Old Time Strongmen Volume Five

The Great Gama

Although he wasn't focused on being a strongman and performer in the traditional sense like others in this series, Gama was undoubtedly one of the strongest men of the era.

Born Ghulam Mohammad Baksh in India in 1878, he soon established himself as a legendary wrestler and was known by the name Gama Pehalwan for most of his wrestling career and in his later life he was known as the great Gama. Gama was a legend in his own lifetime.

In the year 1902 Gama visited the town of Baroda (now called Vador and lifted a giant stone that no man has lifted to this day. The stone weighed in at 1200 kg which is as heavy as small to medium size modern car.

The stone is on display at the Baroda Museum in Sayajibaug as a testament to his super human strength. This seems quite incredible to me and is possibly embellished and the weight exaggerated, but the stone is still there and eye witnesses reported that he did he did lift it. I really find this "fact" hard to believe but I'd love to visit the museum one day and see the stone for myself.

At the age of 10 Gama participated in a strongman competion in Jodpur and finished in the top 15. This was an outstanding effort considering that there were more than 400 professional wrestlers competing in the competition. He was named ass the winner of the competition by the Maharaja of Jodpur because of his young age.

His biggest break came when he challenged the Indian wrestling champion Raheem Bakhsh Sultaniwala to a wrestling match. Gama was said to be 17 at the time although some sources suggest he was 19. Sultaniwala was an enormous man said be near 7 feet tall and Gama was said to be 5'7". The match lasted for hours and ended in a draw.

The two men faced each other a few years later and Gama won the second match.

Gama's training methods would be considered extreme by modern standards as he did very high repetitions of several less common exercises.

His training was said to include
5000 squats aand 3000 Hindu pushups every day.
It's hard to know for sure how many of the squats he did were bodyweight squats and how many were weighted as he also reputedly trained with a stone ring somewhat like an enormous doughnut around his neck, the stone was said to weigh about 200 lbs.

In most of his pictures in circulation where he wasn't actually wrestling, he's pictured holding a metal mace. The mace was presented to Gama by the prince of wales on a visit to India in 1922.

Indian wrestlers still train with a primitive type of mace these days known as a Gada, so it's hard to imagine Gama didn't also do a lot of work with a heavy Gada as part of his training.

Gama traveled to England with his brother Imam in 1910 to challenge the western wrestlers of the day. At first he couldn't get a match because of height but after increasing his offer to pay prize money if he lost he eventually found someone who would accept the challenge, he was an American professional wrestler Ben Roller. Gama had him pinned in less than two minutes the first time and less than 10 minutes the next.

This paved the way for other pro wrestlers to take up his challenge and the next day 12 other pro wrestlers tried their hand against the great man, all of them were defeated.

After proving his worth in those preliminary show bouts Gama gained full entry into the professional tournament.

Gama was pitted against the current world champion at the time Stanislaus Zbyszko and the grueling match was declared a draw after more than 2 and 1/2 hours of wrestling dominated mostly by Gama.

Gama challenged him to a re-match but Zbyszko didn't show and Gama was declared the winner by default.

Gama then went on to defeat some of the best wrestlers on the planet and his notoriety grew to such stature that almost no-one was brave enough to compete with him from that point on.

A rematch between Gama and Zbyszko was scheduled in 1928 and even though Gama had lost a lot of weight he was able to claim victory in less than 1 minute.

The Great Gama died in Pakistan in 1960 after suffering illness relating to a heart condition and asthma.

Images sourced from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Gama
https://yourstory.com/2015/12/gama-pehalwan/
https://www.scoopwhoop.com/Indian-Wrestler-Bruce-Lees-Inspiration/
https://yourstory.com/2015/12/gama-pehalwan/