When you think of wrestling, nowadays showbiz springs to mind, But real wrestling was very much alive and kicking back in the 1030's, when a young man from Michigan stepped into the ring for the first time. This man would go on to create a wrestling legacy, and on numerous occasions he has been branded, and with good reason, the greatest wrestler to have ever lived.

Lou Thesz was trained by some of the greatest wrestlers of that time, in Ad Santel and Ed Lewis. But prior to their involvement with Thesz, his father had been teaching him to wrestle from the age of eight. At that young age, Lou Thesz was performing strenuous neck exercises, as well as being taught the Greco-Roman form of wrestling, both from his father. Lou carried this form of wrestling on right through his career, and it was with this background that he went on to achieve such high levels of success, and leave the everlasting legacy on the sport.

Ed Lewis taught Lou Thesz the art of "hooking", meaning that Thesz would stretch opponents with painful holds. Thesz has gone on to say that he only used this during matches when he was defending his World Championship against somebody in their hometown, as he knew that judges would give the hometown sueprstar the victory no matter how much better Thesz was.

In 1937, at the tender age of 21, Lou Thesz shocked the world, by becoming the youngest World Heavyweight Champion in history, a record that still stands to this day. However, before the match began nobody gave him a chance, other than George Tragos, an Olympic medal winner who had been working with Thesz. After a period of the match had passed, the champion, Everett Marshall, reportedly said to the referee "This kid is in good shape", with the referee telling him that Thesz had plenty more left in the tank. He was proven right too, as Thesz went on to defeat Everett Marshall, and in doing so winning his first World Heavyweight Championship, aged 20. This was the first of many during the long career of Thesz.

Thesz continued to be involved with the championship for the next two years, and simultaneously he was working harder than ever with both Ad Sentel and Ed Lewis. It was this hard training through these years that were the most important in the career of Thesz, as although he had already made history by becoming the youngest World Champion ever to grace the ring, the peak of his career was still yet to come. What happened from this point on, nobody would have been able to predict it.

Thesz earned over $150,000 a year for over 30 consecutive years, and he even used to go skiing between title defenses.

When the NWA was formed, they set out to takeover Thesz's company, and as part of that deal, the first ever NWA champion, Orville Brown, had to defend the championship against Lou Thesz. Brown was involved in a car accident, and so the title was handed to Lou. He then set out to unify all heavyweight championship belts, between 1949 and 1956. In total Thesz held the World Heavyweight Championship for thirteen years, a figure which has never even been approached by any other wrestler, and this was during the time when wrestling was real, and every superstar was in top athletic form and was well trained in some form of wrestling.

In 1954, Thesz, who was proud of his wrestling ability and the background from which he gained it, was scheduled to take on Gorgeous George for the World Heavyweight Championship. George was a current heavyweight champion at the time, and he was facing Thesz, NWA Champion of 6 years by this point, to unify their championships. Thesz called George a "gimmick wrestler", due to his appearances on mainstream television and not being focused on his wrestling. Thesz said that he, as well as many of the 'pure' wrestlers at the time, wanted to eliminate gimmick wrestlers, and Thesz did enough to defeat Gorgeous George, unifying his title belt with the NWA Championship.

Lou Thesz recalled that during his match against Gorgeous George, he locked in a hold and George clutched his chest screaming "Oh, my heart!" Thesz was deducted a point for bursting out laughing at this point.

Thesz went on to compete in Japan, competing in a series of sixty minute time limit draws with Rikidozan. With Rikidozan already a huge fan favourite in Japan, the recognition from the Japanese fans that Lou Thesz not only showed respect towards their hero, but also could test him and had a similar level of wrestling ability, coupled with the fact that Rikidozan showed respect towards Thesz, made Thesz a huge fan favourite in Japan.

When Thesz semi-retired, he dropped the NWA Championship, and during this moment there was a lot of controversy surrounding his decision. As the wrestling fans around America wanted to see him hand the championship to his real-life rival Buddy Rogers, Thesz made an unpopular decision and instead handed the title to Dick Hutton. He accepted the controversy that surrounded the incident, as he stepped away from wrestling for the next five years.

Rumour has it that in 1963, Buddy Rogers, who had won the championship from Dick Hutton, was considering dropping the NWA Championship, and that this is what sparked Thesz into coming out of semi-retirement. Thesz reportedly told Rogers that "we can do this the easy way, or the hard way" and following this, the two men had a final championship match, with Lou Thesz coming out on top. With this victory, he became the oldest man to ever win the World Heavyweight Championship, and he went on to hold it for a further five years.

Lou Thesz made a total of over 250 successful World Heavyweight Championship defenses

In 1994, at the age of 74, Lou Thesz was scheduled to compete in one final match, and so as his training, he was lifting weights of 200lbs, with the reasoning of "A man of my age should only be lifting two hundred pounds, so I limit myself to that weight". So as well as being the man with so many records in wrestling that will undoubtedly last a long, long time, he was also one of the hardest working wrestlers of all time. He would go onto lose that match, due to his artificial hip failing him during the bout. However, it is a testament to this man's career that he would even be able to climb into the ring at the age of 74, and putting on a performance for thousands of wrestling fans one last time is all that he wanted to do.

Lou Thesz is the youngest World Heavyweight Champion in history, he was the oldest World Heavyweight Champion ni history and his championship reigns combined span a greater time than any champion before or after him. In addition to this he is the only man to have wrestled in seven consecutive decades. He may have passed away in 2002, but the legacy of Lou Thesz is one that will live on forever.