Ghulam Mohammad Baksh (22 May 1878 - 23 May 1960), better known by the ring name The Great Gama, was a wrestler in India and later Pakistan.
Born in Amritsar in 1878, he was awarded the Indian version of the World Heavyweight Championship on 15 October 1910. Undefeated in a career spanning more than 52 years, he is considered one of the greatest wrestlers of all time.
Video The Great Gama
Early life
Gama was born in the city of Amritsar into an ethnic Kashmiri family of wrestlers, in what was then the Punjab region of British India. He hailed from a prominent wrestling family which was known to produce world-class wrestlers. Gama had two wives: one in Pakistan and the other in Baroda, Gujarat, India.
After the death of his wrestler-father Muhammad Aziz Baksh when he was six, Gama was put under the care of his maternal grandfather and wrestler Nun Pahalwan. Following his death, Gama was taken care of by his uncle Ida, another wrestler, who also began training Gama in wrestling. He was first noticed at the age of ten, in 1888, when he entered a strongman competition held in Jodhpur, which included many gruelling exercises such as squats. The contest was attended by more than four hundred wrestlers and Gama was among the last fifteen, and was named by winner by the Maharaja of Jodhpur due to his young age. Gama was subsequently taken into training by the Maharaja of Datia.
Maps The Great Gama
Career
Training and diet
Gama's daily training consisted of grappling with forty of his fellow wrestlers in the court. He used to do five thousand Baithaks (squats) and three thousand Dands (pushups). Gama's daily diet was 2 gallons (7.5 litres) of milk, a pound and a half of crushed almond paste made into a tonic drink along with fruit juice and other ingredients to promote good digestion. This high protein and high energy diet helped him accumulate muscle mass.
First encounter with Raheem Bakhsh Sultani Wala
Fame came to Gama at the age of 17 when he challenged then-Indian Wrestling Champion, middle-aged Raheem Bakhsh Sultani Wala, another Muslim wrestler from Gujranwala, now in Punjab, Pakistan. At about 7 feet tall, with a very impressive win-loss record, Raheem was expected to easily defeat the 5'7" Gama. Raheem's only drawback was his age as he was much older than Gama, and near the end of his career. The bout continued for hours and eventually ended in a draw. The contest with Raheem was the turning point in Gama's career. After that, he was looked upon as the next contender for the Indian Wrestling Championship. In the first bout Gama remained defensive, but in the second bout, Gama went on the offensive. Despite severe bleeding from his nose and ears, he managed to deal out a great deal of damage to Raheem Bakhsh. By 1910, Gama had defeated all the prominent Indian wrestlers who faced him except the champion, Raheem Bakhsh Sultani Wala. At this time, he focused his attention on the rest of the world. Accompanied by his younger brother Imam Bakhsh, Gama sailed to England to compete with the Western Wrestlers but could not gain instant entry, because of his lower height.
In London, Gama issued a challenge that he could throw any three wrestlers in thirty minutes of any weight class. This announcement however was seen as a bluff by the wrestlers and their wrestling promoter R. B. Benjamin. For a long time no one came forward to accept the challenge. To break the ice, Gama presented another challenge to specific heavy weight wrestlers. He challenged Stanislaus Zbyszko and Frank Gotch, either he would beat them or pay them the prize money and go home. The first professional wrestler to take his challenge was the American Benjamin Roller. In the bout, Gama pinned Roller in 1 minute 40 seconds the first time, and in 9 minutes 10 seconds the other. On the second day, he defeated 12 wrestlers and thus gained entry to official tournament.
Match with Stanislaus Zbyszko
He was pitted against world champion Stanislaus Zbyszko and the date of bout was set as 10 September 1910. Zbyszko was now regarded among the premier wrestlers in the world; and he would then take on the mammoth challenge of India's feared Great Gama, an undefeated champion who had been unsuccessful in his attempts to lure Frank Gotch into a match. And so, on September 10, 1910, Zbyszko faced the Great Gama in the finals of the John Bull World Championships in London. The match was £250 in prize money and the John Bull Belt. Within a minute, Zbyszko was taken down and remained in that position for the remaining 2 hours and 35 minutes of the match. There were a few brief moments when Zbyszko would get up, but he just ended back down in his previous position. Crafting a defensive strategy of hugging the mat in order to nullify Great Gama's greatest strengths, Zbyszko wrestled the Indian legend to a draw after nearly three hours of grappling, though Zbyszko's lack of tenacity angered many of the fans in attendance.
The two men were set to face each other again but Zbyszko didn't show up and Gama was announced victor.
At forty-eight years old he was now known as the "Great wrestler" of India.
Fight with Balram Heeraman Singh Yadav
After defeating Zbyszko, Gama beat Jesse Petersen in February 1929. The bout lasted only one and a half minutes. This was the last bout that Gama fought during his career.[citation needed] In the 1940s he was invited by the Nizam of Hyderabad and defeated all his fighters.The Nizam then sent him to face the wrestler Balram Heeraman Singh Yadav(THE LION FROM HYDERABAD), who was never defeated in his life.The fight was very long, Gama was unable to defeat Heeraman and eventually neither wrestler won. After the independence and partitioning of India in 1947, Gama moved to Pakistan. Although Gama did not retire until 1952, he failed to find any other opponents. After his retirement, he trained his nephew Bholu Pahalwan, who held the Pakistani wrestling championship for almost 20 years.
Death
The Great Gama died in Lahore, Pakistan on 23 May 1960 after a period of illness. He was given land by the government but he still struggled to pay for treatment for his heart and asthma. Therefore G. D. Birla, an industrialist and wrestling fan, donated Rs. 2,000 and a monthly pension of Rs. 300, and the Government of Pakistan also increased the pension to Gama and supported his medical expenses until his death.
Today, a doughnut-shaped exercise disc weighing 95 kg, used by him for squats, is housed at the National Institute of Sports (NIS) Museum at Patiala.
Influenced
Bruce Lee was an avid follower of Gama's training routine. Lee read articles about Gama and how he employed his exercises to build his legendary strength for wrestling, and Lee quickly incorporated them into his own routine. The training routines Lee used included "the cat stretch", "the squat" (known as "baithak"), and also known as the "deep-knee bend."
Championships and accomplishments
- Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame
- Class of 2015
References
External links
- The Lion of the Punjab - Gama in England, 1910 By Graham Noble
- Subaltern Bodies and Nationalist Physiques: Gama the Great and the Heroics of Indian Wrestling by Joseph Alter, Department of Anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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