Wrestling Heritage

The home of British wrestling history.
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Peter Rann

Memories of Peter Rann are that of  the ultimate professional. Here was a man who wrestled well, usually stayed just inside the rules, but had a hard, aggressive style that made fans turn up to see him lose.

They were usually disappointed because Peter Rann was a very accomplished wrestler, just missing out on the top run behind the likes of McManus and Pallo.

He was always billed from Camden Town, though actually born in Doncaster and moved to London as a child. He turned professional in 1951 after training at the Foresters AWC, Kensington.

When it came to choosing our Shining Stars we have so many favourites that it seems almost unfair to be excluding others by including some. 

In the end we surprised ourselves with our choice of the Camden Town henchman and night-club bouncer himself in our extended feature. 

 

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Sean Regan

When we think of rugby league players turned wrestler, earthy Yorkshire miner types instantly spring to mind.  Here we have the language-teaching Ulsterman from the Irish Republic who had his first professional bout in Hastings against Charlie Fisher and won on his 1964 television debut against Gorilla Don Mendoza.
 
Initially defeated Dr Timmy Geoghegan for the Irish Heavyweight Championship in Belfast only to lose the belt to his tag partner Pat Barratt and then reclaim it for a run through the seventies.
 
His stop-start seemingly part-time wrestling career fizzled out at the end of the decade behind a mask as a latter day Zebra Kid.  Regan was a class act, based in Crawley and then Reading. 
 
His Indian Death Lock was one of the great special holds in its day, and had Kendo Nagasaki submitting in the sixties at the Royal Albert Hall. His language skills were of little use in German rings where he cut no ice in regular summer holiday excursions to their international tournaments.
One of the eleven recording stars that sang "Tiptoe Through The Tulips". 
 
Leaves us with the feeling of unfulfilled potential!!! 

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Billy Riley

Arguably the father of modern day professional wrestling. There was a saying about putting your hand down a coal mine in Wigan and you’d pull up a wrestler or a rugby player.

Riley was from Wigan,  and this was the wrestling capital of twentieth century. Not a miner himself Riley wrestled, with those who were, in the Lancashire catch-as-catch-can style.  Billy Riley founded Rileys gym in the 1950’s, and many of the mid 20th Century  professional wrestling stars owed their skill to Billy Riley and the other trainers at “the Snakepit.”

Stories abound of successful wrestlers who turned up just the once at Riley’s gym and vowed never to return because the experience was too painful. 

Billy himself  excelled in wrestling and was British Middleweight Champion in the 1920’s, as well as holding the World title from 1919-23, before losing it  to the Finnish wrestler Waino Ketonen. Wrestling authority Charles Mascall rated Ketonen and Riley respectively as the two greatest middleweights of all time.

Billy Riley  retired from wrestling in 1946. He continued to referee and promote shows in conjunction with Jack Atherton.  Most notably of all he continued to train youngsters (and those not so young) at his Snakepit  gym until his death in  September, 1977.

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Ernie Riley

Ernie Riley was another of the post war greats to emerge from Wigan and the Snakepit gymnasium. 

Not surprising, really, as he was the son of Billy Riley and continued his father’s tradition of being the best that Britain could offer. Riley was a more familiar figure on the professional circuit than his father, a sign of the times.

Dismissive of gimmicks, which he didn't need, some fans complained that he lacked colour, and complained even more loudly that his championship defences were too sparse. In his latter years this criticism was justified. What was without doubt, though, was that Ernie Riley was the best at his weight, and there was no way that the belt could be removed from him. Here was a man who could really wrestle; like no other light heavyweight. 

He was four times British Light heavyweight champion between 1952 and his retirement in 1969; and we are convinced that when he eventually relinquished his title it was on condition that it was passed on to Billy Joyce, a man of the same wrestling heritage. Joyce came out of retirement and dropped down a weight to beat Tony Charles for the now vacant title at Blackburn. 

On occasions he added the European title to his collection, winning and losing it to Josef Molnar. 

Ernie Riley died  in October, 2000
 

 

  

 

 

 

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Romany Riley

The trunked wrestler and transport café owner from Staplehurst, left, developed into a spectacular all-round leotarded master of the wrestling craft in the late seventies and he is discussed in more detail in Armchair Corner.
 
Into the Fact or Folklore compartment we must put the claim that Basil drove his horse-drawn Romany caravan throughout Europe on a wrestling tour of Germnany, Spain and France.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Pat Roach

Brummie Pat Roach, he of the Brummingem Bump, was a big, bruising heavyweight who despite reaching the dizzy heights of European Heavyweight Champion never really received the push he deserved from the promoters.
 
He first came to our attention when he stubbornly resisted Billy Robinson as he  punished him with successive boston crabs in a 1967 bout in Solihull. This was the moment we knew Roach was something special.
 
Judo Pat was never a villain and yet never a fans favourite either. He could be bad tempered in his bouts and was very hard hitting.
 
He found greatest acclaim outside the ring, making a big screen debut in “A Clockwork Orange” and going on to further roles in “Robin Hood:Prince of Thieves” and the Indiano Jones trilogy.
 
His greatest success, and acclaim, was as Bomber in the “Auf Wiedershen, Pet,” a popular comedy drama that began in 1983 with the fifth and final series in 2004. His death brought the series to a premature end with the final programme being a fitting tribute
 
Roach’s life story can be read in   his autobiography, “If,” written by Birmingham author Shirley Thompson.

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Pete Roberts

Whilst younger fans refer to him as the Super Destroyer for those of the author’s age he will always be, quite simply, Judo Pete Roberts.
 
He was the goodest of the good guys, in his early days wearing a judo outfit to remind us of his credentials.  Years later we can think of no other wrestler for whom it has been said by fellow professionals so many times that here was one of the most underrated wrestlers in Britain.
 
Although a regular worker through the sixties and seventies Roberts was, without doubt, the prophet without honour in his own country. In those days he was overshadowed by the likes of Marino, Howes and Portz.
 
Recognition came later in life after a highly successful tour of Japan, from which he returned with the name Super Destroyer.  Fans also remember the early 1980s series of bouts with Wayne Bridges, for Bridges World Heavyweight Title.
 
Maybe we are too late, but let us now acknowledge that we too failed to recognise Robert’s talent and now belatedly add our tribute to the great Pete Roberts.

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Bill Robinson

No heavyweight could execute a suplex like Billy Robinson. In fact, no heavyweight could execute just about any move like Billy Robinson.
 
Ask any Mountevans wrestling fan to name Britain’s top heavyweight and Robinson would definitely be in the top three, if not number one. We are not talking show wrestlers, we are talking real wrestlers, shooters. The other two contenders would be Bert Assirati and Billy Joyce. All three were graduates from The Snakepit. Joyce was arguably technically the best of the three, but Robinson had more of a killer instinct.
 
In 1957 Robinson won the British Amateur Light Heavyweight title, and in the same year was runner-up in the heavyweight division. A professional for a decade in Britain, making the British and European championship his own, Robinson went to North America in 1970, where he gained huge success with the AWA.
 
Ask any number of young professionals in the 1970s which wrestler they admired the most and the name Billy Robinson was the one that was most frequently answered. It was an immense shock to British fans when their heavyweight champion moved across the Atlantic and their sense of loss was to remain unequalled.
 
In the United States he worked mainly for the American Wrestling Association and held world champions Verne Gagne and Dory Funk Jr to drawn verdicts. Whilst reconised as a legitimate wrestler in North America he failed to receive the full extent of recognition he deserved. Whether this was due to the politics of wrestling, or to the rumours he was a hard man to work with, remains to be seen. We can be certain, though, that Billy Robinson was, and probably always will be, Britain's greatest wrestling ambassador.
 
The remainder of his career was spent developing young wrestlers in the USA and Japan.  

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Eddie Rose

Long-time Northern Area Middleweight Champion, Manchester's wrestling schoolteacher Eddie Rose had a long and varied career in a number of guises. Sometimes we can under-estimate the importance and impact of wrestlers not regularly seen on television, but with a list of opponents such as Eddie Rose's, make no mistake:  Count Bartelli, Johnny Saint, Adrian Street, Jack Dempsey, and in tag, leading pairs The Hells Angels and The Royals.Eddie tagged principally with Pete Lindberg and Ian "Mad Dog" Wilson, but  also notably was a for a couple of years Abe Ginsberg's final partner in the Black Diamonds.
 
Eddie is seen left, in action over Pete Lindberg. He wrestled both for Joint Promotions and on the independent circuit.  For a fuller account of his career read his own highly acclaimed book "Send in the Clowns."

 

 

 

 

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Tony Rowney

 

Proud Yorkshireman Tony Rowney wrestled in the latter part of his career as the Ring Gladiator out of Kettering, where he had a parallel career as an unarmed combat instructor, both in the forces and in civilian life.

 

Northamptonshire was of course Ken Joyce territory and the two had an ongoing feud, with Rowney ever the one  booed by the fans.  See the pair right.

We had first become aware of him in the very early seventies with tales of wrestling lions inside their cages at the zoo

His first televised bout was in 1977 against Dynamite Kid.

Due to his daytime job at a steelworks, Tony was greatly limited travel-wise throughout his career, but we are sure he would have become a big name had he chosen to dedicate himself full-time to wrestling.

Tony passed away on 25th June 2009.

 

 

 

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Bert Royal

Photos exist of a young Bert Royal as a masked wrestler, which surprised us as much as his other fans. Royal was one of the big name middleweights from the 1950s until the mid seventies, a Middle and Heavy Middleweight champion of long standing. Very popular, though we would dare to suggest that much of that popularity rubbed off from his far more youthful looking brother, Vic Faulkner. Nonetheless, he was exceedingly well-liked, and an acrobatic, skilful wrestler, albeit criticised by Jackie Pallo for an unwillingness to allow opponents look good. 

 

 

 

 

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Terry Rudge

Long-term career mid-heavyweight who could wrestle clean or dirty, bald or hairy, tanned or pale.  Blocked at the Royal Albert Hall by Mike Marino in his title bid, this was the story in the over-crowded Mid-Heavyweight division all along for the Dunstable utility wrestler, the Barry Douglas of the south.  A surprising protegé of Wrestling's Most Influential, Leeds based Norman Morrell.

 

Can claim one of the most ourageous quotes:  his toughest opponent was Tornado Torontos!

 

 

 

 

 

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Tiger Jimmy Ryan

Ex-boxer from Cashel, Co.Tipperary who turned professional welterweight wrestler in 1959 and claimed many a notable scalp during his ten years in the game, including Jack Dempsey and Tommy Mann - though he was more likely to end up disqualified than ever feature in a bout with a clear cut result. 
 
The  self-proclaimed Irish Welterweight Champion was perhaps taking revenge on Dempsey who had caused him to lose his front teeth from a drop-kick in an early encounter.
 
Moved to Croydon in 1966 and tagged with Ivan Penzecoff in The Rebels until they turned upon each other during a match to end the association. Later tagged with Peter Rann in The Rioteers.
 
Bulked up to light-heavyweight and then disappeared abruptly and unheralded about 1971.  He had always suffered from injuries, particularly to the eyes, and was a regular bleeder.  
The sudden curtailment of his career was due to hip injury.  Went on to become a security officer.

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