Adolph Ernst (April 7, 1887 – November 10, 1966), better known for his ring name Ad Santel, was a German-American professional wrestler, considered one of the greatest practitioners of catch wrestling.

[6] Ad Santel fought one of the early clash-of-the-styles matches in modern martial arts history against Tokugoro Ito, a 5th degree black belt in judo from Japan.

He assembled a team with fellow wrestlers Henry Weber and Manjiro "Matty" Matsuda, the latter being a judo black belt who had turned to catch wrestling years before.

[12] Though Kano refused to sanction the event and threatened his students with expulsion if they fought, six of them accepted the challenge nonetheless, among them 5th degree black belts Hikoo Shoji and Reijiro Nakata.

[13] Okabe and the judo challengers were effectively expelled from Kodokan, but some of them followed Santel to the United States to train with him, among them Hikoo Shoji, who became a freestyle wrestling pioneer in Japan.

[7] In 1925, Santel faced a new judoka, this time Tsutao Higami, a 165-pound lighter but highly renowned groundwork expert who had trained under Ito and Miyake.

[18] However, Ad Santel was Hackenschmidt's head trainer and sparring partner using his real name of Adolph Ernst for about a year prior and right up until the second Gotch match when he was replaced with Dr Roller.