While working on my latest book project, DragonKingKarl’s Pioneer Era Pro Wrestling Omnibus, I have discovered many fascinating stories and people I did not previously know very much about. Few have turned out to be as interesting as Uzile Pricket.
Uzile Pricket is a name I was not previously very familiar with. The bulk of my research on the pioneer era of wrestling came in the early 2000s when I first wrote my DragonKing Press Pioneers of Wrestling Special booklet. These were the wild west days of pre-1900 research. Finding old newspaper articles back then involved laborious hours spent searching through microfilm at a library somewhere that actually kept old newspapers or having contact with a wrestling historian who had previously done that hard work in their own region. It was an era of the rare nugget of information and tons of misinformation, ballyhoo, and kayfabe that permeated the books and newsletters of that time almost a quarter of a century ago. It also did not help that back in the 1800s almost every time Uzile Pricket’s name was printed in a newspaper it was misspelled. I am fairly confident that I have the name spelled correctly here since a police report exists with his name on it and that is how it is spelled on his tombstone located in Hamilton, OH.
Chronologically, the first thing I learned about Uzile Pricket is that he was born on August 5, 1840, in Cold Run, NJ… presumably. I immediately liked Uzile because that too is my birthday, only 131 years earlier. At least that is what some biographies back in the 1800s claim. I have no reason to doubt it at this point but, as you will soon learn about Uzile Pricket, his story is complex and highly entertaining. There are many “True Crime” stories that can be told about pro wrestlers, but few are on par with the life and times of Uzile Pricket.
On August 24, 1863, during the American Civil War, Uzile Pricket was arrested in Washington, DC for impersonating a police officer. While doing so, he robbed a couple of a sum of money of which he later confessed to taking a $100 share of in silver. At that time, he told detectives he was a native of New Jersey and listed his job as a “butcher”. So, one of the first things we know about the 23-year-old Uzile Pricket is that he was a con artist, and that trait would serve him well during his career as a pro wrestler at least until it got him killed.
By the following year, Uzile Pricket had become a good enough wrestler to be facing one of the most respected wrestlers in the early pioneer era from New York, Harry Hill. On August 17, 1864, in New York City, NY at Cremorne Garden under Collar & Elbow rules, Uzile Pricket defeated Harry Hill in two straight falls for $1000 and the “Championship of America”. Uzile Pricket was 24 years old, and Harry Hill was reported to be 45 years old at this point. Harry Hill was also one of the leading sports promoters of the time and while older pro wrestling title histories fail to list either Harry Hill or Uzile Pricket in their official lineage of the American Wrestling championship it does appear that Harry Hill did have some degree of a legitimate claim to the title and thus, would have passed it on to Uzile Pricket here. Newspapers often called Uzile Pricket the “Champion of America” based on this claim.
On March 7, 1866, we find Uzile Pricket in Philadelphia, PA at the Tremble Hotel where he defeated John Mitchell for $850. The police were needed to keep order and the audience actually collected a donation to give to Mitchell apparently feeling he did not fairly lose the match. The Chicago newspapers stated that the sum was actually $1,500 and that Pricket was the American champion. There seemed to already be suspicions about Uzile Pricket’s matches and those suspicious would later seem to be well founded.
I think it is important here to take a short side quest and clear up a long-standing mythology about professional wrestling. In the modern era, nobody is under the illusion that professional wrestling is a real sport. It is pre-determined entertainment, and that is perfectly fine. It is not fake, there are real risks and dangers in even the most basic pro wrestling matches, but the outcomes are predetermined. The long-held belief by most of the public seems to be that pro wrestling was real at least up through the time of Frank Gotch but my research for both the upcoming pioneer era book and my 1000 Hours Podcast series has made it clear that a great deal of professional wrestling before 1900 was also not on the level, though for a different reason. Not so much to “entertain fans” though by the late pioneer era that was a consideration, but rather to defraud gamblers out of money. It was, in many cases, a crooked sport, and Uzile Pricket did nothing to help out that reputation even in the 1860s.
Uzile Pricket was often mentioned in newspapers from the northeast to the deep south throughout the 1860s, wrestling in a variety of places, but probably his most infamous match took place in Nashville, TN on October 15, 1866. In a news story that was reported nationally in numerous newspapers and appeared to be a highly sensational scandal, American Champion Uzile Pricket was defeated by Simon Thompson, an African American wrestler at the Racetracks in Nashville, TN. Truthfully, Simon Thompson wasn’t even a wrestler, he was a blacksmith. I also am not certain if Simon Thompson was in on the con or not. Regardless, Uzile Pricket was substantially ahead in the betting, yet Thompson won the match easily. The match was believed to have been a work (a thrown match, one in which Uzile Pricket took a dive) and several hundred people lost money and attempted to lynch Uzile Pricket later that night at his hotel. Newspapers in Chicago, Wisconsin, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina, Michigan, Missouri, California, Vermont, and many other places across the country ran the headline “American Wrestling Champion Defeated by a Negro” for months afterward, some reporting it as a con job, some reporting it as a straight story but obviously playing it up due to the racial conflict involved.
Over the next couple of years, Uzile Pricket continued to wrestle around the country. After nearly losing his life in Nashville, TN working a con one might think that Uzile would have learned his lesson but apparently not so and in 1868 it would possibly cost him his life.
On June 10, 1868, Uzile Pricket was killed in Hamilton, OH when he was found shot in the back of the head and severely beaten in a saloon. He was accused the previous evening of “working” a match and fleecing gamblers out of the betting money. Pricket had matched against Tim Waller whom Pricket outweighed by 60 pounds. The crowd of around 200 people believed that Pricket intentionally lost in an effort to scam them out of the betting money with several people ``losing heavily” and one man it is said lost $900 on the match.
Later that night at a place called, and I swear I am not making this up, The Hole in the Wall Saloon, Uzile Pricket was found with his head laying on a table apparently passed out but upon further inspection it was discovered his face was badly cut and he had been shot in the back of the head. A man named John Griffen was ultimately held for the murder of Pricket after admitting to having been in a fight with him earlier.
In 2017 the local Hamilton Journal News newspaper out of Hamilton, OH published this account of the execution of the suspect John Griffen, “A traveling wrestler and old-time Hamilton political bosses played a part in the hanging of the first civilian executed in Butler County… Local historian Richard O. Jones highlighted those details during a talk in August 2017 at Miami University Hamilton’s downtown location.
Irishman John Griffin, a jovial, large blacksmith, was the first of only two people executed in Butler County, not long after the Civil War. A traveling New Jersey wrestler, Uzile Pricket, making the rounds of the Midwest, ‘fought the best wrestler in Butler County,’ Jones said.
Afterward, Pricket was found dead, and Griffin later paid the price in Hamilton...
‘It’s a pretty significant part of the county’s past. The story’s related even in the early history books, the 1888 history of Butler County, but also it kind of gives an insight into what Hamilton was like, back in those early days,’ he said. ‘We don’t really think of Hamilton as a frontier town, along the lines of Tombstone or Dodge City, but pretty much, that’s what it was, back in those days.’
Griffin’s hanging took place March 5, 1869, and he gave an eloquent speech on the gallows, proclaiming his innocence. The hanging took place in a former jail on Court Street. It wasn’t a public hanging. Instead, a ticket was required for admission.”
From Civil War era scammer to the Champion Wrestler of America to a sports figure whom the newspapers of the day openly question the legitimacy of, to being murdered in an Ohio Saloon, the story of Uzile Pricket is one of the earliest examples of a multitude of crazy true crime, life and death stories in pro wrestling’s wild history.
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