H. Allen Smith wrote an article for True magazine in 1964, collected in Low Man Rides Again (1973), about a gentleman named O'Rourke whom he dubs the "Father of Octopus Wrestling". According to information Smith collected from Idwal Jones and other sources, O'Rourke and a partner developed a business in the late 1940s of fishing for octopuses with O'Rourke serving as live bait and his partner hauling him out of the water after an octopus was sufficiently wrapped around him.
All this while O'Rourke was becoming perhaps the world's greatest authority on the thought processes and the personality of the octopus. He knew how to outmaneuver them, to outflank them, and to outthink them. He knew full well, many years ago, what today's octopus wrestlers are just beginning to learn—that it is impossible for a man with two arms to apply a full nelson on an octopus; he knew full well the futility of trying for a crotch hold on an opponent with eight crotches.