David Mantell

Something I remember saying to you on Wrestling Heritage several years ago is that Bob Backlund was basically wasted on the WWF and would have fitted in much better in Britain wrestling clean matches on World Of Sport. I did suggest Marty Jones as an ideal opponent but you pointed out the size difference. What would have been best for Backlund was someone as squeaky clean as himself. Pete Roberts and Tony StClair would be my two pics for a Backlund opponent. Incidentally, there's a lot of comparisons to be made between early 80s WWF smart fans who thought Backlund was some sort of a crime against the Business and late 80s/into the 90s fans of Wild Crazy No Holds Barred American Wrestling who thought all the clean sportsmanly British wrestling was a parochial atrocity.

See my remarks about Count Bartelli above. I think I may have said this above, but a flip through JNLister's site reveals some 22 TV appearances between 1962 and 1969, many of which are probably in the Granada archive.

Add Ben vs McCoy - here's a nice TVTimes article promoting the fight. MUCH more level headed than footage of Diana Hart Smith crying her eyes out. Typing up blatantly pinched from JNLister's site - apologies John - although I do own the original cutting, which comes with a nice pic of father and son shaking hands before the bout.

Dick Conlon - bad tempered moustachioed heel. Best known for putting over a young Jackie Pallo Jr (aka JJ Pallo - he later visted America) and being comedy stooge for Catweazle in a match often used to represent him in docus/DVDs etc

Personally I like this match a lot as a pure "human chess" technical fest. (It was Gordon Solie who coined that "human chess" phrase yet I doubt he got to see too much - if any - British wrestling.) It's also quite good to hold up as an example of how BRitish wrestlers, particularly two blue-eyes could have a competitive match and not only be friends afterwards but actually during the match. In this case, they're actually father and son, which kind of makes look ridiculous and unneccesary a lot of the "bitter family feuds" between the Harts etc that we see in American wrestling - I look at those angle and wonder "what's the point? The Boothmans didn't need this nonsense". Having said that the second generation of the Knight family and Danny and Peter Collins did have some bitter brother vs brother fallout grudge matches in the late 90s (the Collinses) and the C21st (the Knights). Kid McCoy was THE hot prospect of 1986-1989. He was defending Golden Grappler champion looking for a second year on top on this match. He beat Steve Grey for the British Lightweight title in 1987. He was being tipped as the heir to Johnny Saint's throne. He was the creator of the Yorkshire Rope Trick which Owen Hart borrowed for the Blue Blazer in the WWF. Unfortunately the older Boothman had an old grudge against Kendo Nagasaki going back to an incident in the late 60s when a young Kendo badly stiffed King Ben's trainer Ernie Baldwin then handled Ben when he tried to attack Kendo backstage. In Basingstoke 21st June 1990, the Boothmans were matched with Kendo and Blondie Barrett. Father and son overheard Kendo/PEter disparangingly recalling the late 60s incident and decided to take action in the match, pulling various tricks (including Ben overpowering Kendo in a test of strength.) Kendo eventually cut the match short scoring an early finish then went backstage to complain to Brian Dixon. As a result, the Boothmans' bookings were cut to near zero and All Star stripped McCoy of recognition as British Lightweight champion quietly hading the belt back to former champion Steve Grey. Max Crabtree's remnant of Joint Promotions continued to recognise McCoy as champion as did Orig Williams whose BWF produced Reslo, which gave McCoy a high profile World title shot at Johnny Saint. The Kid even made it onto the continent for New Catch (albeit only for a Squashing in France by Scrubber Daly.) But being blackballed by Dixon stymied McCoy's career and he retired in 1994, later starting a roofing business. The other promoters fell back into line and recognised Grey as champion and apart from a couple of losses to Jimmy Ocen in the 90s, he held onto it until formally retiring the title in 2021 with it being awarded to Nino Bryant after he beat Lewis Mayhew to win the belt. (Grey was due to be special referee for this Rumble promotions bout but traffic problems intervened on the night.)

> Heels would be told that they HAVE BEEN DISQUALIFIED!!! by the headmasterly MC Steve Barker, MC and promoter of Rumble Promotions, still likes to do that spot. He likes telling people off, does old Steve.

Interesting little aside there - this comment is a product of its time. At this point some posters on Wrestling Heritage were raising doubts about Count Bartelli's long history as a masked man on the basis of "Well I don't remember him!" Turns out that it was all perfectly true, but that he was largely a hit- and confined to - the North of England, mainly for Morell and Beresford. Which explains why a bunch of elderly Londoners reared on 1950s Dale Martin didn't recall him. Judo Chris Adams. Important point about him at this point was that his brother Neil was an important sports star having become the first British World male Judo Champion and a 1980 Olympic Silver medalist. In 1981 he became double-crown World/European champion and gold medalist at the 1981 World Judo championships. Neil would go on to win another silver at the 1984 Olympics. Chris had also been on the 1976 Olympic team. So naturally promoters cashed in on his brother's celeb status. Promoters here were actually a lot better at milking DQs. Heels would be told that they HAVE BEEN DISQUALIFIED!!! by the headmasterly MC and would then proceed to throw a tantrum! Titles would be changed on DQs which was a good way to get belts off people like Haystacks, Nagasaki and Finlay while keeping them strong. So a DQ was actually a much bigger deal in Britain. The only time it was ever presented as a cop out was when Haystacks would contrive some situation to get himself disqualified to avoid facing Big Daddy. (Also masked men did not have to unmask on a DQ loss.)

Ken Joyce had a great 2-0 loss in 1981 to Johnny Saint (slightly spoiled by a ringside middle aged female fan who spent the whole bout giggling hysterically at everything.) His best trick was to stall on whips across the ring by plummeting down onto his backside as the first tug came. One thing with the likes of Joyce, Saint and Faulkener, as I've said, is that a lot of their counters were clever to the point of being amusing and triggered the giggles in some audiences but that this should NOT be taken as an excuse to label them as "comedy wrestlers". They were primarily skill men who loved what they did and had fun doing it, especially against a like-minded opponent.

About the best Barry Douglas match is on Reslo against a much lighter Johnny Saint who wins a one fall match where Douglas despite being booed at the start as the larger more menacing looking wrestler actually gets to show some good moves in fending off the smaller vastly more skilled Saint, atabout 1:15 breaking up a sideheadlock into a top wrist lever and then going under Saint's arm to get a throw out of it, rolling out of Saint's hammerlock attempt back to a standing start a 1:35, falling from a trip attempt neatly into an arm extention position etc etc. This is not the lumbering brute he looks like nor the Jobber To The Stars he was against new mega heel Red Ivan in 1987 but a true member of the Relwyskow dynasty using skill rather than his strength advantage to reverse and counter Saint's also impecable moves. The referee in this was John Harris was also an MC (including for Saint vs Finlay as mentioned in the previous post) and I believe he did the "corny voiceovers" at the start of shows 1985-1988 (replacing Dickie Davies's lead-ins) which were something of a house style for ITV programming, especially LWT in the mid 80s. John Elijah was a power wrestler first and foremost and the Big Daddy match where he gives Daddy a few problems (see previous page) was a good vehicle for what he could do. He is usually used as an honest-John "Friar Tuck" figure of a simple honest big man. When Dave Bond decided to reset to being a blue-eye, he teamed with Elijah for a match where they lost sportingly to two blue-eyes and Bond behaved himself all the way through. Elijah's role in that match was as an honest broker tag partner to Bond who would have washed his hands had the old rulebending come out. Walsh is generally considered Daddy fodder - "Daddy used me as a punching bag" as he told the Sun in 1985 in a kayfabe breaking interview which pretty much ended his career. An entire page of the 1983 Big Daddy Annual is dedicated to a comedy spot where Daddy plants a corner bucket on Walsh's head! He and Anaconda were Haystacks's cornermen in the Daddy vs Haystacks Wembley showdown. In later years he became a popular celebrity guest at All Star's shows in Leamington Spa at the Royal Spa Centre which was and may again someday be a local venue for me. His son Darren was a much touted prospective "Whizzkid" in the 90s, being involved in Kendo Nagasaki's Millenium Comeback angle in May/June 2000 alongside Marty Jones. Darren had another career as sinister cyborg heel Thunder wrestling everywhere except the West Midlands plus also for the EWP in Germany where he was their World Heavyweight Champion. As Darren, in about 2003-2004 he had several shots at a heel British Heavyweight Champion Robbie Brookside in Leamington (elswhere Robbie was blue-eye but in Leaminngton he did a Harley Race as visiting champion) - as Thunder he actually won the belt a few years later.

> it's got an Americanized finish. Something All Star did which American promoters also did but Joint would not dare do, especially on TV, is play with the rules system (in this case Mountevans) and expose its limitations in preventing villains from cheating to victory. The classic example is the deciding fall in Johnny Saint vs Fit Finlay at Croydon in early 1988. (I think the link or the embedded video is posted elsewhere in the thread). Finlay and Paula have been bugging Saint between rounds all match long and at the end of penultimate round 5 with the score 1-1 Finlay comes over and menaces Saint to the point where Saint collars Finlay and starts asking the audience if he should punch him. Audience say yes, but Paula grabs his coiled arm allowing Finlay to grab an armlock and sling Saint to ringside where he lands badly on his shoulder. Audience is chanting for Finlay to be DQ'd as the bell rings to start final round 6. Finlay duly gets his Second And Final Public Warning to cheers from the crowd but it still means that Saint has to wrestle with an injured shoulder. Saint gets in the ring and the second he is upright Finlay slaps on a reverse armbar with no escape. Saint does not want to submit and the referee does not want to award Finlay the decider given what he just did but Finlay tightens the hold so Saint has no option but to submit (NB in Britain this was NOT seen as unbecoming of a blue-eye to submit) and the referee has no option but to award the contest 2-1 to Finlay. Finlay has succesfully played the system using a between the rounds attack and the two "get out of jail cards" that the first two public warnings allow for fouls to unfairly get a win. Peter Baines getting caught under a pile of Bridges and Kendo and unable to count the fall (although presumably Kendo would have kicked out had he felt/heard a pin count) is an example of the same thing. This was beyond the pale for Joint who had come to an agreement with ITV that rules and referees should always be shown to be in charge. (Then again by this stage viewers had seen a few of the special editions with the WWF with its puny ineffective easily KO'd referees.) On Screensport, All Star had run a storyline where viewers were allegedly upset with veteran referee (and sometime gimmick wrestler) Frank Casey not doing a good enough job to control heels and had apparently written in and got him suspended! The storyline continued with Casey unsuspended and on probation and promising to be a tougher referee.

Oh yes, and Re. George Gillette's promo about "It's America Next, We Want Hulk Hogan" - well the TV audience had seen Hogan on the WWF specials so it had to be acknowledged that there was more than one World Heavyweight Champion on the planet. Personally I think Ric Flair could have made a better opponent and would have been able to do business (say a 1-1 one hour draw) with Kendo whereas with Hogan a loss wouldn't suit either brother. (Of course if you want to be pedantic, Ronnie Garvin was actually NWA champ at the time until a few days after the bout was screened.) This was actually the second of four World title matches Bridges and Kendo had. The first on Sept 1st in Croydon ended in Kendo walking out and George demanding a rematch which he got on the November TV taping in Bradford and Kendo won the belt. He also succesfully defended in January, but at the same Croydon TV taping as the Kendo/Rocco fallout (and Johnny Saint vs Fit Finlay) Bridges beat "Baron Von Schultz" (Judd Harriss) to earn a second shot which was in about April '88 and saw the title held up due to Shane Stevens's interference and eventually given to Bridges on a DQ win some weeks later after a review of the match.

Bridges is a bit foo forearm smashy to get the best out of Kendo. Pete Roberts would have been a better opponent but it was Bridges' belt so what could you do? I did consider listing Kendo and Colin Joynson's 1976 Solihull match (Kendo wins by KO with the Kamikaze Crash in round 3 - not to be confused with the 1978 first round only pin by unmasked Kendo) because Kendo gets to do a lot of good tricks in that bout, but it's hampered by Joynson's over-reliance on his forearm smash. The first time Kendo is hit with it the crowd POP! After a bit, the crowd are contemplating going over to Kendo's side and Kent Walton is saying "Joynsons doing well for himself with the power stuff but I think the crowd want to see more wrestling." Kendo wasn't really old, he was sort of a Terry Funk like character who developed and expanded in his later years and like I said grew away from being scientific to just the extreme violence just like Funk in his ECW/Chainsaw Charlie phase. He was a good 30 pounds heavier during his 1986-1993 run than he was in the 70s, looking like a gorilla built for power instead of the streamlined built for speed mid-thirtysomething Kendo of the mid 70s. It made him look more powerful and imposing but he lost some of the "move like Lightweight" quality of his older days. That said, if Pete Roberts could have left it longer before tagging in during that tag bout above, things could have got interesting, they had a good couple of interesting first exchanges there. Oh yes and the Kamikaze Crash, a great combo of agility and power. Diving Fireman's carry. He was still doing it in 2001 aged 60. Hypnotised Robbie Brookside would also do a slightly clumsier version at early 90s All Star shows.

They weren't considered apprentices in the sense that "young boys"in puroresu were or that a novice like mid 80s Steve Regal getting his head kicked in by Dave Duran every night in a holiday camp was, they were considered graduates who were getting their first real push - think like Sting at Clash I. They'd beat someone like Breaks for a title, wrestle a spectacular 2-1 loss to Johnny Saint (their consolation pinfall would be something to really open the eyes, especially Kent Walton's.) be Big Daddy's parner-in-trouble on the way to a Daddy win and have a fanbase usually among older female fans who felt maternal towards these "nice young lads".

Kendo's late 80s/early 90s period as lead heel of All Star, particularly his tag matches with "Blondie" Bob Barrett were a different kettle of fish - all about deap heet and provoking a crowd to riot. South London with its psychotic crew of wrestling fans, was always a good venue for this. I know this bout has been criticised on here but it catches the atmosphere of one of these Kendo matches. I once had someone on a forum tell me these people were plants. I could, back in the day, personally introduce you to half of 'em! Something to watch out for at the start is a few seconds of Kendo vs Pete Roberts. I think they could still do a couple of rounds of good technical wrestling at this point in '88. I'm also a fan of Nagasaki & Rocco vs Myers and Yamada, not just because of Rocco vs Yamada's "Black Tiger vs Jushn Liger" routine but also because of some great moments re-establishing Kendo as a heel When first tagged in against Yamada, Kendo tags Rocco back in, when the crowd jeers this "cowardice" Kendo dismisses them with a lofty wave and later makes his point by tagging back in and demolising the future Liger to get the eqyalising fall. Later Yamada takes over and a ringside struggle for the mask ensues with Kendo in danger of having it stolen by a crafty audience member. This was broadcast in place of a WWF special featuring Hogan vs Kamala, Outback Jack and Tom McGree - astonishingly people wrote into TVTimes to complain about getting Jushin Liger vs Black Tiger instead of Hulk vs The Mongolian Mauler.

Kendo's best 1970s matches were a game of two halves. Usually a first half where he was a gifted technical wrestler and a second half where he went wildly and crazily violent. Often these were too violent for the small screen. Kendo was a bit of a Terry Funk figure, not just because he kept going into middle ages and ripened in his autumn years but also as someone who came from a scientific background and later specialised in wild violence. He did have quite a few signature moves - his particularly graceful rolling escape from a headscirro on the mat often into a sideheadlock, his sliding conversion of a side headlock into a cross press on the mat like points on a railway switching from one track to another (often these two moves were performed as one long sequence) the slow, majestic cross buttock throw. My ideal pic would be Kendo without the mask vs Pete Roberts from 1978. Two rounds of great technical wrestling and two rounds of utter viciousness that it's a wonder it made it to TV uncensored. Another good bout for showing what Kendo could do (depsite the earlier, scaled down version of the 1988 hypnosis angle) is his round 2 win over Rex Strong. Kendo is very much the blue-eye here. Also it seems to get a bad review later but I've always liked his 1977 match against Lee Bronson, mainly for the technical work in round 1. One nice little moment in here when Lee manages to pop his head out of a Kendo headscissor and Kendo quietly and furtively shakes his hand.

There was also this footage: He also had 22 matches on ITV between 1962 and 1969 so it's probable that at least a fair few of these are in Granada TV's vault. He also visited France during the Le Catch TV years so even if INA doesn't have any footage of him, there may be some French footage elsewhere, perhaps locked away in some vault in some former French colony in North Africa ...

Bear in mind who his son was.

> boy apprentice No, an apprentice was an earlier stage of their career, the "dues paying" phase when wrestlers were not let in on kayfabe but were led to believe by older pros that they were in gruelling contests while they battered and streched them. Those that proved they could handle that level of legit-ish treatment were let into the club to work. A few people -Kendo Nagasaki, Dynamite Kid - came in who had already reached this level of legit proficiency and were allowed in to work. Usually this kind had already paid their dues in a hard scatch wrestling club such as Riley'sGym.Several wrestlers - Tony Walsh, Steve Regal, Stevie Knight- have given vivid written descriptions of the apparenticeship but the one example of it on film may be John Naylor'sdemolition of schoolteacher and wannabe wrestler Keith "Rip" Rawlinson for BBC1 series The Big Time. Someone like Steve Wright, Bobby Ryan, Dynamite Kid, Danny Collins, Kid McCoy, Robbie Brookside, James Mason etc, challenging for or even winning their first title and developing their own signature flashy moves, had passed their apprenticship and was getting their first push. Programme-writer Russell Plummer once labelled this career stage as the "young Whizzkid" stage.

There's been a good Vlog post abot this one recently:

1) Owen really took to the British style at an early career stage. In his match against Barry Horrowitz as the Blue Blazer on WWF TV in 1988, he performs a version of Kid McCoy's "Yorkshire Rope trick" only without climbing the ropes, just leaping to above the top rope and bouncing off it on his calf muscles to spin over and reverse the armbar. Possibly he had seen McCoy in action the previous year Both McCoy's"Yorkshire Rope Trick" and the Blazer/Owen's similar move are more in the style of French catch with the more flamboyant headscissor/reverse snapmare escapes. 2) Grey and Myers had quite a lot of good matches down the years. Grey and Mal Sanders also had some similar clean matches (and some heel vs blue-eye matches after Sanders went heel in about '86). 3) "Babyfaces" - Blue-eyes if you please! (LOL) I'd also humbly suggest that although hero vs villain matches are very traditional, good clean sporting contests have an even longer and more honourable tradition!

I would put it to the court that Kent Walton and the hardcore Riley's Gym crowd were of similar mind in terms of what they thought pro wrestling should be.

Once you've watched that docu, it'sworth comparing Riley Jr and Moore's views to what Kent Walton has to see here: https://www.itvwrestling.co.uk/article791.html

In their later lives, Ernie Riley and Tommy "Jack Dempsey" Moore were the stars of this docu about Riley's Gym (at the time still at its original gym.) Unfortunately the programme makers misunderstood their puritanism for an objection to the basic worked nature of pro wrestling. Fortunately Tommy clears things up when he says how he used to like watching two professionals putting on a good show, but this had been undermined by what he waw as "overacting".

Lucky old you. Ernie Riley as one of the core members of the first two generations of Riley' Gym alumni is someone I would desperately love to see in action that Granada has stashed away.

I think this match may be mentioned later on in the thread, but Dynamite Kid's TV debut (or would-have been TV debut as by the time it got screened, another bout of his had already been on) is one of the most interesting example of this as it sees heel Alan Dennison get inspired to turn good and become a better man after wrestling Dynamite Kid and taking a liking to this younger lighter opponent who could do such amazing things that he eventually refused a TKO victory over the kid. (Yes that's right, a guy gets his soul saved by Tommy Billington. Who'da Thunk It?) Shades of Razor Ramon vs 123 Kid (not so much the upset win as the longer storyline where the two ended up as friends.) Actually this match had a whole long storyline offshoot as following for Dennison's support for Dynamite, he also supports Dyno's cousin Young David, taking over as his coach when Ted Betley (shoot-)retires and being his cornerman for the Jim Breaks matches then ultimately challenging Breaks himself and becoming British Welterweight champion and holding it on-and-off until Breaks gets it back permanently in '83 (just in time to lost it to Danny Collins)