BoxRec

http://www.shutterstock.com/video/clip- ... final.html

http://footage.framepool.com/en/shot/32 ... den-gloves

Short-short clips of Hodge in the Golden Gloves in action (though the date is wrong).

Is this Dan Hodge the wrestler/combination man?

Yes. Hodge still remains the only man to hold both the national wrestling and boxing championships at the same time.

There's a fair bit about Hodge in a book called, 'Shooters'; he could break a pair of pliers by squeezing them apparently.

palooka wrote:There's a fair bit about Hodge in a book called, 'Shooters'; he could break a pair of pliers by squeezing them apparently.

Hell the man is almost 90 years old and can still crush large apples in his hand like it was nothing.

Rare, rare, RARE... picture... of Hodge in his last pro fight (fifth round) against Nino Valdes.

Hodge would lose in the 9th due to cuts. At the time he only had 8 fights as a pro.

Looks like, for all intents and appearances, a brutal bloody contest on both sides.

I read the Hodge was unrecognisable after the Valdez bout and did not go outside for a fortnight he was so bashed up. He was a far better wrestler than a boxer.

palooka wrote:I read the Hodge was unrecognisable after the Valdez bout and did not go outside for a fortnight he was so bashed up. He was a far better wrestler than a boxer.

For having only 17 amateur fights, and 8 pro bouts... he accomplished much in his very short boxing career...

I find it to be of no disgrace, when you figure Hodge was a tremendously powerful amateur wrestler, who made a rather successful transition into boxing. A loss to a guy like Valdes, is nothing to be ashamed of. At the time when he fought Hodge, the Cuban was #8 in the world and in 1956 was the #1 contender for Marciano's title. In less than two years time, he went from relative no-namer to contesting world beaters. He relied heavily on his conditioning and overall strength to overcome his limitations. I can only suspect, that had he had more time and wasn't given the sort of push that his handlers gave him--- he could of possibly been champion.

Never forget, its been six decades since, and Hodge is still the only man to hold national titles in both sports.

The reason Hodge left boxing, from what I understood, was that he was virtually given no money or compensation for the Valdes fight, and others that he contested. This was the reason why Hodge would say later that boxing was 'crooked' and 'fixed'. No less than three months later, he was in a pro wrestling ring and became known as one of the great shooters and enforcers in the business.

I'm nobody at all to knock anyone's achievements and didn't mean anything derogatory about Hodge; he was certainly a highly noted wrestler and could!d do it for real when other champions were 'working' matches

He wrote a very good autobiography in 2009 "Oklahoma Shooter - The Dan Hodge Story".

Another picture of Hodge (left) with the legendary Jack Dempsey.

I might add that Hodge is still alive and is still a sitting member of the Oklahoma Athletic Commission.

Damn, Hodge was something else. I've been fascinated with him since first reading about him back when I was in middle school. But, for such an interesting character there's very little written about him. But, obviously, that's been remedied in the form of his biography something that I'm going to get my hands on asap.

Can you imagine running into a pissed off Hodge back in his heyday?
OUCH!
Your best bet would be to let him knock you spark out as early as possible because if he got his hands on you, he could damn near rip your limbs offs like a fly.
He's an example of a guy born too soon. Can you imagine if MMA had existed back in his day? He would have almost certainly become a world champion.
Although the current UFC heavyweight champion is about as close to Hodge as we may be likely to see as he was an excellent amateur boxer who won the Cleveland Golden Gloves & went on the place fairly highly in the Nationals & he was also a NCAA Division 1 wrestler & Cleveland State.

Considering his success as a pro boxer and his wrestling skills,
He'd be a champ in the UFC today as he was. I like Miocic but the heavyweights in MMA are terrible over all IMO.

He was something else, that's for sure. He had very few amateur contests, and yet won national titles. 17 total amateurs, and went professional. It's one of those magical "What if?" questions had to held out a little longer, and competed as both a boxer and wrestler in the 1960 Olympics in Italy. We'd probably be talking about Hodge as the greatest combat sports Olympian in history. However, he didn't do that. Boxing manager Art Freeman convinced him that he had what it took as a professional to be a "greater prospect" than Marciano was, and within eight fights as a pro he was already taking on the #1 ranked Nino Valdes, and it was a competitive, bloody, sloppy affair in which Hodge was stopped on cuts in the 9th round.

Shortly after that fight, I believe in the locker room, he was rather cryptic and vague saying he wasn't going to "play their game anymore", and that the sport was crooked: and he announced his retirement from the business to the shock of many people. Some speculated that the loss was just that hurtful and profound to his psyche that he couldn't handle it, but according to Hodge he said the business was tied up with mobster types who picked and choosed who would "go up" and "go down", and that they were running a monopoly on his interests and he wasn't going to have it anymore.

It's rather ironic, in a sense, that he left the boxing world for the professional wrestling world where promoters "picked and choosed" who would go up and down---- yet that was the alleged reason for his retirement from boxing. Oh well, Hodge in many ways has the "last laugh" on the sport he felt betrayed him, becoming a longstanding member of the Oklahoma Athletic Commission and his signature goes down on paper "picking and choosing" who gets licensed and who doesnt, what fights get made and what fights dont get made, etc.

People always speculate how well he could have done in modern MMA, and while the idea is more than intriguing, I always go a little bit deeper in such thinking. I always imagine, "What if?" it was Don Hodge in the that ring with Gene LeBell the night he fought Milo Savage. Both men were near or at their peak capabilities, and unlike the pure boxer (Savage) Hodge would have known exactly what to do to combat Gene's throws and holds. Now THAT would have been an encounter for the ages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danny_Hod ... 3_2557.jpg

Oh and here's Hodge at age 80 (2013) demonstrating his still prodigous tendon strength crushing apples in his hands.

Occasionally I see videos of him doing this feat (even today) or actually putting willing fans in choke holds, rendering them unconscious its pretty funny (and yet scary) that a man of his age can probably put every single one of us in the hospital without much effort at all. He's certainly one of the last great legends, from a time when men were really men, and athletes were talked about with the same sort of mystique as Paul Bunyan, John Henry, Pecos Bill, etc.

HomicideHenry wrote:

Rare, rare, RARE... picture... of Hodge in his last pro fight (fifth round) against Nino Valdes.

Hodge would lose in the 9th due to cuts. At the time he only had 8 fights as a pro.

Looks like, for all intents and appearances, a brutal bloody contest on both sides.

The blood was coming from Hodge and spread over both fighters.

I remember him as Danny Hodge the pro wrestler... He was a loser as a wrestler to the top "heroes" of the day... Hodge didn't play a villain or hero or anything. He was just Danny Hodge. He reminded me a lot of Kenny Yates, who as also both a boxer and a wrestler. Yates told me that he would sign a contract to win or lose his wrestling matches, most all the time to lose, and if he won he wouldn't get paid.

Verne Gagne was a big hero wrestler of his day. Gagne actually tried to convince people that wrestling was real and that both wrestlers tried to win their matches. My wife told him "Who the Hell are you trying to kid. Everyone knows rasslin is fake except for a couple of naive old ladies with blue hair."

Kalan wrote:I remember him as Danny Hodge the pro wrestler... He was a loser as a wrestler to the top "heroes" of the day... Hodge didn't play a villain or hero or anything. He was just Danny Hodge. He reminded me a lot of Kenny Yates, who as also both a boxer and a wrestler. Yates told me that he would sign a contract to win or lose his wrestling matches, most all the time to lose, and if he won he wouldn't get paid.

Verne Gagne was a big hero wrestler of his day. Gagne actually tried to convince people that wrestling was real and that both wrestlers tried to win their matches. My wife told him "Who the Hell are you trying to kid. Everyone knows rasslin is fake except for a couple of naive old ladies with blue hair."

Hodge was one of the great legendary wrestlers, back in the era of multiple weight divisions in the "sport". He was the Light Heavyweight (or was it Cruiserweight?) champion for the NWA for the longest time, and of course he'd "lose" to the big men like Gene Kinski who was 6'5" 250+ pounds because as far as the "sport" was concerned it was all about appearances---- never mind the fact that in a real life fight Hodge would have obliterated such men like they were nothing.

It reminds me of a story often told in wrestling of when Tony Atlas broke into the business. Atlas was this enormous black guy with muscles on top of muscles, and looked like a million dollars: the strongest man in all of wrestling (or so it was implied). And the way they promoted him (before he ever even had his wrestling match) was to have him bench press 500 pounds in front of a crowd, and it "sold" the illusion that he was this superhero-type guy who could not be defeated: and it convinced everyone to buy tickets to the next event where he'd have his first match as a pro.

Now, Atlas wanted to have the "best match on the card" and decided to show off all his skills that he learned in wrestling school, and wanted to really entertain the fans---- so he went twelve full minutes with this guy who was half his size, and they tore the house down. Atlas was more than happy with himself, and when he walked into the locker room he expected the promoter to be happy. Well, he wasnt, he was more than pissed at Atlas going twelve minutes with this guy who (by all appearances) should have been squashed by Atlas inside of a minute. He told Atlas, "Know your damn role! Big guys crush little guys!", and he sent Atlas packing. Fired him on the spot. Why? Because as far as the promoter was concerned, Atlas completely destroyed the "realism" of the business by allowing a small guy to go the limit with him.

As for Gagne.... one of the true legends of the business, for sure.... but I can't help but think he wouldn't have been as legendary as he's remembered today if he didn't have his own promotion constantly making himself the world champion of the AWA and constantly being matched with all the big league name stars of the era. Not to say Gange wasn't a world class performer or grappler, cus in real life Gagne was indeed a collegiate wrestling champion in his youth and he legitimately could have beaten alot of guys in real life situations: but at the end of the day, that's not what the "sport" is about.

But you gotta understand, in his era the business was very protected for many different reasons.... most of the time the veterans would "stretch" (beat up) potentially talented guys whoi wanted in the business to prevent them from being "just another guy" who'd take money, food, and "spots" away from them.... these days anyone can be a wrestler, and as a consequence the business has suffered tremendously because there are very few "workers" (real performers) in the "sport" to work with. So, back then, they really put people through hell to really see if they wanted it, because a guy who was mentally fit (as well as physically) was a guy you could rely on to make more money. I think it was Bob Watts who once said, "The only thing that matters in this business is whether there's an ass every eighteen inches in that arena," and everything else was bullshit. There are no winners, no losers: not when everyone is making money, and quite frankly you're only as good as the weakest card on the show: so in Gagne's day even the least famous, least appreciated, least liked, least cared about wrestler still had to be a damn good worker because if at any time the matches were below par (to their liking) you were fired and every promoter in the country knew you sucked and wouldn't hire you.

In Wrestling the athletes are way bigger and better today and they’re much better actors... A lot of wrestlers sucked to beat Hell back in the '50s and 60's... And it was always the same... chairs over the head... brass knuckles hidden in the shorts... flying drop kicks... stomping on heads... punching guys out… blood capsules broken and a bloody mess all over the place... flips off the top rope... flying head scissors... Flipping guys off your back and into the air... referees losing control...especially in tag team matches with all 4 guys battling and punching away and blind side hits with fans screaming bloody murder.

Dwayne Johnson was a great wrestler before he became an actor. “It was a natural transition for me – I’m still acting – only it’s a little easier on the bod.”

Kalan wrote:In Wrestling the athletes are way bigger and better today and they’re much better actors... A lot of wrestlers sucked to beat Hell back in the '50s and 60's... And it was always the same... chairs over the head... brass knuckles hidden in the shorts... flying drop kicks... stomping on heads... punching guys out… blood capsules broken and a bloody mess all over the place... flips off the top rope... flying head scissors... Flipping guys off your back and into the air... referees losing control...especially in tag team matches with all 4 guys battling and punching away and blind side hits with fans screaming bloody murder.

Dwayne Johnson was a great wrestler before he became an actor. “It was a natural transition for me – I’m still acting – only it’s a little easier on the bod.”

Mind you, there never was "blood capsules" ever used in professional wrestling even back in the day. The process of "blading" was commonplace and if you go to Indy shows you will still see it occur. For example, wrestler flies out of the ring and hits the concrete floor.... watch him/her closely.... you will notice them touching their head, fingers moving around.... Next thing you know they are "busted wide open".... cus they hidden a razor blade in their taped/wrapped hands or in their boots, or shorts, or even in their mouths.

As for "wrestlers sucked to beat hell back in the 50's and 60's" comment, I suppose it comes down to what kind of wrestling you like and also if you understand the evolution of the business in general. In the beginning, and up until the 1960's wrestling matches were almost always "best two out of three falls" (three round matches), so these were more methodical, slow paced in the first round, action picked up in the second round, and the prestige came in the third round. Was all about building up "heat" in the matches to get the babyface (good guy) over with the audience, and as a general rule in those times bad guys seldom ever won matches, let alone win championships and when they did they seldom held it for any real length of time. Wasn't until the late 40's to mid 50's that more innovative ideas and moves were incorporated into the matches too, which made them more action packed.

I suppose if one understands the "realism" of the business, one could understand WHY they did more technical wrestling in those days. Promoters would absolutely go batshit crazy if the talent threw punches or kicks, etc at any time because only the "heels" (bad guys) were supposed to be underhanded---- besides, what's the point in doing a "finishing move" on someone after you kicked them in the balls or head butted them? In a real life scenario you do that to a guy you could pin him maybe a dozen times, and he aint gonna move: he's gonna be clutching his balls, or holding onto his head. Again, "realism" was expected at all times in the business. These days its "anything goes" and it becomes less and less believable, to the point of being more than cartoonish.

As for "The Rock" being a great wrestler...... He certainly was a great physical specimen with great athleticism, and had a great psychology for the business and was one of the best men on the microphone, doing some of the best promos one could shoot.... But as for actual wrestling ability.... Ehhhhhhhhhh..... He was about as one dimensional as Hulk Hogan was. Not as one dimensional as John Cena, mind you, but pretty damn close. The success of those men "getting over" in the business was the mystique, the build up, the heat, etc of the characters more so than their actual talents in doing moves, holds, etc.

Consider, for example, Canadian wrestler Lance Storm.... probably the most skilled-all-around wrestler to ever walk into the WCW, WWE, etc rosters.... the man could simply do everything you could ever imagine in that ring.... but he never "got over" with the fans because despite all his abilities he simply was horrible on the microphone and he just wasn't a believable character in the business. Characters in wrestling sell, not actual sportsmen. That's why a guy like Jake "The Snake" Roberts is considered a legend in the business, despite not looking intimidating at all, or having much athletic prowess. It was all about the mind games, and making people believe in what you were doing.

"The Crusher" Reggie Lisowski was very popular when I was in High School... Gagne and Lisowski had a genuine dislike for each other... Larry Hennig and Harley Race never had many nice things about Gagne and thought he was a phony who misrepresented the business... Maurice Vachone was anther guy who had his problems with Gagne who tended to overdue the "hero" routine and misrepresent something that was totally an act for entertainment.

Cowboy Bob Ellis was another big hero type, but was a regular guy not a prima donna. Buddy Rodgers and Johnny Valentine were other wrestlers of our day. Lou Thesz was a hero type, Killer Kowolski was a villain type, Gorilla Monsoon was another villain who did a routine with Muhammad Ali you can see on youtube. He were supposed to let Ali win but Monsoon turned the tables on Ali because. "I don't like him and he couldn't beat me. They didn't pay me but that's okay."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YalhAclq9y4

Danny in the OLympics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhmjRzllHCI

Another clip from the Golden Gloves of Danny

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrziOWxPEHA