Wrestling Heritage

The home of classic British wrestling. Contact us: theriotsquad@hotmail.com

H

 

The eighth letter of the alphabet brings another host of famous names from the past. Howes, Hussey, Haggetty, Holton…..how’s your blood pressure?

 

We have selected ten to bring back the memories.

Steve Haggetty

Billed as an Irish Canadian, Toronto-born Fulham-based Steve Haggetty was a conceited mid-heavyweight  villain of the sixties and early seventies, unsatisfyingly monickered "Hard-boiled", copycatting the more famed American original.  Started out with Joint Promotions and a 1962 television début before transferring to the Paul Lincoln stable where he feuded with lookalike Dave Larsen.  He then tagged fleetingly with Al Fontayne, and then cemented his place as a major star in the Dangermen with Dangerous Danny Lynch, continuing the team alongside Colin Joynson in the seventies (see the tag team section in Autographs).  Often a solo action foe for Kellett and Masambula, and immediately antagonistic, strutting sardonically to the ring with his famed bull on the back of his cape.

John Hall

Low-key value-for-money Croydon welterweight of the late sixties and early seventies who surfaced to achieve a new 2007 peak of fame when the featured interviewee in a BBC News outside broadcast showing current-day training of professional wrestlers.  A former amateur champion who turned pro late in life at 29, we remember him training on-the-job in-the-ing, with protegés the likes of a young Clive Myers.  Still dedicatedly involved in training to this very day.

 

 

 

 

 

Ted Hannon

The wearing of a velvet jacket and a kilt passed as pretty flamboyant in the early 1960s wrestling world. Add to that a previous existence as a drummer in a dance band and Dundee’s Ted Hannon had the makings of a colourful wrestling persona. Maybe so, but those that do remember Ted are more likely to remember a skilful technician than a showman. Here was a master of hold and counter-hold, and one of Britain’s top welterweights in the 1960s.  The kilt was most likely worn because, to Ted, it was the natural thing to wear. He wasn’t one to seek attention through gimmicks, but rather a style that relied on nothing more than wrestling skill. A successful amateur career, reaching the heights of Scottish lightweight champion, led to a wrestling career in which he was regularly seen throughout the United Kingdom. Although he kept a home in Scotland he based himself in Leeds so that he could work nationally.  Despite a televised win over champion Jack Dempsey and the occasional high profile bout against Pallo at the Royal Albert Hall and McManus on television, Ted Hannon was respected by many but destined to rise no higher than mid card level.

Ezzard Hart

Founder member of the Black Knights tag team with Honey Boy Zimba, Ezzard Hart

was a sixties mid-heavyweight from St Andrews, Barbados and on the way up when

he sadly passed away after illness in 1971.  Hart was the first black wrestler in

Britain to dye his hair blond, and could wrestle clean or dirty.  The later blond

version is seen right in a rare black v black encounter, forearm smashing

Masambula.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Judo Al Hayes

Ever youthful Judo Al Hayes was one wrestler who enjoyed a textbook career made up of a series of successful phases.  Crowned as a British Heavyweight Champion in the shambolic pre Joint Promotions days at Harringay Stadium, the nation’s youngest ever judo black belt of the early days of Dale Martin Promotions claimed a more notable scalp with a Royal Albert Hall defeat of subsequent legitimate world champion Eduardo Carpentier.  He then hooked up from the outset with successful independent rival, Paul Lincoln, playing the blue-eyed lead against Lincoln’s colourful stable of international villains.  Hayes had a fun run as the English version of the famed Spaniard, the White Angel, culminating in a famous 1962 unmasking at the Granada Tooting at the hands of Doctor Death.   During his Lincoln years, Hayes wrestled with great regularity in France, both with and without the mask.  When the two promotions finally merged at the start of 1966 it was Judo Al who led the Lincoln wrestlers’ televised ring invasion and took the mike in an open challenge to their Dale Martin counterparts.  Immediately embraced back into the Joint Promotions fold, Hayes featured in the victorious London team in the Capital Cities Trophy series against Paris at the Royal Albert Hall the following year.  Billed now as the wrestling councillor (Con.) from Westminster, Hayes won an open tournament to become the Southern England Heavyweight Champion, defeating Wayne Bridges and Bruno Elrington along the way.  In time-honoured fashion he relinquished his sash to Elrington just prior to his departure for the USA in 1971.  We have a treasured snapshot of the man in action thanks to a regular Wrestling Channel airing of his flying return visit to the UK and his unsavoury heel turn as he went down in a classic encounter with Steve Viedor.  His final 34 years of action in the ring and behind the mike were spent in North America, where he died a very sad death in 2005 aged 77.

 

Ted Heath

He was Yorkshire grit type who found success on both sides of the Atlantic, though he probably didn’t take that “Hooker” Heath nickname to the States with him. Ted Heath turned to professional wrestling following a career in rugby league, and with such a background he had just the style that you’d imagine. If you’re not sure what that means then just imagine a wrestler who was disqualified in his first professional bout!  He was a robust, submission style brawler with the characteristics of a villain despite rarely actually breaking the rules. Well, not often. It was a different matter on those occasions he pulled on a mask to wrestle as the outright villainous Red Scorpion. His greatest fame, though, came as one half of the Dennisons tag team where his aggressive style complemented team captain, Alan Dennison.  Late in his career Ted settled in the USA where he gained some success as Texas Ted Heath, but that’s another story.

 

 

 

Vic Hessle 

Vic Hessle was one of those few wrestlers whose career comfortably spanned two eras. Following the second world  war many wrestlers went into retirement because they were too old to adapt their style to the Mountevans

rules, or because they were simply too old. Neither the war nor the change of style were sufficient to stop

Vic Hessle going on to become one of the most successful and respected wrestlers of the post war era. Visiting

post war American Pat Curry claimed that Vic troubled him more than Bert Assirati. Having turned professional in

1935, in the days of Pojello, Oakeley and Sherry, he was to finally hang up his boots in 1963. On departure he

left a legacy in the form of his two sons, Bert Royal and Vic Faulkner, with the latter adopting the family name

abandoned by the young Lew Faulkner many years before.

 

 

 

 

Tug Holton

Tug Holton’s unspectacular wrestling career was marked by continual underlining of the fact that as a boxer he had faced Dick Richardson, Brian London and Henry Cooper, even decking 'Enery.  Unfortunately there were no equivalent highlights of any kind in his wrestling during the sixties and seventies.  Rather oddly this Waterloo heavyweight seemed regularly to face much smaller opponents such as Kellett, Torontos and Kwango, rather than similarly weighted contemporaries such as Tibor Szakacs or Steve Viedor.  Most frequent opponent was skilful Clayton Thomson at two or three stones less.  Thomson would outwit Holton and win every time, thereby illustrating to all spectators the apparent validity of catchweight bouts.  Holton's unremarkable villainy and unathletic shuffling do nothing to diminish out affection for this reliable undercarder.

 

 

 

 

 

Robin Hoode

 

Wearing green tights, short, ragged jacket and the sort of haircut that makes seventies nostalgia such a hoot Lincoln’s Robin Hoode was a welterweight performer on the independent circuit in the 1970s. Fans mocked as he entered the ring, but mockery turned to boos and jeers as this bag of dynamite was not quite the same sort of  people’s hero as  his namesake. Described as the “Mighty Atom” Robin Hoode was a mainstay of the independent scene in the east of England, training at Brian Trevors Gym and appearing regularly on Trevors’ Anglian Promotion and the Clark brothers Star Promotions  bills.

 

Following his retirement Hoode gained international success in a second sport under more challenging circumstances.  After tragically going blind he began playing bowls and won a Silver Medal in the World Blind Singles Championships.

Bill Howes

Claimed by fans of Bristol and Lancashire as one of their own, and not surprisingly so. Bill Howes had that gritty technical ability seen only in the men of the North, and yet possessed a touch of flair that they often lacked. Bill Howes favoured punishing holds, with a fondness for the Boston Crab, combined with flurries of action with attitude to antagonise the crowds. When Billy Howes lost his temper you could see it in those wild eyes, though his flying fists and feet hurriedly confirmed the matter. Fans would be convinced he really had lost control because all the signs were there of a man with a deranged mind. Lost control? Almost certainly not, because the wrestling skill of Bill Howes established that here was a man with a disciplined mind. He was a wrestler that even the know-all dads seemed to like and respect. In the same minute he could impress with his textbook ability and, seconds later, enrage those same fans with his disregard for the rules. He was the wrestler with the perfect temperament to make it believable, which it may or may not have been,  when he ripped off Kendo Nagasaki’s mask in the masked man’s television debut, in the days when a Nagasaki without a mask was actually worth something.

 

Rebel Ray Hunter

6’4” Taswegian tag partner of Judo Al Hayes in their Lincoln days, and a globetrotting Heavyweight Champion of the Commonwealth who lost his title to Alan Garfield.  Perhaps the highlight of his British career was a 1957 Harringay All Nations Tournament victory in which he beat Andre Drapp in the final. 

 

When Hunter came to Britain in 1950 he had been the youngest Commonwealth wrestler so to do.  He recovered from unsurprising initial disappointment at the hands of Assirati, and with Aussie schoolmate Paul Lincoln, earned his Rebel tag by breaking away from Joint Promotions to set up a rival promotion.

 

Success came in German heavyweight tournaments and the sixties saw a hedonistic jet-set lifestyle in Soho where Lincoln and he owned the famed 2 Is coffee bar, haunt of Tommy Steele and others.  He was linked also with Sophia Loren.

 

Feuded in the early sixties with Docker Don Stedman and made a successsful transition back to Dale Martin's at the end of the decade before disappearing mysteriously from the scene around 1970.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jim Hussey

In a wrestlers equivalent of Desert Island Discs then for many older Northern fans Jim Hussey would be an absolute certainty in their half a dozen must haves. Never mind the fact that his aggression overshadowed his wrestling ability, or that he was a hard core villain, there will always be a place for Jim Hussey in the hearts of wrestling fans. He would bully and torment his opponent, pummel away at any physical weakness, and the fans would jeer him like they jeered no other in a career that spanned thirty years. A teenage Hussey was schooled in the all-in style. He made his debut, just sixteen years old, during the Second World War and yet remained a top television favourite for the best years of the Mountevans era.  He was a true professional, and in the second half of his career Reliable would have been a more appropriate nickname than the commonly used Jumping Jim. Fans relied on him for giving them a good time, in which he never failed. Promoters relied on him to draw in the fans, not to mention taking care of some of their prime assets at formative moments in their career such as the debut of Kendo Nagasaki or first televised appearance of an overseas visitor. Opponents relied on him for making sure they looked good, whatever their shortcomings.