Great Outdoor Fight 1920

From The Great Outdoor Fight

Sometimes referred to as the first truly international Fight, 1920 brought unparalleled world media attention to The Fight. This was due to the composition of the contestants that year, who were drawn from across the battlefields of Europe by word from their American allies/foes of the Great Outdoor Fight. While 1919 and the five years previous had seen a sprinkling of war vets, it was not until 1920 that a great many sought out the Great Outdoor Fight. The reasons, argued by historian Greil Marx in his 1978 tome The Best Opiate: The Great Outdoor Fight In Industrial Society, stemmed from two factors. The first being that, in 1919, many war vets were simply too mentally and physically exhausted to compete. The second being that true cynicism about the war's outcome hadn't settled in yet. To these healthy (and possibly maimed) war vets, the Great Outdoor Fight offered a chance for redemption. Violence there was, by definition, meaningful. These trends would exacerbate themselves in 1921, 1922, and, to a lesser extent, 1923. For these reasons, the Fights of 1920-23 are often called The Great Outdoor Wars.

One hallmark of the so-called GOWs were scarred and mutilated fighters entering the Acres in greater number than those healthy and whole. Another was the totally rejection of alliances among the fighters, most of whom fought in two or three man bands if they fought together at all. The GOWs also featured an unusually high number of female participants, mostly foreign and almost exclusively war widows. One such widow, Lauren Bennett of Belgium, would eventually emerge as Champion.