David Mantell

Pehaps that's expecting tag wrestling to conform to a structure when there's the Atlantic Ocean in the way of where that structure was embedded. I feel like cautioning against confusing "something done differently" with "something done wrongly. Having said all that, if there's one true manifestation of the Hot Tag in British Wrestling, it's in a Big Daddy tag when Daddy tags in and goes on the roll.

The one year off from the Cup Final that Daddy got between 1978 and 1986 and he STILL shows up! A rare UK example of the standard American practice of using a TV match to build up an untelevised arena main event.

Well, more indeed came to light (Faulkner vs McMichael from 1972 as already posted on this thread.)

This bout also took place on the other side of the channel:

The Exorcist on TV was Clay Thomson moonlighting as a heel as I think we already discussed. Godon Corbett did another Exorcist later in the 70s on the indie circuit with a female manger Miss Jamie Barrington.

.. including the buildup bout for The Masked Marauders's 1983 FA Cup Final Big Daddy match. His brother Mike Bennett (no relation to late 80s WWEer Mike Kanelis) had something of a push in the mid 80s as a heel feuding with Danny Collins. Bennett had a wedding ring that he was unable to remove due to the finger swelling (it happens! ) This he frequently used as a foreign object in a territory not noted for such things (heel-era Alan Dennison's notorious leather wristbands being another rare example.) Marvellous Mike beat Danny Boy early in 1985 by submission in a one fall bout, then challenged Collins for his British Welterweight Champion (there was a challenge ceremony a few weeks beforehand that involved them high fiving each other). The title match ended in Bennett DQ'd controversially, with all sorts of repercussions including referee Jeff Kaye coming out of retirement to take on Bennett (and lose 2-1), the two of them co-win a battle royal which somehow ended in a time limit draw (!) and even Big Daddy getting involved with Collins and Bennett on opposite sides of the big Christmas Daddy tag match with Bully Boy Ian Muir on Bennett's side which again ended in DQ when Bennett struck Collins with the ring leaving him in agony on the mat and Daddy up on the corner post screaming abuse at Bennett. Just to top things off, the following year, Bennett won the annual Grand Prix Belt, beating the Birmingham Steve Logan in the final:

Ah well, I'm feeling dangerous ... Davey was more of the apprentice than Bernie, although Bernie really comes of age with his match with Naylor. It looks quite a fast flashy bout- I imagine they had a lot of experience with each other in Ted Betley's gym with Ted getting them to master every spot. Bernie maintained the family tradition by being billed as a Wonderboy in TVTimes. He matured even more than Smith, into the grizzled hard case we see against Rasputin and Ray Robinson in the late 80s while Davey was with Dynamite in the WWF. Five years later they would meet again as described above - with Davey looking more like his later self but acting the whiny heel.

Ah I see you already covered some of the points I made in my post above. I still think it was a little unfair of you to write the whole edition off as "truly atrocious" in your history of British wrestling - as I said the support bouts are both actually pretty solid.

Best of luck with that - they themselves only wrapped up in 1993, Daddy's last year of his career Daly and Gordon had been The Masked Marauders just months earlier for the 1983 FA Cup Final against Daddy and Kid Chocolate (having first scored a warmup win over Nipper Eddie Riley and Fireman Colin Bennet a few weeks earlier. (On the house show ciruit Daly was still doing the Marauders gimmick both with Blackjack Mulligan and with non masked partners including the Xmas 1983 win over Daddy mentioned above) This was the climax of a Daddy's All Stars vs Haystack's Wrecking Crew themed TV taping screened across two weeks worth of World Of Sport. The previous week had ended with the Crew leading 2-1 and week 2 (which I originally watched at a schoolfriend's 10th birthday party - I was the only one rooting for Haystacks) was a clean sweep for the Daddy side, including a solo squashing of Daly by Daddy, where Daly was doing well against Daddy for a moment until Haystacks came out and gave Daly some advice which obviously wasn't very good advice as Daddy immediately started trashing Daly and soon got the winning KO. By this point the theme of the feud of Stax being scared of Daddy had extended to Stax's partners with, as Kent Walton said "any time Daddy gets in - complete disappearance of the opposition" as the camera zoomed in on the "disaapeared" Haystacks. This match lasted just 85 seconds and was a one fall singles match between Daddy and Muir (they had already had a proper singles bout on TV in the summer of '76 from another of my local venues, Bedworth Civic Hall.) Again, Stax finding a way to get out of the match and get out of facing Daddy. See also his attack on the already freshly pinned Alan Kilby in the 1981 cup final. The back body drop was known as the double elbow. Bret Hart mentions this move in his biography. Quite a lot of people got injured by this one (including Banger Walsh on TV in 1984) and it was seen as something of a dare among UK heels out of kayfabe to be prepared to take this one. Bret said that Max C would wave money in front of opponents to get them to risk their lives with this move. Albert Hell-on was not an American and was a fairly low rent fourth man for Daddy, StClair and Stax. StClair was British Heavyweight Champion and had a big title feud with Haystacks in 1979 after Stax won the title at the Royal Albert Hall (NOT named after Mr. Hell-on by the way!) by dropping his weight on StClair's legs to score a TKO, and then StClair getting it back by DQ in a rematch. Rumour has it that before Kendo Nagasaki retired at the end of 1978, this title change was to have been with him as a follow on to the confrontation with StClair at Kendo's final (until late 1986 screened Jan 1987) TV match where StClair and Nagasaki seemed to have agreed to a title match - and that Haystacks was a replacement interim champion. "Roy" Regal's second TV match and often held up as an example of how badly he was handled by Max Crabtree. Also the last week before All Star's TV debut and described as a "truly atrocious" show by JNLister although there were some good supporting bouts with Ian McGregor and Nipper Riley (not against each other this time, which is a pity as they were great together, but against good opponents Mike Jordan and King Ben) This was essentially McGee's blowoff match after 3 years of leading teams such as The Masked Marauders, The Rockers, The Terrible Two (Kirk and Muir) Tiny Callaghan and others in a doomed campaign to beat Big Daddy, often getting in the ring himself and getting beaten up and thrown out by Daddy. His fat beardy slob image was a bit of a rip off of heel-era Captain Lou Albano. In real life he was a retired circus clown and good friend of Crabtree who refused to have a bad word said about his nemesis. Sid Cooper kept ploughing away until a career ending injury in 2000, by which time he was mostly wrestling for Premier Promotions down in Sussex. Bromley would later get his own feud with Daddy as the masked Emperor. 1) This had actually already happened on TV back in November 1977. (Well actually it first happened in September 1977 in the final of a four man KO tournament but Stax walked out seconds into that one, starting the rumour that the one man he was scared of was his former tag partner) The November 1977 fight saw Daddy score an easy first round pinfall and then the two charge at each other at the start of round 2 squishing the poor referee and leaving the match abandoned. You'll notice there seems to be a bit of a theme of Daddy scoring the opener on Stax and then him bailing out quickly one way or another before he could have a totally discrediting second fall scored on him. This happened a lot at non TV shows. 2) A no rounds, no falls, fight to the finish that could only be won on a knock out. See also the Quinn fight and the loser leave UK fight with the Missisippi Mauler Jim Harris. A Texas Death Match in all but name. 3) The only time after 1978 Daddy was allowed to be in any kind of Trouble in the ring, especially on TV. Even so, it wasn't Stax's efforts that got Daddy down but rather Daddy coming to the knocked out first referee's aid, with Stax taking advantage and kicking Daddy about a bit until the missed splash. 4) until finally the fates intervened. A little sweat on the canvas? We'll never know, but Haystacks slid, then stumbled, and fell... fell over the top rope and down into the bowels of the earth. Unable to mobilise his gigantic frame, this lionheart was counted out. Stax himself afterwards claimed to have slipped on the pile of flowers on the ringside table! There's a clip of Daddy and Stax, bitter enemies, discussing these matters on kids slapstick show Tiswas with only petite female presenter (and most frequently pied female face on British TV) Sally James to keep them apart-unfortunately it's no longer on Youtube but I'll see sometime if I can upload it here some other way. 5) The smaller of the two little girl cheerleaders was Daddy's stepdaughter and closest confindante Jane who remains an ambassador for Daddy'smemory and a staunch defender of him online and at wrester reunions. ********************************************************************************************************* > Is there no stopping this man? Apparently not when he's running into people. Scoff all you will, but this was how the family audiences, especially the kids, saw Daddy, as this unstoppable bulldozing force.

EWP's website is still up although Norton Security doesn't like it. I like the photo they have in the background - it looks a lot like a C21st Town Show by All Star or Premier:

The good news is that EPW seems to be out there and they began in 2004 with much the same.talent pool as EWP (i.e. carrying on where the CWA left off. https://www.cagematch.net/?id=8&nr=95 https://www.cagematch.net/?id=8&nr=95&page=4 Here's EWP's entry; https://www.cagematch.net/?id=8&nr=25 https://www.cagematch.net/?id=8&nr=25&page=4

Interesting that they were still making kinescopes as late as the Rocco/Jones match - I guess that was a colour kinescope? There could well be quite a lot of these bouts in all sorts of overseas locations. I wonder if Phillip Morris's Television International Enterprises keeps an eye out for matches. Then again, a lot of this could be preserved and under lock and key at LWT and Granada already.

The Barons, of course, were familiar faces also in Catch Francais. Gilmour did a blue-eyed masked man routine a decade later as Kamikaze who was being hyped as the new Kung Fu (Eddie Hammill) Saw this when I was 5 years old one dark winter's night. Rocco and Finlay were abot the two most credible people to lay down for Daddy (Kendo doesn't count as he beat Big Daddy all 3 of their TV singles bouts and walked out on Rex Strong in the tag match so Rex took both the falls). Stax's continual running away was the ongoing theme of the Stax-Daddy feud from the moment he walked out on a KO tournament final on TV seconds into the match in September 1977. Eventually this was extended to every heel living in abject fear of Big Daddy. The last line is almost ad verbatim what Kent Walton says! I posted this match just above. Business never struggled to the extent that they needed to turn Daddy. The opposition (All Star, Orig) becoming more and more formidable was more the issue. In any case tuning mega babyfaces didn't really take off until the late 90s with Hogan, Dusty, Sting... If Daddy had been still alive perhaps he would have become Big Bad Daddy, worn shades and stomped on opponents like in '75/76. Max had a plan for Daddy and the business and he saw booking like the two April '76 heel matches as sabotage on the part of other Joint members. Daddy's team losing 2-1 with the partner dropping the decider continued to happen sporadically. in 1979 Stax and Kirk got a win over Daddy and Mick McMichael with Stax splashing McMichael like he does Wensor here for the decider. This got repeated 1983 for a match 75% identical but with Sanders as the doomed blue-eye. At Xmas that year in IIRc Norfolk. there was a Christmas Triple-Tag (6 man) match wherre Hastacks teamed with the larger one of the Masked Marauders (Scrubber Daly) plus manager Charlie McGee to beat Daddy and two partners who were the fall guys. This set up a return match where Daddy and one of the two partners beat Stax and the Marauder and unmasked him,leaving the Stax/Daly tag team. Then in 1986 Fit Finlay teamed with Mal Stuart one night to beat Daddy and Richie Brooks when Finlay got Brooks in a pile driver fow a winning pin. I guess this was payback for Finlay's Cup Final comeuppance at the hands of Daddy. There were also a handful of DQ losses for Daddy where he either ran in to help or used the plastic bucket one too many times - the last was in late '87 against Drew McDonald and Rasputin. Generally this was kept off TV to maintain Daddy's aura of indestrucibility. Heels were portrayed as living in terror of Daddy, but a win over his partner gave them the bragging rights to a win over Daddy himself so it was their ultimate prize.

This was actually my first ever handicap tag and seeing it billed in TVTimes was my first encouter with the term "handicap tag". Basically like Andre or Hogan squashing two jobbers for Vince Senior, a vehicle to make Stax look strong. Still Stax's name value and the novelyt of catch a trois made it a TV main event. Two cup final matches. McDonald was a late substitute for someone else and is odd in the blue-eye role especially as he and Daddy went on to have a massive feud. Finlay would also have a feud -0 and another cup final showdown - with Daddy two years later where he was more the focus as Daddy was fed up with Finlay brutalising younger wrestlers and,asI said above, wanted to teach him a lesson. Stax and Angus's manager in the bow tie and frilly shirt was former wrestler Kangaroo Kid Ken Else, who previously managed Stax and Daddy for their July 1975 TV debut DQ loss to Roy and Tony StClair. About the second manager on ITV after Kendo's manager George Gillette.

Various royals, rock stars, politicians. Kendo is a pretty rich man from his out of the ring activity. He actually did preserve a few of his early TV bouts on 8mm home movie camera conversion such as this famous wild match with Billy Howes from 1971:

Afterthought - if Big Daddy was the British Hulk Hogan, then was this phase of his career the equivalent of Fred Blassie's Incredible Hulk Hogan 1979-1981? I thought so when I was 14 and saw back issues advertised in PWI of their poster mag spinoff with the story "Hulk Hogan - Wrestling's Most Hated Man - Full Color Photos Bring His Notorious Past Back To Life!" advertised. It made sense!

By the early 90s Roach had replaced Daddy as the man Stax was scared of and they had quite a feud both on Reslo reissued in Wrestling Madness and for Ring Wrestling Stars (the former Joint) on their 1992 Battle Of The Brits video release partnered for the Reslo match by Drew McDonald and a long haired Robbie Brookside (this match gets reviewed later on) and for the videotape by Scrubber Daly and Alan Kilby. They also had a back and forth feud for the European Heavyeight title. Roach was due to referee the 1991 Kendo vs Haystacks "CWA" (don't tell Luc Rambo Poirier) World title match in Croydon in late '91 as featured in BBC2's Masters Of The Canvas Arena docu, but Kendo's manager Lloyd Ryan objected so Steve Grey was brought in as replacement. Stax had no objections despite his own feud with Roach. Ah yes, the famous WrestleMania IV Battle Royal Rip Off Finish: Unlike Bret Hart, Rasputin's turn to good only lasted the one match before he was back teaming with Anaconda to face Daddy and Pat Patton in the match Tommy "Jack Dempsey" Moore and Ernie Riley had a good sneer at over wine in First Tuesday The Wigan Hold. There were actually a series of two matches within a short period of this. Max Crabtree off the back of the Kendo series was trying to promote Daddy as the kids hero in the Best Wryton area (Midlands + Lancs) but other promoters were having none of it and put Daddy on again as a heel. First he squashed the much lighter Jamaica Kid in Feb '76 then in March he got himself DQ's against Steve Veidor in singles wrestling after one pinfall each (I would love to see Viedor'spin on Daddy!) and now these two bouts. That seems to have been the end of Daddy the heel although he and Stax continued to do bouts like this into early '77 mostly for Morell and Beresford (rest of North) The sandwich double bodycheck was Daddy and Stax's speciality, although it was an illegal double team and such things were clamped down on pretty firmly over here.

I think Tim Fitzmaurice (RIP)'s later 1980 2-0 loss to Keith Haward gets reviewed later in the thread, which is a really good bout for seeing the original forms of various techniques such as the roll on the mat to untwist an arm, done from a kneeling position rather than standing with a cartwheel instead of the roll. Wikipedia describes Terriers as "small, wiry, game, and fearless". It was Kent Walton's preferred term for both Tim and brother Jim. Both were trained iby an elderly Bert Assirati after he'd finished chasing Shirley C out of the business in 1966.

Spot the irony there! LOL Francis is of course our man in the mask and leisure suit (and later on kayfiyeh) El Diablo/Sheik Ayatollah Tony "The Brain" Francis, the man who -as discussed earlier - replaced Charlie McGee as the chief evil mastermind behind almost all Big Daddy's hapless heel opponent.

Rewatched that match last night on the Smart TV and am having a quick flick through now. Not as sparkling as the match with Ken Joyce, but technically solid, with Anthony in the same role as Robbie Brookside in his famous 1987 match with Saint. Plenty of nice little moments like Saint using a bridge to turn out of wristlock at 1:28 (much as IIRC Kid McCoy did in the match against dad King Benn) and the move Kent Walton - and the crowd! - pops for at 5:48 where Anthony lifts up a leg high to corall Saint into a headscissors (rather than jump into the filying headscissor so beloved of les catcheurs across La Manche) Not sure what Ohtani is objecting to with the finishes, they are all nicely enough executed folding presses - Saint at 13:31 dropping to his knees and hooking both legs (like Davey Boy at SummerSlam 92 but in response to a rear trip rather than a sunset flip) - Anthony's consolation fall (unusually for a Saint match this is the equaliser not the opener) where he drops from a hammerlock into a trip then turns him over into guard with the open legs and seals it wih a nice graceful bridge, probably the best of the three falls - and finally Saint's decider with a legdive converting into a press not dissimilar to the American small package.

McHoy was/is the son of Wild Angus, whom Stax had often teamed with! Like his dad, he later made his way to Stampede and thence I believe to other North American territories. I mentioned before how a DQ could sometimes be used to keep a monster like Stax strong by have him lose the bout but win the fight and still be deplored by the fans for his cruletly and fouling. "I'll do the same to your brother" and the Daddy run in afterwards and Brian Crabtree being injured was a rare example of an angle on World Of Sport. Daddy did a number of confrontations of Stax after Stax's easy crushing wins to set up a possible singles match which would become a tag match where STax would lose but the partner would get the worst of it. In 1986 Daddy did a similar angle where he got fed up with Fit Finlay brutalising smaller opponents and would confront him after bouts demaning a match - the blowoff took place as part of the 1986 FA Cup Final coverage with Finlay thoroughly getting the Daddy treatment. I've already mentioned Rafael Harpin's Israeli promotion so he could well have got his start there. He would have fitted in to 70s French Catch which was starting to get gimmicky (though not yet to the point of Flesh Gordon, Jessy Texas, LEs Maniaks, Les Pihrannas etc when France was starting to be Europe's answer to Memphis) with his use of bare feet to attack pressure points etc. Czeslaw's grumpy blue eye foreigner character sometimes made him the butt of jokes with other unusual wrestlers - notably his bout with Kellet. It was mostly based on his real personality anyway - a young green Kendo Nagasaki once dropped Czelaw on his head circa '65 and he ran out of the ring screaming "He Try To Kill Me!!!" and never worked with Nagasaki again. Circa '77 he had clean matches with Big Daddy like the John Elijah ones. Hmm, I've been a fan of this one for quite a long time, nice serious match.Anthony looked young enought to pass for an upcoming kid although he wasn't and it was structured like many other Saint vs Young Whizzkid matches with a 2-1 finish with the YW getting an impressive consolation fall and otherwise getting to show all his moves in a plug and play with Saint'ts set of moves and counters. I understand people complain about Saint "always doing the same match" (although the first thing I'd have to say in response is that it was a pretty darn beautiful match to watch) but apart from this plug and play just add opponent and HIS moves, type there were also matches like the one with Vic Faulkner where he has to pull out new moves against a highly experienced rival who is a real threat, as well as his matches against bigger heels where he either bamboozles them to the point where they complain (eg vs Soldier Boy Steve Prince on camcorder in the early 90s) or where they beat him up and he surprises them or they are fighting him so dirtily that he has to compromise principles (vs Col Brody/Terry Rudge in Germany, vs Finlay and Rocco for All Star on ITV in 87-88.)

Tellingly, Maeda's first move in this match was to legdive Haystacks and have him almost falling out of the ring. Had this been a gym shoot, Ruane would have simply fallen to the mat and Maeda would have slapped a leg submission on and Stax would have screamed like a baby and that would be the end of that. Have duly made his point, Maeda got on with the business of jobbing to Giant Haystacks, just like he previously got on with the job of being rescued by Big Daddy on the 1982 FA Cup Final special. Such is the life of a future martial arts legend.

As discussed Haward's biggest achievement was taking Sanders' Euro Middleweight title a couple of years before this. They wrestled each other quite a bit around the world including some World Middleweight title matches in South Africa (a territory which, politics aside, resembled the CWA in many respects.) I think they carried on having matches even when Sanders went heel in 1986/1987 - he certainly carried on having matches with Steve Grey after that (eg the Mick McManus World Of Wrestling videotape and the aforementioned Coventry Skydome match from 2005) "He's a wrestling machine, and that's all you get -- just relentless wrestling -- but it's cool if you're in the mood for it." Like I said, there was an audience for that sort of thing over here - particularly among an older set of fans who were often crossover fans from legit Lancashire Catch Wrestling. Even with people who weren't into this sort of match, the message from the TV was that this was the high end of wrestling and that you SHOULD be into this sort of wrestling, it would make you a better more cultured wrestling fan. Well they got their wish in 1987, didn't they? Every fan in Britain reckons that King Kong Bundy was a rip-off of King Kong Kirk. They were both superheavies called King Kong and Kirk became a KK in 1979 and Bundy in 1982 (and he only went bald in 1983) so they may have a point. Did Bundy ever get interviewed about Mal Kirk? Kojak Kirk, who became King Kong Kirk was already a headline act as the frequent fourth man tagging with Kendo Nagasaki against Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks (or when Norman Morell wanted to confuse things, putting Daddy and Kendo together against Stax and Kirk.) (One time they even advertised Daddy and Kendo vs Kirk and Bruiser Ian Muir, but the team of Kirk and Muir were so unloveable they would have made Daddy and Kendo obvious blue-eyes and therefore Kendo the blue-eye in peril in a Daddy tag. So Muir was replaced by Dalbr Singh and it became a Kendo and another heel vs pareja increible of a blue-eye and a heel enemy of Kendo-a quite frequent Kendo match format, even more so in All Star in the late 80s/early 90s.) The one time this matchup was done on TV the fourth man was Rex Strong: Ironically, Rex Strong and King Kong Kirk would eventually form an anti Daddy tag team in 1987 during Kirk's final months. Even more ironically, a by then badly out of shape Strong was doing a gimmick as a masked Samurai: (and yes, that's our friend Tony "El Diablo" Francis in their corner.) There was a good vlog about this not so long ago. Peacock wasn't particularly a gay gimmick despite the name, just a midly flamboyant arrogant sort, perfectly suitable for 1980s family TV.

Yes, eccentric vicars with unusual hobbies are a bit of a traditional thing in English culture.

Danielson also mentions working as a boorish American heel who sang the Star Spangled Banner badly. If you guys don't mind being confronted with other nations' steretypes of yourselves, here is an example from Cannock, Staffordshire from 2008. MC is Laeititia Allmark, then wife of Dean Allmark and daughter of Brian Dixon and Mitzi Mueller, the little girl from the Mitzi video a page back: