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In the red corner, standing at six-foot-four (excluding the stovetop hat), with only one defeat in 300 matches, the reigning champion of New Salem County, and a future member of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame... ladies and gentlemen, we give you the Great Emancipator! By all accounts, Abraham Lincoln — yes, the sixteenth President of the United States — was indeed a skilled and accomplished wrestler. However, as with any good story, tales of his prowess in the ring have been exaggerated over the years — and never more so than in the Internet Age. Several rumors are regularly shared in a popular meme that features a rendering of Lincoln with a championship belt draped across his shoulder: Another rumor is that Lincoln was a regional champion at 21: There are a lot of moving parts behind Lincoln's wrestling history, let's try to examine these claims one by one. First up, the absurd artwork of Lincoln with a championship belt: Although the image may give the impression that Lincoln's wrestling matches were comparable to the glitzy modern-day stage productions from groups like World Wrestling Entertainment, Lincoln was a skilled wrestler — but he never hoisted a glamorous gold-encrusted belt, and he never strutted into a ring as fireworks went off behind him. So where did this glamorous portrayal of the Illinois Railsplitter come from? This is a composite of at least two different images and features a championship belt that belonged to WWE star Randy Orton: Did Abraham Lincoln win an Illinois County wrestling championship in 1830? This rumor appears to be based on a very loose translation of the word champion. One of the most famous stories about Lincoln's wrestling skills involves a match with a local tough named Jack Armstrong. Although the details of this fight are hazy at best — some accounts claim that Lincoln won, others that Armstrong did, but only by cheating — this appears to be the match at the root of this rumor. Armstrong is referred to as the champion of his group of friends, the Clary's Grove Boys, in various accounts about this fight. However, this seems to be an informal title. Armstrong was the toughest guy in town, the leader of his group, or, as John T. Stuart, Lincoln's first law partner, described him, the champion of his clan. That is, until he went up against young Lincoln: Another version of this story can be found in the biography Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President: Here's how David Herbert Donald described the fight in the biography Lincoln: The descriptions of Armstrong as a champion are not actually referring to some official title, but instead that he was known as the toughest man in the area. So when Lincoln defeated him — if he actually did — during their storied bout, he may have usurped the informal champion title in the area, but this was not done in any official capacity. We reached out to researchers at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation for more information; they told us that Lincoln was never an official county wrestling champion in Illinois, but for a very good reason: County wrestling championships did not exist in Illinois in the 1830s. Was Lincoln honored by the National Wrestling Hall of Fame? A number of United States presidents have been honored by the National Wrestling Hall of Fame. In 1992, Lincoln was given the organization's Outstanding American award: The National Wrestling Hall of Fame has also honored other Presidential Grapplers such as George Washington, William Howard Taft, and Teddy Roosevelt. A mural of Lincoln's match with Armstrong adorns one of the walls in the museum's Lincoln Lobby: The National Wrestling Hall of Fame is dedicated to athletes who practice a traditional version of the sport. Although the image include in this meme might suggest that Lincoln was a member of the WWE Wrestling Hall of Fame, that is not the case. The NWHF and the WWE Wrestling Hall of Fame are two distinct and separate organizations. Did Lincoln lose only one of nearly 300 matches? There is no official record for all of Lincoln's wrestling matches, making it impossible to say how many he won, lost, or even participated in. As noted earlier, even the details about Lincoln's most famous bouts are unclear. This rumor, however, is rooted in some truth. We know that Lincoln frequently engaged in wrestling matches and that he was especially skilled at the sport. In fact, when Lincoln was reminiscing about his wrestling days on the campaign trail in 1860, he told Risdon Moore, a college professor whose father served with Lincoln during the Black Hawk War, that he was undefeated until he was thrown by a man named Lorenzo Dow Thompson: Lincoln's wrestling history is a mixture of fact and folklore. Although we don't know if this was truly the only match he lost in hundreds of fights (remember that some also claim he lost to Armstrong), we do know that the majority of accounts about Lincoln's wrestling matches end with Lincoln as the victor. Of course, this may have to do with the fact that many of these stories were retold as Lincoln was running for president, and may therefore have been presented by that time in a far more favorable light. Did Lincoln tell a crowd: I'm the Big Buck of this lick? This quote comes from the biography Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years, which was written by poet and author Carl Sandburg in 1926. Lincoln reportedly said this phrase after a raucous battle with his stepbrother, John Johnston, which was initiated by a man named William Grigsby. As Sandburg tells it, Lincoln defeated Johnston, went searching for Grigsby in the crowd, threw the man into the middle of the ring, and then sparked an all out brawl when he issued this challenge to the crowd: This is most likely not an exact quote from Lincoln. As with most of the stories about Abraham Lincoln's wrestling matches, however, it is rooted in truth.
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