![]() But Youssuf absorbed the initial shock, and with one hand took hold of Sabès’ neck with terrific force, brought him to the mat, and turned him over for a fall. Youssuf’s first match in France was against Sabès, and at the start of the bout the Frenchman strode forward to take up his “irresistible” front belt hold. In a search to find someone who could defeat Sabès, Doublier visited Turkey and brought back three wrestlers: Kara Osman, Nurullah, and the 6’2″, 250-pound Youssuf Ishmaelo. An athlete considered by Alan Calvert, the pioneer of American weight training, to have been one of the three strongest men of recent history, and of whom Edmond Desbonnet wrote, “For many years he has left in the world of wrestling and wrestlers the memory of someone irreplaceable.”Īccording to Desbonnet in his book Les Rois de la Lutte (The Kings of Wrestling), (Paris, 1910), the Turkish invasion began in 1894 after a wrestler named Doublier was defeated by a rival, Sabès. ![]() Youssuf Ishmaelo, the Terrible Turk: the original, in fact, of all the “Terrible Turks” who invaded western wrestling arenas over the past century.
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