GSR

The Nagasaki match with Bridges just seemed completely out of place, and as if they were trying to 'Americanize' things to an extent. From the interviews before the match where George Gillette says that they are coming for Hulk Hogan, to the ref bump finish, to all the T-shirt wearing Nagasaki fans and the kid dressed up as Kendo, maybe it was a last ditch attempt at changing things up, just not for me. I've seen two Bartelli bouts and they were both awful. The first was against Roger Wells from November '76, where I thought Wells was even worse than Bartelli and the other was against John Kowalski which I described as 'terrible, and a pair of OAP's going through the motions'. On a complete aside, Roach was laid to rest in the cemetary in the town where I live.

I'm sure I'll get there eventually, but I just find it tough with the Heavyweights after the sheer abundance of great lightweight stuff that there is available. Even guys like Ray Steele, Pete Roberts, Pat Roach and Wayne Bridges do little for me. The Bridges' loss to John Quinn (where there is a rare bit of blood, although surely a blade job) looked decent on fast forward whilst doing my listings, but on the other hand there is a match he has against Nagasaki from towards the end of the WOS coverage on ITV that looks absolute horse shit.

Tony St. Clair was one of those guys who I struggle to get in to, though that can be applied to a lot of the WOS Heavies.

I'd recommend folk check out Steve Veidor vs Judo Al Hayes from 5 November 1975. Haven't watched this one for years but was a bundle of fun when I did, really good stuff and Hayes was a tremendous heel in this one with the crowd totally into it. Hayes especially opened my eyes with his performance here.

Who is the other against OJ? I've got a copy of the one against Haystacks, but am missing the third. In addition, I watched a bout between Steve Grey and Zoltan Boscik over the weekend that was superb. Not sure of the date yet as that is the next thing to work having finally got my listings for all my WOS stuff, but it looks early for Grey's career as he was sporting a classic 70s barnet. Just lots of great chain wrestling, reversals and another beautiful Grey escape when his head was trapped between Boscik's legs and he used a variation of the headstand escape to free himself. It was a pretty sporting bout with Boscik only getting more aggressive towards the ends as he felt Grey 'embarrassed' him by giving him a kick to the backside. I may well chuck a nomination Boscik's way, as he has this and a bout with Alan Sarjeant that I really enjoyed.

Surely not??? One of the main reasons I don't bother with that place is that guy.

Maybe that's just modesty on his part? I always thought the best years were when it was mainly Fin, Rob and John doing the writing. I certainly thought the latter were far superior writers to those who came on board later, whether that was Greg, Mo etc.

Shame there is no Quack vs CP Munk, no Quack vs Dragon Dragon and no Quack vs Los Ice Creams for him to get stuck in to!

If people are only thinking of the 90s powerhouse wrestler they certainly need to check out his stuff with Joint, especially the matches against Jim Breaks and Fit Finlay (I was also cataloguing discs last night and found a match with Tally Ho Kaye, that looks pretty entertaining from first glance). Admittedly, it's tough not to have an enjoyable match with Breaks and Finlay but he more than holds up his end. I'm going to have a soft spot for WOS guys in my list though think it would be a struggle for Davey to make the cut, still I certainly think he needs a look at and is more deserving than some who have been nominated (Marc Mero???).

There was the match at the Survivor Series with Bob Holly, Barry Horowitz & Hakushi against 123 Kid, Skip, Rad Radford & Tom Prichard that stands out, but not much else. He had the stint as the New Rockers with Leif Cassidy but that was at a time when Tag Wrestling was at an all time low in the WWF.

Really looking forward to giving this a listen. Rob is one of those guys who just seems to have disappeared from the scene despite probably many of us in the UK having purchased tapes from him in the the mid-90s. I'm sure I remember Lister telling a story how Rob purchased a house from his profits whilst being the leading tape trader/seller back in the day.

Cheers, turns out that I've got a copy of this bout! I've got a whole bunch of unlabelled WOS discs that were recorded off TWC that I intend to go through properly in the next few days as watching and re-watching this and then Joshi is where I intend to start for this project (also found out that I've got a copy of Sarjeant vs Boscik too). Anyway starting with Steve Grey & Alan Sarjeant vs Sid Cooper & Zoltan Boscik (think this is 8/13/77). It's a shame that of the seven matches on film that this is one of them. Sarjeant is a replacement for Johnny Saint here, and sadly this match does nothing for him. In fact he's the weakest of the four and it's more a showcase for Grey who at one point pulls out this fantastic double top wristlock reversal into a dropkick on both Cooper and Boscik. It was a decent match up until the first fall with some good double teaming behind the referee's back from the heel team, especially from Cooper who was someone that I've never really cared for in the past. The match went completely to pot after the first fall with Grey getting the equalizing pin in 27 seconds, then the heels were DQ'd in the third fall at just 37 seconds. It's actually pretty heated in the crowd at the end with an old lady trying to pull Boscik off Grey, someone sliding into the ring and grabbing referee Max Ward's leg and another member of the crowd throwing punches at the prone Cooper! One for the Sarjeant completists only, and I'm glad that I know it'll get much better for him from now on.

Interesting candidate. If I was just looking at the first few years of his career you'd think he'd be a cert for me; from the PWA matches with Jerry Lynn and Wellington Wilkens, to the Global Light-Heavyweight stuff, to the 1993 NJPW Super Juniors Tourney to his first few years in the WWF there's a bunch of memorable, great matches. He was even doing it on the syndicated shows against the likes of Pat Tanaka, Ted Dibiase and Blake Beverly in the early days, add to his Raw match against Bret, the King of the Ring match against Owen and some tags alongside Marty Jannetty and even one with Barry Horowitz against the Quebecers. From there I'm drawing a blank up until his Chikara match with El Generico at King of Trios. I didn't watch much WCW from when he was there, so I'd like to think he has some good stuff in his resume from that period (the ladder match with Guerrero for instance), but he's one of the few candidates who's stints in the 'Big Two' (especially his Attitude era run in the WWE) I want to have another look at.

I'm not even going to attempt Tag Teams. I'll have enough on my plate and enough to watch when it comes to the Greatest Wrestler, without getting side tracked along the way.

Geoff Capes wrestled? I know he had a background in Athletics, specifically the Shot Put, but never heard of any involvement at all with wrestling.

In the Observer where he is elected into the Hall of Fame, in his bio Dave says that he was a reputed 500lb bench presser.

I watched a couple of Sarjeant bouts earlier and will give a proper write up later. The first was a tag bout with Steve Grey against Zoltan Bocsik & Sid Cooper which does nothing for him and then on the same disc there's the singles match with Clay Thompson which is fantastic. Out of interest is there much more Thompson stuff on tape? I've seen his bout with Reg Trood which I also liked so he's 2 for 2 at the moment.

Doug Furnas was the first person I thought of. A whole slew of records for his weight class, and having done over 2,400lbs on more than one occasion. Whilst not in the same category, Candido was on an old eyada Observer show and Meltzer was saying how he was freakishly strong for his size (they did give some of his stats but I forget these).

There's a match versus Mike Jordan from the late 80s that I'm pretty high on, but I haven't cared at all for a lot of his comeback stuff from the past few years. There was a good six-man from Chikara with Quack & Skayde against Claudio & Taylor & Danielson, but most of his stuff looks even hokier now, not to mention being soooo slow. I mentioned in the Breaks thread that the Saint matches were the ones I wanted to actively search out to see how they work together. Someone who I used to rate highly until having my eyes opened to a whole host of lesser known WOS workers.

Meltzer didn't give a breakdown percentage for Angle like he did in later years. He got the 60% required to be elected getting 105 of the 175 US/Canada votes cast. From the Observer: 'Angle received tremendous support among wrestlers themselves, both active and retired legends. HHH, who had more longevity and has always been positioned as a stronger character than Angle, actually did better among current wrestlers, as well as reporters, than Angle, but not nearly as well among retired legends.' Just as an aside Triple H got 59% that year.

Is that Carl by any chance? I've nominated Myers now (whilst I prefer his earlier stuff, I don't mind his later martial arts schtick), also nice that someone has put forward Alan Sarjeant.

How much of the Best Of Seven series is in circulation? I know I saw the decider on an old NWA TV comp, but don't know about the other six matches.

Clive Myers http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/15983-the-beginners-guide-to-british-wrestling/

I'm in the same boat as several others in that there's the I Quit cage match with Tully but what else? I've enjoyed his interviews and some of the angles he's been involved with (Flair, James Boys), but can't see it for me and I certainly can't see him bring included purely off the back of one match.

Does anyone know why Tom Zenk never did one. I've been listening to those old Observer eyada shows and he's all over those. He's a great story teller and seems like he could've been in the Raven/Honky role of doing numerous ones for the various companies. Did he just completely cut all ties with wrestling?