Issue 91 (July 15th, 2025) 1955 Flashback: Thesz & Nomellini Have NWA World Title Unification Match in St. Louis, MORE

Welcome to the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel Daily Chronicle. The daily habit for an injection of significant events that happened on this day and relative time frames in Pro Wrestling History

Good morning!

Today we will flashback 70 years to a historic title unification match in St Louis, Missouri at the historic Kiel Auditorium.

I will have my take on this coming up in today's issue of The Daily Chronicle, once we do our daily wrestler tributes.

July 15th in the Time Tunnel:

Happy Birthday to those who have passed on and to those great wrestlers still with us:

In Memoriam:

Houston Harris\Bobo Brazil 1924

Anthony Charles Scott\Tony Charles 1935

Alex Karras 1935

Happy Birthday:

Mil Mascaras (83)

Jesse Ventura (74)

Robert L Ross. Jr\Ranger Ross (66)

Martin Wright\The Boogeyman (61)

Kahagas (52)

Kerry Drew\Cherry (50)

Heath Miller\Slater (42)

Anna Jernigan\Anna J (27)

RIP Memorial: We stop & remember those who have passed on this day and gave themselves to the business for us, the fans. We salute you and thank you.

Charles Messerole\Gary Lawler 7-15-2013 at the age of 59

This one is special to me for a couple of reasons.

I always take special care with this section to make sure I have details right and also to make sure to honor those who have passed on that perhaps maay have been long forgotten by fans and other publications. Sometimes, its someone who may have only been regionally known or was in the business a short time. But, I have never failed to come up with some kind of photo to honor that person in this section.

Charles was someone I got to know really well in 1987 and 1988. I was running a grouo of broadcasting stations in Kentucky and Indiana and to bolster the television stations we wanted to run pro wrestling. After a while I began to think we should just have out own pro wrestling company to run shows in the two states and to provide programming content.

Charles (Lawler) and I had met before and as we talked I began to think he could be my booker. I had talked to a couple of others about the job, one being Buck Robley, if you want to know how serious I was, but we were just starting out and I knew pro wrestling was headed into the doldrums, so I wasn’t sure it had legs and Charles was willing to take a chance and it was something he could handle from his home in Alton, Illinois wihtout relocating.

We probably ran 20 to 25 shows over that time period and a few television tapings and he did a great job bringing in talent we could afford and that also could do a great job. Charles was a very creative abd artsy kind of guy and he did have an uncanny resemblance to the Lawler we all know. He wore the single strap singlet and did all the Lawler moves and famous comeback. Crowds didn’t care, they loved it.

But, as wrestling continued its national expansion and as cultural tastes changed, the wrestling company didn’t work out beyond the Summer of 1988 but it was fun while it lasted. I’m ashamed to say I dont have one single photo of Charles. The videotapes of our television are stored away in boxes I havent unpacked in several moves now. Maybe that is something I’ll do when I get back to Kentucky.

Charles got sick and died way too young, leaving a wonderful family behind. I am glad I get to honor him in today’s issue, he helped me and added value to my life and to this day, is still the only guy I have ever worked out in the ring with.

Thank you, Charles and RIP

Select Time Tunnel Pro Wrestling Match Flashbacks:

7-15-1955 Lou Thesz (CH) defeated Leo Nomellini to unify the NWA World Heavyweight Championship at the Kiel Auditorium in St Louis, Missouri

I am writing a piece on this whole situation for an installment article in my Evolution of Pro Wrestling Series that shoul;d be ready for Paid Subscribers very soon.

I will explain the situation in brief in today's Daily Chronicle.

At this time, there were two wrestlers who had gained victories over Lou Thesz since he won the NWA World Heavyweight Title on July 20th, 1948. One of those was Whipper Billy Watson and the other was Leo Nomellini. Both of those victories were on disqualification wins.

Pictured: Leo Nomellini

Leo "The Lion' Nomellini played college football for the Minnesota Gophers and pro football for the San Francisco 49ers where he was drafted in the first round of the 1950 NFL Draft. He played all 14 seasons for them as a defensive tackle, playing his first three years on both sides of the ball, playing offensive tackle as well. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1969 and the College Hall of Fame in 1977.

He made his pro wrestling debut the same year he turned pro in football in 1950, wrestling in the off season in Minnesota due to his friendship with Verne Gagne, also a Minnesota Gopher.

He got over immediately with the West Coast crowds and within two years he had gained a tag team championship and in 1953 he was paired with the popular Gino Garibaldi. Lou Thesz and Nomellini had a rivalry immediately and due to his popularity on the football field and in the wrestling rings, Nomellini was heavily cheered and favored by the crowds in the West.

Thier match in 1953 drew 16.487 and $52,000 which was phenomenal at the time. Jack Dempsey was the referee for the match and Thesz worked as a subtle heel as he would bang away at Nomellini's ear usually on a rope break which sent the crowd into a frenzy. Also, Thesz had Strangler Lewis in his corner as his manager and Thesz would go out to the floor or stick his head through the ropes to confer with Lewis which drew jeers from the crowd.

In one of their rematches two years later, Nomellini had been victorious over Thesz in San Francisco on March 22nd, 1955. The match was even at one fall each when the referee, Mike Mazurki awarded the deciding fall to Nomellini when he disqualified Thesz in the match lasting 50 minutes and 45 seconds. As previously noted, Nomellini was really over in San Francisco and this match and card drew over 12,000 paying $41,000. So, if Joe Malcewicz, the NWA booker in San Francisco paid the NWA standard fees, and since he was also an important committee Chairman in the Alliance, I'm sure he probably did, then Thesz would have been paid $4,100 for the match in San Francisco plus his plane fare from Houston, Texas which would have been more or less in the $300 dollar range in 1955. The NWA Office in St Louis would have received $2,050 as a booking fee for the Champion.

Thesz wrestled 15 times in March of 1955 so you can roughly surmise how lucrative this was for everyone involved. But Lou didn't like working some of the mid to small towns on his schedule, however Muchnick was committed that every NWA member office and their fans should be able to see the World Champion, no matter the size of town or house. So, Lou was going to work in San Francisco, Houston, St Louis and Memphis, but he was going to work Sioux City, Birmingham and Peoria also, and that didn't always sit well.

And Lou Thesz was not a man to keep this kind of dissatisfaction to himself.

There is not very much footage available of Nomellini at all and none of any of his matches with Thesz. We do have a very short clip of him wrestling Rikidozan to give you an idea of what his style was like in the ring:

Video clip: Rikidozan vs Leo Nomellini

Although I do believe from the newspaper descirptions and lengths of his matches, he was much smoother and had more versitility than Goldberg in the ring, but he does remind me of having that kind of body and impact with his work.

From March 22nd through July 15th, Nomellini claimed to be the NWA World Heavyweight Champion and had the backing of the California Athletic Commission to uphold the title change even though the National Wrestling Alliance had the rule in its by-laws that the title could not change hands on a DQ. This rule was put in place at the NWA Convention in 1953.

Regardless of the NWA governing rules, the California Athletic Commission held strong that the match had taken place in San Francisco and that Referee Mazurki was within his rights as an office employee and representative of the Commission to award the match and the title to Nomellini. So, from March through July, there were two NWA World Title claimants and Sam Muchnick had an opportunity to build to the unification match in St. Louis.

70 years ago tonight, Thesz won the match ending Nomellini’s claim to the title.

Pictured: Lou Thesz NWA World Heavyweight Champion

Coming soon, I will outline all the details behind how this happened around the World Championship, but essentially, some of the NWA booking office members were growing weary with Thesz as the title holder. Muchnick was being barraged by complaints about Thesz' attitude while he was in the various towns as the visiting champion. Many of these objections were coming West of St. Louis, so Muchnick devised a plan that would divide the title for a time in 1955 but would result in a unification of the belt again, of course, in St, Louis, which is today's 70-Year Flashback Match.

As I mentioned, I will outline all the details around this "divided title" plan coming soon in “The Evolution of Pro Wrestling" Series.

One Thing I Learned Today About Pro Wrestling History

Leo "The Lion" Nomellini won the NWA World Tag Team Title in San Francisco with Hombre Montana in February 1952.

Thank You for Reading

I'm Tony Richards, Pro Wrestling Historian, Author and Storyteller. I share pro wrestling historical items in each issue of the Time Tunnel Pro Wrestling History Newsletter. Thanks for reading! If you enjoy my information on select events, matches and insights, please share it with folks you think might like to be a subscriber!

Remember, paid subscribers get access to exclusive and special content such as some special issues including a multi-part deep dives on wrestling territories, wrestler bios and championship title histories, special audio and video interviews on territory pro wrestling and more available in The Vault of the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel for Paid Subscribers.