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Lou Thesz came home again the other day, at 81 the same amazing man who last wrestled professionally in Tokyo at age 74 and lost -- because his artificial hip didn't hold up.

Flat-stomached, exercising daily, the six-time former claimant of wrestling championships isn't quite the same. But he's far ahead of most physically and definitely in recollections.

Here, Thesz came in with other wrestlers of his general era - Gene Kiniski, Jack Briscoe, Harley Race and Terry and Dory Funk -- to be honored with them and Sam Muchnick at an enlarged studio show of the Worldwide Wrestling Federation.

The WWF is a poor professional excuse except they laugh all the way to the bank -- the grunt-and-groan grapplers and the promoters. The function was a Sunday sellout at Kiel Center, but they would have done all right if no one had come.

Now, nationally, often with closed circuit, the big bucks come via TV from guys and gals caught up in the pseudo violence of hulks like Hogan who wouldn't know a half-nelson from Lord Nelson.

That's the way many of us snobs see it, including those who also questioned matches even before Thesz won his first title in 1937. The point is, they could wrestle.

That's what the old warrior did in that one-match comeback in Tokyo several years ago. Against a Japanese foe he had taught free-style wrestling, Thesz neared a fall. As he attempted to bridge for a back body drop, the artificial hip failed a test no sane doctor would have expected.

About the present-day box-office dandies, he thought he could pick many well-coached college heavyweights -- even high school -- to beat the big loin-skinned bozos.

"I was taught by two great ones, other than my father," Thesz recalled. Martin Thesz, a South Side cobbler, had been a middleweight wrestler in Hungary. The two pros who polished the cobbler's kid were Ray Steele and George Tragos.

"Ray was a great friend and a great teacher who lived a fast short life," Thesz said.

Lou would rate Steele close up behind Ed "Strangler" Lewis. Like the 92-year-old Muchnick, whom he dramatically escorted into the Kiel ring the other night, Thesz regards Lewis as No. 1. "And at one time one of the top bridge players in the world,"

Thesz, who attended night high school briefly, absorbed culture and found articulation as a world traveler with frequent waking afternoons in public libraries.

By his estimation, wrestling everywhere except South America, he traveled about 16 million miles by plane, then drove by train or car another few million more.

"If,"he said, smiling, "we'd had frequent flyer miles, I never would have to pay."

Lou regarded British crowds as most appreciative. But perhaps the most unusual night was when he performed in what was Memphis' first mixed match.

"Mixed in both senses of the word," he said. "The first, I recall, between a white and black performer and, in addition, mixed with a wrestler vs. a boxer."

Earlier, Thesz had seen Steele dispatch heavyweight boxer King Levinsky here in a Depression-era gimmick. It lasted only 35 seconds. Lou's foe was more formidable, ex-heavyweight champion Jersey Joe Walcott.

The bout, in three-minute boxing rounds, went into a fourth with lefty Lou, barehanded, fending off the fisted Walcott's jabs and punches. Suddenly, Jersey Joe landed a home-run punch. Thesz's knees buckled.

"Going down," he remembered, "I saw -- and caught -- Joe's knees. I took him down. That was all."

Years earlier Thesz suffered a broken knee after football's famed Bronko Nagurski dropped him over the top rope for a nine-foot fall to a concrete floor.

That should have been all, too, but the absence of more than a year just gave Thesz more time to crack the books.