Wrestling Heritage

Our memories are of this veteran welterweight who was able to hold his own, and usually defeat, most of the younger wrestlers of the day. He was a popular hero of the day, with a smile that would evaporate rugged facial features.

His career, which  started in India, developed into one of Britain’s best post war welterweights. Never rated alongside the likes of Dempsey, Kidd and McManus he could certainly hold his own with any one of them.

Whilst his technical ability did much to enhance his reputation the same could hardly be said for his labelling as the Eastern Counties welterweight champion.

A modest, unassuming man Bob Archer O’Brien must be included in any list of post war greats. Following a wrestling career that spanned three decades he went on to become a popular referee. The Chelmsford star also bestowed two other fine wrestlers on UK audiences, his sons Bob and Chris Anthony.

In 1971 he was to be seen in ring action again, coaxed back by independent promoters. 

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Rough and tough middleweight Frank O’Donnell used the sort of tactics that made the crow love to see him lose.

The bald dome and the flying fists were a familiar feature  of wrestling halls during the 1950s and 1960s.

Born in Loughanoran, Donegal, Frank moved to Scotland in his late teens,farming and preparing for a boxing career. He was encouraged to take up wrestling by George Broadfield, the Farmer,  who also persuaded him to move to Yorkshire, where he lived throughout his life.

His working life was shared between his wrestling career and  roadbuilder with McAlpine. Following his retirement in 1972 frank was able to use his construction and landscaping skills to good effect when he designed the Bagden Hall golf course and managed its construction.Golf was Frank’s main love following his retirement.

When he died, aged eighty, the flag was lowered to half mast at the Dewsbury Golf Club. 

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Another tough Northerner, born in Scotland to Irish parents,  but latterly from Liverpool, and one half of the Liverpool Skinheads tag team. He combined the courage and stamina of days as a coal miner with the discipline developed as  an amateur boxier and put it all to good use to become a professional wrestler with a career spanning twenty-odd years. He was an all action wrestler with a career that began in 1956 and  spanned both the independent and Joint Promotion organizations. In the 1960s he would sometimes pull on a mask and adopt the personae of Doctor Blood, a villain who was finally upended, and unmasked by that other good doctor, Death.

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A green dressing gown and trunks were the hallmark of this popular light heavyweight of the 1960s, billed from Donegal, though we are unsure of the connection as he was  otherwise Les Riley, a plumber, from Langley Mill. Irish or not Spike was a formidable wrestler who learned the wrestling trade while he was in the Royal Navy. When he left the Royal Navy, as their Light heavyweight champion, in the late fifties, he quickly turned to professional wrestling, and met the likes of Randolph Turpin, Shirley Crabtree and Cowboy Cassidy. One of the highlights of his career was facing ex world champion Turpin, at Heanor, where he was a local favourite. O’Reilly lost the bout by two falls to one.

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When Middlesborough’s Ron Oakley moved from physical culture and body building to wrestling he acquired thousands of new fans and admiration for a body that gained him the name the “Northern Adonis.”

This man had muscles where we didn’t know muscles existed. He turned professional in 1960, when he was twenty-four, and had already won around twenty body building titles. These included Mr Yorkshire, finalist in Mr Britain and British representative in Mr Universe.

Within a couple of years of turning professional he was in combat with the big names of the age, not just in his own middleweight division, but against much heavier men such as Billy Howes and Eric Taylor.

Throughout the 1960s Ron remained a popular middleweight around the country.

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Coalman Bill Ogden learned to wrestle at the "Black Boy" public house in Stoke on Trent, turned professional in 1935 and wrestled professionally until 1973, when he retired aged sixty. A background in fairground boxing preceded a professional wrestling debut at  the Ideal Skating Rink, Hanley. He was trained by the Belshaw brothers at their Wigan gymnasium, cycling to Wigan and back each week from his home in Hanley.  Bill’s entire life was devoted to wrestling in one capacity or another.  When he wasn’t performing he worked as a referee or MC. When needed he would transport up to eight wrestlers to shows in his van. He even built wrestling rings! We’re not talking about erecting them, we mean actually building them from scratch. Naturally, he did put them up when required also.   Towards the end of his career he was transformed  into the villainous Gypsy Joe Savoldi. Bill’s career spanned almost forty years and he died in March, 1992.

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Jim Oliver was a rough, tough, bad tempered wrestler, and legend has it that on one occasion he knocked out the teeth of the referee. Following an amateur boxing career in which he represented Spain in the 1948 Olympics, and a short professional career, he turned to professional wrestling. He fared far better as a wrestler, despite being banned for a year in his home country, and took the European Mid heavyweight title in  1948.  He wrestled throughout Europe, and  was a regular in the UK, until he retired in 1964.

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This tough as nails Welsh heavyweight turned professional in the 1940s, though he later moved to Yorkshire where he owned a farm. He had two spans as a masked wrestler, first as the Black Angel and latterly as The Mask. He wrestled all over the world and, like so many, seemed to just fade away. His son, Tony, continued the grand tradition of Orford wrestling.

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17 stones visitor from Oregon  debuted in UK in October 1967 in a Lewisham bout with Johnny Yearsley, closing the win via the unusual route of a grapevine submission.  His most notable British victory was a surprise Royal Albert Hall defeat of former British Heavyweight Champion, Geoff Portz.   Such visitors brought to British rings useful worldwide links, Osborn being a case in point having faced Lou Thesz and Japanese champion the seven foot tall Great Babu.  However, he exited from his British tour with a whimper, going down bloodied  0-2 to The Outlaw.

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Masked and never beaten mid-sixties sensation who often challenged members of the public.  Read more under his alter ego, Gordon Nelson.

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