Terry Rudge

[Grimmas]

Discuss here.

[ohtani's jacket]

Rudge's early stuff is okay. He looks a bit like a rugby prop and is a fairly good hand. But my gawd, when he decides to shave his balding head and grow a moustache, he turns into one of the biggest ass kickers in wrestling history. He's a prototype Dave Finlay or Steve Regal. If you like those wrestlers then there's no reason why you shouldn't be familiar with Terence Rudge. Go on Twitter and Regal will tell you himself.

 

Older British fans tend to stop giving a shit about WoS as soon as Daddy's on top, so they don't quite rate Rudge as highly as we do. There's also an issue of him spending a lot on time on the continent so he's away from television a lot, but these are his best bouts:

 

Terry Rudge vs. Marty Jones (11/30/76)

Terry Rudge vs. Alan Kilby (6/18/81)

Terry Rudge vs. Pete Roberts (3/21/83)

Terry Rudge vs. Dalibar Singh (10/11/83)

Terry Rudge vs. Tom Tyrone (11/20/84)

 

Terry Rudge vs. Franz van Buyten (Hamburg 10/1/87)

Johnny Saint vs. Terry Rudge (10/8/87)

Steve Regal vs. Terry Rudge (Hamburg 10/7/88)

[Grimmas]

I had not heard of Rudge before this project began, so this should be fun.

 

vs Steve Regal (10/7/88)

 

Young and spunky Regal vs an old Regal/Dave Taylor/Finlay type wrestler is weird but enjoyable to watch. I liked this a lot and Rudge seems along the same vein as the girzzled british grump. I am happy to watch more.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxIvWPPcUGc

vs Tom Tyrone (11/20/84)

 

Another good match and Rudge looks good, but I don't know if he is standing out as an all-timer. I will have to come back to him.

[DR Ackermann]

Watch that Marty Jones match on YouTube that OJ mentioned.

[Grimmas]

Watch that Marty Jones match on YouTube that OJ mentioned.

I will get to that. I ran out of time tonight, unfortunately.

[Grimmas]

The Jones match was real good. However I think there needs to be a lot more at or above this level. Do those matches exist?

[cheapshot]

A lock for my top 50. I gave Regal a 4 disc Rudge set I had last year after his spoken word show, he seemed pleased as punch with it.

[BillThompson]

The Jones match was real good. However I think there needs to be a lot more at or above this level. Do those matches exist?

 

Don't usually do star ratings, but I had that Jones match as an easy ****3/4. Rudge will definitely be getting more of a look from me.

[Dylan Waco]

There are guys throughout this process who's stock will go up. And then there is Terry Rudge.

 

Rudge went from a guy I had seen a few times, and knew had some fans, but had no real opinion on to being a guy who I want to watch the entire available catalog of. In more concrete terms he went from being off my radar for this project to being a guy who will probably be my second or third highest rated 70s/80s European worker, and a guy who will make the upper half of my ballot.

 

It's alluded to above, but if you are a fan of the Regal, Finlay, Dave Taylor version of Brit Isles wrestling, Rudge is pretty clearly the prototype. I'm not saying there weren't guys before him, or other people who had those elements, but when you can immediately read his influence on those guys.

 

What do I mean by this? Well, for one he's the most hard nosed, of the hard nosed Brits other than maybe Pat Roach who was a fucking giant. He approaches everything with malice in his eyes, wrenches all his holds in tight, wears a nasty facial expression, et. More than that he is really good at subtle stuff involving leverage, posture, and body language that most wrestlers don't "get." He always looks like he is legitimately trying to deliver the maximum amount of punishment, and his unique way of positioning himself also gives off the vibe of him being an expert that knows more about hurting people than mere mortals.

 

The thing is this does not preclude him from doing smooth stuff or exciting stuff. In fact he kind of integrates the flashy with the violent. He'll do something like the little spinning escape that a lot of the WOS wrestlers would do...and he'll try to work a double wristlock variation while mounted on someones shoulders. He can play at both speeds, and play them well. I also really like him in struggle spots, like the staple "will this end up a cross body press or a body slam" routine, which he does better than anyone else by a safe margin.

 

If you are fan of logical, persistent, and strategic offensive attacks, Rudge is pretty much the king within this universe. I would actually rate him at or near the level of someone like a Buddy Rose or Bockwinkel when it comes to picking a method of attack and sticking with it. He will identify a target, hone in, strike, and keep striking. I greatly appreciate this as it elevates the level of drama in his matches dramatically, and gives the viewer something consistent to focus on across falls.

 

Unlike some guys who may have been slightly better pure grapplers, Rudge seemed to relish working the crowd into a frenzy. I genuinely think he enjoyed working comedic matches in Reslo as much as he enjoyed working long classic contests from the WOS peak years. Watching his match v. Robbie Brookside from Reslo I really got the feeling that he would have fit in great in today's Southern indie scene, which coming from me is a huge compliment.

 

Because he gave off a bad ass vibe his bumps meant more, and I think he was a very good theatrical bumper. I'd actually rate him only below Pete Roberts in that regard among the guys that had any real weight on them. He was also probably the best "in between falls" asshole, often throwing his trademark mini-headbutts on the breaks there, among other dick heel tactics that added heat and tension.

 

Another big plus for me with Rudge is that I liked him more the more I watched him. Early on I thought he was really, really good, but as one thing led to another I became convinced that he was an excellent wrestler. To me that means he holds up to scrutiny very well, which is something I worry about a bit with guys where I am watching 3 matches or so of them for the first time in seven or eight years.

 

I know everyone is high on the Jones match, but I honestly doubt the match would even make my top five Rudge match list. Rudge is absolutely awesome in it (and Jones is Jones...I'll have more to say on him soon but he's a really tough one for me to get a handle on after being a big fan at points in the past), but i prefer the longer of the two Ray Steele matches, the Van Buyten match, the Singh match, the Thorton match and possibly others. The point being that he has a healthy volume of very good-to-great matches, and I actually think they tend to be worked pretty differently.

 

So yeah. Great, great wrestler. Will be tough to figure out where to rate him in relationship to Steve Grey, but he's easily on my ballot.

[ohtani's jacket]

The biggest problem with Rudge is that he only appeared on ITV during the 80s a total of 22 times. I'm fortunate in that I think I've seen most of those, but I don't think you can really talk about Rudge having volume. Granted, a lot of those 22 matches are good, but you look at years where Rudge would have been in his prime like '80-82 and we have a total of 4 matches. That was his choice to tour foreign lands, but I can't stay I'm a huge fan of his later ITV appearances or his Reslo work. His '87 Germany work is better than anything he did on ITV after '85.

[El McKell]

Doesn’t belong in my top 100 but I’m someone who won’t be ranking Regal so the fact that I’m not ranking proto-Regal is to be expected. He is fun to watch, especially when he’s being vicious and less so when he’s doing his bumping and getting thrown around by the babyfaces (I can’t really articulate what about how he does this stuff that isn’t for me tbh)

What I watched for this so far and my match ratings
Terry Rudge vs Tibor Szakacs (05/04/74) **½
Terry Rudge vs Marty Jones (30/11/76) ****
Terry Rudge vs Lenny Hurst (17/01/81) ***
Terry Rudge vs Alan Kilby (20/06/81) **¾
Terry Rudge vs Ray Steele (10/06/87) ***
Dave Bond vs Terry Rudge (19/03/88) **½

[Clayton Jones]

I'm on the same journey a lot who have participated in GWE have been on with Rudge. In a limited amount of matches he's made as much of an impression on me as anyone who I was mostly unfamiliar with coming in. Besides some of the matches already mentioned I also really enjoyed him as an ass kicking babyface VS Bully Boy Muir from 8/27/1988. I like how even when he's working meat and potatoes, big boys grunting & grabbing at each others faces kind of matches, there are still creative touches that make each bout feel unique. I saw a comment that you always get your money's worth watching Rudge. That seems pretty spot on. I know the footage is limited so I'm going to table him for now but he may require the least amount watched for me to have a legitimate shot at sneaking on my ballot.