The Beginner's Guide To British Wrestling

[ohtani's jacket]

I am fairly sure Brooks was a Methodist minister and not an Anglican. 

[David Mantell]

You may be right, but he definitely called himself a Vicar. not a "Priest"

[ohtani's jacket]

6 hours ago, David Mantell said:

You may be right, but he definitely called himself a Vicar. not a "Priest"

Not only that, but the most famous wrestling priests are in Mexico. Still, the idea of a wrestling vicar adds to the charm of old-school British wrestling. 

[David Mantell]

On 8/18/2023 at 6:51 PM, Cien Caras said:

I think the fake Road Warrior Animal is Ricky Knight, father of Paige/Saraya.

Possibly, looking at the pic.  There was continuity between Duran and Monroe's Road Warriors ripoff on ITV in 1988 and Johnny South's Legend of Doom trubute act and we know Duran was *an* Animal Legend Of Doom circa 1993.
I think Ricky Knight would have been a bit too small to be a convincing Road Warrior/LOD member myself, but there you go.
Talking of the Knight Family, if you read Daniel Bryan's book "Yes" with his account of working for All Star in 2003-2004, Guy #1 and Guy #3 were, of course Ricky Knight's sons Roy and Zak Bevis and the diva relative was Paige/Britani Knight/Saraya (or Saraya Junior as some British fans call her to disambiguate from her mother Sweet Saraya).  Roy and Zak wrestle as the UK Hooligans doing a skinhead gimmick as heels and occasionally as blue-eyes.

There's a Superflies (Ricky Knight & Jimmy Ocean) match with a very early Saraya Senior in their corner up on Youtube from Reslo 1992 but I'm holding off posting it because I think the bout gets reviewed elsewhere in this thread, so I shall deal with it when I get to it. 

[David Mantell]

On 4/29/2014 at 6:37 PM, JNLister said:

Correction on an earlier post. The plan in 1980 was for the second Wembley Arena show of the year (which never happened) being Quinn dropping the title back to Bridges, not wrestling Daddy again. No idea whether or not Daddy would have been on the show as well, though they didn't have any obvious singles opponent lined up at that point.

Saw buses in London last weekend with advertisments for the AEW Wembley Stadium Show and remembered that the last time I saw a double decker red bus done up with adverts for a wrestling show was 43 years ago for the untelevised middle Wembley show of 1980 featuring Quinn and Yasu Fuji against Daddy and Bridges.  I liked Yasu Fuji - like with Grand Vladimir I was upset, even at age 6, when they threw him to Big Daddy like that.  It's been good to see bouts of his from France and Germany lately.

[David Mantell]

On 5/18/2014 at 12:41 PM, ohtani's jacket said:

Keith Haward vs. Lenny Hurst (6/5/85)

Solid draw. If you were looking at it from a booking perspective, it doesn't make much sense for Haward to be drawing with a veteran like Hurst if Haward is supposed to be one of the wrestlers with great potential, but so much of British wrestling exists in a stand alone sense and therefore you just have to buy that Haward wasn't having the best of days. That's actually how Walton puts over the match, as I guess he noticed that Haward wasn't working full bore.

Little Prince vs. Keith Haward (12/11/85)

This was really good. I liked this. I'd say it was easily the best Little Prince bout I've seen. He kept attacking throughout the bout and really pushed the tempo. Haward got annoyed with him after a while, and it broke down into a big of a chop fest. I didn't realise the Prince had such great chops. The finish was a bit soft, but this was a nice bout with good intensity.

Keith Haward, Commonwealth Games medalist in Greco Roman.  Worked a very old fashioned style of match even by purist standards.  Jon Cortez was the best opponent for him as he had the best grasp of Haward's style.  His bout with Tim Fitzmaurice gets discussed later in the thread.  Quite a lot of the techniques in both those bouts were old moves which had evolved beyond recognition by 1980, so his matches give a real glimpse into the past.

Haward, along with 50s/60s Wigan Snakepit man Tommy "Jack Dempsey" Moore was the sort of wrestler you would cite in response to a claim like the one early in this thread about British wrestling being descended from a variety/music hall tradition.  Haward was strictly a "gym boy" a former amateur GR champion turned catch wrestler and pro wrestler whose legit wrestling skills were his main - perhaps his only - credential for the job.  There were only a handful of Catweazles and King Kong Kirks but there were dozens - perhaps hundreds - of if not Keith Haward himself then certainly Diet Keith Hawards. serious no nonsense guys whose acts were entrely based on their sport wrestling abilites adapted for an exhibition.

From a career perspective, Haward did pretty handsomely - they put Mick McManus's old European Middleweight Championship that McManus had lost to Mal Sanders on him in 1981 (bypassing longtime British champion Brian Maxine.) and he kept hold of it for several years dropping it back to Sanders.  I imagine most American fans would write him off as a Bob Backlund style "abomination".  but it's nice to think that a serious athlete like him was able to make forward porgress in the pros without selling out his particular integrity as an athlete.  (There is one bout where he gets a bit sly and liberty-taking much like Billy Joyce's heel work, and eventually gets a public warning.)

[David Mantell]

On 5/18/2014 at 12:41 PM, ohtani's jacket said:

Mick McManus vs. Lenny Hurst (12/7/81)

 

Mick was washed up at this point. I'm not sure what the point of him continuing past '77 was. He was only ever pinned a couple of times on television, but he at least lost here. Then again, what's the point in losing to Hurst?

He was a bit of a national institution by this point and people would go to see him do his heel routine, particularly "The Ears" (selling opponents' attacks on his swollen cauliflower earlobes.)
Some people would still go to a John McEnroe tennis match on the seniors circuit even today just to hear him tell the umpire that he cannot be serious.

[David Mantell]

On 6/29/2014 at 2:53 AM, ohtani's jacket said:

This was a gimmick match similar to the German tiebreakers, where you'd get a point every time you threw your man to canvas. It was the final of a knockout tournament and Walton raved about how this new format was going to really take off. Suffice to say, it didn't. 

 

They did this every now and then when they had a tournament to hurry along some of the elimination rounds.  First 10 bodyslams wins was a variation of this

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Davey Boy Smith vs. Bernie Wright (2/9/83)

This has to be seen to be believed. Davey had been away for a few years and clearly he's been saying his prayers and taking his vitamins. The difference between Davey Boy here and his Young David days is staggering. He uses his new found strength to pretty good effect against Bernie Wright if you can get past how roided he is. Unbelievable.

He's also heeling it up (like Dynamite Kid did against Marty Jones a couple of months earlier) playing the compaining whining heel 
This is actually a rematch of Davey's TV debut where a skinny 15 year old Davey took on a promising 18 year old Bernie.

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Colonel Brody vs. Steve Logan (1/9/86)

Steve Logan was rocking the new wave hair style. Brody's gimmick was pretty watered down on British television. I don't think Walton acknowledged that he was South African military. The match was okay, I guess, but without the edge to Brody's character his work isn't all that compelling.

This was the second Steve Logan - not Mick McManus's old tag partner the Iron Man.    This Steve Logan, from Birmingham was the classic blue-eye technical whizzkid.  His real name was indeed Steve Logan which the first one was not.  When he first appeared on the circuit there were complaints from some fans of him being an imposter.  This ended when he appeared on ITV in 1980 and his debut appearance was trailed by a nice TVTimes appearance hyping "the New Steve Logan".

As I said, I rank him alongside Caswell Martin as people who never got a title but should have.  He did get a few shots including one at Fit Finlay's World Mid Heavyweight Championship, mainly remembered for defeated ex champ Marty Jones parading at ringside with a sign saying "Finlay Is A Fake".

He also made it to the finals of a tournament for the vacant British Light Heavyweight title before losing to Alan Kilby in early 1985.  (The same thing happened to the original Steve Logan in 1952 and 1955 both times losing out to another perennial holder of the title Ernie Riley.)

In later life he started up the K-Star chain of martial arts gyms in the West Midlands which I believe he still runs (there is one along my bus route to and from work - the Travel West Midlands X1 on the Coventry Road going past the Wheatsheaf junction.)  K Star also did pro wrestling training and ran a promotion, albeit of the Americanised variety, in the Noughties with Steve Logan as a Mr McMahon type heel commisioner figure.

i was watching quite a good short match with him just this morning against Greg Valentine (Steve Crabtree not John Wisniski)

Re. Brody, no I don't think ITV was going to get away with having the full Brody character from German  camcordings (check back a couple of pages for Brody vs Johnny Saint.)  He could be a solid enough heel, I like his match with Owen Hart on Eurosport New Catch from 1991.  He was also Steve Regal's first opponent at Bobby Baron's wrestling booth at Blackpool Pleasure Beach Horseshoe Showbar - something that Bordy aludes to in the promos before Brody vs Regal on a German CWA episode of New Catch - "He had a big mouth at the beginning of his career but tonight his career is over."

[David Mantell]

1 hour ago, David Mantell said:

Talking of the Knight Family, if you read Daniel Bryan's book "Yes" with his account of working for All Star in 2003-2004,

Danielson also mentions working as a boorish American heel who sang the Star Spangled Banner badly.  If you guys don't mind being confronted with other nations' steretypes of yourselves, here is an example from Cannock, Staffordshire from 2008.  MC is Laeititia Allmark, then wife of Dean Allmark and daughter of Brian Dixon and Mitzi Mueller, the little girl from the Mitzi video a page back:

 

[David Mantell]

On 8/18/2023 at 10:20 PM, ohtani's jacket said:

Not only that, but the most famous wrestling priests are in Mexico. Still, the idea of a wrestling vicar adds to the charm of old-school British wrestling. 

Yes, eccentric vicars with unusual hobbies are a bit of a traditional thing in English culture.

 

[David Mantell]

On 6/30/2014 at 4:10 PM, ohtani's jacket said:

Keith Haward vs. Mal Sanders (5/10/83)

 

I didn't realise until this was over and I checked my notes that I'd seen it before. That's an increasing problem now that I've watched just about everything. Looking back on my comments, it seems I was nonplussed with the lack of charisma from Haward and the lack of any spark from the match. This time I thought it was pretty damn good. It might even be the best Sanders match I've seen. Haward outclassed him severely, but it was still an enjoyable contest. It was interesting that after taking a long break from Haward, I was more excited by his wrestling than the last time I saw a bunch of him. He's a wrestling machine, and that's all you get -- just relentless wrestling -- but it's cool if you're in the mood for it.
 

As discussed Haward's biggest achievement was taking Sanders' Euro Middleweight title a couple of years before this.  They wrestled each other quite a bit around the world including some World Middleweight title matches in South Africa (a territory which, politics aside, resembled the CWA in many respects.)  I think they carried on having matches even when Sanders went heel in 1986/1987 - he certainly carried on having matches with Steve Grey after that (eg the Mick McManus World Of Wrestling videotape and the aforementioned Coventry Skydome match from 2005)

"He's a wrestling machine, and that's all you get -- just relentless wrestling -- but it's cool if you're in the mood for it."  Like I said, there was an audience for that sort of thing over here - particularly among an older set of fans who were often crossover fans from legit Lancashire Catch Wrestling.  Even with people who weren't into this sort of match, the message from the TV was that this was the high end of wrestling and that you SHOULD be into this sort of wrestling, it would make you a better more cultured wrestling fan.

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King Kong Mal Kirk vs. Johnny Wilson (1/13/81)

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but this had the most heat I've seen outside of the Caribbean Sunshine Boys. I'm not sure poor old Mal Kirk enjoyed this period of his career, but he was ugly as sin and over as hell and the people wanted to see Daddy squash him.

 

Well they got their wish in 1987, didn't they?

Every fan in Britain reckons that King Kong Bundy was a rip-off of King Kong Kirk.  They were both superheavies called King Kong and Kirk became a KK in 1979 and Bundy in 1982 (and he only went bald in 1983) so they may have a point.  Did Bundy ever get interviewed about Mal Kirk?

Kojak Kirk, who became King Kong Kirk was already a headline act as the frequent fourth man tagging with Kendo Nagasaki against Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks (or when Norman Morell wanted to confuse things, putting Daddy and Kendo together against Stax and Kirk.)

(One time they even advertised Daddy and Kendo vs Kirk and Bruiser Ian Muir,  but the team of Kirk and Muir were so unloveable they would have made Daddy and Kendo obvious blue-eyes and therefore Kendo the blue-eye in peril in a Daddy tag.  So Muir was replaced by Dalbr Singh and it became a Kendo and another heel vs pareja increible of a blue-eye and a heel enemy of Kendo-a quite frequent Kendo match format, even more so in All Star in the late 80s/early 90s.)

The one time this matchup was done on TV the fourth man was Rex Strong:

Ironically, Rex Strong and King Kong Kirk would eventually form an anti Daddy tag team in 1987 during Kirk's final months.  Even more ironically, a by then badly out of shape Strong was doing a gimmick as a masked Samurai:

(and yes, that's our friend Tony "El Diablo" Francis in their corner.)

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Catweazle vs. Steve Peacock (1/9/80)

 

Steve Regal says this match is better than McManus vs. Catweazle. Can't say I agree with you there, Steve. Catweazle taking the lead was bloated and not particularly funny. It didn't help that 'Gaylord' Steve Peacock didn't seem to do his gay gimmick on debut, and Walton was putting over his black belt credentials and the fact he was a defensive man in ice hockey instead of the usual fair with Bobby Barnes and Adrian Street. But still, Catweazle is better when he's playing off a guy like McManus than when he's calling the bout.

 

There was a good vlog about this not so long ago.  Peacock wasn't particularly a gay gimmick despite the name, just a midly flamboyant arrogant sort, perfectly suitable for 1980s family TV.

 

[David Mantell]

On 7/13/2014 at 2:49 PM, ohtani's jacket said:

Giant Haystacks vs. Kwik Kick Lee (1/19/83)

 

Kick him in the head, Maeda! Maeda must have loved this. You could almost see the germ of the UWF idea in his dazed look as Haystacks splashes the absolute fuck out of him.

Tellingly, Maeda's first move in this match was to legdive Haystacks and have him almost falling out of the ring.  Had this been a gym shoot, Ruane would have simply fallen to the mat and Maeda would have slapped a leg submission on and Stax would have screamed like a baby and that would be the end of that.

Have duly made his point, Maeda got on with the business of jobbing to Giant Haystacks, just like he previously got on with the job of being rescued by Big Daddy on the 1982 FA Cup Final special.  Such is the life of a future martial arts legend.

[David Mantell]

On 7/14/2014 at 3:56 PM, ohtani's jacket said:

Giant Haystacks vs. Steve McHoy (2/24/83)

 

Walton would not stop going on about how good looking McHoy was both "physically and in the face." I guess McHoy was part of the generation of stars who never were ...The only real variation on it was Haystacks getting himself disqualified.
The cool thing about this bout was that afterwards he started messing with the MC Brian Crabtree about wanting a piece of his brother. Crabtree told him Big Daddy was on his way to the ring and Haystacks back elbowed him in the face. The crowd were all on their feet by this point. Haystacks was avoiding Daddy and Crabtree was taken backstage to the dressing room. It was a nice bit of TV that got all the kids stomping their feet and chanting along. Some hilariously bad acting too w/ Big Daddy's "What has he done to Brian?" line being comical.

McHoy was/is the son of Wild Angus, whom Stax had often teamed with!  Like his dad, he later made his way to Stampede and thence I believe to other North American territories.  I mentioned before how a DQ could sometimes be used to keep a monster like Stax strong by have him lose the bout but win the fight and still be deplored by the fans for his cruletly and fouling.

"I'll do the same to your brother" and the Daddy run in afterwards and Brian Crabtree being injured was a rare example of an angle on World Of Sport.  Daddy did a number of confrontations of Stax after Stax's easy crushing wins to set up a possible singles match which would become a tag match where STax would lose but the partner would get the worst of it.  In 1986 Daddy did a similar angle where he got fed up with Fit Finlay brutalising smaller opponents and would confront him after bouts demaning a match - the blowoff took place as part of the 1986 FA Cup Final coverage with Finlay thoroughly getting the Daddy treatment.

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Professor Aki Mojo vs. Johnny Czeslaw (9/26/74)

Aki Mojo was a bit of an odd one. According to Walton he was an Israeli with a Japanese name residing in France. The Japanese name part doesn't sound right, but he was doing a judoka gimmick. I couldn't find any information about him in French, so I'm not sure if he was a Catch worker. He didn't do anything particularly amazing. but he looked a lot like some of the rudos we've been seeing in 60s Catch. Walton pulled out his old chestnut of a foreigner not being able to speak a word of English. I love it when that one backfires on him. It's almost as amusing as when he gets uptight over the ring announcer making a mistake or the onscreen graphics being wrong. The bout was mostly Czeslaw schtick, but that's okay. I like his schtick.

I've already mentioned Rafael Harpin's Israeli promotion so he could well have got his start there.  He would have fitted in to 70s French Catch which was starting to get gimmicky (though not yet to the point of Flesh Gordon, Jessy Texas, LEs Maniaks, Les Pihrannas etc when France was starting to be Europe's answer to Memphis) with his use of bare feet to attack pressure points etc.  Czeslaw's grumpy blue eye foreigner character sometimes made him the butt of jokes with other unusual wrestlers - notably his bout with Kellet. It was mostly based on his real personality anyway - a young green Kendo Nagasaki once dropped Czelaw on his head circa '65 and he ran out of the ring screaming "He Try To Kill Me!!!" and never worked with Nagasaki again.  Circa '77 he had clean matches with Big Daddy like the John Elijah ones.

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Bob Anthony vs. Johnny Saint (11/26/80)

 

This was one of the first WoS bouts I watched. I made a few disparaging remarks about Anthony since he was a complete nobody to me at the time. These days, I've come to appreciate the less known wrestlers who appear on tape. Anthony is a bit of a strange case in that he appeared on TV in the early 60s then moved to the independents, but somehow had a handful of TV appearances again in 1980. Walton treated him as a boy despite his age and there was no real mention of him being a vet or an established guy. He was a better worker than I gave him credit for all those years ago and he had some nice exchanges with Saint, but once it was time to go to the finish, Saint's stretch work was again weak.

Hmm, I've been a fan of this one for quite a long time, nice serious match.Anthony looked young enought to pass for an upcoming kid although he wasn't and it was structured like many other Saint vs Young Whizzkid matches with a 2-1 finish with the YW getting an impressive consolation fall and otherwise getting to show all his moves in a plug and play with Saint'ts set of moves and counters.

I understand people complain about Saint "always doing the same match" (although the first thing I'd have to say in response is that it was a pretty darn beautiful match to watch) but apart from this plug and play just add opponent and HIS moves, type there were also matches like the one with Vic Faulkner where he has to pull out new moves against a highly experienced rival who is a real threat, as well as his matches against bigger heels where he either bamboozles them to the point where they complain (eg vs Soldier Boy Steve Prince on camcorder in the early 90s) or where they beat him up and he surprises them or they are fighting him so dirtily that he has to compromise principles (vs Col Brody/Terry Rudge in Germany, vs Finlay and Rocco for All Star on ITV in 87-88.)

[David Mantell]

Rewatched that match last night on the Smart TV and am having a quick flick through now.  Not as sparkling as the match with Ken Joyce, but technically solid, with Anthony in the same role as Robbie Brookside in his famous 1987 match with Saint.  Plenty of nice little moments like Saint using a bridge to turn out of wristlock at 1:28 (much as IIRC Kid McCoy did in the match against dad King Benn) and the move Kent Walton - and the crowd! - pops for at 5:48 where Anthony lifts up a leg high to corall Saint into a headscissors (rather than jump into the filying headscissor so beloved of les catcheurs across La Manche) 

Not sure what Ohtani is objecting to with the finishes, they are all nicely enough executed folding presses -  Saint at 13:31 dropping to his knees and hooking both legs (like Davey Boy at SummerSlam 92 but in response to a rear trip rather than a sunset flip) -  Anthony's consolation fall (unusually for a Saint match this is the equaliser not the opener) where he drops from a hammerlock into a trip then turns him over into guard with the open legs and seals it wih a nice graceful bridge, probably the best of the three falls - and finally Saint's decider with a legdive converting into a press not dissimilar to the American small package.

[David Mantell]

On 7/16/2014 at 4:24 AM, ohtani's jacket said:

Heel vs. heel would have been cool, but that was pretty rate. I... Giant Haystacks vs. Tony Francis (10/2/86)

Spot the irony there!  LOL

Francis is of course our man in the mask and leisure suit (and later on kayfiyeh) El Diablo/Sheik Ayatollah Tony "The Brain" Francis, the man who -as discussed earlier - replaced Charlie McGee as the chief evil mastermind behind almost all Big Daddy's hapless heel opponent.

[David Mantell]

On 3/31/2014 at 6:45 AM, ohtani's jacket said:

Steve Grey vs. Tim Fitzmaurice (1/9/79)

Fitzmaurice was a small little Irish lad who Walton said wrestled like a terrier. World of Sport joined this after Fitzmaurice had already scored a surprise opening fall, which kind of killed the dynamic the workers were going for, but even down a fall this was a walk in the park for Steve Grey.

I think Tim Fitzmaurice (RIP)'s later 1980 2-0 loss to Keith Haward gets reviewed later in the thread, which is a really good bout for seeing the original forms of various techniques such as the roll on the mat to untwist an arm, done from a kneeling position rather than standing with a cartwheel instead of the roll.

Wikipedia describes Terriers as "small, wiry, game, and fearless".  It was Kent Walton's preferred term for both Tim and brother Jim.  Both were trained iby an elderly Bert Assirati after he'd finished chasing Shirley C out of the business in 1966.

[David Mantell]

On 7/18/2014 at 3:27 AM, ohtani's jacket said:

Giant Haystacks vs. Pat Roach (2/3/82)

 

You'd think if anybody could stand up to Haystacks outside of Big Daddy it would be Pat Roach, but this was bullshit. Both men scored a pinfall over each other and then they were both disqualified for fighting between rounds, but really it looked like they had no chemistry together whatsoever.

 

By the early 90s Roach had replaced Daddy as the man Stax was scared of and they had quite a feud both on Reslo reissued in Wrestling Madness and for Ring Wrestling Stars (the former Joint) on their 1992 Battle Of The Brits video release partnered for the Reslo match by Drew McDonald and a long haired Robbie Brookside (this match gets reviewed later on) and for the videotape by Scrubber Daly and Alan Kilby.  They also had a back and forth feud for the European Heavyeight title.

Roach was due to referee the 1991 Kendo vs Haystacks "CWA" (don't tell Luc Rambo Poirier)  World title match in Croydon in late '91 as featured in BBC2's Masters Of The Canvas Arena docu, but Kendo's manager Lloyd Ryan objected so Steve Grey was brought in as replacement.  Stax had no objections despite his own feud with Roach.

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Giant Haystacks vs. Rasputin (4/20/88)

 

This was set up by an angle a few weeks earlier where a Super Eight-Man Battle Royal came down to Haystacks and Rasputin, who were tag team partners at the time. Rasputin didn't want to fight his partner, but Haystacks had no qualms about eliminating the Irishman. So this was a short, hot bout with Rasputin looking for revenge. He wasn't a particularly good worker, but some of you may be familiar with him from the Fit Finlay documentary. Match was the usual DQ bullshit, but Haystacks was miffed at the decision and took a swing at referee Jeff Kaye. Kaye dropped like a sack of potatoes and Haystacks followed up with the big elbow. You don't see that much in WoS and it got a chuckle out of me.

Ah yes, the famous WrestleMania IV Battle Royal Rip Off Finish:

Unlike Bret Hart, Rasputin's turn to good only lasted the one match before he was back teaming with Anaconda to face Daddy and Pat Patton in the match Tommy "Jack Dempsey" Moore and Ernie Riley had a good sneer at over wine in First Tuesday The Wigan Hold.

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Giant Haystacks/Big Daddy vs. Steve Veidor/Tibor Szakacs (4/21/76)

This was a fun match. During the intros, I had no idea what to expect. On one side you had two of the all-time great professional wrestlers and on the other side you had Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks, and there was this moment where Tibor was standing there in his yellow jacket looking cool as shit and I had no idea how he was gonna play it. But to Veidor and Szakacs' credit, they hammed it right up. Both guys had awesome strikes and Daddy and Haystacks bumped like fools for them, so it was a pretty good spectacle. Daddy sucked, but we know that. What surprised me was what good buddies he was with Haystacks in their leaner days. They were thick as thieves those two. It almost makes their later rivalry Shakespearean.

There were actually a series of two matches within a short period of this.

 

Max Crabtree off the back of the Kendo series was trying to promote Daddy as the kids hero in the Best Wryton area (Midlands + Lancs) but other promoters were having none of it  and put Daddy on again as a heel.  First he squashed the much lighter Jamaica Kid in Feb '76 then in March he got himself DQ's against Steve Veidor in singles wrestling after one pinfall each (I would love to see Viedor'spin on Daddy!) and now these two bouts.  That seems to have been the end of Daddy the heel although he and Stax continued to do bouts like this into early '77 mostly for Morell and Beresford (rest of North)

The sandwich double bodycheck was Daddy and Stax's speciality, although it was an illegal double team and such things were clamped down on pretty firmly over here.

[David Mantell]

Afterthought - if Big Daddy was the British Hulk Hogan, then was this phase of his career the equivalent of Fred Blassie's Incredible Hulk Hogan 1979-1981?  I thought so when I was 14 and saw back issues advertised in PWI of their poster mag spinoff with the story "Hulk Hogan - Wrestling's Most Hated Man - Full Color Photos Bring His Notorious Past Back To Life!" advertised.  It made sense!

[David Mantell]

On 7/19/2014 at 1:30 AM, ohtani's jacket said:

How many millionaire British wrestling fans do we know?

Various royals, rock stars, politicians.

Kendo is a pretty rich man from his out of the ring activity.  He actually did preserve a few of his early TV bouts on 8mm home movie camera conversion such as this famous wild match with Billy Howes from 1971:

 

[David Mantell]

On 7/20/2014 at 4:50 AM, ohtani's jacket said:

Giant Haystacks vs. Johnny & Peter Wilson (4/23/85)

 

This was supposed to be a handicap match for Haystacks, but having Peter Wilson in there made it more of a handicap for Johnny than Stax. The Wilson brothers went after Haystacks with the fiercest body blows they could muster, but were no chance against a ballooning Stax.

 

This was actually my first ever handicap tag and seeing it billed in TVTimes was my first encouter with the term "handicap tag".  Basically like Andre or Hogan squashing two jobbers for Vince Senior, a vehicle to make Stax look strong.  Still Stax's name value and the novelyt of catch a trois made it a TV main event.

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Big Daddy/Drew McDonald vs. Giant Haystacks/Fit Finlay (5/2/84)

 

So here we go, Daddy vs. Haystacks. I've been putting off watching these matches for years. On one hand, this was a shitty main event for a Cup Final Day. On the other hand, it wasn't the worst professional wrestling I've seen. Finlay, who was growing his hair out here and had a bit of an odd look, was the pinball for Daddy and was pretty decent. The thing you always hear about these matches is that Daddy stayed on the apron while his smaller, more talented partner did all the work, but I think that's a bit of a fallacy. Finlay vs. McDonald made up the bulk of the match, but Daddy tagged in more than he's given credit for during the HOF voting season. Most of the time, Haystacks avoiding facing Daddy, which was the way they built heat for their singles match(es), but on this occasion they squared off, and it's hard not to get a kick out of two extremely fat men colliding with one another. The problem with the bouts is the shitty finishes. The DQ was their out every single time. The payoff was meant to be that Daddy would get Haystacks one-on-one in a fight to the finish, but you had to be there I suppose.

 

Big Daddy/Alan Kilby vs. Giant Haystacks/Wild Angus (4/29/81)

 

We got to see the entire Big Daddy entrance here -- kissing babies, pushing a kid in a wheelchair, showing respect to the elderly. The whole bit. Shit was faker than the in-ring action and best avoided, unless you want to go around whistling "We Shall Not Be Moved" for the rest of the day. This was Cup Final Day once more, and they took advantage of the larger than usual TV audience to promote the Wembley Arena showdown between Haystacks and Daddy by basically having the heels re-injure poor Al Kilby (who had cartilage damage) and leave Daddy fuming. Match was a non-event, but a decent promotional tool.

Two cup final matches.  McDonald was a late substitute for someone else and is odd in the blue-eye role especially as he and Daddy went on to have a massive feud.  Finlay would also have a feud -0 and another cup final showdown - with Daddy two years later where he was more the focus as Daddy was fed up with Finlay brutalising younger wrestlers and,asI said above, wanted to teach him a lesson.

Stax and Angus's manager in the bow tie and frilly shirt was former wrestler Kangaroo Kid Ken Else, who previously managed Stax and Daddy for their July 1975 TV debut DQ loss to Roy and Tony StClair.  About the second manager on ITV after Kendo's manager George Gillette.

[David Mantell]

On 7/21/2014 at 1:51 AM, ohtani's jacket said:

Ian Gilmour/Jeff Kaye vs. Johnny Saint/Steve Best (aired 12/2/72)

 

This was the best British tag match I can remember seeing. British tag wrestling had this strange convention where the teams had nicknames (in this case the Barons and the Elite, and not the "Elites" as Walton nitpicked over when the onscreen graphic appeared), but there were no tag belts or anything of consequence to the bouts. This was a spectacle, but it had a narrative to it as well. The match turned on a crisscross spot where Gilmour and Best were running the ropes, Best dropped to the canvas in a press-up position and Gilmour did a Giant Haystacks style splash onto Best's back, injuring him in the process. Gilmour went for the pinfall, but Best caught him in a body scissors and was able to pry Gilmour off him. That has to be one of the coolest defensive spots I've seen in a wrestling match. After that, Best's back was a weakness and Saint had to do a lot of wrestling for his side. The action went back and forth and there were a tremendous number of nearfalls and exciting pinfall attempts. Saint and Kaye in particular shone, as you'd expect from wrestlers of their calibre. Really exciting match.

 

 

The Barons, of course, were familiar faces also in Catch Francais. Gilmour did a blue-eyed masked man routine a decade later as Kamikaze who was being hyped as the new Kung Fu (Eddie Hammill)

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Big Daddy/Mal Sanders vs. Giant Haystacks/Mark Rocco (11/13/79)

 

Rocco and Haystacks were a great combination. You can just imagine them backstage hatching their plans to take down Daddy. Much of the action here was centred around champion vs. champion with Rocco being the British Heavy-Middleweight champ and Sanders being the European Middleweight champion at the time, but it wasn't long before Rocco was bumping like a maniac for Daddy taking high back body drops and bouncing around the ring. Sanders was also a brave man, taking the full weight of Haystacks' splash right across his mid-section. That was Sanders done for the night, and Rocco followed shortly after with a disqualification leaving Haystacks and Daddy alone together. Daddy began shunting Haystacks around like he was a freight car, so Haystacks bailed and the public would once again have to wait. It's a shame we didn't get to see more of Haystacks and Rocco as I really liked the spot they did where Rocco whipped Sanders into the corner and Haystacks clobbered him with a giant forearm. Haystacks then pleaded with the ref over the public warning while Rocco beat the crap out of Sanders illegally. Beautiful stuff.

Saw this when I was 5 years old one dark winter's night.  Rocco and Finlay were abot the two most credible people to lay down for Daddy (Kendo doesn't count as he beat Big Daddy all 3 of their TV singles bouts and walked out on Rex Strong in the tag match so Rex took both the falls).  Stax's continual running away was the ongoing theme of the Stax-Daddy feud from the moment he walked out on a KO tournament final on TV seconds into the match in September 1977.  Eventually this was extended to every heel living in abject fear of Big Daddy.

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Big Daddy/Giant Haystacks vs. Steve Veidor/Tibor Szakacs (4/6/76)

 

This was these teams' first match from Croydon, which was Veidor's hometown. I think Daddy missed his true calling as he was a natural prick and should have stayed a heel. Perhaps in the 80s when business began to struggle they could have turned Daddy heel to shake things up. This was another fun bout. I liked the return match more because of how fired up Veidor and Szakacs were, but this was the catalyst for that performance. There wasn't much in the way of wrestling, but Veidor hit the most gorgeous dropkicks. He really was some athlete.

The last line is almost ad verbatim what Kent Walton says!  I posted this match just above.

Business never struggled to the extent that they needed to turn Daddy. The opposition (All Star, Orig) becoming more and more formidable was more the issue.  In any case tuning mega babyfaces didn't really take off until the late 90s with Hogan, Dusty, Sting... If Daddy had been still alive perhaps he would have become Big Bad Daddy, worn shades and stomped on opponents like in '75/76.  

Max had a plan for Daddy and the business and he saw booking like the two April '76 heel matches as sabotage on the part of other Joint members.

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Big Daddy/Gary Wensor vs. Giant Haystacks/Big Bruno Elrington (9/26/78)Daddy carrying a toddler to ringside was slimier than the slimiest politician, and he looked just as crooked during the ring intros. Brian was beaming too, in case you had any doubt that the Crabtrees had taken over. Poor Gary Wensor had the ignominy of being Daddy's worst ever partner here. He was replacing Dave Armstrong, who failed to make it to the building, and was instantly a whipping boy for Big Bruno Elrington. Haystacks managed to distract Daddy and the ref with a faked walk out and then Elrington finished off the meek Wensor. Haystacks then took over, and since the babyfaces never broke up the pinfall attempts in WoS, the unthinkable happened and the heels actually got a victory over Daddy. Apparently, this was the last time that Daddy lost on television, which is ridiculous given the amount of tags he worked.

Daddy's team losing 2-1 with the partner dropping the decider continued to happen sporadically. in 1979 Stax and Kirk got a win over Daddy and Mick McMichael with Stax splashing McMichael like he does Wensor here for the decider.  This got repeated 1983 for a match 75% identical but with Sanders as the doomed blue-eye.  At Xmas that year in IIRc Norfolk. there was a Christmas Triple-Tag (6 man) match wherre Hastacks teamed with the larger one of the Masked Marauders (Scrubber Daly) plus manager Charlie McGee to beat Daddy and two partners who were the fall guys.  This set up a return match where Daddy and one of the two partners beat Stax and the Marauder and unmasked him,leaving the Stax/Daly tag team.  Then in 1986 Fit Finlay teamed with Mal Stuart one night to beat Daddy and Richie Brooks when Finlay got Brooks in a pile driver fow a winning pin.  I guess this was payback for Finlay's Cup Final comeuppance at the hands of Daddy.

There were also a handful of DQ losses for Daddy where he either ran in to help or used the plastic bucket one too many times - the last was in late '87 against Drew McDonald and Rasputin.  Generally this was kept off TV to maintain Daddy's aura of indestrucibility.  Heels were portrayed as living in terror of Daddy, but a win over his partner gave them the bragging rights to a win over Daddy himself so it was their ultimate prize.

[David Mantell]

On 7/19/2014 at 6:39 AM, ohtani's jacket said:

 

Do you know if the 16mm prints of Rocco/Jones and Masambula vs. Leon Arras ever converted to DVD?

Interesting that they were still making kinescopes as late as the Rocco/Jones match - I guess that was a colour kinescope?

There could well be quite a lot of these bouts in all sorts of overseas locations.  I wonder if Phillip Morris's Television International Enterprises keeps an eye out for matches.  Then again, a lot of this could be preserved and under lock and key at LWT and Granada already.

[David Mantell]

On 7/31/2023 at 1:55 PM, Jetlag said:

6. EWP did pretty well running in the old Hannover territory appealing to the old fans who were still left, drawing 500-700 fans on good days, but in the last few years they pretty much went belly up after the former owner Eckstein stepped back and there was some kind of spat in the management. Jeff Jarrett is still their official world champion since winning the title in 2018 because since then they haven't been able to gather the money to fly him back in from what I heard. They only ran a handful of shows in the last year and haven't run any in 2023 so they might be done.

Another promotion, POW split from EWP and they pretty much took over the old EWP location in Hannover. I'm not sure it's an old school promotion but they at least try to appeal to the old fans by using guys like Ulf Hermann (yes, Ulf Hermann is still going and doing hardcore matches in 2023). Another promotion is Catch Factory in Leipzig which is a project of Johnny Rancid who is an ex EWP guy, they still somewhat try to keep up the old school image by using cards and running rounds matches here and there. Other than that there's Karsten Kretschmer, a guy who was brought up in the old Hamburg territory by Lasartesse, tho he hasn't run any shows in years. Austria is a bit luckier as they have EWA, which is run by Michael Kovac. I'm not sure they run round matches still, but Kovac has a decidedly old school attitude (especially towards wrestlers who weigh less than 100 kgs).

In total, there's no promotion left who still mainly runs round matches. They are reserved for rare occasions or title matches. It makes sense, since most fans and wrestlers in this country now never had any contact with the old style of wrestling and only know wrestling from what they saw on TV.

The good news is that EPW  seems to be out there and they began in 2004 with much the same.talent pool as EWP (i.e. carrying on where the CWA left off.

https://www.cagematch.net/?id=8&nr=95
https://www.cagematch.net/?id=8&nr=95&page=4

Here's EWP's entry;
https://www.cagematch.net/?id=8&nr=25
https://www.cagematch.net/?id=8&nr=25&page=4

 

[David Mantell]

EWP's website is still up although Norton Security doesn't like it.  I like the photo they have in the background - it looks a lot like a C21st Town Show by All Star or Premier:

[David Mantell]

On 7/22/2014 at 10:43 AM, ohtani's jacket said:

All right, time to wrap up this Big Daddy/Haystacks feud:

Best of luck with that - they themselves only wrapped up in 1993, Daddy's last year of his career

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Big Daddy/Alan Kilby/Pat Patton vs. Giant Haystacks/Scrubber Daly/Lucky Gordon (11/1/83)

Haystacks managed to scrounge Scrubber Daly and Lucky Gordon up from somewhere and looked to have an advantage over Daddy when Patton was unable to continue, but Daddy was in such bad shape that there wasn't even a FIP segment on Kilby. I've never seen a match where the faces are in such dire straits and there's no heat segment. This was a "fall out of bed" kind of match and they couldn't do it. Just awful.

Daly and Gordon had been The Masked Marauders just months earlier for the 1983 FA Cup Final against Daddy and Kid Chocolate (having first scored a warmup win over Nipper Eddie Riley and Fireman Colin Bennet a few weeks earlier.  (On the house show ciruit Daly was still doing the Marauders gimmick both with Blackjack Mulligan and with non masked partners including the Xmas 1983 win over Daddy mentioned above)

This was the climax of a Daddy's All Stars vs Haystack's Wrecking Crew themed TV taping screened across two weeks worth of World Of Sport.  The previous week had ended with the Crew leading 2-1 and week 2 (which I originally watched at a schoolfriend's 10th birthday party - I was the only one rooting for Haystacks) was a clean sweep for the Daddy side, including a solo squashing of Daly by Daddy, where Daly was doing well against Daddy for a moment until Haystacks came out and gave Daly some advice which obviously wasn't very good advice as Daddy immediately started trashing Daly and soon got the winning KO.

By this point the theme of the feud of Stax being scared of Daddy had extended to Stax's partners with, as Kent Walton said "any time Daddy gets in - complete disappearance of the opposition" as the camera zoomed in on the "disaapeared" Haystacks.

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Giant Haystacks/Bully Boy Muir vs. Big Daddy/Tony St. Clair (4/19/78)

Haystacks was rocking an amazing afro in this match. That's about all he was rocking though as he was disqualified straight away for attacking Tony St. Clair before the bell. That left Big Daddy one-on-one with Muir while St. Clair was laid out on the apron doing his best impersonation of an All Japan tag match. Muir got a decent cheap shot in on St. Clair when he was whipped into the corner and stuck a leg through the ropes, but this was one way traffic and God knows what the public thought of it as Cup Final Day fare. The finish was an absolute mess with nobody but the ref realising that one fall and one disqualification was enough to end the match. Hell, even Walton didn't know it was over and thought Muir had decided to quit. It's staggering how poorly executed a lot of these main events were.

This match lasted just 85 seconds and was a one fall singles match between Daddy and Muir (they had already had a proper singles bout on TV in the summer of '76 from another of my local venues, Bedworth Civic Hall.)  Again, Stax finding a way to get out of the match and get out of facing Daddy.  See also his attack on the already freshly pinned Alan Kilby in the 1981 cup final.

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Big Daddy/Tony St. Clair vs. Giant Haystacks/Albert Hillbilly Hell-On (1/25/78)

 

This was weird. Albert Hillbilly Hell-On was billed as being from Tennessee and literally all he did was look confused and eat the pinfalls. St. Clair shouldered the load here and had rope burn and a bloody nose to show for it. St. Clair was one of the lighter heavyweights at the time, but he looked like a twig next to Haysacks. Daddy looked remarkably thin by his standards and even had a specialty move (a kind of back body drop thing with a pin.) It was early days with his face turn and he was still fleshing things out. Dunno who Albert Hillbilly Hell-On was. It was all a bit baffling really.

The back body drop was known as the double elbow.  Bret Hart mentions this move in his biography.  Quite a lot of people got injured by this one (including Banger Walsh on TV in 1984) and it was seen as something of a dare among UK heels out of kayfabe to be prepared to take this one.  Bret said that Max C would wave money in front of opponents to get them to risk their lives with this move.

Albert Hell-on was not an American and was a fairly low rent fourth man for Daddy, StClair and Stax.

StClair was British Heavyweight Champion and had a big title feud with Haystacks in 1979 after Stax won the title at the Royal Albert Hall (NOT named after Mr. Hell-on by the way!) by dropping his weight on StClair's legs to score a TKO, and then StClair getting it back by DQ in a rematch.  Rumour has it that before Kendo Nagasaki retired at the end of 1978, this title change was to have been with him as a follow on to the confrontation with StClair at Kendo's final (until late 1986 screened Jan 1987) TV match where StClair and Nagasaki seemed to have agreed to a title match - and that Haystacks was a replacement interim champion.

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Big Daddy/Ritchie Brooks/Roy Regal vs. Giant Haystacks/Sid Cooper/Charlie McGhee (11/13/86)

 

What can a person say? Daddy had a full on marching band here. At one point, I was a bit worried about one of the kid's drums with all these fat men flying around, but thank heavens no instruments were harmed. Regal and Brooks must have thought they'd made it making it onto ITV television. In the halls, they could have probably tore the place down. Sid Cooper was still plowing away in '86 and tried his best to work some decent exchanges with Brooks. I can't recall too much else about this other than Daddy inexplicably got a pinfall over Haystacks, and he had a marching band.

"Roy" Regal's second TV match and often held up as an example of how badly he was handled by Max Crabtree.  Also the last week before All Star's TV debut and described as a "truly atrocious" show by JNLister although there were some good supporting bouts with Ian McGregor and Nipper Riley (not against each other this time, which is a pity as they were great together, but against good opponents Mike Jordan and King Ben)

This was essentially McGee's blowoff match after 3 years of leading teams such as The Masked Marauders, The Rockers, The Terrible Two (Kirk and Muir) Tiny Callaghan and others in a doomed campaign to beat Big Daddy, often getting in the ring himself and getting beaten up and thrown out by Daddy.  His fat beardy slob image was a bit of a rip off of heel-era Captain Lou Albano.  In real life he was a retired circus clown and good friend of Crabtree who refused to have a bad word said about his nemesis.

Sid Cooper kept ploughing away until a career ending injury in 2000, by which time he was mostly wrestling for Premier Promotions down in Sussex.

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Big Daddy/Jim Moser vs. Giant Haystacks/Big Bill Bromley (10/11/82)

 

I've liked Moser in other stuff he's done, but Moser vs. Bromley was never going to be enough to hold my interest in this one. They teased a battle royal spot in this match where both Haystacks and Daddy looked like they might fall onto Walton's commentary desk, which quite frankly would have been brilliant, and it was amazing how gassed Daddy was after trying to lift Haystacks. He was hunched over in his corner and I was worried about his ticker for a second. Moser was taken out like so many before him and again there was no heat segment on Daddy. He even scored another pinfall over Haystacks.

Bromley would later get his own feud with Daddy as the masked Emperor.

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Big Daddy vs. Giant Haystacks (6/18/81)

 

And finally here it is, Wembley Arena 1981. The Wrestlemania III of British wrestling. A no rounds, no falls, fight to the finish that could only be won on a knock out. Two referees, the Reverend Michael Brooks in Big Daddy's corner and Anaconda and Banger Tony Walsh in Haystacks' corner. Two minutes and fifty seconds of the most amazing wrestling you'll ever see. Two giants going at it hammer and tongs. Each showing the other no mercy. Haystacks came agonisingly close on the splash, but by some miracle Daddy rolled out of the way. On and on they battled with no end in sight until finally the fates intervened. A little sweat on the canvas? We'll never know, but Haystacks slid, then stumbled, and fell... fell over the top rope and down into the bowels of the earth. Unable to mobilise his gigantic frame, this lionheart was counted out. And to be bloody fair, it's not easy to move an ass that big in only 10 seconds. For a match that was four years in the making you'd think they might have actually teased Daddy losing, but at least it wasn't boring.

1) This had actually already happened on TV back in November 1977.  (Well actually it first happened in September 1977 in the final of a four man KO tournament but Stax walked out seconds into that one, starting the rumour that the one man he was scared of was his former tag partner)  The November 1977 fight saw Daddy score an easy first round pinfall and then the two charge at each other at the start of round 2 squishing the poor referee and leaving the match abandoned.

You'll notice there seems to be a bit of a theme of Daddy scoring the opener on Stax and then him bailing out quickly one way or another before he could have a totally discrediting second fall scored on him.  This happened a lot at non TV shows.

2) A no rounds, no falls, fight to the finish that could only be won on a knock out.

See also the Quinn fight and the loser leave UK fight with the Missisippi Mauler Jim Harris.  A Texas Death Match in all but name.

3) The only time after 1978 Daddy was allowed to be in any kind of Trouble in the ring, especially on TV.  Even so, it wasn't Stax's efforts that got Daddy down but rather Daddy coming to the knocked out first referee's aid, with Stax taking advantage and kicking Daddy about a bit until the missed splash.

4) until finally the fates intervened. A little sweat on the canvas? We'll never know, but Haystacks slid, then stumbled, and fell... fell over the top rope and down into the bowels of the earth. Unable to mobilise his gigantic frame, this lionheart was counted out.

Stax himself afterwards claimed to have slipped on the pile of flowers on the ringside table!   

There's a clip of Daddy and Stax, bitter enemies, discussing these matters on kids slapstick show Tiswas with only petite female presenter (and most frequently pied female face on British TV) Sally James to keep them apart-unfortunately it's no longer on Youtube but I'll see sometime if I can upload it here some other way.

5) The smaller of the two little girl cheerleaders was Daddy's stepdaughter and closest confindante Jane who remains an ambassador for Daddy'smemory and a staunch defender of him online and at wrester reunions.

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> Is there no stopping this man? Apparently not when he's running into people.

Scoff all you will, but this was how the family audiences, especially the kids, saw Daddy, as this unstoppable bulldozing force.