Casey, Steve (‘Crusher’) (1908–87), wrestler and rower, was born 4 December 1908 in Loughane, near Sneem, Co. Kerry, eldest among seven sons and three daughters of Michael Casey, stonemason, and Bridget Casey (née Sullivan) of Ballaugh, Sneem, Co. Kerry. His father, who had returned to Ireland after twenty years in the USA, had reputedly been a sparring partner of the legendary world heavyweight boxing champion, John L. Sullivan, and had been a champion rower in a team of Sneem men in the US funded by the Vanderbilt family. His mother was the daughter of another prominent local athlete, Johnny ‘Mountain’ Sullivan.
The Caseys supplemented their farm income with fishing, and, living in Ballaugh, a townland most easily accessible by boat, all the family were expert rowers. The brothers specialised in four- and six-oar racing and were virtually unbeatable at local regattas. Steve and his brothers Pat (1910–2002), Jim (1912–2000) and Mick (1913–99) got to keep the Salter Challenge Cup after winning this prestigious race at the Killarney regatta three times (1930, 1932 and 1933). The brothers were also serial victors at various tug-of-war competitions, including the 1932 Munster championship.
Steve emigrated to London c. 1933, working first as a labourer on a building site. He was followed by his brothers. In London, either Steve, Pat, Jim and Tom Casey (1914–c. 1985) or Steve, Pat, Tom and Mick were unbeatable in the four-oar sweep with Ace Rowing Club. Reports that the Caseys could have represented Britain at the 1936 Olympics are incorrect, however, as the strict definition of amateurism adopted by the Amateur Rowing Association precluded the selection of ‘artisans’ like the Caseys. In addition, they never rowed in the showpiece rowing events, such as the Henley regatta, and competed in heavier, fixed-seat craft, not the lightweight racing boats favoured by Olympic competitors.
In 1933 or 1934, while working as a hotel porter on the Tottenham Court Road, Steve was spotted by Mike Hawley, a wrestler turned owner of a local gym. Casey began attending the gym where he wrestled under Hawley’s tuition. By 1935 he had quit his job to become a professional wrestler on the British circuit. When the Irish wrestling champion Dan O'Mahony (qv) returned from America to engage in a series of bouts in Ireland during August–October 1936, Casey impressed each time on the undercard.
In October 1936 Casey left for Boston, USA, to come under the wing of the dominant local promoter, Paul Bowser. Wrestling was then a mix of theatre and sport. The fights were fixed, but professional jealousies often undermined these arrangements. A similar lack of cooperation between the various regional promoters was producing a proliferation of ‘world’ titles. O’Mahony had been a spectacular box office success for Bowser in the mid 1930s before being undone by his evident lack of wrestling skills. Still eager to tap into the large Irish market in America’s north-east, Bowser drafted Casey to be a more credible alternative.
Although advanced by Bowser primarily for commercial reasons, Casey, who was touted in America as ‘Crusher Casey’, was sufficiently accomplished at wrestling to pass muster while being hardy and canny enough to cope with any attempted ‘double-cross’. At well over 6ft tall (reports vary between 6ft 2in to 6ft 4in (1.88m–1.93m)) and weighing 17st (107.95kg), he was considered to have the most powerful hands of any wrestler. His signature move was an over-the-shoulder toss called the ‘Killarney flip’.
Casey gradually developed his ringcraft on the gruelling wrestling circuit. Most of his fights were in the Boston region, which was the most important wrestling market, with occasional forays beyond. After 316 victories in sixteen months, he defeated Louis Thesz for the Bowser-controlled American Wrestling Association (AWA) title on 11 February 1938 in Boston. As champion, Casey proved a reasonable draw, without having anything like O’Mahony’s former pulling power. Partly as a result, the National Wrestling Association, which had briefly recognised him as champion, stripped him of its title in September 1938.
Casey and O’Mahony sought to exploit the interest their American successes had generated in Ireland by staging a fight in the soccer ground at Milltown, Dublin. Some 16,000 fans watched them fight each other to a draw on 26 August 1938. The rematch (18 September 1938), which was won by Casey in the twentieth round, attracted less than 3,000 spectators to Mallow racetrack, Co. Cork. The bishop of Ross had instructed catholics not to attend, as the contest was on a Sunday, but for Irish audiences the novelty was wearing thin in any case.
Back in America, Casey was part of a roster of big names who took turns as the AWA champion, depending on Bowser’s reading of the market. After losing the title in March 1939, he regained and lost it five more times over the next six years, developing a productive rivalry with Maurice Tillet (‘the French Angel’). Casey was Bowser’s most reliable earner during a lean period for wrestling.
Rowing, his true sporting love, was fitted in around his wrestling. He was a member, along with his brothers, Jim and Tom, of the Riverside Boat Club in Boston. In 1940 Steve, Jim and Tom Casey competed in a singles race against the forty-five-year-old Boston sculler Russell S. Codman for a cup donated by Leverett Saltonstall, governor of Massachusetts. The Boston Herald put up $1,000 in prize money while the protagonists raised another $2,000 in stakes. The race caught the imagination of the Boston public and a crowd of at least 40,000 saw the three Caseys each finish ahead of the 1925 US single sculls champion.
In early 1941 Steve volunteered for the US army and was stationed in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where he acted as a fitness instructor. He was discharged in October, as he wanted to concentrate more on wrestling, only to be called up in January 1942 when the US entered the second world war. Based again in Portsmouth, he continued in competitive wrestling until he damaged his back in an exhibition bout in August 1942. This injury forced him out of wrestling before he made an impressive comeback in 1944. After losing the AWA title for the last time in June 1945, he was dogged by recurring back problems, yet he kept wrestling until 1951.
His brothers Jim, Pat and Mick followed him into wrestling, with Jim being the most successful of the three: Jim won Texas, Canadian, Southern US and Pacific Coast heavyweight wrestling titles. Steve and Jim refused to fight each other. Tom Casey became a promising professional boxer in America until a hand injury finished his career.
From the late 1940s Steve Casey owned and ran a sports bar and restaurant in Boston, devoting his free time to coaching rowers. On New Year’s Eve 1967 he was shot three times in an armed robbery and spent almost a year in hospital; one of the bullets could not be removed. He lived near Boston in Cohasset, Massachusetts, where he had a 150-acre farm. Dying there on 10 January 1987, he left a wife, Mary (née Neiter), a daughter and two sons. In 2000 a statue was erected to his memory in Sneem.
In Ireland Steve Casey was most famous for being a member of a celebrated sporting family dubbed ‘the toughest family on earth’ by the Daily Mirror (9 September 1937). Much embellished by the Caseys themselves, the ‘Legend of the Caseys from Sneem’ has over the years become exactly that, making it hard to separate fact from fiction. The Caseys were inducted into the Irish Sports Hall of Fame (1982) and the Kerry Sports Stars Hall of Fame (2001).