Sándor Szabó
Toronto Daily Star, March 1 1933
In his prime, Sándor Szabó (1906-1966) stood six feet tall and weighed 235 pounds. Settling in the United States, he held three world championships in the 1940s and wrestled professionally until 1963.
In 1953, he recorded a song on Hammerlock Records called "Take Me In Your Arms". (I love the very idea of a label called Hammerlock Records.) The Internet Archive has a digitized version of this song and a digitized version of the flip side, "It's All In The Game". It's safe to say that Szabó was a better singer than most wrestlers and a better wrestler than most singers!
Szabó also received a commendation from President Dwight Eisenhower for helping an estimated 200,000 Hungarian refugees in America. He passed away at the age of 60 from a heart attack.
YouTube has some footage of Szabó at work. These links are interspersed with links to music performed by another Sándor Szabó, a Yugoslav musician born in 1960. This Szabó is still alive, which means that he has lived longer than his wrestling namesake; to the best of my knowledge, he has never released a recording on the Hammerlock Records label.
Created September 18, 2025.