DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Show: The mystery of Barney Smith & James McLaughlin
On this week’s DragonKingKarl Classic Wrestling Show, it’s another episode in my 1000 Hours series.
Hour 21 focuses on the mystery of Barney Smith.
While his current status of being alive or dead isn’t a mystery (he lived 150 years ago), the question is whether Col. James H. McLaughlin (seen above) killed him.
In the early 2000s when I first really dug into the pioneers of pro wrestling, I was led to believe that in a famous wrestling tournament in Detroit, MI, in 1870, McLaughlin wrestled Smith in the finals and Smith died the day after. There were many specific details to the incident told to me by a historian.
The problem is that over 20 years later and with access to all the major newspapers of the day, there doesn’t seem to be a shred of evidence to support it.
So what happened to Barney Smith?
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Karl Stern is a pro wrestling historian specializing in the 1980s and pioneer era (pre-1900) of pro wrestling. He is an author who has written several books on wrestling and independently runs the When It Was Cool retro pop culture website.