David Mantell

Another thing about technical knockouts (not 10 count KOs) - it might be the mark of a sportsmanly blue-eye that they refuse such a win (even a title) leaving the match a No Contest, but it's also the mark of a dastardly heel that they not only accept such a win but CROW over it:

One thing I can't help noticiing about wrestling in Quebec and France is they seem to have a different french name for just about EVERYTHING eg tag matches are Lutte D'Equippe in Quebec and Catch-Á-Quatre in France. Even wrestling itself has different names (lutte/catch - I gather in France's case this along with the change from GR to CACC was an attempt to sidestep a tax on Lutte in the 1930s by rebranding as a different sport).

Wrestling Madness. An episode of S4C's Welsh language wrestling show Reslo with English commentary by Lee Bamber. Includes Bull Power (Vader)'s win of the vacant CWA title over Luc "Rambo" Poirier from Quebec. Also has Princess Paula doing a quasi shoot interview with British Lightweight champion Tony Stewart about his workout routine and an intro and outro by ITV boxing commentator (and cousin of Jackie Pallo) Reg Gutteridge.

By the way there was another home video I forgot to mention. Ex wrestler turned independent promoter Jackie Pallo filmed his own show at the Great Yarmouth Hippodrome (scene of Mal Kirk's death six years later) in 1981 as an audition tape in a failed attempt to get a share of ITV coverage (ITV controversially renewed Joint's exclusive contract for another 5 years.) This got put out on video to recoup costs. The main event saw Pallo and son JJ (also commentators/hosts) take on Steve Kelly and a bearded Adrian Street just before he went off to America where he trimmed it down to the muttonchops you all remember. Another bout saw Fit Finlay's wife & future manager Paula Valdez team with Blackfoot Sue, the future Miss Linda. (Finlay was also on the tape, the second earliest footage of him after he and Ian Gilmour teamed as faux-Scotsmen on French TV Aug 1980 and before his 1982 ITV debut, but this isn't on YouTube AFAIK.)

Check out the deciding fall of the Nagasaki/Quinn Vs StClair/Sands tag match I just posted.. Kendo gets Neil in the Kamikaze Crash (diving fireman's carry takedown) leaving Sands ironed out on the mat. Referee counts him out to 10 on the mat. That was called a Knock Out (as in "Two Falls, Two Submissions Or A Knockout Will Decide The Winner") and yes, it was considered a slightly more emphatic way to win than two falls/subs. Quite a lot of KOs were out of the ring but they were considered definite because the knocked out opponent was pretty much destroyed by that point. Aged 14 in 1988 I was FLABBERGASTED to learn that in America you could keep a title after falling victim to that. There was one KO artist in the WWF as I recall, the Beserker John Nord who specialized in knocking opponents to ringside for a countout after clotheslining them over the top rope. Bear in mind that because of the no follow down rule in Britain (and France back then) you couldn't simply drape yourself across your opponent for a pin. You stood back while the ref started to count your opponent down and out. Like in boxing.

Add finishes - bear in mind that a countout was called a Knockout and was actually considered a more prestigious and thorough way to win than two falls or submissions. Titles would be changed and masked men made to unmask on a knockout. In a 2/3 singles match it was two falls instantly, ditto in a one knockout tag match. In a two knockout tag match, it was one fall, the knocked out person had to retire from the match (and if under an unmask-if-lose vow would have to unmask) but their partner could contend for the remaining falls under handicap tag conditions. The same rules applied to DQs in a two knockouts match (excpet that masked men could keep their mask on a DQ- titles changed on DQs certainly) leadling to a situation like this where a tag match got cut down to a singles match after the two guys in the ring got out of hand:

It kicked in just as it was coming off TV. There was a straight to video TV taping from Croydon in 1988 which came out in '89 as The Mick McManus World Of Wrestling with McManus and Lee Bamber in place of Kent Walson (and a whole different set of camera angles from TV tapings there in the past). Then came clips of All Star ITV bouts from 1987-1988, compilations of Reslo (again with English commentary by Lee Bamber), at least one CWA tape of Otto Wanz's retirement match with Bull Power (Vader) with English commentary and quite a few Brits on the bill including Tony StClair vs Giant Haystacks. The Crabtrees did their own straight to video effort in 1992 Battle of the Brits which years later got reissued as a two volume DVD series: Also to top it off, Rumble Promotions in their original lifetime did a video in 1996 which has also been reissued on DVD. Mainly notable for James Mason's coming of age moment winning a one night tournament for the World Middleweight title left vacant by Danny Collins: *********************** This is of course quite distinct from the situation with the CWA in Germany/Austria where an intensive - and incredibly early - straight to video release programme was what they had INSTEAD of television.

As for DQs, done the right way it can be very satisfying to see the heel sent packing in disgrace on a third public warning: Current MC Laetitia Dixon-Allmark is particularly good at this - I have seen her lead All Star audiences in chants of "OUT! OUT! OUT!" at DQ'd and protesting heels.

I honestly don't find the No Contest finish a problem if it's a good bout and it gets cut short that way This still goes on in 2023 - earlier this year a Mountevans British title change was aborted on this finish: Of course, this sportsmanly finish has a long history going back over a century - see John Olin refusing the World Heavyweight title after a TKO win over Joe Stecher in 1916 (only to then lose to Ed Lewis who laid claim to the title).

Interesting actual example of this (not relating to Europe) : In 1989 one of the Aptermags did a piece on wrestlers who were "Lost In The Shuffle" (not doing as well as they either were previously or might be expected to be doing.) Terry Gordy at this point was in a very successful tag team with Stan Hansen in Japan and a year or so later would form an even more successful tag team with Steve Williams. This wasn't good enough for the Aptermag writers who claimed that if Gordy didn't drop all this Japanese tag team malarkey and head back to the US "he'll soon be the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question - Who was the third Freebird?"

Bumping this up just to remind people of the main nub of my argument.

Pat Roach certainly was in the right period for having matches kinescoped - for example this one: (at 16:20) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grOxF-sHVF0&t=980s (it's not letting it embed for some reason, never mind) He also made his UK TV debut in 1966 (against Billy Joyce) and had late 60s matches with Billy Robinson, Judo Al Hayes and Steve Veidor among others. Max Crabtree got appointed "matchmaker" (booker) for Best/Wryton around 1975, just about the end of b/w kinescopes but at a time when ITV was still doing this with colour film copies (T.Rex famously appeared on the Bay City Rollers' "Shang A Lang" show in '75 performing "New York City - years later a rather weatherbeaten colour kinescope of this fell into the hands of Bolan's fanclub and got included as the "official promo" of the song on The Ultimate Video Collection in 1992. The master tape copy eventually turned up as an extra on the DVD release of the 1977 Granada TV "Marc" show)

Specifically? I recall you're not a fan of no contest on a refused TKO (a less time consuming alternative to a 1-1 draw.) DQ's were not seen as cheap finishes, they were seen as the heel disgracing him/herself by proving he/she couldn't cleanly compete. Titles were changed on DQs. MCs would shout " (X) ... is DISQUALIFIED!" like an angry schoolteacher sentencing a pupil to punishment, and the heel would rant and rave at the injustice and humiliation.

It didn't eradicate it but it started the shift away from it towards what Puroresu is more famous for. It began to Europify puro.

Jim Ross and Tony Schiovone circa '88 would be winging about Dynamite "betraying his fans" - that's far more marking out. And I stand by my point about out of the ring fighting or ineffective/suspect referees - the broadcasting rules were very strict about those.

There were a considerably higher proportion than in American wrestling and they still occur even now. All Star had them on its show on Screens port and there were plenty on Reslo too. There was a definite imbalance towards "clean wrestlers" - say 70-30. In America it was more 50-50. A lot of heel Vs blue eye bouts started off (and still start off) technical.

Personally I thought he did his best work in clean matches with another similar technician. Didn't seem nonsense to me at all, that he would try and extend the opponent's grip down so that (1) it would loosen the angle of the hammerlock (2) he could then hook his leg in and use it to break the hold and leave the opponent's arm spare and open to attack. Flamboyant way of doing it yes, but it was based on a competitive logic, there is probably a far less showy legit escape that is nonetheless based on the same principles. And yes I know what a real wrestling match looks like:

The IBA had very strict rules about fighting outside of the ring (and also the ref being firmly in charge and not an ineffective wimp like in America much less the quasi heel figures they became in France. Which is why you got tough no nonsense characters like Max Ward as the rule, not the exception like Roger Delaporte and Gorilla Monsoon as a special ref were.)

Inasmuch as before that in the 50s/60s it was a big exercise in jingoism all about honourable Japanese babyfaces vs round eyed Gaijin usually American heels

All Star also went on a tour of Israel in 1987 just a coupleof years after World Class - Mtizi Mueller vs Klondyke Kate and Kendo Nagasaki & Psycho Stevens vs Steve Regal and Dave Taylor, with promoter Brian Dixon refereeing. Here's the whole gang at Ben Gurion Airport.

I'd say the escapes and reversals made it more realistic if anything. When caught in an armbar the British would untwist the arm by rolling on the mat and the French would untwist the arm by leaping up into the flying headscissors position, but both those make more sense to me than what American wrestlers do - nothing, just stand there selling it!

Quite a few of the heels - Stax, Rocco, Kendo's manager George Gillette, Finlay (not in this compilation) hd the gift of the gab. So did Daddy. A lot of people however basically came from the Bob Backlund (when not going crazy) school of interviews. You can't blame them, they'd not been trained with this as part of their skillset. Here's Haystacks doing a snackfood advert to show how he was one of the camera savvy few:

I'd further say that from an American business perspective, British wrestling was "Gym Boy ridden" (and had a TV commentator that supported this and tried to educate his viewers to appreciate wrestling from this position.) Here are some Brits on the mic from the last two years of ITV when promos were suddenty introduced:

Daddy was one particular direction in which promoter Max Crabtree pushed. It was succesful in terms of making him a household name and filling up venues with family audiences but it alienated enough fans and wrestlers to create a gap in the marketplace for an opposition promoter to build a red hot promotion which eventually took over. Kendo, JIm Breaks and Rollerball Rocco were all gifted pure wrestlers (as was Kellett come to that and I would add Adrian Street to that list.) and this was central to their credibility. Breaks especially fans respected his skills even if they hated the guy and liked to throw pacifiers into the ring at him. When he turned seventeen? (Okay there have been a few promising whizzkids who bagged themselves Lightweight and Welterweight titles at that sort of age - Dynamite Kid, Danny Collins, Kid McCoy etc) He turned pro as part of the first wave of intake of Athol Oakley's All In Wrestling in 1930. I'd be sceptical of that piece, it sounds like a generalising journalist spouting the usual cynical cliches ********************************************** British wrestling definitely took things down a different direction with a different philosophy from American Wrestling. This doesnt mean that many of the same promotional techniques weren't tried and they especially lured in the casual public, but there was a backbone of serious wrestling there that gave it a credibility that many of the older generation have found severely lacking in WWE since the 80s. It's an easy pub conversation to have in England, how "that was Proper Wrestling back then, not like this American rubbish they have on now." My general understanding is that inside the business on each side of the Atlantic it was a case of "the grass is greener on the other side." The American locker rooms admired and envied the British for their legit skills in the ring. The British boys (and girls) admired and envied the Americans for their sharper grasp of ring psychology and manipulating a crowd. Looking back on it all these years later, Americans like some of you are aghast at the lack of storytelling in most traditional British matches while Brits like me wonder why on earth there seems to be virtually no defences, counters, reversals - "undressing" of holds as Kent Walton used to put it - in the American game, even in bouts like the '89 Flair/Steamboat series.

Since I've mentioned wrestling in Nigeria- and television there and findng old Doctor Who episodes there - here are some anecdotes from Orig Williams of Reslo fame about promoting in Nigeria and getting the seal of approval of the local ruler the Obong and having to light a stadium show with car lights ... https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=f2g3DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT87&lpg=PT87&dq="OBONG"+"ORIG+wILLIAMS"&source=bl&ots=u7twcgDK5W&sig=ACfU3U0kceziPyMwjy1pVyZ830q72Zf5nQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj6mZelj9WCAxXVWEEAHS0fARQQ6AF6BAgIEAM#v=onepage&q="OBONG" "ORIG wILLIAMS"&f=false