David Mantell

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)

Yeah, the Americanised/New School sector scores its share of hits, fair play to them. To be honest I doubt if Tony Khan did much homework, he just looked at what had been on our telly just a few years earlier and judged it on that. At least they'll be getting the 2018-2019 Grado as a Dusty-esque working class hero type rather than the 2016 version who was just a gormless fool who lucked his way to triumph. (By this same token, All Star deserves more credit for TNA turning to them to recruit X Cup Team UK in 2004 - James Mason, Dean Allmark, Robbie Dynamite Berzins and Frankie Sloan - not to mention James Mason getting to beat MVP on that UK edition of Raw in 2008. Come to that, theee most old school of old school promotions, John Freemantle and Premier Promotions deserve more credit for scoring themselves some TV coverage in 2003 as part of Johnny Vaughan's World Of Sport.) But it's still a separate universe from the traditional promotions. They may not be as hermetically sealed from each other as they were back in the 1990s when the Americanised promotions first started appearing, but they're still separate phenomena which suceed and/or fail on their separate merits, not on each others'.

Re declining a TKO victory - an example of the polar opposite is Rocco pouring oil on the flames wth his "THE BEST MAN WON!" speech after winnng against Johnny Saint after Saint crotch-bumped himself on Rocco's skull during a rare rope-running sequence. Sorry if this match has already been reviewed here.

See the Nino Bryant vs Joe Lando 2023 British Lighweight title match I posted about a page ago. Only in that case it was a title change that got aborted due to one guy declining a victory.

Ah yes, this one. He'd been a more serious heavyweight as Blond Adonis Shirley Crabtree in the 50s/60s and even as the Battling Guardsman in '72-74. From about 1976 Max Crabtree was pushing Daddy to be the familiar figure we all remember on Best-Wryton (Midlands/Lancashire) bills, either in the Daddy tag format or else in big Battles Of The Giants against the likes of King Kong Kirk and Bruiser Muir. Elsewhere going into 1977 they were occasionally still putting him on in the old heel tag team with Haystacks or else putting him in serious matches like this one as well as against such opponents as Colin Joynson and Johnny Czeslaw. Author Tony Earnshaw condemned matches such as this one in his recent book We Shall Not Be Moved about the 1975-1979 period, claiming that it was a misuse of Daddy's appeal! You be the judges ... He has to properly wrestle in the 2-1 los to Kendo where he took Kendo's mask off.He also has to do a fair amount of proper work in a bout against Dave Soul Man Bond on a local experimental cable channel in Swindon in 1978. Mainly this bout is a realistic portrayal of Shirley's abilities - and limitations - at legit Catch wrestling. He knows a few tricks how to use his weight and power such as flinging Elijah from the ring with a flick of the ankle, but he had no real finesse and would be easy meat for any determined shooter.

Agreed Daddy would never have been a main eventer. He would have been an end of the evening bit of fun. A lot like the Flatiner circa 2005 in the UK when he was teaming with "Little Legs" Mark Sealy and the two would have a borderline comedy match where a couple of heels would be ritually humiliated. The main reason Big Daddy didn't go more internation is - like he said in the Sportsviewer's Guide To Wrestling he really didn't want to travel that far. Also he was brother Max's mealticket.

Grado is a different kettle of fish- the 2018 WOSW was totally New School and nothing to do with the world maintained by Premier, All Star and Rumble. I was answering back both Simon Garfield's claim that gimmicks took over and Herodes post on page 2 11+ years ago on here where he said that it was more like vaudeville than serious sport. The vaudeville people - like I said - were a minority (albeit a noisy one) - it was the serious no nonsense wrestlers that made up the bulk of the talent pool. That declined a bit over time but the priciple held true at least until the mid 90s and there are still traces of the imbalance to this day. And yeah,I'd rather watch Keith Haward than Big Daddy too. Any day!

Yes that rings a bell. I also saw a VERY bloody ladder match between Kendo Nagasaki and Rollerball Rocco from the front row of Fairfield Hall Croydon in July 1990, with Rocco in particular drenched in his own juice. The prize in the ladder match, incidentally, was allegedly the very same mask Rocco had made off with when they fell out on TV at the same venue two years earlier. Here is Rocco taunting Kendo with the mask. I have a later programme from that same show with a similar photo and the blurb - "Rocco shows off his proudest possession - the mask Kendo Nagasaki is so desperate to regain."

On the subject of Big Daddy, this should be required viewing as a guide to the Great British attitude to Kayfabe. The actual sport and the finishes and holds hurting - yes all that got protected, but when it came to hiding from the outside world the fact that goodies and baddies weren't really enemies, well that was a different kettle of fish .... On a similar note, at home I've got a TVTimes lifestyle piece about Rollerball Rocco by his wife Ann from 1981 saying what a wonderful, hard working and helpful man around the house he is. Complete with pic of Mark and Anne working away together at the kitchen stove! Honestly, Bill Watts would have had KITTENS!!!

He appealed to kids who saw him as being this indesctructible juggernaut that just BULLDOZED the villains. He was also a very colourful and charismatic guy. There's a bit of the Warrior appeal there, think of how the Warrior just knocked down Honky at SS88. I've never been a parent myself but apparently parents and grandparents like to see their offspring having fun and like anything that makes their offspring happy (until they reach about 9 or 10 and get into heavy metal.) I was an unquestioning Daddy fan myself until aged 6 when he beat Le Grand Vladimir who I thought was cool and I was upset over that. I'm glad Spiros Arion never did a Daddy tag as I liked The Iron Greek too. By 16, obviously, I was hoping someone would make Paul Ellering an offer to bring the Road Warriors to England and kick Big Daddy's head in. At the end of the day kids are kids and families and families the world over. I don't think he would have been a main event but he could have been end-of-the-night send-em-home-happy fodder. With WWF kids in the US, he also wouldn't have the extra handicap of TV trying at the same time to educate them to be technical wrestling connosieurs as in Britain.

I would think Big Daddy would if anything be a lot less offensive to American fan sensibilities than he was to adult British wrestling fans at the time. I could imagine Daddy in the WWF in the late 80s doing end of the night tag matches similar to those six man tags Andre used to do at the end of the night at MSG where he (or earlier on Haystacks Callhoun) would send the audience home by teaming with the likes of Ivan Pustki and Dusty Rhodes to beat three of the most vicious heels-typically the current heel tag champions. Daddy would never have topped the bill, but he would have made a good novelty attraction like Uncle Elmer. Book yer own WWF Daddy tags - Big Daddy and Sam Houston vs One Man Gang and Butch Reed Big Daddy and Tito Santana vs Earthquake and Dino Bravo Big Daddy, Paul Roma and Jim Powers vs Big John Studd, King Kong Bundy and Bobby Heenan. etc