David Mantell

Barcud Du was El Diablo Tony Francis. These two bouts plus Orig vs Barcud all made up one episode of Reslo in 1987 Bill "King Kendo" Clarke could be a passable worker, I quite like the draw with Romany Riley and I've heard good things said about his tag team with kayfabe brother Ron Clarke (Dick Harrisson) as the Lincolnshire Poachers in the 70s.

I refer you also to Rocco's "Sensational Second" for his 1991 Paris Eurosport match with Danny Collins.

The Iraq bouts are from 1971. Promotion booked by Saddam Hussein at gunpoint - Andre and Gordienko did the job to Al Qaisi after Saddam threatened to shoot them. Iraqi wreslting was one of two full blown territories in the Middle East along with Rafael Halperin's promotion in Israel in the 60s/70s Probably both deserve their own thread. Don't know if there's any Halperin promotion footage but at least we have some of Saddam's. Continued even after Adnan fled back to the West - PWI had a story about a Baghdad show with Bad News Brown on the bill in December 1990 on the eve of Gulf War I.

He still does announcing for All Star and also did some commenting for a few online Rumble Promotions shows earlier this year. Lee Bamber - then and now:

I like this one because instead of pressing his advantage as a heavyweight, Douglas uses the opportunity to show off his technical prowess with Saint., so you forget it's a catchweight match.

Part of a HEATED feud with Brooks leaning towards heel. Hit its climax in June that year when Collins fell out of the ring during a Croydon title match, hit his head and dazedly attacked the referee, getting himself DQ'd and losing the title to Brooks. Collins was very ashamed afterwards and felt like he'd let his fans down. He got the title back in the 90 days return match.

I think I might have already dealt with this, or at least talked about it. Classic NagasakiSouth London crowd riot (I've spoken to people who think the rioters were hired actors - I could actually have introduced you to some of the rioters personally, back in the day) Nagasaki and Roberts had some good moment at the start till Adonis came in with his forearm smash. I wouldn't say Naggers was old, he was an evergreen like Terry Funk.

Sadly, Karl died late last year in his 50s. A nice bloke who liked to chat to me about the old days.

The match where Kent Walton finally became a fan of Regal. Best bits are between Danny and Robbie. Pete finally found his level as heel Mr Vain Pete Collins in the late 90s/early 00s, including a brother vs brother feud with Danny who had just recently gone back to blue-eye.

All Star never quite went full blown tribute although they put UK Undertaker, Big Red Machine and Legend Of Doom on as headliners a lot. I can tell you a fair bit about storylines - Carl "Karl Kramer" Davies apparently as British Heavyweight champion in 1998, a split between the Superflies with Ocean and the Canary Kid winning the tag belts that the 'flies had to vacate after the split. There are a few camcordings here and there but things pick up with the arrival or cameraphones in the Noughties.

I guess Max Crabtree had a farm. Pete Ross and a couple of others used this nickname to get over as a handsome young country boy. All Star's last ITV match, one of a couple left over from the final Bedworth TV taping where the Kendo Nagasaki hypnosis angle on Robbie Brookside was done. South as the kiddy favourite Legend Of Doom got to unseat heel Jones for his final World Mid Heavyweight Championship reign in April '99 over a decade later. Disqualifications were a bigger deal over here, not just because a title could change on one but because the heel throwing a stroppy over it would get a great pop from the audience, glad to see the villains get blistered like a naughty schoolboy by the headmasterly MC and ref.

Was initially rather cross about this review as there is a Saint win over McCoy on Reslo that I like a lot, but I've since found out that there were two and the one I like was the second match, whereas what you'vr got hold of here is the first match. This is the lacklustre first match: and here is the rather better second match with English commentary by veteran MC Lee Bamber whom you heard earlier as Mick McManus's sidekick on his 1988 videotape.

Clwyd I've already dealt with, Tony Stewart aka Billy Reid was getting quite a push in the early 90s. He had 21 months as British Lightweight Champion with Jimmy Ocean as twice interim heel champion and preceded and succeeded as long term champ by Steve Grey. On the Wrestling Madness videotape he does an interview with an odd quasi shoot interview about his excerise routine (including digging up sand with a plank of wood) conducted by an unusually subdued Princess Paula. He also has a match with Johnny Saint from Leeds, late 1995 but it is rather hard to watch as it was filmed some distance from thje ring.

A good early specimen of the Nagasaki Tag match that would fill the headline spot at many a small town show. The breakout of wild punching violence between StClair and Quinn ended in both DQd and thrown out in disgrace - StClair is actually the blue-eye attacking the referee and he turns even Kent Walton against him and seems fairly shamefaced once he's calmed down.

er because of the big fat old men like Daddy and Haystacks so says everyone? Clywd aka Gary Welsh was being touted as a hot prospect by Orig in the late 80s and into the 90s but ended up as one of a couple of Doink The Clown tribute acts (or rather "Dunk the clown") alongside veteran Blondie Bob Barrett. Bainbrdge was on a tear having a couple of European Lightweight title runs, but then packed it in and was not heard from again.

As you can see, there was quite a long series of Finlay vs Collins matches, starting in about 1986 with an absolute squashing of Collins and climaxing in 1989 with Collins beating Finlay for the British HeavyMiddleweight title. The 2012 match pitting an older Dirty Dan against Finlay JR, from a fan appreciation show at Croydon was something of a coda to this.

Rocco and Collins had quite a few matches, including a TV bout with Mitzi Mueller in the MC role she would later bequeath to her daughter Laetitia, ending in Rocco taking advantage of Collins's leg being trapped in the ropes to get a winning submission. Also a World Heavymiddleweight title match in Paris 1991 on Eurosport with Rocco incorrectly billled as American (like Tommy Mann, the Black Diamonds and Dave Bond before him in France) where again Collins got trapped in the ropes, this time resulting in a TKO. (If you don't like the dancing girls Eurosport gave Flesh Gordon as hangers on, then you won't liek Rocco's "sensational second" either, whom Orig puts a lot of effort into letching over. I guess Rocco thought his wife Anne wouldn't be impressed either, which may explain why he carried her out humiliatingly over his shoulder upside down like Elizabeth by heel Randy Savage circa 1986.)

There were two of these in the summer of 1996. Regal was TV champion for the third time and doing a World tour with his title. This included two defences against former partner Regal at Fairfield Hall Croydon (old TV venue, All Star's showcase location) and Victoria Hall Hanley (about the best venue used for Screensport.) Along with the visit by Michinoku Pro to Croydon, Regal's visit and defences were The big headline in All Star for 1996.

Screensport was a very limited viewing satellite/cable channel at a time when most people in the UK only had the then four terrestrial channels. I'd totally agree with your assesment of the production and would point to the the dreadful commentators (I call them the Chuckle Brothers) as further evidence of how fantastic Kent Walton was. Like French TV wrestling and to a lesser extent Reslo, it did push the boat out in terms of violence (especially weapons and fighting outside the ring) far further than ITV would ever dare. There were however some serious clean matches thrown in as well. This was basically All Star's audtion tape for a share of the ITV pie. Tellingly it ran for almost the same time period as the Joint-only first season of post-WOS shows (Sept '85-Dec '86) Clearly they had action and ideas but they needed the restraint of the IBA to get a proper upmarket professional show such as Joint had managed before Daddy. That restraint on the violence was what they needed to become a major league promotion.

He very much made a career of dropping lighter weight titles to the latest hot young whizzkid. Bobby Ryan, Dynamite Kid, Davey (almost), Danny Collins, Peter Bainbridge, probably a load more. Imagine if Harley Race had to job the NWA World title about 30 odd times to every promising Tommy Rich in the business. Some, like Collins, went on to bigger things, others like Peter Bainbridge had their reign or two (Euro lightweight in Bainbridge's case) then flashed right back in to the pan.

Triple Tag !!!

I've already praised and posted the second one of the two. The first I find a little disappointing because there's less of the technical work of the first half of the 1978 bout. Watch the 1978 bout as a one fall contest ending in Round 2 and watch the Rex Strong contest and you have a good idea of what Nagasaki could be like as a pure wrestler. The second half is a rare example of one of Nagasaki's wild brawls from live shows that slipped the net and was allowed on TV. Not sure how or why but they got away with this one - mainly because of the reversed decision DQ for Kendo at the end (this was announced later in the night at the venue and by studio host Fred Dineage, filling in for Dickie Davies, on transmission. There is some footage of a third earlier Nagasaki-Roberts bout from 1971, short clips filmed off TV on 8mm like the Billy Howes bout (indeed by the same person), with Kendo winning with an airplane spin, also noticabale for Kento's samurai sword charge at the start coming close to Roberts, but him not batting an eyelid. Also as I said, they have a few good seconds at the start of the Mick McManus World Of Wrestling before Steve Adonis tags in and forearm smashes everything in sight.

I think it would have been more interesting if Bret hadn't done the "not understanding the British rules" soft heel part and had another clean bout like the Dalbir Singh one. Likewise Jones vs Dynamite Kid. Sometimes having a heel and having to work the crowd gets in the way of a good technical match. Or so it seems if Kent Walton shaped your ideas about what constitutes a good wrestling match. If you give up on a match because of no story then that probably won't make much sense to you, like the no followdowns rule if you were brough up with following down being perfectly clean. If you grew up with this wrestling culture then you see following down as akin to a boxer who has just knocked an opponet down and rather than retire to a corner, proceeds to kneel down and pummel his opponent on the mat.

Glad you were warming to Kendo too but I have to disagree with the bit in red. I gave a list of some of his prettier moves a few pages back and he does a fair few of them in the scientific round 1 of this bout. I listed them a while back so rather than make another list, I shall just paste the original. Also here's my own review of it from earlier By the way, I've spotted an error where I posted this Bronson match a second time instead of his bout with Rex Strong from 1978. I've now corrected it and put in the correct video if anyone wants to go back and check.

I think you were beginning to warm to Vic at this point and see the substance. Without checking, I guess it was a refused TKO resulting in No Contest - the shorter alternative to a 1-1 time limit draw.