Images are interesting, but assembling a collection of related images can facilitate research that unearths a story, in this case one about an individual. I’ve been able to acquire several unusual images of this Native American wrestler. Some had captions, others depicted the individual in various poses. The subject was John “Jumbo” Middlesky (also noted as Midlesky and Middle Sky).
John was a member of the Cocopah Native American tribe born in Mexico about 1876. He came to Yuma, Arizona, as a young man about 1900. He may have attended the Yuma Indian School before he began working for the railroad at age fifteen. His size, strength, and bulk led to his discovery and promotion as a wrestler and boxer by wrestling manager H. P. Taylor. By 1904 John was already being promoted as “Jumbo, the Big Cocopah Wrestler.”
Taylor’s promotion, using exaggeration common during this era, quickly brought national visibility. Descriptions of Jumbo’s height ranged from 6 foot 6 inches to 7 feet. In August 1906, the St Paul Pioneer Press described his physical appearance as 6 foot 6 inches tall and weighing 350 pounds. His chest measured 60 inches. His waist has a girth of 54 inches, his thighs are 32 inches around, his calves 28 inches, biceps 22 inches, and neck 20 inches. The paper went on to note that he was “a bit slow in his actions but not clumsy.”
That year he gained notoriety by beating the former champion wrestler of the Southwest, Sid Varney, in a match in Bisbee, Arizona. The first fall took only a minute, the second only 38 seconds. His promoter, Taylor began planning to challenge the recently retired, but undefeated 6 foot 2 inches tall, 220 pounds world heavyweight boxing champion James “The Boilermaker” Jeffries. Taylor offered a wager of $5,000 that John could throw “Jeffries or any other champion alive.”
Jeffries was white and John was Native American. The match proposed by Taylor reflected the racial overtones of the times and foreshadowed Jeffries eventual return to sport as “The Great White Hope” to recover the heavyweight crown from African American Jack Johnson in 1910.
Despite his growing notoriety, in 1908 the Associated Press still referred to “the Indian as something of a newcomer in the wrestling field. He has issued a challenge to wrestle any man in the world.”
In March 1909, John returned to Yuma and led the Yuma Indian School in a local parade. The Arizona Sentinel wrote, “The big 350-pound Indian, “Jumbo,” in a state very close to nudity, headed the line, closely followed by others of his race with the same scarcity of raiment.”
In 1910, his new manager C. Stone was successful in scheduling a match between John and world champion wrestler Frank Gotch. Both wrestlers were noted as being previously undefeated. During a stop en-route to the match in Washington D. C., John made headlines in the Evening Star. The paper noted that the hotel elevator “wheezed and after a long prayer to its deity started upwards.” The bed couldn’t carry his weight and was smashed to ruined after he laid down. I haven’t found a record of whether the match occurred, or its outcome.
By 1911, John had fallen from World Championship matches to the burlesque circuit. The New York Times carried the report of a match at the Harlem River Casino on October 30. The last match of the evening was between 6-foot 5-inch, 250-pound Russian Ivan Romanoff, and now 6-foot 4-inch, 310-pound Middlesky. The Russian humiliated Middlesky, besting him in 3 minutes and 20 seconds in the first bout and just over 5 minutes in the second.
John Middlesky’s stardom quickly faded. He returned to Yuma for a match just after Christmas 1912 but afterward disappeared from the record books.