David Mantell

I take it we're talking about Jim Barnett's Australian WCW of 1964-1978 (which he folded to spend more time and effort on Georgia) rather than 1920s-1950s when Australia had its OWN wrestling - George Penchef, Alan Pinfold etc

The business model in the UK and I believe France also was based on intensity of touring, not single big dates. 6000 shows per year, weekly residencies in over 30 cities.

I think he was a reputation mark rather than a belt mark. He knew about Lou Thesz obviously from Thesz's visit in the late '50s- and Assirati's (unapproved by promoters) grandstanding challenge to Thesz at the Royal Albert Hall and fancied his chances against Thesz in a "smoker" public shoot match, a win in which would establish Robinson as top shooter on the planet. He was certainly enough of a belt mark to want to get Billy Joyce to job the British and European Heavyweight titles to him - which Joyce reportedly only agreed to do once Robinson could beat him on the mat in Riley's Gym.

Having said that, I think Billy Robinson's initial motive for going to North America was a naive and youthful desire to use his vast shoot skills to double cross his way to a major American version of a world title - consider how the first thing he did in Stampede pretty much was to double cross Archie Gouldie in an eliminator match for a shot at Dory Funk Jr - and thanks to having a sympathetic Stu Hart as the promoter he got away with it.

I'd say that the territory era, or at least the 30 year gap between the end of the 40s/50s American TV wrestling boom and Vince getting the WWF onto MTV and NBC represented an extended dip period for wrestling's public profile in Amerca at a time when it was certainly much higher in Britain and for a fair while in France also. Consider how the ITV Golden Age and the NWA territories era were actually concurrent!

I think perhaps you're overestimating the global importance of the NWA World title. I didn't know of its existence until 1988 - we had our own World Heavyweight title which Quinn and Wayne Bridges fought for on FA Cup Final day 1980, Bridges won over Jim Harris in the second highest bout on the bill after Daddy vs sTax at Wembley '81 and Kendo had won from Bridges in late '87. Andre, apart from his time challenging Wanz in '87 had already been a big name back home in France and had been on World Of Sport in spring '69. Bruno and Dusty I'm sceptical about how big they were globally beyond North America and Japan.

It's evolved a long way but at the end of the day it's all still the W(W)WF. The pull away from sports based presentation further and further towards entertainment has its roots in ideas deep within New York wrestling, already in evidence in the days of Mondt and Pfefer... He was primarily based in the AWA after a start period in Stampede. He kind of went on tour to places like Memphis, British Columbia etc.

also obviously Spiros Arion, Jim Harris the future Kamala, Mighty John Quinn the former Kentucky Butcher (all of whom had already done well in Britain.) EDIT: oh yes and just months after he was in with Flair - TERRY FUNK

Don Leo Johnathan, Bobby Duncum, Steelman the future Tugboat/Typhoon/Shockmaster, Kokina the future Yokozuna ....

True, although PR is not annexed so arguably deserves separate status like Mexico. The corpse of Stampede twitched a bit in the late '00s.

Sergeant Slaughter pre-babyface concurrently with his WWF Grand Wizard phase and JCP Don Kernodle/World tag title phase. Andre in 1987 was juggling two separate World title quests - Hogan in the WWF and Wanz in the CWA. The Moondogs, Baron Von Rashcke, Colonel DeBeers, the about to be Brutus Beefcake ... Later on there was Road Warrior Hawk, Eddie Gilbert, Rick Martel, Paul Roma, WARRIOR ... I could sift through serj1e's Youtube channel for more names.

Wrestling in the most succesful European territories had a higher profile than in the US territories at the time. Even in weaker territories like Spain and Greece, there were 10k megashows going on in the early 70s. Otto Wanz in 80s Germany and Hercules Cortez in 60s Spain were household names in their respective countries.

True they were quicker off the mark on the internet although Britain caught up with this a few years later. France is still in a more primitive state when it comes to celebrating its wrestling heritage. I refer you to my remarks about Royal variety performances and other mainstream TV ops in the UK and (possibly to a lesser extent) France. Only one US wrestling territory lives on in 2023 (or indeed past March 2001) , compared with three surviving European old school wrestling cultures.

Austria/Germany especially the CWA was the usual preferred gateway territory for Americans. Britain had a reputation for being full of shooters which apparently scared a lot of Americans, so said Lou Thesz who did tour here. Also Europe made a lot more stars in the lighter weight divisions which was a concept that ran counterintuitive to the Bigger Better Badder philosophy of American wrestling and American culture at large.

Wrestling in Northwest Europe had a more prominent public profile until Vince Jr properly got his feet under the table in '85. Between 1955-1985 American TV wrestling was mostly small local stations, often minority language. Most territories made their TV shows in front of 50 people in a studio - even the WWF at that point taped their shows in a converted barn in rural Pennsylvania. In Britain and France, the biggest national stations sent out Outside Broadcast units and filmed big house shows at places like the Royal Albert Hall and Elysee Montmatre and presented them as sport coverage of the top action. Wrestling in America during the terrirories era was uniformly despised by the establishment as vulgar trash. In Britain, wresters were invited to make personal appearances on Royal Variety shows and royalty and politicians were openly fans. In Britain Mick McManus publicly hung out with pop stars like Mick Jagger. In France, Le Petit Prince practically WAS a pop star minus the music and records.

and as for the money being better in the US, I've got two words for that: Nick Gulas.

Why assume the American big names were the World big names? I became a wrestling fan in 1976 aged 2. I first heard of Hulk Hogan in December 1986. I first read about Ric Flair in an imported copy of PWI in 1988.

Have bounced this over to a thread of its own:

(Copied from the WON HOF 2023 thread) Why the United States is automatically ASSUMED to always have been the Big Time worldwide capital of professional wrestling. Is it just patriotism/chauvinism on the part of American wrestling fans? Obviously nowadays WWE is the biggest wrestling company on the planet and it's American so that much is understandable. In the 1960s there was a good case to be made that European wrestling was as big if not bigger a business than American wrestling. Both British and French wrestling had prestigious mainstream national TV slots that would have been the envy of any individual US or Canadian territory between 1955 (closure of DuMont) and 1985 (launch of SNME). In Germany/Austria by the early 80s there was a fixed cultural link between wrestling and the big traditional festivals and a thriving early home videotape market for wrestling and a massive talent exchange with the US. In North America, NWA members were. ACTIVELY PREVENTED from sending footage to TV stations in other territories. In Britain and France in the 50s/60s/70"s, ITV and (O)RTF were cheerfully flogging b/w 16mm kinescope prints of their respective wrestling shows to TV stations all over Africa and Asia. In Britain, France and Germany, old school European wrestling culture lives on, at least at grassroots level. In the US and Canada, with the one obvious exception of New York Wrestling which lives on as WWE, all the old territorial wrestling cultures of the mid//late 20th century have been wiped out. Where small time wrestling exists in America today, it takes the form of a generic modern indie wrestling style. I would put it to you all that in the 60s, 70s and even into the early 80s, the centre of the wrestling universe was Northwest Europe, not the US and this helped smoothen the road for the popularity of WWF and to some extent WCW in the early 90s

That's odd. Everyone insists to me that America would NEVER have accepted someone like Big Daddy, dear me no!!! I always said that if anything the American public are less fussy about technical ability and he would have at least got over as an end of the night comedy act in WWF. You can have fun booking imaginary Big Daddy tags in the WWF - Big Daddy and Tito Santana vs One Man Gang and Butch Reed, Big Daddy and Sam Houston vs Akeem and Rick Martel, Big Daddy and Paul Roma vs King Kong Bundy and Paul Orndorff. The formula was transferable. There's aslo a lot of similarity between Big Daddy tags and those six man tags they used to have at the end of the night with Andre and/or Callhoun plus Dusty or Putski or the babyface tag champs/top contenders versus three of the biggest nastiest heels like Bruiser Brody or Bugsy McGraw or the current heel tag champs/top contenders such as the Blackjacks or Executioners, where it would all end with Andre or Callhoun squashing the heels gruesomly for the winning pinfall and fans could end the night happy that the men they hated had been thoroughly defeated and probably badly injured too.

I'm thinking of starting a thread asking why the United States is automatically ASSUMED to always have been the Big Time worldwide capital of professional wrestling. Is it just patriotism/chauvinism on the part of American wrestling fans? Obviously nowadays WWE is the biggest wrestling company on the planet and it's American so that much is understandable. In the 1960s there was a good case to be made that European wrestling was as big if not bigger a business than American wrestling. Both British and French wrestling had prestigious mainstream national TV slots that would have been the envy of any individual US or Canadian territory between 1955 (closure of DuMont) and 1985 (launch of SNME). In Germany/Austria by the early 80s there was a fixed cultural link between wrestling and the big traditional festivals and a thriving early home videotape market for wrestling and a massive talent exchange with the US. In North America, NWA members were. ACTIVELY PREVENTED from sending footage to TV stations in other territories. In Britain and France in the 50s/60s/70"s, ITV and (O)RTF were cheerfully flogging b/w 16mm kinescope prints of their respective wrestling shows to TV stations all over Africa and Asia. In Britain, France and Germany, old school European wrestling culture lives on, at least at grassroots level. In the US and Canada, with the one obvious exception of New York Wrestling which lives on as WWE, all the old territorial wrestling cultures of the mid//late 20th century have been wiped out. Where small time wrestling exists in America today, it takes the form of a generic modern indie wrestling style. I would put it to you all that in the 60s, 70s and even into the early 80s, the centre of the wrestling universe was Northwest Europe, not the US and this helped smoothen the road for the popularity of WWF and to some extent WCW in the early 90s

Well I've never paid much attention to the HOF, so I don''t know. They were all fairly legendary in their different ways. George Kidd massively developed the art of technical wrestling especially defensive/counter wrestling (something sorely lacking in American-style wrestling), he managed to make a World Lightweight title a draw in spite of all received wisdom and between them he and Johnny Saint kept that title a draw for nearly half a century. Of the other three only Kendo was particularly a great technical wrestler- when he wanted to be, mainly in round one of his 1970s bouts.In the ring he was a Terry Funk like character, a guy who was trained to be a scientific marvel but found his niche in violent dirty wrestling. Much like Terry Funk during his Flair feud/USWA/ECW/Chainsaw Charlie years, he blossomed and ripened with age, having some of his best years as a controversial heat drawing heel (albeit with a significant col heel following) during All Star's two years on ITV and even more so in ASW's post-TV boom period when his violent battles with Rocco etc were blowing Joint Promotions/Big Daddy out of the water and confirming All Star's overtaking of Joint as dominant UK promotion, a title it still holds in 2023. Mention has to be made also of his powerful ring entrance in Kendo helmet, cape and sword, a combination of Darth Vader and Ax & Smash of Demolition. Ironically Kendo didn't just destroy Big Daddy but he made him also as it was their mid 70s feud, after Daddy pulled off his mask on TV in 1975, starting a feud that was the prototype for Daddy's feuds with Haystacks and Mighty John Quinn. Obviously Big Daddy was no technical wrestler. Contrary to popular opinion, he did know how to sell and work on the defensive as some surviving bouts from 75-78 attest.It was Max Crabtree who deliberately booked his brother as an unstoppable juggernaut that moved down all opposition heels. A force of nature. He was a household name with particular appeal to the child/family audience and kept at least some of that drawing power until his Dec 1993 retirement. Ultimately however he alienated much of the locker room and adult fans alike with the way the entire scene was subverted to putting him over with heels all being humiliatingly mown down by him and blue-eyes (faces) having to be rescued by him, that both defected in droves to opposition All Star.to the point where they took over the territory and held onto it to this day. Pallo is usually thought of as joined at the hip with his heel Vs heel nemesis Mick McManus.An arrogant cocky smug heel who sometimes treated the thin line between that and being actually quite a loveable rogue, a cheeky chappie who people might actually have liked if not that what he was being cheeky about was grossly violating the rules and taunting and harassing ringside fans. His charisma got him a lot of showbiz work outside wrestling.

I would have a lot of support for Kidd - the only drawback is that there is little or any representative footage of him in circulation that we can watch. Of the three bouts we have, all from the final months of his career, only this quick squash gives a hint of the man's genius - and even then it's like saying that you understand what Johnny Saint is all about purely on the basis of watching his matches against Mike Quackenbush for Chickara in 2011. Hopefully one day Granada TV will open up its archive of 1960s kinescopes and we will get to see Kidd properly, (plus a whole bunch of the Wigan Snakepit crowd like Billy Joyce, pre-America Billy Robinson, Tommy "Jack Dempsey" Moore, Ernie Riley etc)

The flipside- an actual WoS matchup transplanted to Antenne 2 and the French ring: