Widespread
internet access in the twenty-first century has allowed like-minded
grappling fans the world over to unite in discussion and
reminiscences of years gone by.
A surprising
number have emerged in the UK alone, still with vivid recollections
of the time when a number of wrestlers could truly claim to be
household names. This is another such site, with its window of
interest firmly fixed in the Golden Years of British Professional
Wrestling.
So what identifies this Wrestling
Heritage site from the others that are already up and running?
We offer evocative descriptions of those heady days, of the stars that made professional wrestling the enormously successful spectacle it was, of the important lesser lights that helped those stars to shine, and the disciplined management that allowed the whole business to blossom. We hope that our indulgences in the nostalgia from our youth, as we were mesmerised by the skills of colourful and larger than life characters both on monochrome sets and live and sweaty at our smoky local halls, will help preserve, by way of tribute and through adult insight, much of the considerable impact that Grunt and Groan had on the nation. Who knows, we may find or even create more latter day fans, who, like us, want to show some belated mark of appreciation for the years of pleasure and mystery that occupied significant corners of our lives.
Competitive
Professional Wrestling. The very words are a contradiction in
terms to most people. Given that Professional Wrestling was one
of the most popular spectator sports in the UK throughout the 1960s,
both live and televised, it’s worth examining the entire phenomenon
to see what the fuss was all about and why large numbers of viewers
tuned in regularly for their weekly doses on Saturdays at 4
o’clock.
Maybe we should start by asking why we
should propose the spectacle as competitive at all. Cynics
would argue that it’s no more competitive than Swan Lake or circus
clowns, or that it’s not even as competitive as tiddly winks. You
wouldn’t ask whether Swan Lake was competitive, would you?
But
pro wrestling achieved its most defining accolade when it was
included, alongside other popular and undisputed sports such as
soccer and horse racing, in ITV’s weekly World of Sport. This
was an inclusion that brought nationwide publicity to the game and
made household names of many of its stars. But those involved
now had to strive to maintain the competitive image, ensuring plenty
of clean and apparently completely competitive bouts with only
occasional and believably limited rule-breaking, enough to create
controversy and arouse sufficient interest to raise attendances at
the hundreds of venues offering regular wrestling shows
nationwide.
It was an inclusion that at the very
least served to arouse doubt – or at best removed it. And for
many television viewers there was no doubt at all - why would you
doubt the competitive nature of a sport included in World of Sport?
Years later, irregularities in cricket, snooker, soccer and
other sports would lead us to doubt everything, but in the sixties we
trusted our broadcasters’ and sportsmen’s integrity.
Wrestling
actually ran along parallel lines with boxing. Dinner-jacketed
masters of ceremonies announced rounds, timekeepers rang bells,
championship belts and eliminators added structure, and even the ring
itself led to the two sports being considered comparable with just
differing rules, perhaps like billiards and snooker. Golden boys such
as Billy Walker, colourful loudmouths like Cassius Clay, and baddies
like Brian London gave a ritzy sparkle to the noble art, wrestling
just made sure it had a few more such drawcards. And the dark
side of boxers “taking a dive” even seemed to pass below, and
elevate wrestling above, such underhandedness.
So
the implied competitive nature of the sport, whilst not wholly
undisputed, became central to its being and essential for its
longevity. It was therefore up to all involved to fight off
outside threats through a strict internal code of discipline. And
threats there were aplenty.
Broadly speaking,
professional wrestling survived and thrived through the sixties, with
only occasional newspaper exposés failing to make any serious dent
in the sport’s image. These exposés were perhaps digested
with a pinch of salt in the same way as many twenty-first century
tabloid revelations are. Quite why they had such little impact
is anyone’s guess. Maybe the bean-spillers were perceived as
disenchanted cranks; maybe what they revealed came across as
only occasional skulduggery rather like drug-taking nowadays in any
number of sports; or perhaps these outbursts were too sporadic
to gain any appreciable credence and the very turncoats turned into
the ones not to be believed, rather than the sport they were trying
to discredit.
Then again, maybe the exposés did
make an impact. We will never know how many fans were lost.
But it can most certainly be argued that, even in the face of
such potential damage, no publicity was bad publicity, and
professional wrestling flourished.
The well
organised promoters who had caringly built up a respectable post-war
image through strict discipline had, by the early seventies, grown
old and were less motivated, and, as their sights turned to
retirement, new administrators came in, some with novel ideas, some
in the fast lane to implement rapid change where gradual development
had been the norm. A key downward turn was when the promoters’
respect for the fans and the sport itself visibly diminished.
Unlikely catchweight bouts pitted opponents of vastly different
weights against each other; sixties headliners seemed largely
to remain invincible into their fifties and beyond; and rivalling
promoters pursued their gimmicky ambitions often at the expense of
the sport itself.
More worrying was the seventies
arrival of the video recorder. Fans had been used to
blink-and-you-miss-it performances, and there were never repeats of
tv wrestling broadcasts. There was no way to double-check that
dodgy looking throw or whether the ref really did count the winning
fall much faster than all the failed attempts that had gone before.
When ITV started to include the new-fangled action replay in
wrestling shows, it was sparingly used on only the most spectacularly
well executed manoeuvres. Certainly never to see whether an
inside move had been a punch.
A later small-screen
threat to British professional wrestling arrived in the mid-eighties
with the bally-hoo of the American version. The novelty value
of an undoubtedly fascinating spectacle on a grand scale, with its
summit at the 1985 Wrestlemania III, may have been a contributory
factor to the eventual death of ITV’s patronage three years later,
but it is generally agreed that the decline was already well underway
due to largely self-inflicted and to a certain extent natural
causes.
The most notable threat of all was the rise
of the super heavyweight division. The big names here certainly
did cause interest but in reality the new division centred around
immobile and unfit fat men providing very short performances. Added
to this were the repetitive nature of these performances, and an
underlying dangerous streak of nepotism. When in 1979 pro
wrestling did manage to regain national press coverage through a
Wembley arena bout between John Quinn and Shirley Crabtree, prospects
looked momentarily bright for a revival. It was a golden
opportunity, but the standard 90 second knockout was applied, fans
were short-changed, and those millions of curious outsiders who had
peeped in quickly turned away again.
These highs and
lows scarcely serve to describe the intricate spectacle that is
professional wrestling. Swan Lake may be thoroughly rehearsed
and immaculately implemented, but a good wrestling bout is art of the
spontaneous kind. Two willing opponents taking real knocks,
running real risks, but each trusting the other not to go too far –
but to go far enough so as to make the show look real. Each has
his own repertoire of moves, or more accurately, moves and throws he
is willing or able to take. They ensure the variety that is so
often lacking during a boxing match. They fight to a
pre-determined conclusion, but in most cases no discussion goes into
the route they take to arrive there. And they strive
unstintingly to make the other’s performance and persona however
box-office it is intended to be.
They make mistakes,
of course. In most bouts once or twice we perceive the two not
quite on the same wavelength, one not selling the other’s moves.
But there is no room for pride, the good of the game always
comes first, they improvise and keep going. And sometimes
serious injuries do occur. Still there are Knower fans whose
extent of analysis is that it is “all fake”. But it’s not
fake at all. There is no trap door, no hidden compartment.
Everything is visible before your very eyes, and when done
well, which is the norm rather than the exception, professional
wrestling is a fluid and exciting interchange between two master
craftsmen, perhaps involving the crowd or external gimmicks, but
always maintaining a suspension of disbelief as to the competitive
nature of it all. In short, we really believe they are out to
win.
And here is the crux of it all, this desire to
win that is central to sport. Competitiveness.
We
arrive late with our own website. Others go before us with
marvellously comprehensive listings of matches and results, collated
according to location, date, nationality, wrestler, pairing, tv
airing – in short, statisticians are in great supply amongst
wrestling fans. We thank and value our quantitatively-minded
colleagues, their offerings in some cases form the basis of our
observations, whilst at the same time questioning their angle of
focusing on results when these results had very little competitive
foundation, or none at all. We comment on and record the
halcyon days, defined as you wish, perhaps equating to the first 25
years of Her Majesty’s reign, but focusing more personally, and we
hope appreciatively, on the combined company effort that went into
each and every wrestling show to give it balance and variety,
forsaking all aspects of competitive superiority, even ability, in
the interest of providing all-round entertainment.
The
most mystifying aspect of all is perhaps that a handful of aged fans
are still able to recall and recount with such detail and dedication
the events of decades gone by. Now we want to analyse what we
were seeing, we want to dissect the goings on that captivated us, and
we want to explore the business organogram that determined who were
the victors and losers, the names and the nameless, in the
magnificent uncompetitive sport or spectacle that was professional
wrestling.
Do not consult us for career records or
championship histories. Look elsewhere for details of unbeaten
runs and invincibility of all kinds. But stay a while with us
here to glory in the performance of each and every wrestler, from the
least until the lowest, to see how the collaboration worked and to
try to fathom out what non-ability based hierarchy determined poster
inches, championship status and regular televised appearances. We
offer a modern-day sociological and business perspective on what was
a hugely popular spectator sport nationwide.