Professional wrestling in the United Kingdom

Professional wrestling in the United Kingdom spans over 100 years but became popular when the television show World of Sport was launched in the mid-1960s, making household names of the likes of Mick McManus, Count Bartelli (the dominant wrestler in Britain during the 1940s), Giant Haystacks, Jackie Pallo, Big Daddy, Steve Veidor and Kendo Nagasaki. The sport remained a mainstay of British culture from the late then until World of Sport's cancellation in 1985.

History of British wrestling

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 Cornish-American ex-miner named Jack Carkeek, who would challenge audience members to last 10 minutes with him.

The development of wrestling within the UK brought legitimate Russian 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 title. This 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, both beloved babyfaces and hated heels, 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.

Between the wars

While amateur wrestling continued as a legitimate sport, grappling as a promotional business didn't catch on until the late 1920s when the success of the more worked aspects of professional wrestling in America, like gimmickry and submission holds, were introduced to British 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.

Under the British Wrestling Association banner, Oakley's promotion took off with the likes of 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.

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 prompted Admiral 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:

• Lightweight (154 pound limit)
• Welterweight (165)
• Middleweight (176)
• Heavy middleweight (187)
• Light heavyweight (198)
• Mid-heavyweight (209)
• Heavyweight

The existence of the committee was readily acknowledged by promoters who used its existence to counter any accusations of wrong doings within the business. However, it was the promoters themselves 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.

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 Yorkshire, 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.

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 regional forerunners to ITV) on 9 November 1955, featuring Francis St Clair Gregory (father of Tony St Clair) versus Mike Marino and Cliff Beaumont vs 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.

Other aspects were introduced after the 1950s: five minute rounds (three minutes for title matches), best of three falls matches, two public warnings for rule breaking before a disqualification, and no diving moves allowed on a grounded wrestler. Gimmick matches were also 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 British Wrestling Federation name was used for a rival championship, built around Heavyweight champion Bert Assirati who split away Joint Promotions while still champion and though Joint Promotions vacated the title, Assirati continued to claim it within BWF. BWF would later built itself around a new champion in Shirley Crabtree, a young body builder who won the title after it was vacated by Assirati who retired through injury in 1960. BWF disappeared, together with the young Shirley Crabtree in the early '60s. The opposition to Joint came from the young Australian promoter, Paul Lincoln.

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 Shirley, 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 15 years. Big Daddy was a larger-then-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. 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 else where for exposure mainly outside the UK as a whole. This led to a rise of New Japan and Calgary's junior-heavyweight divisions both having their roots in British wrestling of the time. One English promoter that benefited from this 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 Promotions, and began capitalizing on this disaffection taking many of Joint Promotions top champions.

Decline

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 newspapers 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, 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 of Wrestling shows on terrestrial tv saw the demise of Joint Promotions.

While All Star kept afloat on live shows mainly on the holiday camp circuit, British wrestling fell to the wayside as American counterpart WWF continued on Sky television. Though crumbling of larger promotions within the UK would seem to be a deathblow it allowed many smaller promotions to build upwards feeding of the popularity of American wrestling.

The 1990s were a low point for British wrestling, as the remembered Joint stars moved towards retirement, and the dreaded "Tribute" shows were started with Brit performers imitating World Wrestling Federation stars.

Post-modern era

Until 2004, British wrestling took a back seat to professional wrestling in North America as no British television company would broadcast local events. During this time, smaller wrestling companies expanded with evermore growing fan bases. The British style of wrestling is more traditional and technically oriented as opposed to the power moves displayed by their North American counterparts, as well as the high flying lucha libre moves performed by their Mexican counterparts. The slogan/philosophy of British wrestling is simply "We wrestle!"; many old style British wrestlers rarely have signature or finishing moves but instead employ a large array of technical holds and pins to win matches.

With the advent of Digital satellite television British wrestling has once again begun to make a resurgence, albeit with some American influence along with re-runs of the classic World Of Sport. This re-interest in wrestling has culminated in the production of the world's first wrestling channel known simply as The Wrestling Channel. The channel would later shift some of its focus onto Mixed martial arts, subsequently re-branding itself The Fight Network to reflect the wider scope of programming now available.

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.

As it stands, there has never been so many promoters working in British wrestling as there are at this time. Following long-time promoters such as John Freemantle, Scott Conway, Brian Dixon, and Ricky Knight are many "new school" promotions based around training schools, the most prominent being the Frontier Wrestling Alliance until its eventual demise. Other promotions such as 1 Pro Wrestling showcase British talent along foreign stars.

See also

• History of professional wrestling
• UK wrestling promotions

References

• Lister, John. "The History of British Wrestling". Pro Wrestling Press #6, (May 2002)
• House of Deception Golden Age 1911-1979: bibliography, photos, Lister article.
• "Catch - The Hold Not Taken", a documentary on the origins of catch-as-catch-can wrestling

External links

• BritanniaWrestling.co.uk
• BritishWrestling.co.uk
• Pro-Wrestling Title Histories: United Kingdom