By Elliott West
“This is a sport (wrestling) that has turned many boys into men and many men into leaders. And it is a sport in which you can be a giant regardless of how big you are”.
Carl Albert
Introduction
From 1965 until the television plug was finally pulled on British wrestling after 33 years in 1988, Saturday afternoon was a must for any sports fan. Shown on ITV’s World of Sport, this phenomenon attracted an audience of 8.5 million viewers. between 1970 and 1975. A sport that spanned the generations with the young and old loving the holds, throws and the colourful costumes and personalities of the wrestlers involved. Names like Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks, Pat Roach, Mick McManus, and Kendo Nagasaki still roll off the tongue. Wrestling giants who were household names, were often prodded with umbrella spokes by hysterical grandmothers in the audience or burnt by a cigarette from a disgruntled fan. From black and white to the full glare of colour television, this was slamdunk flamboyance that brightened up a cold Saturday afternoon in venues as big as Wembley Arena and the Albert Hall or Seymour Hall, Marble Arch, Fairfield, Croydon and West Ham baths. Packed to the rafters with fans armed with bags of boiled sweets and rustling crisp packets.
Yet this Golden Age of British wrestling first found its roots in the 1950s, born out of the music hall and the circus, dating back to 1904, the bottom of the bill and fought out on mats. Balletic moves that are reminiscent of the slapstick choreography of Buster Keaton or Laurel and Hardy, laced with a lethal dose of hair-pulling, winding throws and holds which left an opponent with a wrestling boot cemented to their face. Sport and entertainment were expertly woven together by the promoters and took the sport by the jugular by creating continuous grudge matches. A sport that was banned by Westminster County Council for being too violent in the 1930s and had to be cleaned up with stringent new rules in the post-war years by Admiral-Lord Mountevans before it began to flourish again. Rules where the referee played a central part in matches. An era where critics would constantly throw accusations of British wrestling being fake and fixed. The fans didn’t care, they just wanted their fill of this wrestling pantomime. A play within a roped ring.
The Ultimate Villan
Born in Camberwell, in 1920, William George Matthews or Mick McManus as he later became known, was a former employee in the printer’s drawing room who later perfected his service in the RAF during World War II with his first fight in 1945 in Australia. Known among other stage names as the Dulwich Destroyer, McManus was a heel wrestler who stretched the rules as far as he could in a career that ran from 1947-1982. A wrestler who hated his cauliflower ears being touched and made more television appearances than any other. Mick won the British Middleweight Championship once, the British Welterweight Championship twice and the European Middleweight Championship four times. He would spend his final years in Brinsworth House. A retirement home for entertainers where Charlie Drake and Mike Yarwood spent time. A place where Richard O’Sullivan still resides.
Big Daddy
Shirley Crabtree was born in 1930 and was born in Halifax, West Yorkshire. Weighing in at 12 pounds as a baby, Crabtree’s father was a professional rugby league player for Halifax but his tough upbringing couldn’t stop him from being bullied and teased at school for his feminine name. His father abandoned him when he was seven and drove the young Shirley to defend himself, hitting back at those who decided to mock him. His father Shirley Sr, had become a professional wrestler and his son decided to follow in his footsteps in 1952. Quickly becoming known as “Blond Adonis Shirley Crabtree”, he won the European Heavyweight Championship in 1952 and then again in 1961 but decided to briefly quit in 1966 for six years after a campaign of harassment from former champion Bert Assirati. A time when he bought and ran a nightclub in Bradford.
Shirley returned to the ring in 1972 and continued to be managed by Joint Promotions. Portrayed as a villain, Crabtree was promoted as the Battling Guardsman, a throwback to his days serving in the Coldstream Guards. He would often wear a bearskin hat for publicity and before he came into the ring. However, it was in late 1974 that Shirley first got the stage name Big Daddy. He started to wear the trademark leotards with the letter “D” on them, bright and colourful, made by his wife Eunice. Big Daddy became notorious for his tag team fights with Giant Haystacks and his arch-rival Kendo Nagasaki, whom he famously tore off his mask in a televised contest in December 1975 in Solihull. Crabtree would fall out with Giant Haystacks and enter a feud that would last until the 1990s.
Big Daddy was notorious for his killer belly flops and belly punches that knocked his opponent into the next week. Not surprising as he had a 64-inch chest. The man with a Union Jack and top hat continued to perform until 1993. He passed away in 1997 after suffering a stroke in Halifax General Hospital.
Giant Haystacks
Born in 1946 as Martin Austin Ruane in Camberwell, London, he weighed a staggering 14lbs at birth. A man of Irish heritage, he left school at 14, he went to work as a scraper driver building motorways and a nightclub club before a friend suggested he take up wrestling. He took up the sport in 1967, working as “Luke McMasters” and “Haystacks Calhoun” before modifying his stage name to “Giant Haystacks”. Working for Joint Promotions, Ruane was a tough fighter who had an enormous diet. He once got trapped in an aeroplane toilet with a concertina door, not being able to turn around to open it in the cubicle and had to wait until the plane landed before the door was removed to let him out.
Haystacks won the BWF European Heavyweight Championship in 1991, the Joint Promotions British Heavyweight Championship in 1978 and the Stampede International Tag Team Championship with Dynamite Kid in 1980 under the name of “Loch Ness Monster”. He sustained practically every injury imaginable and would go on to fight in the USA and Canada. A devout Catholic who ate three pounds of bacon and a dozen eggs for breakfast every morning, he refused to wrestle on a Sunday and was a loyal husband to his wife Rita who they had met as teenagers at the age of 17 in 1965. Ruane retired in 1996 and died from lymphoma in 1998 in Prestwich.
Kendo Nagasaki
“Let’s see if we can get a close-up of him and those red eyes if you’re lucky enough to be watching on a colour set…”
Kent Walton
Born Brian Stevens in 1941 but changed to Peter William Thornley after being adopted, Thornley was a man of mystery. Wearing a Japanese Samurai mask to conceal his identity, some even believed the mask concealed a member of the Royal family or that he had been burnt in a fire. He wouldn’t speak and spoke through a representative with some believing he had a voice like a girl. A man with a broody darkness who loved to hit his opponents with his full force and refused to take a dive in any of his matches. He loved to perform the forearm smash and submission moves. He used a Samurai ritual of throwing salt into the ring and he had a finger missing from his left hand. One that was thought to be severed off when he worked as an apprentice at Jennings, the horse-box makers in Crewe. A wrestler who claimed he won all his fights but he didn’t.
Peter quelled the hype of his identity by having an unmasking ceremony that was filmed. It revealed a man in his thirties who looked not dissimilar to Marlon Brando. He had a star-shaped tattoo on his crown and a long stream of dark hair that resembled a horse tail. So tense was the atmosphere that even Diana Dors turned up to watch it. This was a universe away from when Kendo was obsessed with keeping his identity hidden, going to extremes to keep it that way. He once trapped a theatre manager’s head in a door to stop him from seeing his face when he started to walk into the dressing room.
Peter carried on to wrestle after the unmasking but never wore it for fights again. He survived all his adversaries in the sport but in 1990 was on a chat show where a pre-arranged scuffle went wrong and left a female makeup artist, once a makeup artist to Sir Laurence Oliver, hitting her head against a wall and unconscious. It ended her career as a result and led to Peter being sued by Granada on her behalf. Nagasaki wasn’t insured and ended up paying £327,000 in compensation and costs.
Peter did however retain a shroud of mystery throughout his life as he never knew who his real parents were. An adopted aunt left him a number of properties in her will when she died and he lived in one of them, a beautiful house worth in the region of £300,000 at the time. A world away from the ring where he was lucky if he earned £50 a night. He eventually retired in 2008 and is now 82 years old.
Pat Roach
Before becoming an actor, Pat of Auf Wierdersehen Pet fame as Bomber and who also appeared in the Indiana Jones films was a wrestler. Born in 1937 in Birmingham, Francis Patrick Roach used his Bomber name in the ring and was a black belt in Judo. He was the National Judo Champion in 1960 and the Midlands Black Belt Champion in 1962. Trained by Alf Kent as a wrestler, he won the British Heavyweight Championship in 1986 and the European Heavyweight Championship in 1990 and 1991. A wrestling career that spanned between 1960 and 1998. A man who also ran a scrap yard and a gym. Pat sadly died from oesophagal cancer in 2004.
Kent Walton
Kent was best known for being the voice of British wrestling. He was my next-door neighbour for several years when I was a child growing up in Haslemere, Surrey. A place where he grew up and was educated at Charterhouse. A commentary career that lasted from 1958 until 1988. Born in 1917, Kenneth Walton Beckett, initially trained as an actor, attending the Embassy School of Acting in London and appearing in repertory theatre. Born in Cairo, he was often confused for being Canadian due to his distinct accent. An accent that was formed when he served in the RAF during World War II in Bomber Command as a radio operator and mixed with Canadian airmen. He went on to be a disc jockey at Radio Luxembourg and as well as presenting wrestling on World of Sport for 33 years, was also the co-creator of Crossroads under the pseudonym of Elton Hawke with business partner Hazel Adair. He married Lynn Smith in 1949 and had a son and also had a stepson through this marriage, Lord Michael Grade. Kent sadly passed away in 2003 in Guildford, aged 86.
The Burst Bubble
British Wrestling was extremely popular especially when it was televised but I suppose the obsession to promote it and make it almost into a circus, killed its success. The noose of it being a fix and the big names never losing a fight caused some to say that Big Daddy killed British wrestling. However, Big Daddy probably helped save the show for longer. It didn’t help that World of Sport was axed in 1985 and the mid-week show had already been axed.Despite it having its own show on the channel for several years afterwards, its place in the schedule kept changing. Greg Dyke pulled the plug on ITV coverage. The final nail in the coffin was ITV paying £44m for 4 years for football from 1988. This was a massive increase from the shared £6.3m with BBC for the previous two years and meant that other “sports” were cut back on to help afford the football. The rise of WWF or WWE as it is now called in the USA also didn’t help with many switching allegiances for good. Fond memories of the golden age of British wrestling.
