When an Ottawa man wrestled a bear at Lansdowne Park in 1966, it took a courtroom to decide who was the definitive winner.

Before an Ottawa jury could decide whether John Szigeti had earned $3,000 by pinning a massive black bear in a wrestling match, his lawyer, Arthur Cogan, had to answer this fundamental question: Does a bear even have shoulders?

To understand why the question ever came up in an Ottawa courtroom, let’s back up a couple of years — to July 1966.

It was wrestling night in Ottawa — a Wednesday. The ring was set up at the middle of the football field at Lansdowne Park. The main event was a tag-team match pitting Lord Athol Layton and Edouard Carpentier against The Masked Yankees (No. 1 and No. 2) in a best-of-three-falls contest. Another bout on the card featured 82-pound Little Brutus against 91-pounder Jamaica Kid.

And there was Terrible Ted, a seven-foot black bear whose weight was billed as an improbably precise 692 pounds. Ted would fight his owner, Gene DuBois — the wrestling name of Dave McKigney — that night, along with anyone else who dared get in the ring with him. Event promoter Howard Darwin — he of Ottawa 67’s, London Knights and Ottawa Lynx fame — had offered a $3,000 reward — the equivalent today of almost $27,000 — to anyone who could pin Ted.

This was nothing new to Ted who, in an era when wrestling bears was considered entertainment, had his claws and teeth removed and was paraded across North American arenas where he routinely tossed men from wrestling rings with, in some cases, a single swipe of his paw. According to newspaper reports at the time, the Gaspé-born bear had previously faced some 1,500 men — beating them all, according to DuBois — before Szigeti entered the ring against him.

It was definitely Szigeti’s first match against a bear. But the 36-year-old, 220-pound Hungarian-born welder had wrestled large animals before. He’d worked in an abattoir in his native Hungary, and was familiar with fighting 400-pound pigs.

Besides, he desperately needed the money. His truck had recently been hit by lightning and needed replacing, an expense Szigeti could ill afford. So into the ring he went, incidentally just seconds after the previous challenger unceremoniously flew out of it.

The match lasted about four-and-a-half minutes. Szigeti later testified that he got his arms around Ted, lifted the bear slightly and twisted him off balance, bringing him onto his back. Szigeti ended up laying across Ted’s chest.

It was DuBois, though, who ended the match, kicking one of Szigeti’s arms to break the hold, and then removing Ted’s muzzle. Szigeti scrambled out of the ring, while the crowd took the Hungarian’s side with shouts of “Fake!” “Phoney!” and “Put the muzzle back on.”

Szigeti was convinced he had won.

The promoter disagreed, and didn’t pay the $3,000.

So Szigeti announced he was going to sue.

The case landed with Cogan, the lawyer who thought he could win.

After all, the advertised offer was clear enough: $3,000 to anyone who could pin Terrible Ted. The defence eventually conceded both that Darwin had made the offer and that Szigeti had accepted it. All that remained was whether Szigeti actually pinned the bear.

Which brought Cogan to the shoulders.

“If it was an athletic event,” he told me the other day, his memory uncanny for something that happened 60 years ago, “then I treat it as an athletic event.

“So then I treat the bear as an opponent. And an opponent has to have shoulders to be pinned.”

Under the Ontario wrestling rules that Cogan found, an opponent’s shoulders had to be held to the mat for at least three seconds.

“So the first question,” Cogan recalls, “was ‘Does a bear have shoulders?’”

Which is how, in May 1968, a bear skeleton ended up under a sheet in an Ottawa courtroom.

Cogan had gone to the National Museum of Natural Sciences — now the Canadian Museum of Nature — on McLeod Street to enlist the help of Philip Youngman, its curator of mammals. Youngman not only agreed to testify that bears possessed the required anatomy to lose a wrestling match, but Cogan also persuaded the museum to lend him a polar bear skeleton.

“I couldn’t bring a bear into court,” Cogan says, “but I sort of did.”

The skeleton was transported to the courthouse and hidden beneath a sheet before the six jurors entered. Then, he recalls, he pulled the sheet away “in dramatic fashion.”

Behold: a bear.

Youngman walked the jury through the animal’s anatomy, identifying the shoulder structures and explaining why they could lie flat against the ground. He also said that a standing bear isn’t that stable, and could be pushed over without much difficulty.

Having proven that a bear could, at least anatomically, be pinned, Cogan still had to prove that Szigeti had actually pinned Ted.

Szigeti testified that he’d held Ted down for about 15 seconds. Three spectators who testified on his behalf put it at somewhere between six and 10 seconds.

Several defence witnesses disagreed. Most damagingly, referee Kenneth “Tiger” Tasker, testified that Szigeti hadn’t held Ted down long enough.

Nearly six decades later, Cogan still thinks Tasker’s testimony may have decided the case. He was, after all, the referee.

The three-day civil trial went to the jury on May 8, 1968. They began deliberating at 3:20 that afternoon.

And they deliberated.

And deliberated.

Just before 9 p.m., they returned to tell the judge — Archibald M. Carter — that they couldn’t reach the five-to-one majority required for a verdict.

He sent them back.

Finally, at 11:40 p.m., eight hours and 20 minutes after beginning deliberations — the longest civil-jury deliberation that court officials could remember — they returned with a verdict.

Newsmen, wrestling fans and  a well-known local bookie in the courtroom all became awake as the jury returned.

The verdict: Szigeti had not pinned Terrible Ted.

As Szigeti left the courthouse, someone asked whether he’d consider a rematch. Before he could answer, his wife pulled him by the sleeve.

“Come on,” she told him. “Let’s go home. It’s midnight.”

*

That might have been the end of one of the strangest wrestling matches — and civil court cases — in Ottawa’s history. Except Darwin was nothing if not a savvy promoter.

Within weeks it was announced that Terrible Ted would return to Ottawa as part of the new Civic Centre’s inaugural wrestling card. And Darwin had an idea for an opponent: John Szigeti. Cogan says a deal was struck: Darwin would pay Szigeti $3,000 — win or lose — if he got back in the ring with Ted. For promotional purposes, Szigeti would be identified only as “Mr. X.”

Szigeti agreed.

The rematch took place on June 11, 1968, in front of 3,200 spectators. This time, nobody needed a jury. The next day’s Ottawa Journal reported simply that Ted “disposed of Mr. X in short order.”

Cogan’s recollection is a bit more vivid. Szigeti, he says, went flying out of the ring.

“The long and the short of it,” he says, “is that Howard paid the $3,000.”

So Szigeti got his money, and Cogan got a story he’s been telling to other lawyers for nearly six decades.

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