David Mantell

Talking of Daddy Tags: It's difficult to underestimate just how OVER as a blue-eye Sammy Lee was in Britain in 1980/1981. I missed his first TV match from Croydon against Sid Cooper because my dad dragged us all out swimming that Sat afternoon, but my grandad came round that evening and was absolutely frothing at the mouth. "SAMMY LEE!!! WHOAH!!! HE'S FANTASTIC!!!" Lee and his fast moves and flying kicks were starting to eclipse even Big Daddy in terms of popularity, even the Crabtrees themselves were reportedly in awe of the young lad. Perhaps that's why they let him upstage Daddy somewhat in this match, even scoring the deciding fall. Vladimir was a favourite of mine, he had been on a winning streak up til this, so I was rather upset as a kid to see he would be wrestling TWO unbeatable opponents. The "illegal" sleeper is the only real offence either heel gets in as they slink to a 2-0 loss. At least Fuji & Quinn vs Daddy and Bridges was not on TV so I was spared having to watch Fuji go down to defeat. Getting back to Sammy Lee, I remember reading once how Vince Russo or it may have been Vince McMahon - Some fool called Vince anyway - thought that it was impossible for a Japanese to be a straight babyface (which is why they lumbered Kaentai with that stupid "indeed" gimmick.) They should watch this match - especially the end when MrMuscles Johnny England flees from the ring and Sammy just shrugs his shoulders modestly and comes across as really likeable. Perfect blue-eye.

I guess it's just a matter of overcoming the need for an American style structure to a tag match. Athough like I said, the Big Daddy tag is pretty much the ultimate manifestation of the FIP >>>HOT TAG story. I remember one time in the 90s watching a WWF tape, probably WM4 with Strike Force vs Demolition and pondering how the Big Daddy Tags In spot actually must have pre-dated Big Daddy by ages - only with the two faces in interchangable roles. (I believe it was Toods Mondt who originally invented FIP/Hot Tag spots in the 1920s.)

Barnes and Cooper were each one half of legendary heel teams the Royals had feuded with going back to the 60s (Barnes in the Hells Angels with Adrian Street, now just about to head off to North America starting with Stampede, Cooper with Strongman Alan Dennison in the Dennisons, by now a reformed character who had his soul saved in 1976 by the Dynamite Kid and who ended up as British Welterweight Champion.) Indeed there is footage of the Hells Angels and the Dennisons against each other. Not sure if I already posted it but what the heck, I'll post it again Bert Royal had a severe injury not too long after this match which put the Royals to an end more or less although he came back for some singles bouts later on. Vic Faulkner later formed a new tag team with John Savage (John Hindley, later Johnny Smith, evil heel cousin of Davey Boy, in Stampede and Japan.)

Murphy had quite a long career ahead of and behind him. He was the son of 1950s/1960s heel Roy Bull Davies who wrestles Billy Robinson in The Wrestlers from 1967. As Steve Young, he'd been quite the promising clean youngster in the late '60s even getting some TV appearances in, before defecting off to the independents. Some time in the 70s he turned heel and became Bad Boy Steve Young and in 1979ish he lost a hair vs hair match (I did know against who but have forgotten.) before returning to Joint and reappearing on TV as Skull Murphy in 1982. He was due to have been in the 1982 FA Cup Final match with American heel Crusher Brannigan (a low rent Mighty John Quinn - General/Ripper John Raven was another one.) but had some sort of issue in a previous Daddy tag a few nights earlier and was either banned from working with Daddy by Max C or else refused to work with him again. Possbly he got rough with Daddy and didn't go along wiht the no selling. Finlay and Murphy formed a tag team wnning the 1982 Top Tag Team tournaments and being presented with the only set of tag team title belts I can remember from before the WWF invaded (there was no British Tag Team Title until 1989, a year after TV). They reunited after TV, appeared on Reslo and even had a heel vs heel match with Kendo Nagasaki and Blondie Barrett one night (as part of an ongoing Kendo/Murphy feud.) Murph's greatest moment came in 1995 when he won the British Light Heavyweight title off Alan Kilby altbough Kiilby got it back later that year. He also had a big feud with Robbie Brookside for both All Star and TWA in 1999 which involved TWA's - and possibly All Star's - versions of the British Heavyweight title. Murphy continued into the C21st and had an enthusiastic fan called Patti J who would get into fights online with anyone who said anything untowards about her man. In fact now I've written this, she'll probably turn up on here, so hiya Patti !

Something else worth mentioning - after this and the previous week's wrestling they ran a trailer for the new look show with its WWF and All Star tapes. This was the first time I ever saw Hulk Hogan - I instinctively knew he was the American Big Daddy and hated him for that. They also showed a clip of the British Bulldogs and this is my earliest memory of the bigger American ring with the individual corner pads. Also a lot of talent who had defected to All Star were reintroduced as "some familiar faces coming back to TV - Quinn, St Clair, Rocco ("Johnny Saint, JUST YOU WATCH OUT!") - "and it all starts with the return of The Great KENDO NAGASAKI" (the only "familiar face" who was legitimately coming out of retirement.)

Zimba trained at Riley's Gym and had a reputation for working stiff (cf Dynamite Kid's comment in Pure Dynamite that Zimba "was a big old bgger who didn't care if he hurt you.") He was personable and fans liked seeing him do his headbutt on heels and could work a solid strenght match. (Oh yes and he liked goat for his Xmas dinner, even if it was in rigor mortis.) Dave Bond seems to have been getting out of his heel phase by this point. Stax and Quinn had a much bigger TV match that summer against Pete Roberts and Johnny Wilson FAO John Lister, correction to the 1980 page on ITV Wrestling, this WAS the only match transmitted that week. Regular World Of Sport was pre-empted in favour of special wall-to-wall coverage of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow but this one match was inserted in to keep the wrestling public happy a la the FA Cup coverage. There was no actual Olympic wrestling on ITV but this match's screening prompted six year old me to loudly proclaim that the bout was "Olympic Wrestling" which led to a lengthy argument with my dad! At the end of the above match Wayne Bridges runs in to demand his contractual return match for the title loss to Quinn. He would finally get it in 1984 I recall watching this one as a child too. After the 1979 FA Cup Final Daddy & Rigby vs Quinn and Rocco bout and the late 1979 Big Daddy and Mal Sanders vs Giant Haystacks and Rocco match, this was the third Daddy vs Rocco match I had seen in my young life. To be honest, the photo op bit was generally expected of top stars and it was probably more the mayor's photo opportunity with Daddy rather than the other way round. "Easy" was something invented by football fans (see also a lot of the chants in Catch Francais such as "Ho Ho Cette Arbitre" and "Allez les rouges/verts/bleus/etc".) which wrestling fans picked up on and which became a big part of the Daddy shtick. Together with "we shall not be moved", "Easy" became a slogan for Daddymania as a force like Hulkamania, albeit a force with no name, just an emotional expression of Daddy on the attack. The most obvious articulation of this was Daddy's speech after his win over Haystacks at Wembley "AND REMEMBER, HAYSTACKS, WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED!!! EASY! EASY!" as young Jane Crabtree stomped along to the chant and waved her cheerleader baton, but clearly Daddy trying to pump up Kid Chocolate here was another example. BD and KC would have a future together, they would be in the 1983 FA Cup Final match against Charlie McGee's marvellous magical Masked Marauders. After defeating Fireman Colin Bennett and Nipper Eddie Riley, this is what went down on Cup Final day: Marauder Minor, played by Lucky Gordon, disappeared fromTV after aving his carcass dragged out of the ring to safety at the end of this match (clearly Bret Hart had a point about that backdrop) while the bigger Marauder went on to not one but TWO TV unmaskings by Big Daddy: Banger Walsh in that second match is the incident I referered to above where Walsh actuall did get injured onscreen by the Double Elbow backdrop.

I suspect some of the surviving late '70s Catch Francais we've got was colour kinescope too:

As discussed a couple of pages back in examples of juice on World Of Sport. The sympathy factor made Joynson, once the brutal boot droog of The Dangermen with Steve Haggerty, unable to work as a heel again.

Yes, he transformed from Beautiful Bobby to Bad Boy Bobby. He would later have the blond hair dyed various colours punk-style. Kent Walton adored Marino-mainly because he gave Kent some wrestling training in the gym early on as research for his role. Kendo has in recent years complained about Marino's tendency to keep taking a step back all the time. His big escape from a headlock was just to yank his head clear suddenly - clearly there was a time before the bandstanding escape was invented. At one time he was reportedly quite the handsome blue-eye until Bert Assirati badly mauled him in the ring one night. Still, The Golden Boy got his revenge on Assirati in this photoshoot: Both Marino and Kirk are sadly remembered for their respective premature deaths - Marino collapsing from leukaemia and dying by a roadside in the arms of his student Mal Sanders, Kirk for his death in the ring in a 1987 Daddy tag.

Pehaps that's expecting tag wrestling to conform to a structure when there's the Atlantic Ocean in the way of where that structure was embedded. I feel like cautioning against confusing "something done differently" with "something done wrongly. Having said all that, if there's one true manifestation of the Hot Tag in British Wrestling, it's in a Big Daddy tag when Daddy tags in and goes on the roll.

The one year off from the Cup Final that Daddy got between 1978 and 1986 and he STILL shows up! A rare UK example of the standard American practice of using a TV match to build up an untelevised arena main event.

Well, more indeed came to light (Faulkner vs McMichael from 1972 as already posted on this thread.)

This bout also took place on the other side of the channel:

The Exorcist on TV was Clay Thomson moonlighting as a heel as I think we already discussed. Godon Corbett did another Exorcist later in the 70s on the indie circuit with a female manger Miss Jamie Barrington.

.. including the buildup bout for The Masked Marauders's 1983 FA Cup Final Big Daddy match. His brother Mike Bennett (no relation to late 80s WWEer Mike Kanelis) had something of a push in the mid 80s as a heel feuding with Danny Collins. Bennett had a wedding ring that he was unable to remove due to the finger swelling (it happens! ) This he frequently used as a foreign object in a territory not noted for such things (heel-era Alan Dennison's notorious leather wristbands being another rare example.) Marvellous Mike beat Danny Boy early in 1985 by submission in a one fall bout, then challenged Collins for his British Welterweight Champion (there was a challenge ceremony a few weeks beforehand that involved them high fiving each other). The title match ended in Bennett DQ'd controversially, with all sorts of repercussions including referee Jeff Kaye coming out of retirement to take on Bennett (and lose 2-1), the two of them co-win a battle royal which somehow ended in a time limit draw (!) and even Big Daddy getting involved with Collins and Bennett on opposite sides of the big Christmas Daddy tag match with Bully Boy Ian Muir on Bennett's side which again ended in DQ when Bennett struck Collins with the ring leaving him in agony on the mat and Daddy up on the corner post screaming abuse at Bennett. Just to top things off, the following year, Bennett won the annual Grand Prix Belt, beating the Birmingham Steve Logan in the final:

Ah well, I'm feeling dangerous ... Davey was more of the apprentice than Bernie, although Bernie really comes of age with his match with Naylor. It looks quite a fast flashy bout- I imagine they had a lot of experience with each other in Ted Betley's gym with Ted getting them to master every spot. Bernie maintained the family tradition by being billed as a Wonderboy in TVTimes. He matured even more than Smith, into the grizzled hard case we see against Rasputin and Ray Robinson in the late 80s while Davey was with Dynamite in the WWF. Five years later they would meet again as described above - with Davey looking more like his later self but acting the whiny heel.

Ah I see you already covered some of the points I made in my post above. I still think it was a little unfair of you to write the whole edition off as "truly atrocious" in your history of British wrestling - as I said the support bouts are both actually pretty solid.

Best of luck with that - they themselves only wrapped up in 1993, Daddy's last year of his career Daly and Gordon had been The Masked Marauders just months earlier for the 1983 FA Cup Final against Daddy and Kid Chocolate (having first scored a warmup win over Nipper Eddie Riley and Fireman Colin Bennet a few weeks earlier. (On the house show ciruit Daly was still doing the Marauders gimmick both with Blackjack Mulligan and with non masked partners including the Xmas 1983 win over Daddy mentioned above) This was the climax of a Daddy's All Stars vs Haystack's Wrecking Crew themed TV taping screened across two weeks worth of World Of Sport. The previous week had ended with the Crew leading 2-1 and week 2 (which I originally watched at a schoolfriend's 10th birthday party - I was the only one rooting for Haystacks) was a clean sweep for the Daddy side, including a solo squashing of Daly by Daddy, where Daly was doing well against Daddy for a moment until Haystacks came out and gave Daly some advice which obviously wasn't very good advice as Daddy immediately started trashing Daly and soon got the winning KO. By this point the theme of the feud of Stax being scared of Daddy had extended to Stax's partners with, as Kent Walton said "any time Daddy gets in - complete disappearance of the opposition" as the camera zoomed in on the "disaapeared" Haystacks. This match lasted just 85 seconds and was a one fall singles match between Daddy and Muir (they had already had a proper singles bout on TV in the summer of '76 from another of my local venues, Bedworth Civic Hall.) Again, Stax finding a way to get out of the match and get out of facing Daddy. See also his attack on the already freshly pinned Alan Kilby in the 1981 cup final. The back body drop was known as the double elbow. Bret Hart mentions this move in his biography. Quite a lot of people got injured by this one (including Banger Walsh on TV in 1984) and it was seen as something of a dare among UK heels out of kayfabe to be prepared to take this one. Bret said that Max C would wave money in front of opponents to get them to risk their lives with this move. Albert Hell-on was not an American and was a fairly low rent fourth man for Daddy, StClair and Stax. StClair was British Heavyweight Champion and had a big title feud with Haystacks in 1979 after Stax won the title at the Royal Albert Hall (NOT named after Mr. Hell-on by the way!) by dropping his weight on StClair's legs to score a TKO, and then StClair getting it back by DQ in a rematch. Rumour has it that before Kendo Nagasaki retired at the end of 1978, this title change was to have been with him as a follow on to the confrontation with StClair at Kendo's final (until late 1986 screened Jan 1987) TV match where StClair and Nagasaki seemed to have agreed to a title match - and that Haystacks was a replacement interim champion. "Roy" Regal's second TV match and often held up as an example of how badly he was handled by Max Crabtree. Also the last week before All Star's TV debut and described as a "truly atrocious" show by JNLister although there were some good supporting bouts with Ian McGregor and Nipper Riley (not against each other this time, which is a pity as they were great together, but against good opponents Mike Jordan and King Ben) This was essentially McGee's blowoff match after 3 years of leading teams such as The Masked Marauders, The Rockers, The Terrible Two (Kirk and Muir) Tiny Callaghan and others in a doomed campaign to beat Big Daddy, often getting in the ring himself and getting beaten up and thrown out by Daddy. His fat beardy slob image was a bit of a rip off of heel-era Captain Lou Albano. In real life he was a retired circus clown and good friend of Crabtree who refused to have a bad word said about his nemesis. Sid Cooper kept ploughing away until a career ending injury in 2000, by which time he was mostly wrestling for Premier Promotions down in Sussex. Bromley would later get his own feud with Daddy as the masked Emperor. 1) This had actually already happened on TV back in November 1977. (Well actually it first happened in September 1977 in the final of a four man KO tournament but Stax walked out seconds into that one, starting the rumour that the one man he was scared of was his former tag partner) The November 1977 fight saw Daddy score an easy first round pinfall and then the two charge at each other at the start of round 2 squishing the poor referee and leaving the match abandoned. You'll notice there seems to be a bit of a theme of Daddy scoring the opener on Stax and then him bailing out quickly one way or another before he could have a totally discrediting second fall scored on him. This happened a lot at non TV shows. 2) A no rounds, no falls, fight to the finish that could only be won on a knock out. See also the Quinn fight and the loser leave UK fight with the Missisippi Mauler Jim Harris. A Texas Death Match in all but name. 3) The only time after 1978 Daddy was allowed to be in any kind of Trouble in the ring, especially on TV. Even so, it wasn't Stax's efforts that got Daddy down but rather Daddy coming to the knocked out first referee's aid, with Stax taking advantage and kicking Daddy about a bit until the missed splash. 4) until finally the fates intervened. A little sweat on the canvas? We'll never know, but Haystacks slid, then stumbled, and fell... fell over the top rope and down into the bowels of the earth. Unable to mobilise his gigantic frame, this lionheart was counted out. Stax himself afterwards claimed to have slipped on the pile of flowers on the ringside table! There's a clip of Daddy and Stax, bitter enemies, discussing these matters on kids slapstick show Tiswas with only petite female presenter (and most frequently pied female face on British TV) Sally James to keep them apart-unfortunately it's no longer on Youtube but I'll see sometime if I can upload it here some other way. 5) The smaller of the two little girl cheerleaders was Daddy's stepdaughter and closest confindante Jane who remains an ambassador for Daddy'smemory and a staunch defender of him online and at wrester reunions. ********************************************************************************************************* > Is there no stopping this man? Apparently not when he's running into people. Scoff all you will, but this was how the family audiences, especially the kids, saw Daddy, as this unstoppable bulldozing force.

EWP's website is still up although Norton Security doesn't like it. I like the photo they have in the background - it looks a lot like a C21st Town Show by All Star or Premier:

The good news is that EPW seems to be out there and they began in 2004 with much the same.talent pool as EWP (i.e. carrying on where the CWA left off. https://www.cagematch.net/?id=8&nr=95 https://www.cagematch.net/?id=8&nr=95&page=4 Here's EWP's entry; https://www.cagematch.net/?id=8&nr=25 https://www.cagematch.net/?id=8&nr=25&page=4

Interesting that they were still making kinescopes as late as the Rocco/Jones match - I guess that was a colour kinescope? There could well be quite a lot of these bouts in all sorts of overseas locations. I wonder if Phillip Morris's Television International Enterprises keeps an eye out for matches. Then again, a lot of this could be preserved and under lock and key at LWT and Granada already.

The Barons, of course, were familiar faces also in Catch Francais. Gilmour did a blue-eyed masked man routine a decade later as Kamikaze who was being hyped as the new Kung Fu (Eddie Hammill) Saw this when I was 5 years old one dark winter's night. Rocco and Finlay were abot the two most credible people to lay down for Daddy (Kendo doesn't count as he beat Big Daddy all 3 of their TV singles bouts and walked out on Rex Strong in the tag match so Rex took both the falls). Stax's continual running away was the ongoing theme of the Stax-Daddy feud from the moment he walked out on a KO tournament final on TV seconds into the match in September 1977. Eventually this was extended to every heel living in abject fear of Big Daddy. The last line is almost ad verbatim what Kent Walton says! I posted this match just above. Business never struggled to the extent that they needed to turn Daddy. The opposition (All Star, Orig) becoming more and more formidable was more the issue. In any case tuning mega babyfaces didn't really take off until the late 90s with Hogan, Dusty, Sting... If Daddy had been still alive perhaps he would have become Big Bad Daddy, worn shades and stomped on opponents like in '75/76. Max had a plan for Daddy and the business and he saw booking like the two April '76 heel matches as sabotage on the part of other Joint members. Daddy's team losing 2-1 with the partner dropping the decider continued to happen sporadically. in 1979 Stax and Kirk got a win over Daddy and Mick McMichael with Stax splashing McMichael like he does Wensor here for the decider. This got repeated 1983 for a match 75% identical but with Sanders as the doomed blue-eye. At Xmas that year in IIRc Norfolk. there was a Christmas Triple-Tag (6 man) match wherre Hastacks teamed with the larger one of the Masked Marauders (Scrubber Daly) plus manager Charlie McGee to beat Daddy and two partners who were the fall guys. This set up a return match where Daddy and one of the two partners beat Stax and the Marauder and unmasked him,leaving the Stax/Daly tag team. Then in 1986 Fit Finlay teamed with Mal Stuart one night to beat Daddy and Richie Brooks when Finlay got Brooks in a pile driver fow a winning pin. I guess this was payback for Finlay's Cup Final comeuppance at the hands of Daddy. There were also a handful of DQ losses for Daddy where he either ran in to help or used the plastic bucket one too many times - the last was in late '87 against Drew McDonald and Rasputin. Generally this was kept off TV to maintain Daddy's aura of indestrucibility. Heels were portrayed as living in terror of Daddy, but a win over his partner gave them the bragging rights to a win over Daddy himself so it was their ultimate prize.

This was actually my first ever handicap tag and seeing it billed in TVTimes was my first encouter with the term "handicap tag". Basically like Andre or Hogan squashing two jobbers for Vince Senior, a vehicle to make Stax look strong. Still Stax's name value and the novelyt of catch a trois made it a TV main event. Two cup final matches. McDonald was a late substitute for someone else and is odd in the blue-eye role especially as he and Daddy went on to have a massive feud. Finlay would also have a feud -0 and another cup final showdown - with Daddy two years later where he was more the focus as Daddy was fed up with Finlay brutalising younger wrestlers and,asI said above, wanted to teach him a lesson. Stax and Angus's manager in the bow tie and frilly shirt was former wrestler Kangaroo Kid Ken Else, who previously managed Stax and Daddy for their July 1975 TV debut DQ loss to Roy and Tony StClair. About the second manager on ITV after Kendo's manager George Gillette.

Various royals, rock stars, politicians. Kendo is a pretty rich man from his out of the ring activity. He actually did preserve a few of his early TV bouts on 8mm home movie camera conversion such as this famous wild match with Billy Howes from 1971:

Afterthought - if Big Daddy was the British Hulk Hogan, then was this phase of his career the equivalent of Fred Blassie's Incredible Hulk Hogan 1979-1981? I thought so when I was 14 and saw back issues advertised in PWI of their poster mag spinoff with the story "Hulk Hogan - Wrestling's Most Hated Man - Full Color Photos Bring His Notorious Past Back To Life!" advertised. It made sense!