Meet the WoS Wrestlers

[ohtani's jacket]

There's something iffy about that timeline.

 

The Hurst Park Syndicate were managers of the Hurst Park Racecourse through to 1962 when they were forced to close the race course and the land was sold for a housing estate. The Syndicate was then taken over by a firm called Elysian investments who bought into Terry Downes and Sam Burns' betting shops the following year. Astaire was Downes' manager at the time I believe and had some sort of stake in the business. The Syndicate allowed Downes and Burns to keep operating the shops and sold out to William Hill in 1971. At the time Hurst Park still owned Dale Martin along with the betting business. William Hill kept Burns on, so if Astaire was involved with the wrestling (as it seems he was), it would appear it was during the time that Hurst Park and William Hill were owners. Kung Fu has an anecdote about being called into Astaire's office, which was well after Crabtree had become the promoter. Lincoln was supposed to have sold out in '65 or so, which suggests to me that Hurst Park bought up the promotions prior to selling up.

[ohtani's jacket]

I found an obituary for Henry William Abbey that supports my idea:

 

"After the war ended, he returned to

Prudential until 1950, when he joined the new family

business, Dale Martin Promotions, where he was

known as ‘Billy Dale’. Dale Martin Promotions held

an exclusive wrestling contract with ITV from 1955 to

1985, which had its best years when shown on World

of Sport between 1965 and 1985, and they were closely

involved in World Championship Boxing in the 1960s

and 70s. Henry became a chartered secretary, merged

Dale Martin Promotions with Hurst Park Syndicate and

floated the new company in 1964. He was a director

and company secretary of this company until it was

taken over by the William Hill Organisation in 1971. He

became a director and subsequently Deputy Managing

Director of William Hill, and was also a director

of numerous other sporting, leisure and finance

companies within the same group. He travelled widely

on business in Europe and the USA before retiring from

William Hill in 1988, when it merged with Mecca."

[JNLister]

Wrestling Heritage has this capsule history, which is roughly in line with how I understood the timeline:

 

 

 

Joint Promotions consisted of regional promoters who worked in conjunction with one another as a sort of self-managed governing body. Each was independently owned until 1964 when the Hurst Park syndicate bought the biggest member, Dale Martin Promotions. Fortunately for wrestling the current owners, the Abbey and Martin families, were to remain in operational control for a further few years. Hurst Park later acquired the largest independent promoter, Paul Lincoln Management. In the late 1960s boxing entrepreneur Jarvis Astaire purchased the Hurst Park acquisitions and subsequently added Best, Wryton, Morrell and Beresford Promotions to his portfolio before selling them on to William Hill. Independent promoter Max Crabtree was employed to manage the northern promotions from 1975, and a couple of years later he took over management of the Dale Martin shows, expanding the brand to the midlands and north. Crabtree’s innovations brought a short lived revival to a business that was already ailing. With many of the biggest attractions joining the independents in the 1980s the influence of Joint Promotions began to wane and eventually their stranglehold on wrestlers’ exclusive contracts was broken. A management buy-out led to Max Crabtree taking ownership of Joint Promotions, but by then the decline in wrestling’s popularity was out of control. In 1988 Joint lost their exclusive rights to televised wrestling. The name Joint Promotions was dropped in 1992, and for the next three years Crabtree re-branded the business as Ring Wrestling Stars.

 

Based on what you've found, and stuff I've briefly looked at, it sounds like the true picture is less "Astaire buys the wrestling companies from Hurst Park, then sells to William Hill" and more "Astaire was part of Hurst Park the whole time, but took the hands on/visible role after it bought up Dale Martins and Paul Lincoln Promotions, but before it bought up the the others, and may well still have been the 'management representative' in the William Hill era." It also looks a bit like the ownership history some of the wrestlers remember is based on who they actually dealt with.

 

It also definitely appears as if the day to day operations of the regional promotions was being handled locally for several years after they were all under a single ownership.

 

Also, as far as I can gather Relwyskow & Green was the only Joint member never bought out and always remained a separate promotion. It was doing some of the TV shows as late as 1988 (in the 'Joint' timeslot) it appears that even after the various takeovers you still technically had two promotions as members of Joint. That leaves the question of the extent to which you had a business/corporate difference between Dale Martin (as a massive promotion eventually running near nationwide) and Joint (as a 'governing body' holding the TV slot.)

 

Long story, this is definitely something I need to look into for a Greetings, Grapple Fans article. Really sad irony is that the one archive of business-related documents I know still exists and I could get access to is that of Relwyskow & Green!

 

I'm also very intrigued by the Billy Dale stuff with Hurst Park/William Hill - I wonder how much of his work there was "real" and how much was getting a good job for life as part of the sellout.

 

Short story, if it's on TV before 1987 you can safely call it a Joint Promotions presentation!

[ohtani's jacket]

If you want I can send you the supporting documents for the stuff I mentioned. This the only really contentious part: "In the late 1960s boxing entrepreneur Jarvis Astaire purchased the Hurst Park acquisitions and subsequently added Best, Wryton, Morrell and Beresford Promotions to his portfolio before selling them on to William Hill." It's possible that Astaire bought everything up before selling it to Hill, but Hill definitely took over Hurst Park because I found newspaper articles pertaining to it, and as I said Astaire appeared to still be in the wrestling game after '71. I wonder if the Wrestling Heritage lineage comes from the Simon Garfield book The Wrestling where Max Crabtree mentions the ownership history? It seems to me that Crabtree was given the book because business was bad under Marino.

[JNLister]

Yep, anything you can send me would be great. It's john at johnlisterwriting dotcom.

 

Definitely looks to not be as simple as "Hurst sold to Astaire, Astaire sold to William Hill". As best I can tell, it looks to be a lot more like, Astaire was part of (or bought into) the Hurst Park Syndicate, which was then bought by William Hill but Astaire carried on running things.

 

The more I read, the more I suspect Astair never personally/individually owned the wrestling groups and the stuff about him buying them from Hurst was a combination of confusion over his role and wrestlers remembering him becoming the guy they saw as their ultimate boss.

 

Really fascinating thing is that in 1971 -- which is right when William Hill is buying Hurst Park and in turn Dale Martin and several other Joint members -- William Hill itself was bought by the Sears Group, which owned several major shoe stores and a department store chain. It's bizarre to think that ultimately Selfridges and Dale Martin were part of the same business family.

[dawho5]

Just watched Cortez vs. Grey and that's right up there with Breaks vs. Street and Breaks vs. Faulkner. Tremendous amount of heat between them as the match goes on. Great escalation throughout with some chippy stuff near the end. I really love how Cortez starts the bout normally but ever so subtly becomes more and more heelish throughout. Even in the early going everything is really well-worked. They set a great tone early with the intensity they work headlocks and chinlocks and ramp up from there. Reccomended watch for sure. Jon Cortez seems like the guy they wanted Dean Malenko to be in WCW.

[ohtani's jacket]

Question that has come out of some viewing: do the 70s WoS guys ever do suplexes and other such throws? Seems like most "throws" result from flinging a guy by the head or body part from matwork.

 

Is there a moment when they start doing more "moves"? I don't ask this out of any complaint -- it's all incredibly easy to watch and enjoy -- but out of curiosity about style. Guys like Dynamite Kid and Billy Robinson who came out of Britain to work elsewhere have plenty of "bombs", but I don't see guys working like that on 70s WoS. Does McManus ever do suplexes? Does Breaks?

 

I've been noticing a lot more suplexes in the late 70s footage I've been watching. They tend to do them in transition as opposed to setting them up as a big highspot. I think they're kind of cool. They seem like more legitimate throws than pro-wrestling moves.

[PeteF3]

Another sort of weird thing is that even in the early '70s, some guys like Abe Ginsberg are busting out power bombs--but they're treated more as takedowns or roll-ups than deadly moves, a la the old "Greco-Roman front body drop" as Lou Thesz called it.

[JerryvonKramer]

OJ tell me about Steve Wright.

[ohtani's jacket]

There's not much footage of Wright. There's a few matches of his from the early 70s where he was doing a wonderboy gimmick similar to early Alex Wright. He ended up working in Germany and Austria pretty much full time and unfortunately most of the German footage we have is either clipped or difficult to watch. There isn't a single match of his from Germany/Austria that I would consider worth watching. In 1986 he had a match against Marty Jones on ITV that's one of the best matches of the 80s. He works that match as a fake German, Bull Blitzer. IIRC, there's talk of a re-match at the end, but it never happened. Regal has said in the past that he ate guys alive and people were scared to work with him. I personally find him overrated. He's one of those guys like Saint who people are vaguely aware of and think is some great Euro worker despite the lack of footage to substantiate that idea. I'm sure there were nights when he was great, but we don't have the footage to support that.

[Parties]

Is there a secret stockpile of Szacacs or Clay Thomson online or for sale? What is available on Youtube is amazing, but they only have a couple matches apiece.

The Ray Steele performance with Roach looked a bit like Will Ferrell’s playbook, but I mean that as a compliment.

[ohtani's jacket]

This is the definitive collection of the stuff that's available to buy:

 

http://www.britishwrestlingdvds.vze.com

 

Carl used to make comps but these days he's only offering discs. Search among his best of comps. There's not that much Tibor out there and even less Clay Thomson.

 

If there's anything that really takes your eye and I have it, I'll be glad to rip it for you.

[GSR]

I've asked OJ about Clay Thomson in the past and sadly only five matches of his are on tape, with a further two when he was working as the Exorcist. I've only seen the Alan Sarjeant, Reg Trood and Majid Ackra bouts and enjoyed them all (with the first two being especially good). It's a shame as like Sarjeant (who has a similar number of small matches on tape) he appears to be one of the lost great workers.

[cheapshot]

This is the definitive collection of the stuff that's available to buy:

 

http://www.britishwrestlingdvds.vze.com

 

Carl used to make comps but these days he's only offering discs. Search among his best of comps. There's not that much Tibor out there and even less Clay Thomson.

 

If there's anything that really takes your eye and I have it, I'll be glad to rip it for you.

 

I can vouch for Carl if anyone is interested in some footage from him.

 

Known him for many years now, and a fine gentleman, with an even finer collection!

[Dylan Waco]

Bumping this both to note that I have been writing up some of the nominated guys over recent days and will continue to do so, and also as a sort of reminder that if anyone in this thread is someone you are considering voting for but hasn't been nominated yet, please get that nomination in ASAP. Only a couple weeks left for them.