Leon Dumont Splits from Paul Pons and Exposes Him as a Fraud

A behind the scenes split reshapes the French pro wrestling scene in 1905.

Left to right: Leon Dumont, Paul Pons, Ivan Poddubny, Jess Pedersen

At the start of 1901 the veteran French pro wrestler Leon Dumont had a troupe of wrestlers (which included Raoul le Boucher and Simon Antonitch among others) and they were touring France. At the same time the top French pro wrestling star Paul Pons was in the USA. Not too long after his return to Europe Pons joined forces with Dumont and essentially the Dumont troupe became the Pons troupe. The two were no strangers to each other and had worked together previously. This was them forming an official partnership going forward. For the next several years Pons and Dumont were partners behind the scenes and managed the troupe together, turning it into one of the premier wrestling troupes in Europe. Pons was the headline star of the troupe and was winning pretty much all of its tournaments. I think most likely Dumont was the one running the day-to-day affairs of the troupe and was the booker if you will (i.e. he was the one putting the cards together and deciding the match outcomes), but Pons was the ultimate boss and had final say.

Toward the end of 1904 there was the third annual Gold Belt tournament in Paris, which was the Pons troupe's highest-profile tournament of the year. Pons won it, for the third year in a row. In addition to all the usual stars of the troupe (Pons, le Boucher, Antonitch, etc.) they also brought in several Turks, mostly notably Ahmed Madrali, who had spent the past year in the UK where he was a big attraction and George Hackenschmidt's main rival. Another notable inclusion in the Gold Belt tournament was the up-and-coming German star Ernst Siegfried, who had been a supporting star for Madrali in the UK and had a reputation of being a very legit wrestler. Right after the Gold Belt tournament the Pons troupe, including the Turks and Siegfried, headed to Rouen for a short tournament (again, won by Pons). And that's when the partnership between Pons and Dumont fell apart and they went their separate ways. The exact reasons for the split are not known.

Here's where it gets interesting though. You would think most of the wrestlers would stick with the meal ticket Pons, but no - almost everyone, with the notable exception of Raoul le Boucher, went with Dumont, which to me backs the theory that Dumont was the brains behind the operation and the wrestlers trusted him over Pons. The split left the Pons troupe very depleted in terms of talent while Dumont now had a strong troupe of his own. The newly established Dumont troupe had Ahmed Madrali as its headline star and guys like Ernst Siegfried, Simon Antonitch, Redjeb Pengal, Maurice Gambier, Jean Calvet, Ivan Shemyakin, Alphonse Steurs, etc. as supporting stars. For the next two months the Dumont troupe toured France, putting on short tournaments in a number of French cities - Lyon, Carcassonne, Narbonne, Pau, Tarbes, Montpellier, Toulouse, Toulon, Vienne, Dijon and probably some others that I'm not aware of. 

But Dumont did not stop there. In early January "Les Sports", one of the major French sports newspapers, reported the news of the Pons-Dumont split, and then a few days later Dumont himself sent in a letter to the newspaper to provide further details about the split. And what Dumont actually did was expose that Pons' past victories had been fixed and that it was he [Dumont] who had been paying off popular wrestlers to lose to Pons. For example, Dumont said that for the 1903 Gold Belt tournament he had paid the following amounts to the following wrestlers to lose to Pons: Jess Pedersen (1,000 francs), Raoul le Boucher (500 francs), Laurent le Beaucairois (500 francs), Simon Antonitch (200 francs). Le Boucher, le Beaucairois, Pedersen and Pons then issued responses to the press denying those claims, of course. And while the Dumont troupe was on tour Dumont kept issuing challenges to Pons and le Boucher to take on his stars Madrali, Siegfried and Antonitch. At one point he even deposited a stake of 1,000 French francs, but of course these challenges went nowhere (as was often the case with such shoot challenges between rival groups). Dumont was also claiming that now that Pons and le Boucher were out of the picture his wrestlers no longer had to engage in fixed matches and all of their matches were going to be real...

Another claim coming from Dumont was that during the 1904 Gold Belt tournament Dumont had decided he wasn't going to be paying for Pons' victories any more and Ernst Siegfried in particular wasn't willing to play ball and lay down for Pons. However, Pons and le Boucher convinced Siegfried to lose and promised to pay him well for it... but they did not pay him at all. So now Siegfried was pissed off at them and wanted to beat them for real, which according to Dumont he could easily do.

Leon Dumont reveals it all to "Les Sports" (12 January 1905)

Despite the revelations, Pons' reputation did not take much of a hit and he continued being a very popular star in France. He did, however, stay away from wrestling in France for a while and toured Italy and South America until November 1905 when he returned to Paris for a Cup of France tournament, backed by the popular "L'Auto" sports newspaper, which had also backed the Gold Belt tournaments in the past. Whether that absence from France was coincidental or on purpose to allow all the match fixing talk to die down, I don't know. By November 1905 Pons had also rebuilt his troupe. It now featured a line-up of him, Raoul le Boucher, Aimable de la Calmette, Emile Vervet, Ivan Shemyakin, Ivan Romanoff, Alphonse Steurs and some others.

Meanwhile, in October 1905 there was another interesting development. A brand new sports federation was created with the intent of governing wrestling in France, with a big focus on pro wrestling specifically. The name of this new federation was FSFL (Fédération des Sociétés Françaises de Luttes). It had delegates all over France, it put together a list of official referees that would be allowed to referee the matches and it issued an official set of rules for the Greco-Roman pro wrestling matches in France. Publicly, one of the reasons given for the creation of this new governing body was to limit all the faking going on in wrestling. While at first it may have appeared FSFL was aiming to govern all pro wrestling in France, ultimately that wasn't the case and it worked only with some of the pro wrestling troupes (especially the Poddubny one). 

The newly created FSFL governing body authorized "Les Sports" to organize a World Championship tournament in Paris in November-December 1905 and worked closely with the newspaper going forward. That was an interesting development on its own, because "Les Sports" had no involvement in pro wrestling previously. The previous two World Championship tournaments in Paris (1901 and 1903) were backed by "L'Auto", which was now doing business with Pons. So now in November and December 1905, for the first time ever, there were two big Greco-Roman pro wrestling tournaments happening at the same time in Paris - the World Championship by "Les Sports" and the Cup of France by "L'Auto".

Sidenote: The full history of the World Championship tournaments in Paris is available here.

But obviously you can't have a World Championship tournament without notable stars and this is where things got even more interesting. The tournament by "Les Sports" featured what would become known as the Poddubny and Pedersen troupe. The Russian Ivan Poddubny had wrestled in the 1903 Paris World Championship and was eliminated by Raoul le Boucher in a controversial match. Poddubny now won the 1905 World Championship and this turned him into one of the biggest names in European pro wrestling. In the final he defeated the 1903 Paris World champion the Dane Jess Pedersen. The 1905 World Championship also featured the Danish World champion claimant Magnus Bech-Olsen and the 1900 Paris World champion Laurent le Beaucairois. In other words, to become World champion for the first time Poddubny went through four former World champions, which was a higher level of competition than any other previous Paris World champion had ever had.

Where does the aforementioned Leon Dumont tie into all of this? Well, it seems he was the one pulling the strings behind the scenes the whole time. His troupe from earlier on in 1905 with Madrali as the headline star was short-lived. After the troupe disbanded it doesn't seem like Dumont did much. He did wrestle in a couple of tournaments outside of France and the second one in particular is notable. In early November 1905 Dumont was part of a tournament with the Jess Pedersen troupe in Lausanne, Switzerland, which was promoted by... "Les Sports" newspaper. That same "Les Sports" that Dumont made all the Pons revelations to and that same "Les Sports" which was about to promote the World Championship in Paris. From Lausanne the Pedersen troupe headed straight to Paris to join up with Poddubny and the rest of the crew. From there on there was the Poddubny and Pedersen troupe, which toured around Europe for next half a year as one of the top European pro wrestling troupes, Pedersen usually putting Poddubny over in the tournament finals. The manager of the troupe behind the scenes? Leon Dumont.

So to sum up everything so far. Dumont and the biggest French star Pons are running one of the top European wrestling troupes together. They split. Most of the wrestlers go with Dumont and Pons has to rebuild from scratch. A new pro wrestling governing body is formed and "Les Sports", which Dumont already seemingly had some connection to, gets into pro wrestling and promotes a World Championship tournament (their first of several over the next few years). Dumont brokers a deal with Poddubny and Pedersen and puts together a new high-profile European pro wrestling troupe, making Poddubny World champion and a major star in the process. Quite a few developments in the span of a single year!

And the story does not end there. Even as late as 1908 Poddubny (i.e. Dumont's star) and Pons were feuding publicly and Poddubny in particular was challenging Pons to wrestle him for real. That ultimately led to Pons suing Poddubny (and "Les Sports") for unfair competition and defamation of character. You can read all about that story here.