgium took the third, and the fourth place went to Viennese Josef Steinbach, who got the consolation prize.

Before the competition began, Koch deposited 3,000 Kroner and invited Antonich to a match, and Antonić deposited 3,000 Kroner and accepted the challenge with a statement that he would wrestle Koch three times, and if Koch won only once, he would give him his deposit. In the same manner, Josef Steinbach challenged Alphonse Steurs, but evidently lost to the Belgian.

Antonić held several tournament titles for the next 10 years. He wrestled many of the great wrestlers and strongmen of the era, often beating such greats as Nikola Petroff, Ivan Poddubny, Jess Pedersen, Paul Pons, Josef Steinbach, Magnus Bach-Olsen, John Pohl, Anastase Anglio of Martinique, Giovanni Raicevich, Jacob Koch, Stanislaus Zbyszko, and also losing to them. After all, it was the era when wrestlers together travelled the world to promote the sport of Greco-Roman wrestling and at the same time attract and entertain audiences and be able to sustain each member of their troupe financially.

According to German historian Karl Janicke (1888-1935), Antonić's physique was not at all grotesque. "Despite his huge height (210 centimeters or 6 feet 10.7 inches), all parts of his body are in good proportions. He is perfectly healthy and meets all the conditions of a heavyweight wrestler. Owing to his tremendous strength, it was almost impossible to resist his headlocks or half- or full-nelson."

Another historian, Adolf Guretzki, wrote: "Due to his phlegmatic nature and kind-heartedness typical of extraordinarily strong people, he lost several high rankings in tournaments." In Brazil, on 16 August 1904, at a tournament, Paul Pons beat Antonić easily "because he was suffering from severe rheumatism."

In the incomplete database of "Wrestlingdata.com", Simon Antonitsch (Simo Antonić) had 120 recorded matches and fought against 42 different wrestlers, which seems odd since there are no records of him fighting after 1911, yet it is known that he did fight well into the 1930s.

Also, curiously enough, there is no record of when or where he died. What we do know from French newspapers is that his last recorded appearance in the wrestling ring was in 1937 when he appeared at Élysée Montmartre. He was 56 years old at the time.

Acting career

Many of the wrestlers and strongmen appeared in the early documentary films as far back as the turn of the 20th century, when motion picture technology was in its infancy. Simo Antonić and his wrestling buddies were the earliest performing stars.