Professional wrestling in the United Kingdom
Encyclopedia
Professional wrestling
in the United Kingdom
spans over 100 years but became popular when the then new Independent Television station - ITV
began showing it in 1955 firstly on Saturday afternoons and then also in a late night mid week slot. It was at its peak of popularity when the television
show World of Sport
was launched in the mid-1960s, making household names out of Mick McManus, Count Bartelli, Giant Haystacks, Jackie Pallo
, Big Daddy
, Steve Veidor
, and Kendo Nagasaki
. The sport remained a mainstay of British culture until World of Sport's cancellation and then finally as a stand alone programme until 1988. Despite the end of ITV coverage, a largely untelevised live circuit - with some promotions featuring the traditional British style of professional wrestling and others more fashioned after the contemporary American independent scene - survives and indeed thrives in this territory to the present day.
-American
ex-miner
named Jack Carkeek
, who would challenge audience members to last ten minutes with him in the ring.
The development of wrestling within the UK brought legitimate Estonian Greco-Roman grappler Georg Hackenschmidt
to the country, where he would quickly associate himself with promoter and entrepreneur Charles B. Cochran
. Cochran took Hackenschmidt under his wing and booked him into a match in which Hackenschmidt defeated another top British wrestler, Tom Cannon
, for the European Greco-Roman Heavyweight Championship
. This win gave Hackenschmidt a credible claim to the world title, cemented in 1905 with a win over American Heavyweight Champion
Tom Jenkins
in the United States
. Hackenschmidt took a series of bookings in Manchester
for a then impressive £150 a week. Noting Hackenschmidt's legitimately dominant style of wrestling threatened to kill crowd interest, Cochran persuaded Hackenschmidt to learn showmanship from Cannon and wrestle many of his matches for entertainment rather than sport; this displayed the future elements of "sports entertainment
".
Numerous big name stars came and went during the early inception of wrestling within the UK, with many, like Hackenschmidt, leaving for the US. The resulting loss of big name stars sent the business into decline before the outbreak of World War I
in 1914 halted it completely.
continued as legitimate sports, grappling as a promotional business did not return to Britain until the beginning of the 1930s when the success of the more worked aspects of professional wrestling in America, like gimmickry and showmanship, were introduced to British wrestling. It was with this revival that the more submission
-based Catch As Catch Can
wrestling style, which had already replaced Greco Roman wrestling as the dominant style of professional wrestling in the United States back in the 1890s, became the new dominant style in Britain. With Lancashire
catch-as-catch-can already a major amateur sport particularly in Northern England, there existed a ready-made source of potential recruits to professional wrestling.
Amateur wrestler, Sir Atholl Oakley got together with fellow grappler Henry Irslinger to launch one of the first promotions to employ the new style of wrestling which was coined "All-in" wrestling. Though, like many wrestlers throughout the business, Oakley would claim his wrestling was entirely legitimate, his claim was highly dubious. Under the British Wrestling Association banner, Oakley's promotion took off with wrestlers such as Tommy Mann, Black Butcher Johnson, Jack Pye
, Norman the Butcher, College Boy, and Jack Sherry
on the roster, while Oakley himself would win a series of matches to be crowned the first British Heavyweight Champion
.
The business was reaching one of its highest points at the time, with the best part of forty regular venues in London
alone. The great demand for wrestling, however, meant there were not enough skilled amateurs to go around, and many promoters switched to more violent styles
, with weapons and chairshots part of the proceedings. Women wrestlers and mud-filled rings also became common place. In the late 1930s, the London County Council
banned professional wrestling, leaving the business in rough shape just before World War II
.
Lord Mountevans
, a fan of the sport, to get together with Commander Campbell (a member of the popular "The Brains Trust
" radio panel show), member of parliament
Maurice Webb
and Olympic
wrestler Norman Morell to create a committee
to produce official rules for wrestling.
The most notable action of the committee was to create seven formal weight divisions, calling for champions to be crowned at each weight. These weight divisions included lightweight (154 pound limit), welterweight (165), middleweight (176), heavy middleweight (187), light heavyweight (198), mid-heavyweight (209), and heavyweight. Many of these rules diverged heavily from those in used in American Wrestling - five minute rounds (three minutes for title matches), two public warnings for rule breaking before a disqualification, "knockouts"(countouts) and disqualifications counting as automatic two falls in best of three falls matches (which were predominant), and no follow-up moves allowed on a grounded opponent.
The existence of the committee was readily acknowledged by promoters who used its existence to counter any accusations of wrong doings within the business. It was the promoters themselves, however, who revolutionized the business during this time by using America's National Wrestling Alliance
territory system under the guise of an alliance of promoters attempting to regulate the sport and uphold the committee's ideas to, in fact, create a promotional cartel designed to carve up control of the business between a handful of promoters—which it did in 1952 under the name of Joint Promotions.
, Billy Best in Liverpool
, Arthur Wright in Manchester and George de Relywyskow in Scotland
, with Arthur Green the secretary of the group. By agreeing to rotate talent and block out rival promoters, Joint Promotions was soon running 40 shows a week, while leaving wrestlers with little bargaining power. The financial advantages of this arrangement helped the members survive the tough conditions caused by a post-war tax
that took 25% of all entertainment revenue. Other promoters were not so successful. The closure of Harringay Arena
in 1954 was the last straw for Atholl Oakley, and Joint Promotions were the only major player left to benefit when Chancellor
Peter Thorneycroft
abolished the entertainment tax in the 1957 budget.
One of Joint Promotions' first moves was establishing (and controlling) the championships called for by the Mountevans' committee. At first, this proved a profitable venture, with title matches leading to raised ticket prices. However, perhaps inevitably, attempts to extend this success by bringing in additional titles led to overexposure. While the World and British titles had some credibility (particularly as they were often placed on the more legitimate wrestlers), the addition of European, Empire/Commonwealth, Scottish, Welsh, and area championships got out of hand, and at one point there were conceivably 70 different titleholders to keep track of within Joint Promotions alone. Actually, the British, European and World titles were given most prominence. The "regional" titles were mainly titular, with only the "southern Area" titles actually being fought for. The Empire/Commonwealth titles were a "long stop" title, being used by promotions outside of the Joint monopoly, for the most part.
) on 9 November 1955, featuring Francis St Clair Gregory (father of Tony St Clair) versus Mike Marino
and Cliff Beaumont versus Bert Royal live from West Ham
baths. The show was successful, and wrestling became a featured attraction every Saturday afternoon from Autumn to Spring each year. In 1964, it went full-time as part of the World of Sport
show.
Televised wrestling allowed wrestlers to become household names and allowing personality to get a wrestler over just as much as size. The exposure of wrestling on television proved the ultimate boost to the live event business as wrestling became part of mainstream culture. By the mid 1960s, Joint Promotions had doubled their live event schedule to somewhere in the region of 4,500 shows a year. Every town of note had a show at least once a month, and at some points more than 30 cities had a weekly date.
The style of wrestling at the time was unique - not only in terms of the rule system, but also for the strong emphasis on clean technical wrestling. Heels made up a minority of the roster, with most shows containing an abnormaly high proportion of clean sportsmanly matches between two "blue-eyes" (as faces
were known backstage in the UK). This would remain the case for several decades to come. Gimmick matches were a rarity, midget wrestling
failed to catch on, while women were banned by the Greater London Council
until the late 1970s. Tag wrestling
, however, did prove to be popular, with televised tag matches happening a mere eight or so times a year to keep them special.
The success of wrestling on television did however create a better opportunity for the independent groups. The opposition to Joint came from the Australian-born promoter, Paul Lincoln. Having promoted shows in the 1950s with himself in the main event as masked heel Doctor Death, Lincoln led a consortium of independent promoters under the British Wrestling Federation (BWF) whose name was used for a rival championship, built around Heavyweight champion Bert Assirati
who split away from Joint Promotions in 1958 while still champion. Although Joint Promotions considered the title vacant and held a tournament for a new champion (won by Billy Joyce), Assirati continued to claim it within the BWF.
The group later built itself around a new champion in Shirley Crabtree
, a young bodybuilder who won the title after it was vacated by Assirati while injured in 1960. The BWF faded away in the late 1960s after a campaign of pestilence by a disgruntled Assirati (vastly superior as a shooter
to Crabtree) in the form of unsolicited appearances and challenges to his successor at BWF shows, eventually resulting in the abrupt retirement of Crabtree in 1966. Lincoln's own promotion was bought out and amalgamated into Joint Promotions at the end of the 1960s.
, who was headhunted by Joint as the most experienced booker still in the business.
Crabtree produced the next boom in British wrestling by creating the legend of "Big Daddy", the alter ego of Shirley, who had been unemployed for the best part of 6 years before joining Joint in 1972 as the heel "Battling Guardsman" and then being rebranded as Big Daddy two years later. After an initial transition period as a heel
/tweener in the mid 1970s (most notable for his tag team partnership with future arch-rival Giant Haystacks and a heel vs heel feud with legendary masked wrestler Kendo Nagasaki
, whom Daddy unmasked during a 1975 televised bout), from the summer of 1977 onwards, Big Daddy became a larger-than-life fan favourite of children and pensioners alike. That he was no longer a bodybuilder youth, rather an overweight man in his forties, did not seem to be an obstacle as every major heel in the country was defeated by Daddy, usually in short order thanks to Crabtree's lack of conditioning.
Big Daddy became the best known wrestler in British history and even had his own comic strip in Buster comic. Due to his popularity, Crabtree's run was extended by carefully positioning him in tag matches, allowing a host of young partners (which included Davey Boy Smith
, Dynamite Kid
, Gentleman Chris Adams and Steven Regal
) to carry the match before tagging Daddy in for the finish. Basing a whole cartel around one performer, however, though good for television, did nothing for live events and promotion once again began losing interest.
Performers became dissatisfied with their position within the Joint Promotions and soon looked elsewhere for exposure mainly outside the UK as a whole. As a result, there was a rise in New Japan
and Calgary
's junior-heavyweight divisions, both of which had their roots in British wrestling of the time.
, and began capitalizing on this disaffection taking many of Joint Promotions' top champions.
The wrestling industry as a whole seemingly began to fall into disarray as the true nature of wrestling began to fall into question as many newspaper
s tried to expose the worked aspects of the sport. However, this trend did not ultimately harm the industries as the suspension of disbelief
was all too easy to maintain for fans, even if they knew the truth. On 28 September 1985, the Crabtrees received another blow when World of Sport was taken off the air. Wrestling instead got its own show, but the time slot changed from week to week, slowly driving away the regular audience. Far worse for Joint Promotions, however, was that with their contract up for renewal, they were forced to share the TV rights as part of a rotation system with All Star Promotions and America's World Wrestling Federation
(WWF).
The introduction of American wrestling to the UK and the eventual axing in 1988 by Greg Dyke
of Wrestling shows on terrestrial tv saw the eclipse of Joint Promotions from its dominant position in the British wrestling scene. The promotion, renamed Ring Wrestling Stars (RWS) in 1991, continued to tour the old venues with Big Daddy in the headline slot until his retirement in December 1993 after suffering a stroke. Even then, Max Crabtree continued to tour, using the same business model, with British-born former WWF star "British Bulldog" Davey Boy Smith
replacing Daddy as the headlining household name, until Smith was lured back to the WWF in the summer of 1994. Thereafter, RWS went into decline and eventually ceased promoting in 1995.
By contrast, All Star had played its cards well with regard to its two years of TV exposure, using the time in particular to build up a returning Kendo Nagasaki
as its lead heel and establishing such storylines as his tag team-cum-feud with Rollerball Rocco
and his "hypnotism" of Robbie Brookside
. The end of TV coverage left many of these storylines at a cliffhanger
and consequently All Star underwent a box office boom as hardcore fans turned up to live shows to see what happened next, and kept coming for several years due to careful use of show-to-show storylines. Headline matches frequently pitted Nagasaki in violent heel vs heel battles against the likes of Rocco, Dave 'Fit' Finlay
, Skull Murphy and even Giant Haystacks.
All Star's post-television boom wore off after 1993 when Nagasaki retired for a second time. However, the promotion kept afloat on live shows at certain established venues and particularly on the holiday camp
circuit, and remains active right up to the present. Meanwhile American promotion WWF continued on Sky television while its chief rival WCW made the jump from late-night ITV to British Wrestling's old Saturday afternoon ITV timeslot. Both major US promotions made several arena tours of the UK, while the WWF even held the pay-per-view event SummerSlam '92 in London
's Wembley Stadium
before a crowd of around 80,000
All Star duly adapted to meet the challenge, recruiting a new generation of wrestlers such as Dean Allmark
and Robbie Dynamite
and signing up such stars as "American Dragon" Brian Danielson. The promotional war came to an abrupt end in 2003 when Conway relocated to Thailand
, closing down the TWA (which he briefly tried to transplant to his new country as the "Thai Wrestling Alliance"). Nowadays, All Star tours extensively and successfully with shows mixing British Wrestling tradition with family entertainment, while another company, John Freemantle's group Premier Promotions, (established in 1987) presents a more purist version of British Wrestling.
The gap left by TWA in the traditional British scene was later filled by such promotions as Revolution British Wrestling (RBW) and later still LDN's Academy/Spirit League. In the mid-2000s, Adam Mumford's Revolution British Wrestling
promotion (run as an adjunct of his wrestling tape trading business in much the same manner as the American Ring Of Honor
promotion in its infancy) picked up where TWA left off with promoting the British Welterweight and British Middleweight titles. After the company ceased promoting in 2006, LDN Wrestling emerged as a British based World of Sport
-style product that has brought many of the Legendary names out of retirement such as Kendo Nagasaki
, Johnny Saint
and Johnny Kincaid. In November 2008 along with the Wrestling Channel, it presented a "World of Sport Reunion Show" in front of a sellout crowd. Since the autumn of 2010, it has begun a full time touring schedule of shows in a bid to compete with All Star, often at some of All Star's main regular venues.
Wales also had a strong foothold in British Wrestling, dominated by Orig Williams
from the mid/late 1960s onward up to the 21st century. Williams' British Wrestling Federation (a name recycled from the aforementioned 1960s promotional alliance) produced Welsh-language television wrestling programmes for the bilingual S4C
channel in the 1980s and 1990s under the title Reslo. One compilation from the early 1990s was released on VHS (in English) as Wrestling Madness. Since Orig's passing in November 2009, the torch has been passed to his protegé Alan Ravenhill, who operates Welsh Wrestling and runs regular shows in every county of Wales, and hosted a historical event at Harlech Castle to crown a new Welsh Heavyweight Champion in May 2010. A rival promotion, Britannia Wrestling Promotions (BWP) also operates shows throughout the North Wales coast.
Standing apart from all this was the rise of "Americanised" promotions in the UK. One extremely early attempt at this kind of promotion in the UK was a set of "American-style"/entertainment-orientated TV tapings arranged by Jackie Pallo in 1990. In the early 1990s, WAW and Hammerlock, both run by veterans of the traditional British circuit, emerged producing shows more in line with the slick entertainment ethos of American wrestling. In the late 1990s, the success and popularity of the American Extreme Championship Wrestling
promotion, which specifically emphasised its own small scale and "underground" nature, combined with the growth of internet
discussion boards and tape trading, generated a new interest in British wrestling among local fans of the American wrestling scene. Many of the promotions which started during this time were directly influenced by the style of ECW and most were designed to appeal more to smart mark fans rather than the family audiences targeted by the classic British wrestling era.
The most prominent of the "New School" promotions of the 2000s - including the Doncaster
based 1 Pro Wrestling
and the recently-revived Frontier Wrestling Alliance
- used British talent alongside a variety of imported international stars, including former WWE and TNA
talent. A large number of other smaller promotions were established throughout the 2000s, focusing entirely on British talent. Boundaries between the "traditional" and "Americanised" promotions were increasingly broken down after FWA's 2001 "Old School vs New School" storyline which saw a group of traditional ITV-era veterans invade the promotion.
More recently, another "New School" UK promotion UK Wrestling Experience Mayhem has achieved television coverage in the form of a weekly tape delay television program, on My Channel (Sky Channel - 219) on Thursdays at 2100h, hosted by Lance Shepherd and Vicky Bell and taped at the Horbury Bridge Thunderdome. The Wakefield
based promotion is currently the only British based professional wrestling company to have nationwide television coverage.
A number of the new generation of British wrestlers who made their name on the new domestic circuit would go on to international recognition, including Doug Williams
and Nigel McGuinness
. Other major US promotions, however, opted to use wrestlers from the traditional promotions such as the Team UK in TNA
's 2004 X Cup which featured All Star Promotions wrestlers James Mason
, Dean Allmark
, Robbie Dynamite
and Frankie Sloan
. Mason would also guest on WWE Raw in 2008, defeating MVP.
With the advent of digital satellite television
British wrestling - including vintage ITV footage - would be featured heavily on the short-lived Wrestling Channel. Premier Promotions briefly gained some coverage on BBC Three
when its matches were featured on Johnny Vaughan
's short-lived revival of World of Sport. In 2005, British television network ITV
tried to make use of the revived popularity of professional wrestling by starting a Saturday night prime time show called Celebrity Wrestling
, featuring celebrities in wrestling style bouts. The show received a feeling of derision by professional wrestling fans and was shortly moved to Sunday mornings after being beaten in audience share by Doctor Who
for five weeks.
Professional wrestling
Professional wrestling is a mode of spectacle, combining athletics and theatrical performance.Roland Barthes, "The World of Wrestling", Mythologies, 1957 It takes the form of events, held by touring companies, which mimic a title match combat sport...
in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
spans over 100 years but became popular when the then new Independent Television station - ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
began showing it in 1955 firstly on Saturday afternoons and then also in a late night mid week slot. It was at its peak of popularity when the television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
show World of Sport
World of Sport (UK TV series)
World of Sport was a British television sport anthology programme which ran on ITV between 2 January 1965 to 28 September 1985 in response to competition from BBC's Grandstand...
was launched in the mid-1960s, making household names out of Mick McManus, Count Bartelli, Giant Haystacks, Jackie Pallo
Jackie Pallo
Jackie "Mr TV" Pallo was an English professional wrestler, a star of British televised wrestling in its 1960s and 1970s heyday, when the sport had a regular 40-minute slot before the Saturday afternoon football results on ITV.Even before the publication of his 1985 autobiography "You...
, Big Daddy
Shirley Crabtree
Shirley Crabtree, Jr, better known as Big Daddy was a British professional wrestler famous for his record-breaking 64 inch chest...
, Steve Veidor
Steve Veidor
Steve Veidor, born 10 January 193? as Steve Bell, in Ellesmere Port, Wirral, in Cheshire, England, is a former heavyweight professional wrestler of the 1960s and 1970s, usually billed as The Handsome Heart Throb....
, and Kendo Nagasaki
Peter Thornley
Peter Thornley is a British professional wrestler known as Kendo Nagasaki. He was one of the biggest draws of all time in British Wrestling, especially in the mid-1970s and the turn of the 1980s/1990s....
. The sport remained a mainstay of British culture until World of Sport's cancellation and then finally as a stand alone programme until 1988. Despite the end of ITV coverage, a largely untelevised live circuit - with some promotions featuring the traditional British style of professional wrestling and others more fashioned after the contemporary American independent scene - survives and indeed thrives in this territory to the present day.
Beginning
At the turn of the 20th century, wrestling was introduced to the public as part of a variety act to spice up the limited action involved in the bodybuilder strongman attractions. One of its earliest stars was a CornishCornish people
The Cornish are a people associated with Cornwall, a county and Duchy in the south-west of the United Kingdom that is seen in some respects as distinct from England, having more in common with the other Celtic parts of the United Kingdom such as Wales, as well as with other Celtic nations in Europe...
-American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
ex-miner
Miner
A miner is a person whose work or business is to extract ore or minerals from the earth. Mining is one of the most dangerous trades in the world. In some countries miners lack social guarantees and in case of injury may be left to cope without assistance....
named Jack Carkeek
Jack Carkeek
Jack Carkeek, was an American Cornish champion wrestler, from Rockland, Michigan United States. His parents were from Cornwall, United Kingdom. He met many wrestlers in his career. He died March 12 1924 in Havana, Cuba....
, who would challenge audience members to last ten minutes with him in the ring.
The development of wrestling within the UK brought legitimate Estonian Greco-Roman grappler Georg Hackenschmidt
Georg Hackenschmidt
Georg Karl Julius Hackenschmidt was an early 20th-century Estonian strongman and professional wrestler, and the first free-style heavyweight champion of the world. He launched his professional career in Russia and lived most of his life in London, England, where he gained the nickname of 'The...
to the country, where he would quickly associate himself with promoter and entrepreneur Charles B. Cochran
Charles B. Cochran
Sir Charles Blake Cochran , generally known as C. B. Cochran, was an English theatrical manager. He produced some of the most successful musical revues, musicals and plays of the 1920s and 1930s, becoming associated with Noel Coward and his works.-Biography:Cochran was born in Sussex and educated...
. Cochran took Hackenschmidt under his wing and booked him into a match in which Hackenschmidt defeated another top British wrestler, Tom Cannon
Tom Cannon
Tom Cannon is Professor of Strategic Development at the University of Liverpool Management School. He is considered to be an expert on Sports finance, economics and business notably professional sports like soccer, F1, cricket, rugby , tennis, horse-racing, American football and is often featured...
, for the European Greco-Roman Heavyweight Championship
European Greco-Roman Heavyweight Championship
The European Greco-Roman Heavyweight Championship was a Greco-Roman professional wrestling championship contested for throughout the continent of Europe...
. This win gave Hackenschmidt a credible claim to the world title, cemented in 1905 with a win over American Heavyweight Champion
American Heavyweight Championship
The American Heavyweight Wrestling Championship was the first Heavyweight professional wrestling championship in the United States. The title existed from 1881 through approximately 1922.-Title history:-References:* at Wrestling-Titles.com...
Tom Jenkins
Tom Jenkins (wrestler)
Tom Jenkins was an American catch wrestler who held the American Heavyweight Championship three times around the turn of the 20th century...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Hackenschmidt took a series of bookings in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
for a then impressive £150 a week. Noting Hackenschmidt's legitimately dominant style of wrestling threatened to kill crowd interest, Cochran persuaded Hackenschmidt to learn showmanship from Cannon and wrestle many of his matches for entertainment rather than sport; this displayed the future elements of "sports entertainment
Sports entertainment
Sports entertainment is a type of spectacle which presents an ostensibly competitive event using a high level of theatrical flourish and extravagant presentation, with the purpose of entertaining an audience...
".
Numerous big name stars came and went during the early inception of wrestling within the UK, with many, like Hackenschmidt, leaving for the US. The resulting loss of big name stars sent the business into decline before the outbreak of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
in 1914 halted it completely.
Between the wars - All In Wrestling
While various styles of amateur wrestlingAmateur wrestling
Amateur wrestling is the most widespread form of sport wrestling. There are two international wrestling styles performed in the Olympic Games under the supervision of FILA : Greco-Roman and freestyle. Freestyle is possibly derived from the English Lancashire style...
continued as legitimate sports, grappling as a promotional business did not return to Britain until the beginning of the 1930s when the success of the more worked aspects of professional wrestling in America, like gimmickry and showmanship, were introduced to British wrestling. It was with this revival that the more submission
Submission wrestling
Submission wrestling or Combat wrestling in Japan, is a formula of competition and a general term describing the aspect of martial arts and combat sports that focus on clinch and ground fighting with the aim of obtaining a submission using submission holds...
-based Catch As Catch Can
Catch wrestling
Catch wrestling is a style of folk wrestling that was developed and popularised in the late 19th century by the wrestlers of traveling carnivals who incorporated submission holds, or "hooks", into their wrestling to increase their effectiveness against their opponents...
wrestling style, which had already replaced Greco Roman wrestling as the dominant style of professional wrestling in the United States back in the 1890s, became the new dominant style in Britain. With Lancashire
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...
catch-as-catch-can already a major amateur sport particularly in Northern England, there existed a ready-made source of potential recruits to professional wrestling.
Amateur wrestler, Sir Atholl Oakley got together with fellow grappler Henry Irslinger to launch one of the first promotions to employ the new style of wrestling which was coined "All-in" wrestling. Though, like many wrestlers throughout the business, Oakley would claim his wrestling was entirely legitimate, his claim was highly dubious. Under the British Wrestling Association banner, Oakley's promotion took off with wrestlers such as Tommy Mann, Black Butcher Johnson, Jack Pye
Jack Pye
Jack Pye, also known as Dirty Jack Pye and the Doncaster Panther, was an English professional wrestler and actor from Doncaster, England.-Wrestling career:In 1933, Pye came close to beating Atholl Oakley for the British Heavyweight Championship...
, Norman the Butcher, College Boy, and Jack Sherry
Jack Sherry
John E. "Jack" Sherry was a two sport star at Pennsylvania State University . In American football, he set a team record with 8 interceptions in 1952. In basketball, he was team captain of Penn State's team that reached the 1954 Final Four....
on the roster, while Oakley himself would win a series of matches to be crowned the first British Heavyweight Champion
British Heavyweight Championship
The British Heavyweight Championship is a top British wrestling championship found throughout the country's circuit.Many versions of the British Heavyweight Championship exist in the independent circuit of the United Kingdom at any given time but the scene is usually dominated by one companies...
.
The business was reaching one of its highest points at the time, with the best part of forty regular venues in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
alone. The great demand for wrestling, however, meant there were not enough skilled amateurs to go around, and many promoters switched to more violent styles
Hardcore wrestling
Hardcore wrestling is a form of professional wrestling that eschews traditional concepts of match rules in favor of matches that take place in unusual environments, using foreign objects that are not normally permitted...
, with weapons and chairshots part of the proceedings. Women wrestlers and mud-filled rings also became common place. In the late 1930s, the London County Council
London County Council
London County Council was the principal local government body for the County of London, throughout its 1889–1965 existence, and the first London-wide general municipal authority to be directly elected. It covered the area today known as Inner London and was replaced by the Greater London Council...
banned professional wrestling, leaving the business in rough shape just before World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Mountevans' committee
After the war, attempts to relaunch the business in 1947 failed to catch on with journalists who condemned the gimmickry calling the show fake. The revelation of this, and the general chaos which had surrounded All In Wrestling prior to the War, prompted AdmiralAdmiral
Admiral is the rank, or part of the name of the ranks, of the highest naval officers. It is usually considered a full admiral and above vice admiral and below admiral of the fleet . It is usually abbreviated to "Adm" or "ADM"...
Lord Mountevans
Edward Evans, 1st Baron Mountevans
Admiral Edward Ratcliffe Garth Russell Evans, 1st Baron Mountevans, KCB, DSO , known as "Teddy" Evans, was a British naval officer and Antarctic explorer...
, a fan of the sport, to get together with Commander Campbell (a member of the popular "The Brains Trust
The Brains Trust
The Brains Trust was a popular informational BBC radio and later television programme in the United Kingdom during the 1940s and 50s.- History :...
" radio panel show), member of parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
Maurice Webb
Maurice Webb (politician)
Maurice Webb PC was a British Labour politician.Webb joined the Labour Party in 1922 as a teenager and was a well-known political journalist, including for the Daily Herald. From 1929 to 1935 he worked as the Party's propaganda officer...
and Olympic
Olympic Games
The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...
wrestler Norman Morell to create a committee
Committee
A committee is a type of small deliberative assembly that is usually intended to remain subordinate to another, larger deliberative assembly—which when organized so that action on committee requires a vote by all its entitled members, is called the "Committee of the Whole"...
to produce official rules for wrestling.
The most notable action of the committee was to create seven formal weight divisions, calling for champions to be crowned at each weight. These weight divisions included lightweight (154 pound limit), welterweight (165), middleweight (176), heavy middleweight (187), light heavyweight (198), mid-heavyweight (209), and heavyweight. Many of these rules diverged heavily from those in used in American Wrestling - five minute rounds (three minutes for title matches), two public warnings for rule breaking before a disqualification, "knockouts"(countouts) and disqualifications counting as automatic two falls in best of three falls matches (which were predominant), and no follow-up moves allowed on a grounded opponent.
The existence of the committee was readily acknowledged by promoters who used its existence to counter any accusations of wrong doings within the business. It was the promoters themselves, however, who revolutionized the business during this time by using America's National Wrestling Alliance
National Wrestling Alliance
The National Wrestling Alliance is a wrestling promotion company and sanctions various NWA championships in the United States. The NWA has been in operation since 1948...
territory system under the guise of an alliance of promoters attempting to regulate the sport and uphold the committee's ideas to, in fact, create a promotional cartel designed to carve up control of the business between a handful of promoters—which it did in 1952 under the name of Joint Promotions.
Joint Promotions
Joint Promotions was represented in London by the Dale Martin promotion, which had incorporated in 1948, and involved Les Martin, and Jack, Johnny and Billy Dale, whose real last names were, in fact, Abby not Dale. Other promoters included Norman Morell and Ted Beresford in YorkshireYorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
, Billy Best in Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
, Arthur Wright in Manchester and George de Relywyskow in Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, with Arthur Green the secretary of the group. By agreeing to rotate talent and block out rival promoters, Joint Promotions was soon running 40 shows a week, while leaving wrestlers with little bargaining power. The financial advantages of this arrangement helped the members survive the tough conditions caused by a post-war tax
Tax
To tax is to impose a financial charge or other levy upon a taxpayer by a state or the functional equivalent of a state such that failure to pay is punishable by law. Taxes are also imposed by many subnational entities...
that took 25% of all entertainment revenue. Other promoters were not so successful. The closure of Harringay Arena
Harringay Arena
Harringay Arena was a sporting and events venue on Green Lanes in Harringay, North London, England. Built in 1936, it lasted as a venue until 1958.-Construction:...
in 1954 was the last straw for Atholl Oakley, and Joint Promotions were the only major player left to benefit when Chancellor
Chancellor
Chancellor is the title of various official positions in the governments of many nations. The original chancellors were the Cancellarii of Roman courts of justice—ushers who sat at the cancelli or lattice work screens of a basilica or law court, which separated the judge and counsel from the...
Peter Thorneycroft
Peter Thorneycroft
George Edward Peter Thorneycroft, Baron Thorneycroft CH, PC , was a British Conservative Party politician. He served as Chancellor of the Exchequer between 1957 and 1958.-Biography:...
abolished the entertainment tax in the 1957 budget.
One of Joint Promotions' first moves was establishing (and controlling) the championships called for by the Mountevans' committee. At first, this proved a profitable venture, with title matches leading to raised ticket prices. However, perhaps inevitably, attempts to extend this success by bringing in additional titles led to overexposure. While the World and British titles had some credibility (particularly as they were often placed on the more legitimate wrestlers), the addition of European, Empire/Commonwealth, Scottish, Welsh, and area championships got out of hand, and at one point there were conceivably 70 different titleholders to keep track of within Joint Promotions alone. Actually, the British, European and World titles were given most prominence. The "regional" titles were mainly titular, with only the "southern Area" titles actually being fought for. The Empire/Commonwealth titles were a "long stop" title, being used by promotions outside of the Joint monopoly, for the most part.
Television
But while titles had some success, it was television that took British wrestling to the next level. The first show aired on ABC and ATV (the weekend franchise holders on ITVITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
) on 9 November 1955, featuring Francis St Clair Gregory (father of Tony St Clair) versus Mike Marino
Mike Marino
Mike Marino was an English professional wrestler and a leading name during the World of Sport era in British wrestling...
and Cliff Beaumont versus Bert Royal live from West Ham
West Ham
West Ham is in the London Borough of Newham in London, England. In the west it is a post-industrial neighbourhood abutting the site of the London Olympic Park and in the east it is mostly residential, consisting of Victorian terraced housing interspersed with higher density post-War social housing...
baths. The show was successful, and wrestling became a featured attraction every Saturday afternoon from Autumn to Spring each year. In 1964, it went full-time as part of the World of Sport
World of Sport (UK TV series)
World of Sport was a British television sport anthology programme which ran on ITV between 2 January 1965 to 28 September 1985 in response to competition from BBC's Grandstand...
show.
Televised wrestling allowed wrestlers to become household names and allowing personality to get a wrestler over just as much as size. The exposure of wrestling on television proved the ultimate boost to the live event business as wrestling became part of mainstream culture. By the mid 1960s, Joint Promotions had doubled their live event schedule to somewhere in the region of 4,500 shows a year. Every town of note had a show at least once a month, and at some points more than 30 cities had a weekly date.
The style of wrestling at the time was unique - not only in terms of the rule system, but also for the strong emphasis on clean technical wrestling. Heels made up a minority of the roster, with most shows containing an abnormaly high proportion of clean sportsmanly matches between two "blue-eyes" (as faces
Face (professional wrestling)
In professional wrestling, a babyface or face or in simple words, a fan favorite is a character who is portrayed as a heroic relative to the heel wrestlers, who are analogous to villains...
were known backstage in the UK). This would remain the case for several decades to come. Gimmick matches were a rarity, midget wrestling
Midget wrestler
A midget professional wrestler is a dwarf or person of short stature who competes in professional wrestling. The heyday of midget wrestling was in the 1950s and 1960s, when wrestlers such as Little Beaver, Lord Littlebrook, and Fuzzy Cupid toured North America, and Sky Low Low was the first holder...
failed to catch on, while women were banned by the Greater London Council
Greater London Council
The Greater London Council was the top-tier local government administrative body for Greater London from 1965 to 1986. It replaced the earlier London County Council which had covered a much smaller area...
until the late 1970s. Tag wrestling
Tag team
Tag team professional wrestling is a variation in which matches are contested between teams of multiple wrestlers. A tag team may comprise two wrestlers who normally wrestle in singles competition, but more commonly are made of established teams who wrestle regularly as a unit and have a team name...
, however, did prove to be popular, with televised tag matches happening a mere eight or so times a year to keep them special.
The success of wrestling on television did however create a better opportunity for the independent groups. The opposition to Joint came from the Australian-born promoter, Paul Lincoln. Having promoted shows in the 1950s with himself in the main event as masked heel Doctor Death, Lincoln led a consortium of independent promoters under the British Wrestling Federation (BWF) whose name was used for a rival championship, built around Heavyweight champion Bert Assirati
Bert Assirati
Bartolomeo Esserati , also known as Bert Assirati, was an English professional wrestler who became a multiple time British Heavyweight Champion, and, posthumously, a member of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame...
who split away from Joint Promotions in 1958 while still champion. Although Joint Promotions considered the title vacant and held a tournament for a new champion (won by Billy Joyce), Assirati continued to claim it within the BWF.
The group later built itself around a new champion in Shirley Crabtree
Shirley Crabtree
Shirley Crabtree, Jr, better known as Big Daddy was a British professional wrestler famous for his record-breaking 64 inch chest...
, a young bodybuilder who won the title after it was vacated by Assirati while injured in 1960. The BWF faded away in the late 1960s after a campaign of pestilence by a disgruntled Assirati (vastly superior as a shooter
Catch wrestling
Catch wrestling is a style of folk wrestling that was developed and popularised in the late 19th century by the wrestlers of traveling carnivals who incorporated submission holds, or "hooks", into their wrestling to increase their effectiveness against their opponents...
to Crabtree) in the form of unsolicited appearances and challenges to his successor at BWF shows, eventually resulting in the abrupt retirement of Crabtree in 1966. Lincoln's own promotion was bought out and amalgamated into Joint Promotions at the end of the 1960s.
Max Crabtree and Big Daddy
By 1975, the stranglehold of Joint Promotions had almost crumbled, with many of its founding members retiring and the company being bought out several times, leading to the wrestling industry being run by a public company with little experience of the unique business. Finally promotions were left in the hands of Max Crabtree, the brother of ShirleyShirley Crabtree
Shirley Crabtree, Jr, better known as Big Daddy was a British professional wrestler famous for his record-breaking 64 inch chest...
, who was headhunted by Joint as the most experienced booker still in the business.
Crabtree produced the next boom in British wrestling by creating the legend of "Big Daddy", the alter ego of Shirley, who had been unemployed for the best part of 6 years before joining Joint in 1972 as the heel "Battling Guardsman" and then being rebranded as Big Daddy two years later. After an initial transition period as a heel
Heel (professional wrestling)
In professional wrestling, a heel is a villain character. In non-wrestling jargon, heels are the "bad guys" in professional wrestling; the term heel coming from the term take to you heels, which means to run away which heel champions tend to do to avoid losing their titles.storylines...
/tweener in the mid 1970s (most notable for his tag team partnership with future arch-rival Giant Haystacks and a heel vs heel feud with legendary masked wrestler Kendo Nagasaki
Peter Thornley
Peter Thornley is a British professional wrestler known as Kendo Nagasaki. He was one of the biggest draws of all time in British Wrestling, especially in the mid-1970s and the turn of the 1980s/1990s....
, whom Daddy unmasked during a 1975 televised bout), from the summer of 1977 onwards, Big Daddy became a larger-than-life fan favourite of children and pensioners alike. That he was no longer a bodybuilder youth, rather an overweight man in his forties, did not seem to be an obstacle as every major heel in the country was defeated by Daddy, usually in short order thanks to Crabtree's lack of conditioning.
Big Daddy became the best known wrestler in British history and even had his own comic strip in Buster comic. Due to his popularity, Crabtree's run was extended by carefully positioning him in tag matches, allowing a host of young partners (which included Davey Boy Smith
Davey Boy Smith
Davey Boy Smith was a British professional wrestler, better known as "The British Bulldog" Davey Boy Smith, who was born in Golborne in North West England, United Kingdom. Smith is known for his appearances with Stampede Wrestling, the World Wrestling Federation and World Championship Wrestling...
, Dynamite Kid
Dynamite Kid
Thomas Wilton Billington , best known by the ring name Dynamite Kid, is a retired British professional wrestler who competed in the World Wrestling Federation, Stampede Wrestling, All Japan Pro Wrestling and New Japan Pro Wrestling in the mid- to late-1980s...
, Gentleman Chris Adams and Steven Regal
Darren Matthews
Darren Kenneth Matthews , is an English professional wrestler, author and color commentator currently signed to WWE and competing on the SmackDown brand under the ring name William Regal. He is also known for his time in World Championship Wrestling under the ring name Steven Regal...
) to carry the match before tagging Daddy in for the finish. Basing a whole cartel around one performer, however, though good for television, did nothing for live events and promotion once again began losing interest.
Performers became dissatisfied with their position within the Joint Promotions and soon looked elsewhere for exposure mainly outside the UK as a whole. As a result, there was a rise in New Japan
New Japan Pro Wrestling
is a major professional wrestling promotion in Japan, founded by Antonio Inoki in June 1972 and owned by Yuke's since 2005, when Inoki sold the promotion. Naoki Sugabayashi is the current President of the promotion and has held that position from 2007. Owing to its TV program aired on TV Asahi, it...
and Calgary
Calgary
Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...
's junior-heavyweight divisions, both of which had their roots in British wrestling of the time.
Rise of All Star / End of ITV era
One English promoter that benefited from the backlash against the Crabtrees was Merseyside promoter Brian Dixon, who had started in the business during his youth, running the Jim Breaks fan club, now had several years experience running his own firm, All Star PromotionsAll Star Wrestling
All Star Wrestling is a British Professional wrestling promotion also known as All Star Promotions, Superslam Wrestling and Big Time Wrestling and originally known as Wrestling Enterprises , run by Brian Dixon and based in Liverpool, England...
, and began capitalizing on this disaffection taking many of Joint Promotions' top champions.
The wrestling industry as a whole seemingly began to fall into disarray as the true nature of wrestling began to fall into question as many newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
s tried to expose the worked aspects of the sport. However, this trend did not ultimately harm the industries as the suspension of disbelief
Kayfabe
In professional wrestling, kayfabe is the portrayal of events within the industry as "real" or "true". Specifically, the portrayal of professional wrestling, in particular the competition and rivalries between participants, as being genuine or not of a worked nature...
was all too easy to maintain for fans, even if they knew the truth. On 28 September 1985, the Crabtrees received another blow when World of Sport was taken off the air. Wrestling instead got its own show, but the time slot changed from week to week, slowly driving away the regular audience. Far worse for Joint Promotions, however, was that with their contract up for renewal, they were forced to share the TV rights as part of a rotation system with All Star Promotions and America's World Wrestling Federation
World Wrestling Entertainment
World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc. is an American publicly traded, privately controlled entertainment company dealing primarily in professional wrestling, with major revenue sources also coming from film, music, product licensing, and direct product sales...
(WWF).
The introduction of American wrestling to the UK and the eventual axing in 1988 by Greg Dyke
Greg Dyke
Gregory "Greg" Dyke is a British media executive, journalist and broadcaster. Since the 1960s, Dyke has a long career in the UK in print and then broadcast journalism. He is credited with introducing 'tabloid' television to British broadcasting, and reviving the ratings of TV-am...
of Wrestling shows on terrestrial tv saw the eclipse of Joint Promotions from its dominant position in the British wrestling scene. The promotion, renamed Ring Wrestling Stars (RWS) in 1991, continued to tour the old venues with Big Daddy in the headline slot until his retirement in December 1993 after suffering a stroke. Even then, Max Crabtree continued to tour, using the same business model, with British-born former WWF star "British Bulldog" Davey Boy Smith
Davey Boy Smith
Davey Boy Smith was a British professional wrestler, better known as "The British Bulldog" Davey Boy Smith, who was born in Golborne in North West England, United Kingdom. Smith is known for his appearances with Stampede Wrestling, the World Wrestling Federation and World Championship Wrestling...
replacing Daddy as the headlining household name, until Smith was lured back to the WWF in the summer of 1994. Thereafter, RWS went into decline and eventually ceased promoting in 1995.
By contrast, All Star had played its cards well with regard to its two years of TV exposure, using the time in particular to build up a returning Kendo Nagasaki
Peter Thornley
Peter Thornley is a British professional wrestler known as Kendo Nagasaki. He was one of the biggest draws of all time in British Wrestling, especially in the mid-1970s and the turn of the 1980s/1990s....
as its lead heel and establishing such storylines as his tag team-cum-feud with Rollerball Rocco
Mark Rocco
Mark Hussey is a retired English professional wrestler who competed for All-Star Wrestling as Mark "Rollerball" Rocco and as the original masked Black Tiger in New Japan Pro Wrestling during the 1970s and 80s...
and his "hypnotism" of Robbie Brookside
Robbie Brookside
Robert Edward Brooks , better known by his ring name Robbie Brookside, is a British professional wrestler. He has toured all over the world during his career including such countries as the United States, Japan, Germany, and Mexico...
. The end of TV coverage left many of these storylines at a cliffhanger
Cliffhanger
A cliffhanger or cliffhanger ending is a plot device in fiction which features a main character in a precarious or difficult dilemma, or confronted with a shocking revelation at the end of an episode of serialized fiction...
and consequently All Star underwent a box office boom as hardcore fans turned up to live shows to see what happened next, and kept coming for several years due to careful use of show-to-show storylines. Headline matches frequently pitted Nagasaki in violent heel vs heel battles against the likes of Rocco, Dave 'Fit' Finlay
Dave Finlay
David John "Fit" Finlay Jr. is a Northern Irish professional wrestler and road agent. He is perhaps best known for his time in World Championship Wrestling and WWE as an active wrestler and later as a road agent...
, Skull Murphy and even Giant Haystacks.
All Star's post-television boom wore off after 1993 when Nagasaki retired for a second time. However, the promotion kept afloat on live shows at certain established venues and particularly on the holiday camp
Holiday camp
Holiday camp, in Britain, generally refers to a resort with a boundary that includes accommodation, entertainment and other facilities.As distinct from camping, accommodation typically consisted of chalets – small buildings arranged either individually or in blocks. Some had three or four storeys,...
circuit, and remains active right up to the present. Meanwhile American promotion WWF continued on Sky television while its chief rival WCW made the jump from late-night ITV to British Wrestling's old Saturday afternoon ITV timeslot. Both major US promotions made several arena tours of the UK, while the WWF even held the pay-per-view event SummerSlam '92 in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
's Wembley Stadium
Wembley Stadium
The original Wembley Stadium, officially known as the Empire Stadium, was a football stadium in Wembley, a suburb of north-west London, standing on the site now occupied by the new Wembley Stadium that opened in 2007...
before a crowd of around 80,000
The Post-Modern Era
After the demise of Joint/RWS, All Star's chief rival on the live circuit was Scott Conway's TWA (The Wrestling Alliance) promotion, originally founded as the Southeastern Wrestling Alliance in 1989. Many smaller British promoters were increasingly abandoning their British identity in favour of "WWF Tribute" shows, with British performers crudely imitating World Wrestling Federation stars. By the turn of the millennium, many of these tribute acts such as the "UK Undertaker" and "Big Red Machine" were headlining All Star shows. Conway began to promote his TWA as an alternative, featuring more serious wrestling (in much the same way as All Star had previously targeted Joint fans disaffected with Big Daddy).All Star duly adapted to meet the challenge, recruiting a new generation of wrestlers such as Dean Allmark
Dean Allmark
Dean Allmark , is an English professional wrestler. He is best known for his time in All-Star Promotions and his appearance in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling...
and Robbie Dynamite
Robbie Dynamite
Robbie Dynamite is a British professional wrestler. He is the current and five-time British Mid-Heavyweight champion and has also held the British Open Tag Team Championship with Mikey Whiplash.-British Wrestling:...
and signing up such stars as "American Dragon" Brian Danielson. The promotional war came to an abrupt end in 2003 when Conway relocated to Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...
, closing down the TWA (which he briefly tried to transplant to his new country as the "Thai Wrestling Alliance"). Nowadays, All Star tours extensively and successfully with shows mixing British Wrestling tradition with family entertainment, while another company, John Freemantle's group Premier Promotions, (established in 1987) presents a more purist version of British Wrestling.
The gap left by TWA in the traditional British scene was later filled by such promotions as Revolution British Wrestling (RBW) and later still LDN's Academy/Spirit League. In the mid-2000s, Adam Mumford's Revolution British Wrestling
Revolution British Wrestling
Revolution British Wrestling was a British professional wrestling promotion, that governed over smaller branches across the United Kingdom.-History:...
promotion (run as an adjunct of his wrestling tape trading business in much the same manner as the American Ring Of Honor
Ring of Honor
Ring of Honor ' is an American professional wrestling promotion, founded in 2002 by Rob Feinstein and Gabe Sapolsky. From 2004 to 2011, the promotion was under the ownership of Cary Silkin before being sold to the Sinclair Broadcast Group in May 2011...
promotion in its infancy) picked up where TWA left off with promoting the British Welterweight and British Middleweight titles. After the company ceased promoting in 2006, LDN Wrestling emerged as a British based World of Sport
World of Sport (UK TV series)
World of Sport was a British television sport anthology programme which ran on ITV between 2 January 1965 to 28 September 1985 in response to competition from BBC's Grandstand...
-style product that has brought many of the Legendary names out of retirement such as Kendo Nagasaki
Peter Thornley
Peter Thornley is a British professional wrestler known as Kendo Nagasaki. He was one of the biggest draws of all time in British Wrestling, especially in the mid-1970s and the turn of the 1980s/1990s....
, Johnny Saint
Johnny Saint
John Miller is a semi-retired English professional wrestler better known by his ring name Johnny Saint, who worked around the United Kingdom during the World of Sport era.-Career:...
and Johnny Kincaid. In November 2008 along with the Wrestling Channel, it presented a "World of Sport Reunion Show" in front of a sellout crowd. Since the autumn of 2010, it has begun a full time touring schedule of shows in a bid to compete with All Star, often at some of All Star's main regular venues.
Wales also had a strong foothold in British Wrestling, dominated by Orig Williams
Orig Williams
Orig Williams was a Welsh professional wrestler and wrestling promoter. Williams spent his wrestling career in the persona of a villainous heel under the pseudonym "El Bandito", and after retiring as a fighter he became a promoter, manager and television presenter...
from the mid/late 1960s onward up to the 21st century. Williams' British Wrestling Federation (a name recycled from the aforementioned 1960s promotional alliance) produced Welsh-language television wrestling programmes for the bilingual S4C
S4C
S4C , currently branded as S4/C, is a Welsh television channel broadcast from the capital, Cardiff. The first television channel to be aimed specifically at a Welsh-speaking audience, it is the fifth oldest British television channel .The channel - initially broadcast on...
channel in the 1980s and 1990s under the title Reslo. One compilation from the early 1990s was released on VHS (in English) as Wrestling Madness. Since Orig's passing in November 2009, the torch has been passed to his protegé Alan Ravenhill, who operates Welsh Wrestling and runs regular shows in every county of Wales, and hosted a historical event at Harlech Castle to crown a new Welsh Heavyweight Champion in May 2010. A rival promotion, Britannia Wrestling Promotions (BWP) also operates shows throughout the North Wales coast.
Standing apart from all this was the rise of "Americanised" promotions in the UK. One extremely early attempt at this kind of promotion in the UK was a set of "American-style"/entertainment-orientated TV tapings arranged by Jackie Pallo in 1990. In the early 1990s, WAW and Hammerlock, both run by veterans of the traditional British circuit, emerged producing shows more in line with the slick entertainment ethos of American wrestling. In the late 1990s, the success and popularity of the American Extreme Championship Wrestling
Extreme Championship Wrestling
Extreme Championship Wrestling was a professional wrestling promotion that was founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1992 by Tod Gordon and closed when his successor, Paul Heyman, declared bankruptcy in April 2001...
promotion, which specifically emphasised its own small scale and "underground" nature, combined with the growth of internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
discussion boards and tape trading, generated a new interest in British wrestling among local fans of the American wrestling scene. Many of the promotions which started during this time were directly influenced by the style of ECW and most were designed to appeal more to smart mark fans rather than the family audiences targeted by the classic British wrestling era.
The most prominent of the "New School" promotions of the 2000s - including the Doncaster
Doncaster
Doncaster is a town in South Yorkshire, England, and the principal settlement of the Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster. The town is about from Sheffield and is popularly referred to as "Donny"...
based 1 Pro Wrestling
1 Pro Wrestling
One Pro Wrestling was a British professional wrestling promotion. 1PW was founded in 2005 by Steven Gauntley until the promotion went into liquidation in 2007; it was restarted within the same year..It ended in August 2011....
and the recently-revived Frontier Wrestling Alliance
Frontier Wrestling Alliance
Frontier Wrestling Alliance is a British professional wrestling promotion. Established in 1993 as the Fratton Wrestling Association it soon became the Frontier Wrestling Alliance six years later and until 2007 when it lost a scripted inter-promotional feud with International Pro Wrestling: United...
- used British talent alongside a variety of imported international stars, including former WWE and TNA
Total Nonstop Action Wrestling
Total Nonstop Action Wrestling is a privately held professional wrestling promotion founded by Jeff Jarrett and Jerry Jarrett. The company broadcasts its events on television and the Internet fifty two weeks a year with over a million weekly viewers on its primary television program, Impact...
talent. A large number of other smaller promotions were established throughout the 2000s, focusing entirely on British talent. Boundaries between the "traditional" and "Americanised" promotions were increasingly broken down after FWA's 2001 "Old School vs New School" storyline which saw a group of traditional ITV-era veterans invade the promotion.
More recently, another "New School" UK promotion UK Wrestling Experience Mayhem has achieved television coverage in the form of a weekly tape delay television program, on My Channel (Sky Channel - 219) on Thursdays at 2100h, hosted by Lance Shepherd and Vicky Bell and taped at the Horbury Bridge Thunderdome. The Wakefield
Wakefield
Wakefield is the main settlement and administrative centre of the City of Wakefield, a metropolitan district of West Yorkshire, England. Located by the River Calder on the eastern edge of the Pennines, the urban area is and had a population of 76,886 in 2001....
based promotion is currently the only British based professional wrestling company to have nationwide television coverage.
A number of the new generation of British wrestlers who made their name on the new domestic circuit would go on to international recognition, including Doug Williams
Doug Williams (wrestler)
Douglas Clayton Durdle is an English professional wrestler, better known by his ring name Doug Williams. He is currently signed to Total Nonstop Action Wrestling under the ring name Douglas Williams...
and Nigel McGuinness
Nigel McGuinness
Steven Haworth is an English professional wrestler, better known by the ring names Desmond Wolfe and Nigel McGuinness. As McGuinness he first gained notoriety working for Ring of Honor in the United States and Pro Wrestling Noah in Japan...
. Other major US promotions, however, opted to use wrestlers from the traditional promotions such as the Team UK in TNA
TNA
TNA may refer to:*Tamil National Alliance, a political coalition in Sri Lanka*The National Archives, in the United Kingdom*The New Amsterdams, a band*Threose nucleic acid, an analog of the nucleic acid DNA*Tonga Nurses' Association...
's 2004 X Cup which featured All Star Promotions wrestlers James Mason
James Mason (wrestler)
James Atkins is a British professional wrestler best known under his ring name James Mason.-Career:A childhood fan of Big Daddy, Atkins began wrestling for All Star Promotions in 1993, adopting the ringname James Mason, after the film actor of the same name at the behest of ring announcer John...
, Dean Allmark
Dean Allmark
Dean Allmark , is an English professional wrestler. He is best known for his time in All-Star Promotions and his appearance in Total Nonstop Action Wrestling...
, Robbie Dynamite
Robbie Dynamite
Robbie Dynamite is a British professional wrestler. He is the current and five-time British Mid-Heavyweight champion and has also held the British Open Tag Team Championship with Mikey Whiplash.-British Wrestling:...
and Frankie Sloan
Frankie Sloan
Frankie Sloan is an English professional wrestler from Liverpool. He appeared under his wrestling name on BBC quiz show The Weakest Link broadcast on 3 May 2011.-Total Nonstop Action Wrestling:...
. Mason would also guest on WWE Raw in 2008, defeating MVP.
With the advent of digital satellite television
Sky Digital (UK & Ireland)
Sky is the brand name for British Sky Broadcasting's digital satellite television and radio service, transmitted from SES Astra satellites located at 28.2° east and Eutelsat's Eurobird 1 satellite at 28.5°E. The service was originally launched as Sky Digital, distinguishing it from the original...
British wrestling - including vintage ITV footage - would be featured heavily on the short-lived Wrestling Channel. Premier Promotions briefly gained some coverage on BBC Three
BBC Three
BBC Three is a television network from the BBC broadcasting via digital cable, terrestrial, IPTV and satellite platforms. The channel's target audience includes those in the 16-34 year old age group, and has the purpose of providing "innovative" content to younger audiences, focusing on new talent...
when its matches were featured on Johnny Vaughan
Johnny Vaughan
Jonathan Randall Vaughan is an English broadcaster and journalist. Vaughan has become well known as a television and radio personality and has also built a reputation as a film critic. He co-presented Capital Breakfast alongside Lisa Snowdon on 95.8 Capital FM between 2004 and 2011...
's short-lived revival of World of Sport. In 2005, British television network ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
tried to make use of the revived popularity of professional wrestling by starting a Saturday night prime time show called Celebrity Wrestling
Celebrity Wrestling
Celebrity Wrestling is a British television programme, broadcast on ITV in 2005. It involved two teams of celebrities, competing against each other in wrestling style events. The series was presented by Kate Thornton and Rowdy Roddy Piper...
, featuring celebrities in wrestling style bouts. The show received a feeling of derision by professional wrestling fans and was shortly moved to Sunday mornings after being beaten in audience share by Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
for five weeks.
See also
- History of professional wrestlingHistory of professional wrestlingProfessional wrestling in the United States, up until the late 1920s, was viewed as a legitimate sport. Across the country there were "iron men" who would stand in the center of the ring, usually at state fairs, and literally shout out a challenge to anyone with the nerve to enter the ring...
- UK wrestling promotions
External links
- Casino Sports Wrestling
- British Wrestling Archive
- Pro-Wrestling Title Histories: United Kingdom
- Wrestling Heritage (website chronicling the golden heydays of British Professional Wrestling)
- All Star Wrestling
- Premier Promotions
- Britannia Wrestling Promotions (a promotion based in North Wales)
- 1Pro Wrestling
- UKW – UK Wrestling Experience Mayhem
- DPW – Dynamic Pro Wrestling