Wrestling Heritage

Unbelievably it is now twenty years since ITV dropped professional wrestling from their schedules.

Twenty years to celebrate. A time to celebrate the fact that professional wrestling has not only survived two decades without the support of national television but that it is once again gaining new followers throughout the country. A celebration that here at Wrestling Heritage we are able to join with thousands of friends and re-live the days of wrestling that we loved most.

We commemorate the occasion of televisions loss with one for the lovers of lists, and there seems to be a great many of those amongst the wrestling fans of yesteryear. Thirty years of television wrestling, over five thousand bouts, hundreds of wrestlers, countless “Ai-ai, ai-ai AIs!" and a handful of mystery men who refused to say a word to dear old Kent even in the privacy of the dressing room.

John Lister’s excellent website www.itvwrestling.co.uk documents the wrestling years of ITV. Here at Wrestling Heritage we are about to trace the evolution of the stars of British wrestling by charting their television appearances from 1960, the year that tv wrestling became a weekly Saturday afternoon feature in homes across the country, and 1988, when Pat Roach finally closed the door on the parlours of the nation.

Unlike those “Wrestler” ratings of yore that never quite had that touch of credibility the Heritage ratings are based on the undisputable evidence of a wrestler’s television appearances from one leap year to the next. Bite sized  chunks were chosen that would allow us to examine the path of wrestling’s greatest stars from nova to extinction.

Click on Kent to continue to The Evolution of TV's Greatest

1960- 1964     1965-1968     1969-1972     1973-1976    1977-80     1981-1984     1985-1988