Wrestling Heritage

For the majority of people the name synonymous with wrestling promotion was that of Joint Promotions. Joint Promotions was a nationwide group of promoters who worked co-operatively by carving the towns and cities of Britain into distinct territories and employing wrestlers under exclusive contract. The group began working together shortly after the war, but it was 1952 before the Joint Promotion organisation officially came into existence. An exclusive contract to present televised wrestling gave Joint Promotions and their wrestlers an advantage over their rivals.

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The formation of Joint Promotions meant that a larger group of other promoters was left behind, and these were known as the independents, or opposition promoters. Without the well known television names the independent promoters relied more heavily, and some would say too heavily, on marketing and gimmicks. In the industrial parts of the North and Midlands the independents provided a credible challenge to Joint Promotions. In the South Joint Promotions were by far the more dominant force, though independent promoters Paul Lincoln and Jackie Pallo provided credible challenges.  The dominance of Joint Promotions was finally broken by All Star Promotions in the 1980s, though the less than generous might say that this was due to good fortune as much as good management.

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