Henri Deglane

Henri Deglane (1902 to 1975) was a French heavyweight wrestler who succeeded in both the amateur and the professional branches of the sport. At the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris he won the gold medal in Greco-Roman wrestling in the heavyweight class. He later turned to professional wrestling, and in May 1931 he met Ed Strangler Lewis in Montreal for the AWA World Heavyweight Championship in a two-out-of-three falls match. The bout ended with Deglane awarded the title by disqualification after a dispute over a bite, and for the next two years there was disagreement over who was recognised as champion. In 1933 he and his friend Raoul Paoli, a French rugby player and all-round athlete, popularised professional wrestling in France and co-founded the FFCP. In July 1937 he lost his European Heavyweight Championship to the American Al Pereira. He was inducted into the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame in 2013.