Paul Bowser

Paul Forbes Bowser (May 28, 1886 – July 17, 1960) was a professional wrestling promoter who was active from the 1920s to the 1950s in the Boston area.

Bowser grew up on a farm in western Pennsylvania and attended Beaver College before becoming a professional wrestler and touring with the Pollock Brothers Circus. He moved to Newark, Ohio in 1912 and began to promote wrestling shows, often working as a referee. In 1913 He married women's wrestling champion Cora Livingstone. That same year, he opened a wrestling school in Newark.

On March 10, 1916, Bowser became world middleweight champion, defeating Joe Turner in Newark. In November 1919, he and a co-defendant were successfully sued by Kelton Mitchell, who claimed he had been conned out of $2,300 that was bet on a fixed wrestling match in 1917.

Bowser moved to Boston in 1922, running shows against the area's established promoter, George V. Tuohey. Within a year, Bowser had won the promotional war and Tuohey filed for bankruptcy. In Boston, on January 3, 1922, Bowser again won the middleweight title from Joe Turner in a show promoted at the Boston Opera House. He retired as a wrestler the following year.

As a promoter, Bowser was initially allied with Billy Sandow and Ed "Strangler" Lewis and took on entrenched rival, New York-based Jack Curley. On January 25, 1923, Curley-backed Nat Pendleton was defeated in a real contest by Bowser's John Pesek, taking two falls in under 45 minutes. Curley would get his revenge two years later, paying Stanislaus Zbyszko to go against plans and defeat Sandow/Lewis/Bowser-backed world champion Wayne Munn in Philadelphia. On March 11, 1926, Bowser planned to regain control of the title by having Joe Malcewicz ambush champion Joe Stecher (who had won the title from Zbyszko and was also aligned with Curley)—who was expecting to wrestle a different opponent. But the plan failed when Stecher just walked out of the ring and left before the match started.

In 1928, Bowser put his promotional efforts behind Gus Sonnenberg, an NFL football player for the Providence Steam Roller. Sonnenberg and his flying tackle became a sensation in professional wrestling and, on January 4, 1929 at the Boston Garden, promoted by Bowser, Sonnenberg became the world heavyweight champion, defeating Strangler Lewis. Sonnenberg became the biggest draw in professional wrestling, although he would soon be eclipsed by Jim Londos, wrestling's biggest star during the Great Depression. Sonnenberg consistently drew big crowds in Los Angeles for promoter Lou Daro—part of the Bowser camp. His popularity also led Bowser-aligned Ivan Mickailoff to introduce weekly wrestling shows to Toronto in 1929, largely using Bowser's wrestlers.

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