David Mantell

Royal Albert Hall was definitely bigger. Actually the ring from that Royals vs Saints match looks a lot bigger than normal. CWA in Germany had bigger rings, probably to accomodate all the visiting Americans with what they were used to. The ring in Reslo was slightly larger than UK standard, but only slightly. It was borrowed for the first WCW UK tour in December 1991, so it was quite strange seeing Lex Luger, Sting and the Steiner Brothers, not to mention Hayes, Garvin, Zybysko and Anderson in such a small ring. Title Belts have to be considered in terms of title belts in 1920s/1930s America ... or maybe title belts in boxing Bigger flashier title belts seem to have been a specifically American second half of C20th offshoot in evolution

Hi I went to all three of the big Skydome shows the FWA one and the two TWC shows, and actually walked from my house in Coundon to the arena for all three. After the 2004 FWA show I took their coach back from Coventry to King's Cross London as I went to see All Star's Sunday afternoon matinee show at the Fairfield Hall Croydon and spent the night at my parents. Apparently there had been some incident involving Sanjay Bagga and Tony Walsh earlier in the day where Sanjay had criticised Darren Walsh's abilities and Tony had responded by putting him in a hold. Sanjay was getting people on the coach to suggest ideas for what he could do in a putative "rematch". I remember PowerSlam's Fin Martin - who has always tried to bury old school British Wrestling - rather predictably put the boot into the Mal Sanders vs Steve Grey match from the March 2005 TWC show at the Skydome (actually far and away the best thing on any of those shows.) For the second TWC show, there was a "World of Sport - The Next Generation" match unfortunately involving the appaling Colt Cabana who seemed only interested in making a mockery of everything. Personally I feel that an ideal "WoS - TNG" match at that time should have been James Mason vs Dean Allmark in a clean match. There's a FANTASTIC match of exactly that up on Youtube from Croydon from October 2013 which I do intend to post to this thread in due course, but am saving for a mini deep dive into the Modern Era of traditional British wrestling - especially old school clean matches - in the 21st century once I've worked through all the old posts on here and replied to everything I want to reply to.

Mitzi did get onto ITV eventually in 1988 as a Mike McGuirk style female ring announcer. Her & Brian's daughter Laetitia (the little girl with the brown hair in the first clip) later took on this same role for All Star. Laetitia' son referee Joe Allmark (with her ex husband wrestler Dean Allmark) has now inherited ownership/ directorship of All Star since Brian Dixon's death, having taken over road manager duties from Brian last year. Summary - an indie set up as a vehicle for a female wrestler by her boyf and future hubby went on to be the biggest company in British wrestling history - bigger even than Joint Promotions - and still the biggest living company to this day..

Brian Dixon originally formed All Star Wrestling (then Wrestling Enterprises) in Sept 1970 especially as a vehicle for his girlfriend and later wife, British Ladies champion Mitzi Mueller. All Star eventually went on to get a slice of ITV in 1987-1988 and are stillthe biggest UK company despite Brian's death earlier this year. They eventually ran the last British show at the Royal Albert Hall-Mitzi's retirment match and a bout which circumvented a ban on Womens' Wrestling in London: The battle tor Mitzi's vacant title was the subject of a BBC2 documentary (the match was at one of my local venues the Royal Spa Centre in Leamington.)

I do remember thinking in Jan 1987 how strange it was that American WWF rings were so LARGE! Q: How you do feel about the similarly small rings in the NWA Cental States Terrirtry, particularly the one for Harley Race's maiden NWA World title win over Dory Jr?

Who were they? Heel opponents of his? Most fans were quite happy to see him get on the nerves of a villain. In blue-eye mode, his odd bits of mischief just added to the general air of sportmanship and bonhomie of a clean match. But he was not - repeat, NOT - a comedy wrestler. I posted his match with Johnny Saint from 1981 a couple of pages back. It's the bout I use to challenge American fans' preconceptions of what pro wrestling can and should be. I would also pick out another great classic that stands head and shoulders above the rest - this 1971 tag match with brother Bert against fellow blue-eyes and fellow brothers tag team Roy and Tony St Clair. (Incidentally, this was not broadcast on World Of Sport, but rather on Wrestling's late-evening midweek slot that it kept up to the mid 70s.

The round system actively works against this, bringing everything to a complete standstill every three minutes. I'm here to watch wrestling - what am I supposed to do between rounds? Scratch my arse? Plan to take over the world? It doesn't flow - it spurts. The tiny rings make the sport itself look tiny. The rounds remove the need for rest holds during the match. This doesn't mean that you do away with headlocks etc but that they instead become links in the chain. Without rounds, old school British wrestlers have to resort to other things to create gaps, such as leading the family audiences in clapping etc. Just heard Jim Cornette describing a match as "a Raw match without commercial breaks." And I just rememebered ANOTHER thing that rounds are useful for - you can slot the commercial breaks in the round breaks, especially in a longer match! I've seen this done with boxing and I've seen it done with longer matches on ITV (I think there was an advert break during the original transmission of Bridges vs Nagasaki and also during Fit Finlay winning the British Heavy Middleweight title from Chic Cullen around the same time in a title match that took up a whole episode of All Star's share of the final two years of ITV. Come to that, I've seen the advert break between rounds used in one of the most historic matches in British history - the match that made Big Daddy a star! (U=Matic recording of original December 1975 transmission. Advert break is at 5:10)

Verhuslt, pronounced "Veruce". Orig Williams claimed in his commentary on Mile's early 90s Eurosport bout with Fit Finlay that Charley V actually trained Mile. Bernie Wright I think I may have already talked about. Brother of Steve, uncle of Alex. Third generation Wigan Snakepit man. Had a good scientific TV match with fellow Snakepitter John Naylor in Morecambe in the early 80s. Went off to Canada and came back calling himself Bearcat Wright with a silly Mr T haircut. After a humiliating Big Daddy Tag defeat, went back to being a matured version of the old Bernie, hardened clean cut veteran like Ray Robinson. Ritchie Brooks was an interesting story. Another pushed Whizzkid of the late 80s - teamed with Big Daddy and Steve (then Roy) Regal at Xmas 1986 in the last edition of season 1 of the standalone wrestling show (before All Star and WWF were added to the mix.) Despite his clean loks, he had a bit of a reputation for stiffing people in the ring, reportedly eventually coming unglued one night when he tried it on with Fit Finlay. Probably Bernie showed him a thing or two on legit wrestling in their bouts. In the early 90s Brooks was the heel or quasi-heel in a feud with Danny Collins including a cage match on Reslo. He also ditched the blond hair and got the nickname "The Man Who Fights Fire With Fire" The high point of Brooks' entire career was his controversial win of the British Heavy Middleweight title from Danny Collins in Croydon in 1990 on a disqualification when Collins fell out of the ring, banged his head and in a crazed stupor tried to attack the referee. Collins got it back in their 90s day return match in Croydon in Sept 90 but the feud raged on until '92 at least. Mike Shaw - We're talking Norman The Lunatic/Bastion Booger here. Also Owen Hart's 1987 Stempede nemesis Makhan Singh of Karachi Vice, a minature version of Giant Haystacks (or the Loch Ness Monster as Stampede fans knew him.) What do you expect?

Recently saw his 1981 match with Bret Hart. Hart actually seemed a lot better in this match than in the Marty Jones world title semi final not long after where he was playing the part of the foreign quasi-heel who didn't understand the rules. Here we see Bret adapting almost as well as Owen to the British style. Singh was generally used as a strength heavyweight. Here he is in 1989 at Blackpool Tower Circus against "Mongolian Mauler" Peter Flowers, the man whose flagpole attack on Robbie Brookside that year caused a police raid on the Victoria Hall Hanley due to a worried fan calling the cops on the show, the man who tried to reunite Kendo and Rocco in 1990 but ended up reigniting their feud. He also had a tag team going with Jason Kashmir Singh in the early 90s. There was one period in late '76 when promoter Normal Morrell was trying to sabotage Big Daddy's lead blue-eye push (backstage politics, worried about Max Crabtree getting too powerful ) by putting him as tag partners with his archenemy Big Daddy. One night they were due to face Kojak Kirk and Bruiser Muir but Morell had second thoughts on the night, reckoning that fans would just treat Kendo as an unusual blue-eye partner in peril to hero Daddy, so got Singh in to replace Muir, making it your standard Kendo plus heel versus heel plus blue-eye match so the fans would side with Kirk and Singh.

Zoltan Boscik was mainly known for his 3 in 1 combination submission hold and for the fact that he liked to brag about being a former British Lightweight Champion and therefore should be treated with respect. Consequently he would be used as a heel (unless up against a nastier heel in a heel vs heel match) and making up the numbers in the heel side on team events such as triple tag matches (that's six man tags in Americanese!) However this morning on the smart TV I saw a match from Woking from December 1976 (transmitted after the New Year. where he kept things clean against another ex British champion, Alan Sargeant and got the win. Quite an impressive bout from a man more likely to be seen tag teaming with Jim Breaks or Cyanide Syd Cooper.

Gave the battle of the Boothmans a rewatch just now. Most of the best moves in this seem to come from the son Kid McCoy, flipping over bridges to reverse an armbar, lots of complex arm-to arm transfers.... A clue comes at the end of the second round when we find out that his other trained was Marty Jones. Ben is, as Walton notes, more the strength man but he does get some good moves in especially on his two pinfalls - a quick snapmare throw into a cross press in round 3 and the Summerslam '92 Smith vs Hart finisher foiding press to get the winner (with an extra little twist round thrown in for some reason.)

Quinn and Haystacks were regular tag parners and allies in the war against Big Daddy (Stax acted cornerman for Quinn in the 1979 Wembley Daddy vs Qunin match). They had another world title match in Claremorris, County Mayo. Quinn and Stax had a big contract signing ceremony on chat show host Derek Davis's show Derek At Large. RTÉ didn't have its own TV wrestling show but much of the Irish Republic could pick up World of Sport on Ulster and HTV from Wales as well as Reslo from the same transmitters as HTV - Orig Wiliams was running Reslo Live Tours well into the late 90s and into the early 00s by which time they had morphed into WWF tribute tours.

Or rather "Colonel Brody" was Shaun "Maginificent Maurice" Brody copying Ed "Colonel De Beers" Wiskowski's gimmick after meeting DeBeers in Germany where Ed wrestled under his real name. Needless to say he couldn't do the whole racist thing on ITV. Handheld camcording in Germany was a different matter: (This bout is also what I would consider a good example how NOT to use Johnny Saint.)

Ahmet Chong later reappeared in Germany doing the same gimmick against Axel Dieter in 1980

>Around 1975, wrestling's ratings began to drop somewhat as audiences grew tired of McManus, Pallo, Logan and Kellett. Indeed, Pallo and Kellett, along with Adrian Street, had defected to independent promotions the previous year! Ironically it was also around this time that Daddy and Haystacks got the start of their push - Battling Guardsman Crabtree had morphed into Big Daddy late the previous year and by July '75 was being listed as Big Daddy in TVTimes and on screen captions and teamed with Stax in the latter's debut TV match, a DQ loss to Roy and Tony StClair. Stax had been rebranded from "Luke McMasters" to "Haystacks Callhoun" by Brian Dixon in 1972 and had refined the gimmick to become the Giant over the next year or two.

Tony Francis was primarily a wrestler who exanded into managing. He had the masked El Diablo persona downpat by 1988 and actually did a wierd crossover with his managing work when he appeared in Drew McDonald and Rasputin's corner as guest cornerman wearing the El Diablo mask (or rather a purple/silver version of - he usually used red and blue as his colours) AND his "Tony The Brain" lounge lizard suit. Gordon was a generic crumb-heel used mainly as Daddy fodder (see also Banger Walsh and Cyanide Syd Cooper). His peak for me was as Masked Marauder Minor, the smaller of the two Masked Marauders, an all masked tag team managed by Francis's predecessor as hapless mastermind of the heel movement to bring Daddy down - "The Gentleman" Charlie McGeen, who played a fat beardy slob that I suspect was largely based on heel-era Captain Lou Albano. (Apart from imported magazines, wrestlers could have visited Germany and met Afa and Sika or Rex and King/Sailor Art White who would have told the Brits about their manager Lou who played the hateful fat slob to the hilt.)

Something I remember saying to you on Wrestling Heritage several years ago is that Bob Backlund was basically wasted on the WWF and would have fitted in much better in Britain wrestling clean matches on World Of Sport. I did suggest Marty Jones as an ideal opponent but you pointed out the size difference. What would have been best for Backlund was someone as squeaky clean as himself. Pete Roberts and Tony StClair would be my two pics for a Backlund opponent. Incidentally, there's a lot of comparisons to be made between early 80s WWF smart fans who thought Backlund was some sort of a crime against the Business and late 80s/into the 90s fans of Wild Crazy No Holds Barred American Wrestling who thought all the clean sportsmanly British wrestling was a parochial atrocity.

See my remarks about Count Bartelli above. I think I may have said this above, but a flip through JNLister's site reveals some 22 TV appearances between 1962 and 1969, many of which are probably in the Granada archive.

Add Ben vs McCoy - here's a nice TVTimes article promoting the fight. MUCH more level headed than footage of Diana Hart Smith crying her eyes out. Typing up blatantly pinched from JNLister's site - apologies John - although I do own the original cutting, which comes with a nice pic of father and son shaking hands before the bout.

Dick Conlon - bad tempered moustachioed heel. Best known for putting over a young Jackie Pallo Jr (aka JJ Pallo - he later visted America) and being comedy stooge for Catweazle in a match often used to represent him in docus/DVDs etc

Personally I like this match a lot as a pure "human chess" technical fest. (It was Gordon Solie who coined that "human chess" phrase yet I doubt he got to see too much - if any - British wrestling.) It's also quite good to hold up as an example of how BRitish wrestlers, particularly two blue-eyes could have a competitive match and not only be friends afterwards but actually during the match. In this case, they're actually father and son, which kind of makes look ridiculous and unneccesary a lot of the "bitter family feuds" between the Harts etc that we see in American wrestling - I look at those angle and wonder "what's the point? The Boothmans didn't need this nonsense". Having said that the second generation of the Knight family and Danny and Peter Collins did have some bitter brother vs brother fallout grudge matches in the late 90s (the Collinses) and the C21st (the Knights). Kid McCoy was THE hot prospect of 1986-1989. He was defending Golden Grappler champion looking for a second year on top on this match. He beat Steve Grey for the British Lightweight title in 1987. He was being tipped as the heir to Johnny Saint's throne. He was the creator of the Yorkshire Rope Trick which Owen Hart borrowed for the Blue Blazer in the WWF. Unfortunately the older Boothman had an old grudge against Kendo Nagasaki going back to an incident in the late 60s when a young Kendo badly stiffed King Ben's trainer Ernie Baldwin then handled Ben when he tried to attack Kendo backstage. In Basingstoke 21st June 1990, the Boothmans were matched with Kendo and Blondie Barrett. Father and son overheard Kendo/PEter disparangingly recalling the late 60s incident and decided to take action in the match, pulling various tricks (including Ben overpowering Kendo in a test of strength.) Kendo eventually cut the match short scoring an early finish then went backstage to complain to Brian Dixon. As a result, the Boothmans' bookings were cut to near zero and All Star stripped McCoy of recognition as British Lightweight champion quietly hading the belt back to former champion Steve Grey. Max Crabtree's remnant of Joint Promotions continued to recognise McCoy as champion as did Orig Williams whose BWF produced Reslo, which gave McCoy a high profile World title shot at Johnny Saint. The Kid even made it onto the continent for New Catch (albeit only for a Squashing in France by Scrubber Daly.) But being blackballed by Dixon stymied McCoy's career and he retired in 1994, later starting a roofing business. The other promoters fell back into line and recognised Grey as champion and apart from a couple of losses to Jimmy Ocen in the 90s, he held onto it until formally retiring the title in 2021 with it being awarded to Nino Bryant after he beat Lewis Mayhew to win the belt. (Grey was due to be special referee for this Rumble promotions bout but traffic problems intervened on the night.)

> Heels would be told that they HAVE BEEN DISQUALIFIED!!! by the headmasterly MC Steve Barker, MC and promoter of Rumble Promotions, still likes to do that spot. He likes telling people off, does old Steve.

Interesting little aside there - this comment is a product of its time. At this point some posters on Wrestling Heritage were raising doubts about Count Bartelli's long history as a masked man on the basis of "Well I don't remember him!" Turns out that it was all perfectly true, but that he was largely a hit- and confined to - the North of England, mainly for Morell and Beresford. Which explains why a bunch of elderly Londoners reared on 1950s Dale Martin didn't recall him. Judo Chris Adams. Important point about him at this point was that his brother Neil was an important sports star having become the first British World male Judo Champion and a 1980 Olympic Silver medalist. In 1981 he became double-crown World/European champion and gold medalist at the 1981 World Judo championships. Neil would go on to win another silver at the 1984 Olympics. Chris had also been on the 1976 Olympic team. So naturally promoters cashed in on his brother's celeb status. Promoters here were actually a lot better at milking DQs. Heels would be told that they HAVE BEEN DISQUALIFIED!!! by the headmasterly MC and would then proceed to throw a tantrum! Titles would be changed on DQs which was a good way to get belts off people like Haystacks, Nagasaki and Finlay while keeping them strong. So a DQ was actually a much bigger deal in Britain. The only time it was ever presented as a cop out was when Haystacks would contrive some situation to get himself disqualified to avoid facing Big Daddy. (Also masked men did not have to unmask on a DQ loss.)

Ken Joyce had a great 2-0 loss in 1981 to Johnny Saint (slightly spoiled by a ringside middle aged female fan who spent the whole bout giggling hysterically at everything.) His best trick was to stall on whips across the ring by plummeting down onto his backside as the first tug came. One thing with the likes of Joyce, Saint and Faulkener, as I've said, is that a lot of their counters were clever to the point of being amusing and triggered the giggles in some audiences but that this should NOT be taken as an excuse to label them as "comedy wrestlers". They were primarily skill men who loved what they did and had fun doing it, especially against a like-minded opponent.

About the best Barry Douglas match is on Reslo against a much lighter Johnny Saint who wins a one fall match where Douglas despite being booed at the start as the larger more menacing looking wrestler actually gets to show some good moves in fending off the smaller vastly more skilled Saint, atabout 1:15 breaking up a sideheadlock into a top wrist lever and then going under Saint's arm to get a throw out of it, rolling out of Saint's hammerlock attempt back to a standing start a 1:35, falling from a trip attempt neatly into an arm extention position etc etc. This is not the lumbering brute he looks like nor the Jobber To The Stars he was against new mega heel Red Ivan in 1987 but a true member of the Relwyskow dynasty using skill rather than his strength advantage to reverse and counter Saint's also impecable moves. The referee in this was John Harris was also an MC (including for Saint vs Finlay as mentioned in the previous post) and I believe he did the "corny voiceovers" at the start of shows 1985-1988 (replacing Dickie Davies's lead-ins) which were something of a house style for ITV programming, especially LWT in the mid 80s. John Elijah was a power wrestler first and foremost and the Big Daddy match where he gives Daddy a few problems (see previous page) was a good vehicle for what he could do. He is usually used as an honest-John "Friar Tuck" figure of a simple honest big man. When Dave Bond decided to reset to being a blue-eye, he teamed with Elijah for a match where they lost sportingly to two blue-eyes and Bond behaved himself all the way through. Elijah's role in that match was as an honest broker tag partner to Bond who would have washed his hands had the old rulebending come out. Walsh is generally considered Daddy fodder - "Daddy used me as a punching bag" as he told the Sun in 1985 in a kayfabe breaking interview which pretty much ended his career. An entire page of the 1983 Big Daddy Annual is dedicated to a comedy spot where Daddy plants a corner bucket on Walsh's head! He and Anaconda were Haystacks's cornermen in the Daddy vs Haystacks Wembley showdown. In later years he became a popular celebrity guest at All Star's shows in Leamington Spa at the Royal Spa Centre which was and may again someday be a local venue for me. His son Darren was a much touted prospective "Whizzkid" in the 90s, being involved in Kendo Nagasaki's Millenium Comeback angle in May/June 2000 alongside Marty Jones. Darren had another career as sinister cyborg heel Thunder wrestling everywhere except the West Midlands plus also for the EWP in Germany where he was their World Heavyweight Champion. As Darren, in about 2003-2004 he had several shots at a heel British Heavyweight Champion Robbie Brookside in Leamington (elswhere Robbie was blue-eye but in Leaminngton he did a Harley Race as visiting champion) - as Thunder he actually won the belt a few years later.