Abraham Cann: Greatest of All Time

April 7, 2026
April 11, 2026
22 min read
Biography, Research
Abraham Cann Biography Cann-vs-Polkinghorne

He threw giants. He filled stadiums. He challenged any man in the world. And he died at sixty-nine in a Devon cottage, rescued from the parish poor roll by a famous boxer’s five-pound note.

Published 7 April 2026 — the 162nd anniversary of Abraham Cann’s death. Full and detailed Biography and Match records.

As a Wrestler, we have never seen any one like Abraham Cann; he appears to us to use his legs with the same facility and judgment as Jack Randall exercised his fists in the P[rize]. R[ing]. This is saying quite enough to place Abraham Cann at the top of the tree amongst WRESTLERS.

Egan, P (1836). ‘The Wrestlers’, in Pierce Eganʼs Book of Sports...

I. The farm at Colebrooke

Abraham Cann was born in the closing days of 1794 at Eastcombe Head Farm in the parish of Colebrooke, a scattering of farmsteads in the rolling red-earth country between Crediton and Bow, in the heart of Devon. He was baptised at the parish church of St Andrew on 2 December (Wikipedia, ‘Abraham Cann’, 2024; Colebrooke Village, 2024). His father, Robert Cann, was a farmer and maltster — and, by local reputation, something more colourful. The family history records that Robert was a rum-runner who had barrels of spirits transported to the farm disguised in hay-loads, whilst his wife Mary handled distribution with the contraband hidden in her voluminous skirts (Heard Family History, ‘Abraham Cann 1794–1864’, n.d.).

Robert was also a wrestler. All five of his sons — George, Robert, James, William, and Abraham — followed him into the ring. James Cann would become a formidable competitor in his own right, and later served as a respected trier at major tournaments. But it was Abraham, the youngest, who would carry the family name into national fame.

The Canns were not gentry. They were not wealthy. They were the rural working class of Georgian Devon — farmers, maltsters, and, if the family stories are true, smugglers. Wrestling, for men like them, was not an aristocratic diversion. It was the sport of the parish revel and the village fair, the one arena in which a man of no birth and no fortune could earn public honour and hard currency through nothing but the strength of his body and the quickness of his mind. Understanding this is essential to understanding everything that followed. Abraham Cann rose from nothing, achieved everything the wrestling ring could offer, and in the end had nothing again. His is not a story of triumph. It is a story about what a society does with its heroes when the cheering stops.

II. Arise: Devon’s Favourite Son

By his early twenties, Cann had established himself as the foremost wrestler in Devonshire. The archive record from these years is fragmentary, but the trajectory is clear. At the Chawleigh annual match in 1815, when Cann was barely twenty, his name already appears alongside the established champions — Jackman, Wreford, Flower, and Totley — as one of the ‘first-rate men from Morchard and Colebrooke’ (Exeter Flying Post, 17 August 1815). He defeated John Jordan, the towering North Devon man whose proportions had earned him the nickname ‘the Devonshire Giant’ and whose kicking was so feared that tournament committees regularly excluded him from competition by name (Exeter Flying Post, 1826). He threw Flower, Wreford, Simon Webber, and every other redoubtable Devon champion who stood before him (Baring-Gould, Devonshire Characters and Strange Events, n.d.).

The physical descriptions of Cann are remarkably consistent across the sources. He stood five feet eight and a half inches tall and weighed twelve stone seven pounds — 175 lbs — at the peak of his career. One reporter at the Tavistock match of 1827 recorded these measurements precisely, alongside those of the other principal wrestlers (Tavistock Fair, 1827, Exeter Flying Post, 12 April 1827). His head, neck, and shoulders were described as ‘those of a bull’, and his limbs ‘fully corresponded with his upper works’ (Exeter Flying Post, 26 October 1826). A model of his forearm and hand was displayed at a public house in Moretonhampstead for years afterwards, and those who saw it remembered it as ‘a marvel of symmetry’ (Western Morning News, 19 August 1926). Farmer Pearse, one of Cann’s backers, recalled that he had watched Cann squeeze a pewter tankard rim flat in his bare hand, and crush a fistful of walnuts to fragments (Western Morning News, 19 August 1926).

Considered to be one of the earliest representations of the young Champion. A cleaned up version of the original promotional sketch of Cann, dated August 1826. Cann was already at this time considered the Champion of England. The original sketch was used by Baring-gould in ‘Devonshire Characters and Strange Events’ (1908).

Yet Cann was not merely strong. He was, by all accounts, a technician. The Exeter Flying Post described his kicking as having ‘the force of a sledge’ and working ‘with such regularity as a pendulum’ — a description that captures both the power and the rhythmic precision of the Devonshire out-play system (Westcountry Wrestling Textbook, 2024, p. 223). A young baker’s apprentice from Exeter named Webber, barely eighteen years old, who fought in Cann’s style at the St Thomas’s match, was described as ‘the best copy of a master in the art’ — and the crowd’s delight at watching the boy imitate Cann’s technique suggests that Cann’s style was already recognisable, distinctive, and admired as a model of the craft (Exeter Flying Post, 1828).

And he was, it seems, a gentleman. The word appears again and again. He was described as ‘modest, unassuming, cool and taciturn, inoffensive, victorious’ (South West Collections Explorer, RAMM portrait catalogue, n.d.). The Exeter Civic Society, when commemorating Cann with a plaque, erected in 2022 at 28 Bartholomew Street West — the site of his former inn — records a contemporary judgement that carries the weight of a eulogy: ‘a man who was never beaten in his life, who never sold his back, who never disgraced his county by foul play or vicious habits’ (Exeter Civic Society, 2022). In an era when match-fixing was endemic and the wrestling ring was saturated with gambling money, Cann’s reputation for incorruptibility was itself a form of fame.

III. ‘Is this the Little Devonshire Dumpling?’: Cann versus Polkinghorne, 1826

The match that made Abraham Cann a national figure took place on 23 October 1826 at Tamar Green, Morice Town, Devonport — on the very bank of the river that separates Devon from Cornwall. His opponent was James Polkinghorne, the Champion of Cornwall: six feet two inches tall, 320 lbs, landlord of the Red Lion inn at St Columb Major, and a man of such physical enormity that even experienced observers were taken aback when they saw him stripped for action (Exeter Flying Post, 26 October 1826; Wikipedia, ‘James Polkinghorne’, 2025).

**A painting to commemorate the Cann-Polkinghorne match of 1826. A full match report is available in our archives. On the left was the Banner of Exeter City, and on the right is the Banner of Cornwall.** Cann was often featured alongside iconography of Exeter City.

The disparity between the two men was extraordinary. Cann weighed 175 lbs. Polkinghorne weighed 320 lbs — nearly twice as much. The stake was 200 sovereigns, 100 a side, the best of three fair back falls. The seats accommodated 10,000 paying spectators; the hills surrounding the yard swarmed with thousands more. Contemporary estimates placed the total crowd at between 15,000 and 20,000 people (Exeter Flying Post, 26 October 1826). The money taken at the doors exceeded £1,300. The entire West Country appeared to have mobilised: ‘truculent and redoubtable gladiators flocked to the scene — kickers from Dartmoor, the recruiting ground of the Devonshire system, and bear-like huggers from the land of Tre, Pol, and Pen’ (Baring-Gould, n.d.).

A metal sign printed in 1996, believed to be a replica of an original poster advertising an event in 1835 (**historically verified**)**. Although neither Cann or Polkinghorne were present, the poster used the recognisable figures from their engravings of 1826.** From the Private collection of Matthew Bennett-Nichols. Again, the iconography of the 3 gates of Exeter are shown beside Cann’s signature Top Hat.

Farmer Pearse, who accompanied Cann to the ring, described what happened when Polkinghorne first laid eyes on his opponent. The Cornish giant took hold of Cann by the elbows and carried him around the ring, displaying him to the crowd like a curiosity: ‘Is this the little Devonshire dumpling I have to wrestle with?’ (Western Morning News, 19 August 1926).

It was a mistake. The moment Cann’s feet touched the ground, Polkinghorne discovered that the little dumpling was rather harder to move than he had supposed. Cann fought with one shoe on his right foot — his kicking leg — and Polkinghorne in stockings, as was the Cornish custom. The early rounds were dominated by Cann’s kicking system, targeting the big man’s legs with relentless precision. Polkinghorne was described as ‘much distressed by the severe kicks which Cann inflicted with his right foot’ (Exeter Flying Post, 1826). According to Farmer Pearse’s account, at one point Cann threw Polkinghorne clean over his left shoulder — and then, in an act of sportsmanship that became part of the legend, addressed his fallen opponent directly: ‘Don’t let me throw you again like that, or I might pitch you on your head and kill you’ (Western Morning News, 19 August 1926).

The match eventually dissolved into confusion. The triers could not agree on several of the falls. Polkinghorne, believing he had won, left the ring; Cann refused to leave, standing his ground for nearly an hour. After extended wrangling between the two county committees, the stakes were eventually returned to both parties and the match was declared drawn (Exeter Flying Post, 9 November 1826). Polkinghorne never agreed to a rematch. Cann repeatedly challenged him — offering to fight at any place, at any time, for any stake not less than twenty pounds — but the Cornishman, who had felt the force of the Devonshire shoe, declined every approach (Cann’s Committee, letter to Mr Grove, Lanreath, Cornwall, 4 November 1826, Exeter Flying Post, 9 November 1826).

Cann emerged from the match as the most famous wrestler in England. The stakes were never settled, but the verdict of the Devon public was absolute. He was their champion, and no Cornishman had put his back on the ground to prove otherwise.

IV. London, Leeds, and the Golden Eagle

The years between 1826 and 1829 were the summit of Cann’s career. He and his Devon contingent — brother James, James Stone (‘the Little Elephant’, who stood just five feet four), John Jordan, William Wreford, and others — became fixtures on the London wrestling circuit, competing at the Eagle Tavern in City Road and the Golden Eagle in Mile End Road, venues that attracted crowds numbered in thousands and bet-money measured in hundreds of pounds.

It was at the Golden Eagle, on 24 September 1827, that the celebrated match with Gaffney, the Irish champion, took place — the one in which spectators climbed the poplar trees, the roofs collapsed, and Gaffney’s stockings were left soaked in blood from Cann’s kicking (detailed at length in our companion article, ‘Blood on the Shins’). Cann won decisively, throwing Gaffney to three back falls and dislocating his shoulder. The Irishman never wrestled competitively again (Exeter Flying Post, 27 September 1827).

At Easter 1828, Cann travelled to Leeds for what was perhaps the most ambitious wrestling tournament of the Georgian era: a multi-day, multi-regional contest at the Race Ground, with prizes totalling over £140 and expenses exceeding £500, funded by a consortium of Yorkshire noblemen and gentlemen. Ten picked men from London, ten from Devonshire (including the champion), and wrestlers from Cornwall, Ireland, Cumberland, and Westmorland were all brought together at the organisers’ expense (Manchester Courier, 8 March 1828). The specific shoe regulations for the Leeds match — ‘light shoes, and padding to be worn, if approved by the parties’ — suggest an early attempt to accommodate the different regional traditions within a shared framework. Cann won the first prize of £30, with James Stone second at £20, and the Devonians dominant throughout the field (Exeter Flying Post, 1828).

In the same period, Cann and James Stone were welcomed at Vauxhall Gardens — the most fashionable pleasure garden in London — where their appearance ‘excited considerable curiosity’ (Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 16 June 1827). It is difficult to overstate how remarkable this was. Cann was a farmer’s son from a Devon hamlet of a few dozen souls. He was now being received, ‘fashionably dressed’, at the entertainment venue of the London elite. The wrestling ring had done for him what no other institution in Georgian England could have: it had given a man of no rank a public identity, a national reputation, and — for a brief, shining period — an income.

V. The Champion’s Arms, and the Beginning of the End

In 1828 or 1829, Cann took over the Woolpack Inn in Bartholomew Yard, Exeter, and renamed it the Champion’s Arms. It was a logical step: wrestling and the tavern had always been intertwined, and the most successful wrestlers of the era — Polkinghorne at the Red Lion, John Stone at the Plymouth Inn in Crediton — combined their sporting fame with the publican’s trade. The plaque erected by the Exeter Civic Society in 2022 marks the site at 28 Bartholomew Street West (Exeter Civic Society, 2022).

But the Champion’s Arms also marked the beginning of Cann’s decline. His two-year-old son George died in 1829 and was buried at Colebrooke (Heard Family History, n.d.). By the early 1830s, Cann’s name appears less frequently in the match reports. He was suffering from gout — a condition cruelly ironic for a man whose livelihood depended on his legs. At the St Thomas’s match in June 1828, he was present but unable to compete: ‘the champion, attended by his brother James, Roach, &c., was on the ground, but not playable — he was hobbling under all the acute sensations of gout. Persons entertaining suspicion that this was assumed, Abraham, with great naïveté, produced his swollen and burning foot, convincing the most sceptical of the painful reality’ (Exeter Flying Post, 1828).

The same reporter added a sentence that reads, at this distance, like a prophecy: ‘His success as a wrestler is without parallel — all, however, must regret that a brave and modest man, who has so long upheld the character of his native county in this way, has not reaped that solid reward to which his prowess entitled him, and that the future has cold, cheerless scant in the prospect.’

Cold, cheerless scant. In 1828, Cann was thirty-three years old, at the peak of his fame, and already an observer could see where the road was leading.

VI. ‘Only the Shadow of His Former Self’: The Last Fight, 1841

On 29 July 1841, in a spacious ring enclosing more than an acre of ground near St Thomas’s Church, Exeter, Abraham Cann fought for the last time. The match was for 100 sovereigns against John Ellicombe of Kingsteignton, and between five and six thousand spectators came to watch. The Exeter and Plymouth Gazette described what they saw, and the description is painful to read:

‘On entering the ring it was evident to all that the champion Cann was only the shadow of his former self, whilst the rival for the championship was a fine, well-built, and remarkably muscular young man’ (Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 31 July 1841).

Cann’s jacket bore the letter ‘D’ on the back; Ellicombe’s bore ‘C’. They shook hands at half-past one and began to play. What followed was, by all accounts, a display of the old champion’s extraordinary tactical intelligence operating within a body that could no longer sustain it. Cann showed ‘coolness, innate courage and science equal to his best days’ — saving himself from one throw that would have finished any other man — but Ellicombe had the strength, and used it. Repeatedly, Cann was forced to his knees. The odds shifted. The crowd sensed the end.

At a quarter past two, it came. Cann reached his right hand to his left shoulder. Something was wrong. A surgeon was called into the ring. Mr Cumming examined the champion and pronounced the verdict: a fracture of the clavicle — the collarbone — ‘gone completely, close to the shoulder’. It was an old injury, re-broken under the strain of competition (Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 31 July 1841).

Abraham Cann shown in his later years, believed to have been illustrated around 1860. Cann died in 1864, which prompted the *Illustrated Sporting News* to release the engraving for a limited period. Available to view in our archives, both digitally and physically.

Ellicombe came forward to shake Cann’s hand, asking whether the champion attributed the injury to any unfair play. Cann’s reply was characteristic: ‘No — that he was as good, or as fair a man as ever he had played with’ (Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 31 July 1841).

At about half-past two, Abraham Cann, who had ‘for years reigned champion of the ring’, bade his farewell to it, surrounded by his friends. He was forty-six years old. He never fought competitively again.

VII. The Long Descent

The two decades that followed Cann’s retirement are the least documented and most distressing period of his life. He returned to Colebrooke, to the farm at Eastcombe Head where he had been born. He continued to appear at tournaments as a trier and as a celebrity guest, both in Devon and in London, through the 1840s and 1850s. His expertise was valued, his presence drew crowds, and his name still commanded respect. But the income from refereeing and public appearances was not enough to sustain a man growing old and increasingly infirm.

By 1860, Abraham Cann was receiving parish relief — the nineteenth-century equivalent of being on welfare. The Champion of All England, the man who had filled Tamar Green with 20,000 spectators and been welcomed at Vauxhall Gardens, was dependent on the Poor Law for his survival (Heard Family History, n.d.; Colebrooke Village, 2024).

It was at this point that a Mr Langdon of the Bull Inn, Exeter, began a subscription on Cann’s behalf. The effort attracted significant support. Lord Palmerston — then serving as Foreign Secretary and soon to become Prime Minister — headed the subscription among the west-country gentlemen, and the sum of £200 was raised, providing Cann with a quarterly annuity (Wikipedia, ‘Abraham Cann’, 2024; Colebrooke Village, 2024).

But the story most worth telling from these years comes not from the aristocracy but from the ring. Farmer Pearse, the same old backer who had carried Cann’s cap at Devonport, recounted the episode decades later to a reporter for the Western Morning News. Tom Sayers — the bare-knuckle boxing champion of England, who had recently defeated the American giant John Heenan in the most famous prize-fight of the Victorian era — visited Exeter. A party of gentlemen gathered at an inn in Paul Street to honour Sayers with a presentation. At which point, Farmer Pearse stepped forward:

‘Gentlemen, I have no doubt Mr Sayers fully deserves the honour you propose, and is a good sportsman, but may I remind you that we have in the next room one who has ever played straight and fair and never let us down, who is now in poor circumstances — Abraham Cann. I think you ought to consider him first’ (Western Morning News, 19 August 1926).

Tom Sayers’s response was immediate: ‘Quite right.’ And his was the first five-pound note placed into the collection. The gentlemen of Exeter raised enough, combined with the Palmerston subscription, to keep Cann in modest comfort. But he did not enjoy it for long.

VIII. The sad end

On New Year’s Day 1862, Abraham Cann and his son Abraham junior had been celebrating at the Bell Inn, Colebrooke. When they arrived home, the elder Cann retired to bed. His son, described as ‘tipsy’, settled into an armchair for a pipe. He fell asleep. The fire caught his clothing. He ran upstairs with his trousers and shirt ablaze. He was terribly burned, and was taken to hospital, where he lingered in great pain until his death on 6 March 1862 (Heard Family History, n.d.).

Abraham Cann buried his son at Colebrooke. Not long afterwards, the horse drawing the cart that carried the tombstone to the churchyard shied, throwing the old wrestler beneath the wheels and injuring him badly (Heard Family History, n.d.).

He was not to endure much longer. On 7 April 1864, at Colebrooke, near Crediton, Mr Abraham Cann — champion wrestler — died, in his seventieth year. He was buried in the churchyard of St Andrew’s, the same church where he had been baptised nearly seventy years before. The memorial stone was erected by public subscription (South West Collections Explorer, RAMM, n.d.; Wikipedia, ‘Abraham Cann’, 2024).

The Western Times would later record, with uncharacteristic brevity, that he ‘was born in 1796 and stood 5 ft 8 in, and scarce knew defeat, lies in the little village churchyard’ (Western Times, 11 November 1904).

IX. What remains

What remain of Abraham Cann is a portrait, a gravestone, a plaque, and a legend.

A portrait of Cann by Henry Caunter, photographed by Jamie Acutt. The painting is currently part of the collection at RAMM, Exeter. We have a full description of this artefact in our archives. Cann’s Top Hat, both part of his personal brand, but also a feature of the sport. It represented his readiness to ‘catch as I can’ wherever and whenever.

The portrait — oil on canvas, artist unknown — is held by the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter. It shows Cann in his wrestling costume: sleeved jacket over bare chest, breeches, gaiters, and the heavy shoes that were his signature weapons. Behind him stands a statue of Hercules on a plinth bearing an image of a wrestling match. It was purchased at an auction in 1914 for two shillings and sixpence (South West Collections Explorer, RAMM, n.d.).

**The tombstone in the Colebrooke Churchyard, barely legible and underappreciated.** Photographed by The Devonshire Wrestling Society.

The gravestone stands in St Andrew’s churchyard, Colebrooke. It was paid for by the people who remembered him.

**A blue plaque at the original site of Cann’s Champions Arms. We were invited by the Exeter Civic Society to attend, and commemorate the event. Photograph by The Devonshire Wrestling Society.**

The plaque — erected by the Exeter Civic Society in 2022 at 28 Bartholomew Street West — reads: ‘Abraham Cann (1794–1864), Champion of England at Devonshire wrestling, landlord of the Champion’s Arms public house on this site 1828–30’ (Exeter Civic Society, 2022).

And the legend endures. In 1926 — sixty-two years after his death — the centenary of the Cann–Polkinghorne match at Devonport was celebrated with a memorial tablet, a public luncheon, and a wrestling tournament at St Columb. The Cornwall County Wrestling Association appealed for any surviving relatives of the late Abraham Cann. Devon was ‘rising to the occasion’, and although the entries from the county were few, the lost art of Devon wrestling was, the organisers hoped, ‘being regained’ (Western Morning News, 7 August 1926).

**A copy of the 150th anniversary of the Cann-Polkinghorne match, gifted to the Devonshire Wrestling Society by the Cornish Wrestling Association. A detailed view is available in our archives**.

It would take another eighty-eight years. In 2014, the Devonshire Wrestling Society was founded in Exeter — the city where Cann had kept his inn, fought his last match, and received Tom Sayers’s five-pound note. The Society teaches the techniques that Cann made famous: the fore-crook, the back-crook, the heaving toe, the back-heel, and the kicking system — ‘the Sledgehammer’ — that bore his name. His legacy is no longer confined to a portrait in a museum case or a gravestone in a country churchyard. It is alive, in the bodies and the practice of the people who train in his tradition.

X. On the anniversary

Today, 7 April 2026, marks 162 years since Abraham Cann died at Colebrooke. It is worth pausing on the essential facts.

He was born into rural poverty and rose to become the most famous wrestler in England. He fought before 20,000 people at Devonport and was welcomed at Vauxhall Gardens in London. He defeated every man who stood before him in the Devonshire style, and no opponent ever put his back cleanly on the ground. He challenged any man in the world to face him, for £50 or £100, and meant it. He was described by those who knew him as modest, unassuming, incorruptible, and kind.

He ran an inn, and lost it. He buried a child, and then another. He was crippled by gout. He went on the parish rolls due to poverty. He was rescued by a boxing champion’s generosity and a Prime Minister’s subscription. He buried his son after a house fire, was thrown under a cart carrying the tombstone, and died a little over a year later. His memorial stone was paid for by strangers.

The story of Abraham Cann is the story of every athlete in every era who gives the best years of their body to a sport that has no pension, no safety net, and no long memory. It is a story about the distance between fame and security, between public adulation and private destitution. It is also a story about the people — Farmer Pearse, Tom Sayers, Lord Palmerston, the anonymous subscribers who paid for the gravestone — who refused to let the old champion be forgotten.

The Devonshire Wrestling Society exists, in part, because of them. And because of him.