What mattered was that Lincoln proved that he had immense strength and courage, and that was enough to win the admiration of the Clary’s Grove gang. Enraged by the dirty tactics, Lincoln grabbed Armstrong by the neck and, extending his long arms, "shook him like a rag. Lincoln's wrestling exploits did not resemble modern-day professional wrestling, and he was not honored by the WWE.By all accounts, Abraham Lincoln — yes, the sixteenth President of the United States — was indeed a skilled and accomplished wrestler. "The premise of this question is inherently flawed. “He won us by his bearing and boldness,” Royal Clary recalled, “Jack and [Lincoln] were the warmest friends during life.”Here’s how David Herbert Donald described the fight in the biography None were wilder than the boys from Clary’s Grove, a few miles to the west, whose leader was the stalwart Jack Armstrong …When Offutt, enchanted with his new assistant, began boasting that Lincoln was not merely the smartest man in New Salem but also one of the strongest, the Clary’s Gove boys called his bluff. At this time, where working at a store in New Salem, Illinois, Lincoln had a famous bout with Jack Armstrong, also a county wrestling champion. We know that Lincoln frequently engaged in wrestling matches and that he was especially skilled at the sport. On April 14, 1865, Lincoln signed … Lincoln created the Secret Service hours before his assassination. The details were irrelevant. Abraham Lincoln was an accomplished wrestler who was inducted into the Wrestling Hall of Fame with a near-perfect record.Abraham Lincoln was a skilled wrestler and was honored with an award from the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1992. But do their budget decisions say otherwise?Thousands of readers inquired about people featured in a viral video pulled by social media companies for pushing COVID-19 misinformation in July 2020.In June 2020, Seattle City Council passed a law banning police from using "crowd control weapons. He worked in a general store, though he was mostly concentrating on reading and educating himself.Lincoln's employer, a storekeeper named Denton Offutt, would boast about the strength of Lincoln, who stood six feet four inches tall.As a result of Offutt's boasting, Lincoln was challenged to fight Jack Armstrong, a local bully who was the leader of a group of mischief makers known as the Clary's Grove Boys.Armstrong and his friends were known for mean-spirited pranks, such as forcing new arrivals in the community into a barrel, nailing the lid on, and rolling the barrel down a hill.A resident of New Salem, recalling the event decades later, said the townspeople tried to get Lincoln to "tussle and scuffle" with Armstrong. Then, so they said, Abe Lincoln called out, “I’m the big buck of this lick,” and his eyes sweeping the circle of the crowd he challenged. And it wasn't even like the organized athletics of high school or college wrestling.Lincoln's grappling amounted to frontier feats of strength witnessed by a handful of townspeople. If any of you want to try it, come on and whet your horns.” Though he competed in about 300 matches, he was only defeated once.Abraham Lincoln, as a 21 year old in 1830, was the wrestling champion of his county in Illinois. The general outline, however, is always the same:And those elements of the story became part of American folklore. Growing up in Illinois, he clerked in a store, studied law, served in the Black Hawk War and took part in political talk of the day.In the rough and ready style of the frontier, “catch as catch can” wrestling was more hand-to-hand combat than sport. Help preserve this vital resource. "Lincoln lost that election, but two years later, when he had been nominated as the young Republican Party's candidate for president, the wrestling mentions came up again.John Locke Scripps, a Chicago newspaperman, wrote a campaign biography of Lincoln which was quickly published as a book for distribution during the 1860 campaign.