A Year of Wrestling 1973

Wrestling Heritage welcomes memories, further information and corrections.

Edward Heath’s Britain joined the Common Market at the start of the year and wrestling was quick to celebrate the event as you can read in Wrestling Leads the Way. The three continentals involved, Frank Dhondt, Tino Salvadore, and Jacky Rickard, went on to face Street, Maxine and Kellett respectively at The Royal Albert Hall. In contrast with their televised successes, all were defeated by the bigger home names in London.

The following month in Kensington, Jackie Pallo, fresh from his big victory over Mick McManus in December, challenged for the European Middleweight title – with an inconclusive outcome. A return bout was set up for the May spectacular with the European Middleweight title once again at stake, and this time Mr TV was decisively unsuccessful, losing by a knockout.

But these were the dark 1973 days of skyrocketing fuel prices, and wrestling fans were most affected by Power Cuts and the three-day working week at the end of the year. We hoped Saturdays at 4pm would not be in jeopardy, and we feared cancellations at our local halls.

Meanwhile, the Vietnam War ended, the Cod War began and the Watergate Affair flared up. It was open season for hi-jackers with a number of spectacular diversions and numerous deaths and miraculous escapes. There was a new King in Sweden, but not everyone wanted royalty. Captain Mark Phillips married Princess Anne and remained plain Captain. The Greeks got rid of their king altogether, but had had two different presidents by the year’s end.

The world population hit 4 billion in 1973, the Bosphorus Bridge opened to link Europe with Asia and facilitate European sight-seeing and even migration, whilst in October Her Majesty the Queen opened Sydney Opera House.

In tennis, Billie-Jean King played Bobby Riggs in Las Vegas amidst bally-hoo lifted straight from the realms of professional wrestling.

In the amateur wrestling ranks, 19 year old Howard Ansell became National Junior Champion. This was the son of pre-war great, Norman the Butcher, profiled in the A-Z section. Trained in part by Clayton Thomson, Howard took the ring name Gold Star Lee Bronson and was a regular on the heavyweight scene for several years of the decade and featured in Billy Robinson’s final tv appearance as well as the only handshake ever witnessed with Kendo Nagasaki. It may be the case that the late seventies scene developed too sensationally and too fast for this classically trained wrestler, and he disappeared from the business without ever fulfilling the potential that had been widely predicted.

Billy Two Rivers was back on the British warpath, but not all wrestling enthusiasts were as keen as the promoters would have had us believe. One sceptic was stung into indignant letter-writing, centre, which appeared in a Royal Albert Hall programme – but was this just sour grapes after the promoter had refused requests for posters ….?

We learnt more about the promoters’ perceptions of infallibility when, in another Scottish surprise, Two Rivers defeated Kendo Nagasaki. In the opinion of Wrestling Heritage, this just showed how much the promoters were out of touch with contemporary opinion. Johnny War Eagle would go on to be, objectively, a far greater visiting Red Indian than Two Rivers ever was or had been.

At a general level, and at a level echoing our comments in our editorial Sport or Spectacle, we reiterate that the competitive element of professional wrestling was absolutely vibrant. Delicately bruised egos such as Two Rivers’ would not lie down.

We at Wrestling Heritage continue to strive to determine how much the promoters were involved in deciding match outcomes, and what pecking order was in existence to have the final word. Johnny Kwango appeared alongside Paul Luty in the subsequently controversial 1973 television comedy Love Thy Neighbour which then led to his stage appearance in Peter Pan with Dave Allen and Maggie Smith, whilst Jackie Pallo shared billing in another pantomime with Lionel Blair in Goldilocks. Their fellow veteran thespians Dennis Price and Noel Cowerd both passed away.

Love Thy Neighbour’s leading star, Jack Smethurst, was featured on the top-rating tv show of the day, This is Your Life. Other stars profiled in 1973 included Jack Charlton, Shirley Bassey, Larry Grayson, Willie Carson, Dudley Moore, Spike Milligan and doing a great job raising the profile of the wrestling industry in April, Mr TV himself, Jackie Pallo.

Yorkshire’s Gil Singh was on the up after his début the year before, and he scored a rare success over Shirley Crabtree in Scotland. Alan Garfield virtually took up residence north of the border for some unclear reason, but had his explosive double disqualification against the Halifax villain on a trip south to Hull – their first match-up for 15 years. These were the final appearances of Alan Garfield in Joint Promotions rings and the quality of his work was an irrefutable justification that age and guile could amply compensate for youth and agility in professional wrestling.

During the summer, one of wrestling’s greatest mysteries was finally resolved with the following announcement in wrestling programmes: “So many people write and ask us is it ‘Viedor’ or ‘Veidor?’ that we feel we should settle the matter once and for all. It’s VIEDOR … and that’s on no less authority than Steve himself.”

The Covermen of Wrestling destigmatized autograph hunting though the 40np. price was a hefty outlay for what was a collection of the covers of the defunct Wrestler magazine. But it was good to see Johnny Kincaid making the cover, albeit rather groggily. Northerners were treated to their first glimpse of John Elijah in 1973, but Southerners were denied any sighting of the intriguing Heritage favourites, The Undertakers, who claimed many notable tag scalps in 1973. Kentish Man Mel Stuart appeared from an uncertain past on Joint Promotions bills and went on to be a versatile and popular villain for the following decade.

Man of Kent Romany Riley made his rapid improvement in 1973 and went on to feature in some of the most exciting bouts over the next few years. Read about his development at A Romany Trilogy.

Most surprising upturn of the year was the re-growth of Brian Maxine’s hair, and he even resorted to wearing various items of ring headgear to keep it in place. 1973 was an extremely quiet year for the championship scene, the only noteworthy event being Andy Robin defeating Jock Cameron to claim the vacant Scottish Heavyweight title, thereby underscoring the disappearance, once again unheralded, of Wild Ian Campbell. Campbell featured alongside Edward Woodward as Oak in the screen’s cult classic of the year, The Wicker Man.

Albert Wall was a British Heavyweight champion who wrestled only a few times a month, and he suffered two surprising losses to Pat Roach this year. Maybe this championship quietness was noteworthy in itself. As ever at Wrestling Heritage, we find ourselves sniffing around for causes and consequences. In the first instance, with no “The Wrestler” magazine to report title activity, the promoters slouched back into complacency, happy to promote bills for immediate profit without nurturing the long-term good of the industry. Then again, we had noted movement on the promotional front late in 1972 and the formation of Dale Martin Metropolitan. Maybe some settling in period had been agreed upon. Whatever the circumstances, this absence of championship activity was a worrying downturn.

Andy Robin remained concerned exclusively and repugnantly with his own invincibility and took no risks on a rare trip to England when defeating Tug Holton on a Blackburn tv show.

An unknown and unmasked Eddie Hammil was having his first professional bouts, usually losing to Ian Gilmour. If you can’t understand the significance of that, read on to 1974. Meanwhile minor masked men had their runs in the guises of the Mad Axeman, who could really create some heat, and the Black Angel, a northern-based wrestler who did make one brief tour to the south, getting as far as Eastbourne, left. In our 1947 Year of Wrestling we had considered the original Black Angel. This seventies Angel was eventually unmasked in Scotland by Les Kellett and we’ll keep the mystery alive by letting you trawl the A-Z section for his identity!

Other Northerners making an impact in the south were the Broughton Rangers, whilst Sean Regan, Billy Robinson, Geoff Portz and Mal Kirk continued long American tours. A personal view is that the name Killer Kirk used on that tour was better than the other names chosen for him in Britain.

In a mouth-watering tag tournament in Nottingham, the Pallos, the Royals and McManus & Logan all came unstuck, with the victors being Masambula & Les Kellett. The September Nottingham spectacular then slumped to a new low with such poor planning as to have in the three main events two Double Disqualifications and one No Contest. Why oh why were so many big names so precious about not being beaten by falls … and how were they entitled to wield such authority?

Later in the year, Kellett enjoyed further tag success alongside ever-popular “Squire of Eltham” Charlie Fisher, complete with bus pass. The Hells Angels didn’t mind losing – they were a superb spectacle every time regardless of result.

Kendo Nagasaki and George E Gillette were back in British rings in 1973. They had arrived in Canada waving the Union flag, and returned fluttering the Maple leaf. Fans who had gone along with the Samurai Sword Bearer imagery for the previous 8 years, now openly gave up all hope of seeing a red disc on a white background featuring in future ring entrances.

As “mere” fans, we return with a belated sting in our comments 36 years after these 1973 events. 1973 could, qualitatively, have been described as the absolute high point of British professional wrestling. Just look at the top-of-the-bill names that regularly graced the ring throughout the year: Jackie Pallo, Gwyn Davies, Les Kellett, Masambula, Alan Garfield, Mick McManus, Ricki Starr, the Hells Angels, The Borg Twins, Steve Logan, Billy Two Rivers, The Royals, Kendo Nagasaki, Albert Wall, Shirley Crabtree.

Notably absent from this list, however, is any sign of visiting international heavyweight talent, without which scarcely a year had passed since the Nurenburg Trials. Furthermore, we have seen just how very very competitive the supposedly uncompetitive sport of professional really was, with ageing veterans insisting on remaining undefeated, even at the expense of creating an embarrassing trail of inconclusive and unsatisfactory results.

Add to that the lack of championship activity mentioned earlier.

Unfortunately, such promotional neglect meant that the appetizing list above was distributed in sporadic and meaningless bills. There is no question that manoeuvring on the promotional front was afoot, but when curious 21st century fans want to wonder why British wrestling lost its foothold in society, look back no further than this sad 1973 depiction of the dismantling of years of dedicated hard work.