R. Asselin

Roy Asselin vs George Temple, At Ringside with the Wrestlers

Remember Shirley Temple? She went from Hollywood stardom in the mid-1930s to US Ambassador to Czechoslovakia in the early 1990s. Did you know her big brother George was a professional wrestler? I did not know that. According to Cagematch, the 209-pound six-footer wrestled from 1946 to 1952, first in Los Angeles and eventually across the USA and Canada.

The match above took place at the Hollywood Legion Stadium in 1951, an NWA-sanctioned show, in which Temple took on the cleverly named Roy Asselin and lost. Temple is the thickly set one. Quebecois Roy, six-one, 225#, former Mr. Canada at age 17, worked under a half-dozen names from 1947 to 1974, mostly as Ovila Asselin. He was 23 when he covered a walloped 38-year-old George for a ref's three count.

The match is not extraordinary, but it's one of a few mid-century matches that were saved on film. That's especially nice since Asselin was a competitive bodybuilder as well as a wrestler. Various writers report that his ring style was not fancy. Still, he got the job done. As one YouTube commenter notes, it's rare that we see "a match where the guy kicks so dramatically but still gets his shoulders held down for the count." I hadn't thought of that, but the idea of a guy bucking and kicking and still getting pinned by a younger, more muscular opponent hits the right buttons for me.

Roy Asselin