The Beginner's Guide To British Wrestling

[ohtani's jacket]

Well, I didn't mean to watch any entire broadcast of WoS, but rather the matches they chose to show that week (prior to it becoming a standalone show.) These matches are available to a certain extent not from the vault or the matches that aired on the Wrestling Channel, but from the original VHS recordings of WoS bouts. This period covers the late 70s and early 80s. 

[David Mantell]

This might help - it's a special one from November 1980 for a  25th anniversary trophy.  Kent Walton actually speaks to camera at the start which is unusual.  At 39:54 it goes on to the second week of the tournament. 

I remember the TVTimes special for this from 1980 (well I don't need to remember it, I've got it all nicely photocopied from Birmingham Central Library.) with a group of four wrestlers' partners (including a young Jeanie "Lady Blossom" Clark) taking tea at the Ritz and talking about their husbands.

Also here's a nearly full episode of the standalone wrestling show from "Season One" Sept 1985 up to the end of 1986 while Joint was playing out the last of its exclusive contract and before All Star and WWF got let in the door:

 

[David Mantell]

On 3/31/2012 at 4:02 PM, MJH said:

I'm not sure if this will be understood by people who aren't, but I find the Britishness of it to be nauseating.

I've also never felt that there was any great evolution in the style; if anything, it devolved near the end of the TV run.

 

LOL are you actually British yourself, then?

I've already detailed how Big Daddy was an aberation- mainly the trailblazers in terms of style evolution were the younger kids people aren't happy about later on this thread (I'll get to that as and when) who found new and flamboyant ways to do things like untwist an armbar.  Obviously as American wrestling became more accesible from the mid 80s (bootleg tapes of territories, WWF on pre=Astra Sky Channel, getting to see American visitors in Germany) this had an influence on peoples' style in terms of them copying moves (Brookside and Regal doing the Hart Attack on Kendo Nagasaki in late '88) and more generally in terms of what Ohtani later describes as the internationalisation of the style in Britain. 

A tag match pitching two heel non regular partner heavyweights against two blue-eye non regular partners - even where the lead blue-eye is someone other than Daddy - say, Pat Roach as it was in quite a few early 90s situations - is not the greatest place to show off agility nor skill so inevitably it will come to resemble an American match of the same concept. (Case in point Haystacks & Drew McDonald vs Pat Roach and Robbie Brookside.  Put Robbie in against Danny Collins or his Liverpool Lads partner Doc Dean and it was a quite different story.  Roach too could have a reasonably streamlined scientific match with someone like Ray Steele.)

[David Mantell]

On 3/31/2012 at 9:38 AM, ohtani's jacket said:

I was referring more to the injury finishes and all the other screwjobs.

A sportsmanly no contest due to one wrestler refusing a TKO win is still happening to this day - even causing a recent nearly title change to be aborted:

 (NB for those unaware, in old school British Wrestling, titles change on any type of win including DQs,cuts and TKOs )

[David Mantell]

On 4/1/2012 at 5:38 PM, Herodes said:

I think the comparison between British wrestling and RINGS, and the suggestion that it was presented as a 'legit sport' is way off. It was very much centered in the British traditions of pantomime and especially has a huge amount of parallels with the British institution of Music Hall / Variety (most similar to vaudeville in the US) where there were hundreds of shows a week in almost every town featuring comedians, music acts, magic, ventriloquists, animal acts, strongmen etc on bills structured like a wrestling show. When TV kicked in they created 'main event' variety stars like Max Miller and Tommy Cooper who would then appear in the halls all over the country supplemented by the other 'gimmick' acts (e.g. the snake charmers, acrobats etc), many of whom would could TV exposure every now and then.

This is a rather selective view of that era of British Wrestling. and one which a non wrestling journalist could have written (even more so in France, it seems.)  Gimmicks, comedians and villains actually made up a minority element of the locker room, even in the 1980s. The overall majority were a serious no nonsense bunch whose main credential for getting their jobs were that they were recommended from an amateur club or a submission gym.  A very "dry" bunch - it depends if you like it dry or not.  This proportion declined over time but still remained if not a majority then at least a plurality or at very least an imbalance.

I will get back in a future post to the difference between an outright comedian like Kellett, Catweazle, Kevin Coneely or Dizzy Dave George on the one hand and someone like Vic Faulkner or Ken Joyce who could be a bt of a "cheeky chappy" but whose primary focus in their act was their serious skill.  Faulkner is a particularly prominent case in point as he seems to get mistaken for a comedy wrestler - he most affirmedly was not.

[David Mantell]

On 4/1/2012 at 11:50 AM, JerryvonKramer said:

I know what MJH means about "Britishness" ... from my own point of view a lot of the appeal of wrestling lies in a a certain time and place. Being transported to a world that probably doesn't exist anymore that I'll never and can never be a part of.

This was why I thought MJH might be a fellow Brit - I don't agree with their views but here are some ageing WWF kids saying similar things from 2:20

Personally I watched wrestling  for the, er, the wrestling and found my first WWF episode to be distinctly lacking in substance - a world where EVERY MATCH was a Big Daddy match.

[David Mantell]

On 4/2/2012 at 1:41 AM, PeteF3 said:

The only bladejob I've seen was by Wayne Bridges in his title match against John Quinn and that resulted in an immediate stoppage.

A few more I could name -
Kendo Nagasaki vs Giant Haystacks 1977
The Iron Greek Spiros Arion vs Colin Joynson 1979
Blondie Barrett doing an ongoing cut angle in 1992

[David Mantell]

On 4/2/2012 at 3:30 AM, Al said:

Big Daddy's an awful wrestler. But weirdly I can also buy him as credible. A man of his stature would be awfully difficult to tackle in a legitimate wrestling match or fight. Particularly in a style such as WOS that eschews brawling. I mean, Daddy just looks immovable.

Earlier on, he did get to properly bodyblock his opponents. I believe the subject of the 1977 match with John Elijah gets braoched later on in the thread.

Of course his lack of shooting skills made him offensive to all the shooters, perticularly Bert Assirati after they gave Crabtree Bert's BWF British Heavyweight title ....

[David Mantell]

On 4/5/2012 at 4:41 PM, FLIK said:

11/21/1987 (World Heavyweight Title) Wayne Bridges © vs Kendo Nagasaki

 

I know this is supposed to be a best of thread but this was so bad I had to bring it up. Maybe i've just been lucky but one of the things I like about WoS is that I rarely run into crap matches. Not that all of them are good of course but most will atleast qualify as average, with enough good parts to make them watchable and not a complete waste of time. This, was awful though, scared the crap out of me to know it was scheduled for 15 rounds as I was sick of it by the 3rd and wanting to gouge my eyes out by the 5th or 6th. They're full on 100% into the entertainment era by now and the most amusing highlights of this were Kendo & his manager George Cullen calling out Hulk Hogan in a pre match promo backstage and the match ending in a freakin ref bump (first time i've ever seen one in a WoS match) allowing Kendo to get the win by attacking Bridges from behind as he was helping the ref up.

Bridges was not the ideal opponent for a singles match with Nagasaki, too much of a power-based brawler, not enough of the technical skill to bring out that side of Kendo.  He was better as a thuggish heel - or else being put over by his mentor Mike Marino.  It does requite its clean round at the start.  I wish this could have been somebody like Pete Roberts as the defening champion.

Quote

Post match is insane with Kendo, a small kid about 7 or 8 yrs old dressed up like Kendo that he brought to the ring with him, his manager and Kendo's fan club which mainly seemed to consist of dirty hippies and ppl that looked like Manson family rejects all having a giant celebration in the ring while the rest of the crowd pelts them with garbage. All poor Kent Walton can do utter "well that was certainly diffrent" as they go off the air. Top 10 worst WoS match i've seen easy.

They were genuine supporters - part of what gave a late 80s Kendo match its sense of danger was the clash between the regular fans who hated Kendo and the Kendo supporters.  People talk of the America vs Canada feud in WWF 1997 but there never was a situation where America and Canada were both in the same building and liable to get into fistfights ringside with each other (although as Cornette pointed out, you got something like this recently with pro and anti CM Punk factions.

[David Mantell]

On 4/6/2012 at 3:10 AM, MJH said:

I don't remember having seen that Kendo/Bridges match, but the one in which he hypnotises Robbie Brookside is enough to put anyone off the guy for good.

This was his last one on TV and it actually got a good five years of heat-triggering show to show storylines as Kendo would repeatedly retake control of Brookside, even to the point of tag teaming with him sometimes quite efficiently, then ending the night by luring Brookside back to the dressing room and back to his lair as the crowd desperately tried to rescue him and Brookside's blue-eye compadres would be shouting from the ring "Robbie!  ROBBIE!!! COME BACK ROBBIE!!!!"  

Brooskide had his long heavy metal hair by then and when "hypnotised" would let it hang down in front of his face and shamble around the ring like something out of Day Of The Triffids when not immediately called into action by Master Kendo.

[David Mantell]

On 4/6/2012 at 4:21 AM, ohtani's jacket said:

All that Screen Sport/ASW stuff is an abomination.

They still had some good clean matches and helped give a window to people like Brooside and Yamada before they finally got on ITV.  The "Chuckle Brothers" commentators (one of whom Max Beasely was the ring announcer for Bridges/Kendo) were of course dreadful, like a less snooty, more get-ourselves-over version of some of the French Catch commentators. Ultimately the Screensport shows demonstrate that Dixon needed to learn from working through the filter of the IBA to finally get a truly world class product (input from Thornley/Kendo on storyline ideas also helped.)

One positive - Rocco had come out of his shell by this point in the time he had been away in Japan/the US as the Black Tiger, his "Maniac" persona had really blossomed.  I would have loved to have seen Rocco do Pipers Pit while in New York in '84ish

[David Mantell]

Just now, David Mantell said:

They still had some good clean matches 

True also of Reslo and indeed the French Catch.  No matter how much lawlessness there was from looser broadcaster restrictions, prooters still felt the need to push the classier higher end element of the product.  Interesting.

[David Mantell]

On 4/11/2012 at 2:55 AM, ohtani's jacket said:

but thought Saint/Hassouni was fun. I'm not a fan of Johnny Saint's style of wrestling but the match had a good Cup Final Day atmosphere.

Odd - I always found this a bit of a dissapointment.  A Saint match against a lesser younger name is usually a chance for said lesser younger name to showcase their clever moves and clever counter moves against the master.  Hassouni didn't seem to have too many eye catching moves. He was better back home as a tag team wrestler.

[David Mantell]

On 4/13/2012 at 6:05 PM, Big Rob said:

Chris Colt got banned from wrestling on British TV after being deemed too violent by ITV. I believe there was meant to have been a fair amount of blood in that match, but it was never broadcast.

Colt did a Big Daddy tag on drugs.  He didn't so much shoot on Daddy (now there was a thing someone should have done, like Pete Preston did with McManus) as generally misbehave so as to make Daddy look stupid and ineffective.  It made Daddy look ridiculous anyway, and got Colt the sack.

[David Mantell]

On 6/24/2012 at 4:40 AM, FLIK said:

Out of curiosity, anyone have any info on Jumping Jim Hussey?

Google search doesn't really tell me much except that he's Roller Ball Rocco's dad and that he was Kendo Nagasaki's opponent in his first match.

 

* EDIT *

 

And this awesome pic

 

http://www.britishwrestlersreunion.com/app...hotoid=12266488

There's some footage in Granada TV's 1967 docu The Wrestlers of him versus Kellet.  Kellet isn't doing the comedy in that one, he's in a hard fight.

Not at all like his son. Big beefy moustacioed bully.  Every big tubby snarly hard northern bloke with his wife and kids you ever get stuck on a train with. Like an evil version of Ted Bovis out of the sitcom Hi De Hi.  Kendo was supposed to be a masked comic book superhero in Thornley's mind, but he ended up stiffing Hussey so badly that Hussey ended up the sympatthetic victim blueeye for a night, which is really saying something.

[David Mantell]

On 12/19/2012 at 5:39 AM, ohtani's jacket said:

 I liked the women's reactions to Klyondyke Kate, the weird medium/adviser/spokeswoman for Kendo Nagasaki

Klondyke Kate material comes from the docu Raging Belles

Atlantis Chronotis Goth is an M>F transperson who replaced Lloyd Ryan as Kendo's spokesperson in 2007.  Pre-transition she (then a he) worked as a sound engineer for Thornley and Gillette's rock management company's home studio while they were out of wrestling in the early 80s.  ACG came from a broken family with an abusive father who was outwardly a respectable doctor (GP) but privately a mad Kendo-hating psycho wrestling fan until the day he met Thornley out of character and he (Thornley) turned out to be a charming bloke - but stayed a dangerous abusive dad causing ACG to relocate permanently to Thornley's London home, pursue a sound engineer career and sort out her gender identity issues with transition - it's all in Kendo's book. 

[David Mantell]

On 12/20/2012 at 9:57 AM, ohtani's jacket said:

Yeah, Atlantis Chronos Goth I think she calls herself.

Rosalind is her real name

[David Mantell]

On 12/20/2012 at 11:12 PM, rovert said:

Regal had more issues than anyone with it seems :

Nick Aldis got VERY upset with it for showing the world old school British Wrestling as still surviving (there was footage from All Star's fan appreciation night at Fairfield Hall Croydon 2012) instead of peddling the usual narrative of it being killed off by the Americans which people like Fin Martin. Alex Shane and the New School crowd are so keen to push.

It was quite good although most of the b/w footage was just colour-stripped 1970s footage.  Didn't agree with Simon Garfield's belief that gimmicks etc drew more interest than the serious wrestling or that the latter subsided somehow.  Serious wrestlers remained the majority like I said above - for every one Les Kellet there were a dozen Keith Haywards.  Some of the serious wrestlers were MILITANTLY anti showmanship - best case in point Tommy "Jack Dempsey" Moore - but they still got pushed and gave the scene a backbone of credibility that - for this 12 year old in 1987 anyway - the WWF lacked.

[David Mantell]

On 12/21/2012 at 12:49 AM, JerryvonKramer said:

So I've still not seen this, but did it shed any further light / bring anything new to bare on the old "Big Daddy for the HoF" debate?

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

[khawk20]

For that to work, Daddy would have had to come to North America and done something extraordinary in the ring first. Calhoun had extreme size (especially via weight billing) which made him an attraction. Andre was actually a very good wrestler before his size overtook his ability to use his body to be extraordinary in a moves-and-holds sense. He was a legitimate yet oversized contender for many years all over the continent. This allowed for his end of night tags to have an aura of “bad guys will get their come uppance” and send the fans home happy as you say. He was credible.

 

I don’t see any scenario where Big Daddy would have been remotely credible to North American fans. None. He was ridiculous in an ultimate warrior gets a voodoo curse put on him by papa shango kind of way, which for me translates as “turn off wrestling for a few years because I feel embarrassed watching this.”

 

I don’t know how he got over like he did in Britain, but he never would have gotten near that here. An outback jack career arc is about as good as I can see a wwf 80s stint going for him. Best case.

[David Mantell]

1 hour ago, khawk20 said:

I don’t know how he got over like he did in Britain, 

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.

[David Mantell]

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!!!

[NintendoLogic]

23 hours ago, David Mantell said:

A few more I could name -
Kendo Nagasaki vs Giant Haystacks 1977
The Iron Greek Spiros Arion vs Colin Joynson 1979
Blondie Barrett doing an ongoing cut angle in 1992

I'm fairly certain Johnny Saint bladed in the match against Jim Breaks that aired on FA Cup Final Day in 1973. Shortly before the finish, he took a bump to the floor and was bleeding from the forehead when he came back in the ring. The finish was a blood stoppage, so that looked like an obvious setup for a bladejob.

[David Mantell]

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."

[PeteF3]

4 hours ago, David Mantell said:

It was quite good although most of the b/w footage was just colour-stripped 1970s footage.  Didn't agree with Simon Garfield's belief that gimmicks etc drew more interest than the serious wrestling or that the latter subsided somehow.  Serious wrestlers remained the majority like I said above - for every one Les Kellet there were a dozen Keith Haywards.  Some of the serious wrestlers were MILITANTLY anti showmanship - best case in point Tommy "Jack Dempsey" Moore - but they still got pushed and gave the scene a backbone of credibility that - for this 12 year old in 1987 anyway - the WWF lacked.

But that's true of any promotion anywhere. There's a select few stars to whom the standard rules don't apply and the rest, as great as they may be individually, are interchangeable and fungible as far as consistently drawing goes--pretty much by definition there's going to be more of them than the stars. Even in a different model like Joint's. But are they more *important* than the stars?

I'd rather watch Keith Haward than Big Daddy all day every day. And the classic WoS style still exists, but who was the biggest star on the British indy scene when it was hot, who appears to be getting the token homegrown wrestler's spot at Wembley in a few weeks? Grado isn't much of a traditional wrestler from what I've seen and sure wasn't over because of it.