Classic Wrestling Articles

The Herald and Torch Light – December 25, 1867

No visitor to Paris has failed to notice enormous placards, with a mammoth engraving of two muscular wrestlers engaged in a desperate trial of strength and skill. They are advertisements of the “Arena Athletique,” in the Rue Pelletier, where the trials of strength and skill indicated in the big placards take place every night in the week. Very few foreigners, however, seem to have taken the trouble to visit the “Arena Athletique,” and very few probably of the Parisians themselves know what goes on there. Mr. George Wilkes of The Spirit of the Times was nevertheless induced to pay it a visit, principally, it would appear, for want of something better to do, and was agreeably surprised at what he saw. Instead of a dingy ring, lighted with fetid “dips,” and crowded with “roughs” and rowdies, he found himself in “a…