MAT TALES

THE WIBAUX BETTING SCHEME

Jim Londos may have inadvertently helped to break up a betting scam. In the early 1920s, Charley Rentrop, a familiar opponent, was working an “easy money” tour of North Dakota where he knocked off three locals on successive weekends in the city of Beach, on the Montana border.

 

Like a mat whiz, Rentrop then took on all three at once, coming out victorious and convincing the Beach betting sector that he could defeat anyone of his size at any time. Sheriff Bert Nelson of nearby Wibaux, Montana, a bitter rival to Beach, was in the crowd that night and decidedly suspicious of the outcome. When Beach bettors told Nelson they would back Rentrop against any foe, the sheriff announced he would take that bet because his crackerjack wrestler Jack Sandow would whip Rentrop. “Rentrop’s been tossing your farmer suckers in time limit grapples,” Nelson told them.

Only one problem. Jack Sandow did not exist. Nelson had gotten himself in a boastful pickle. Scanning a weeks-old San Francisco newspaper, he came across a picture of Londos.

 

This, he decided, would be Jack Sandow, a face unfamiliar in Wibaux and Beach. Nelson wired a guarantee to Londos who accepted and said he’d come to Montana the day before the match. In the meantime, the sheriff recruited an untrained farm boy to play the part of Sandow, inviting the public to watch him lamely work out, which only whetted bettors’ enthusiasm for Rentrop.

Nelson later told journalist Frank Hyde (coincidentally a mentor of this book's author) that he thought bettors from Beach would see the error of their ways and demand their money back once they saw the handsome, muscular ringer from California. But no one objected, so the match went on with the sheriff as the referee, five-gallon hat, six-shooter, and high-heeled boots in tow.

 

Londos won in two falls; some fans in attendance insisted that after an hour of action, Nelson patted his holstered gun and said, “I want a couple of falls and I want ’em quick.” Londos was “definitely not” in on the financial setup, according to Nelson and sportswriter Hyde, who checked and rechecked the story several times with the sheriff and financial winners and losers. “Londos could have beaten any grappler in the game then and he knew it, so Rentrop or Sandow, it made no difference,” Hyde concluded. Londos got a nice payday, the sheriff covered his expenses with the gate receipts, and the sportsmen of Beach learned a lesson.