By David Mantell
Wrestling Heritage welcomes memories, further information and corrections.
We might as well get the elephant in the room out of the way at the start; this was the year when Greg Dyke put his evil masterplan into full gear to take wrestling off ITV. Over in America, Vince McMahon had been working to repackage wrestling to a more respectable upmarket family audience since 1985. Back then, for several decades, most of mainstream American society considered pro wrestling to be hopelessly déclassé phony violent trash fit only for the dregs of society – blue-collar factory workers, bumpkin farmhands, trailer park trash, Southern “hicks” and unassimilated ethnic minorities (as well as senile old folk).
Any fan in the USA above that social stratum either adopted a pose of ironic fandom (i.e. claimed to watch it for a laugh) or else was a closet fan. In Britain, wrestling had been considered working class in a more positive, salt-of-the-earth kind of way. However in the mid-1980s ITV needed to get its money from advertising paid for by American company executives with an unreconstructed snobby hatred of all pro wrestling. As far as they were concerned ITV needed rebranding towards an audience with more spending power. It didn’t help that a new social class, the yuppies, emerging around this time, adopted an East Coast US version of affluence as their lifestyle, even building a knock-off Manhattan in Canary Wharf because central London wasn’t good enough for them.
The problem was that wrestling was a still popular, it always got good viewing figures and simply cancelling it would be impossible to publicly justify. It took three years of fiddling around with the timeslot and moving wrestling from late afternoon to lunchtime to cut the audience down to a size enough for Dyke to pull the plug when the end of 1988 contract renewal round came up, and he came dangerously close to having all his hard work undone – just weeks after the final ITV broadcast, Sky TV launched its regular coverage of the WWF and started a whole new wrestling boom.
Had the contracts been up for negotiation a year later or had Sky started up a year earlier in line with the launch of the WWF on major French and Italian cable TV stations it would have been impossible for Dyke to push the cancel button. If the WWF’s 1988 tour had included shows in London and Birmingham like its 1989 tour did, with wrestling fans flocking to the London Arena right in the heart of the yuppie Docklands and millions tuning into Sky – and probably a resultant up-shoot in the viewing figures for ITV – then pulling the plug on a booming sport would have become untenable.
As it was, All Star, by now at least the joint biggest UK promotion with Joint, was on a red hot tear with Kendo at the helm. We shall get back to Kendo’s wild, violent and controversial 1988 later, but first, a look at the opposition. With its status as dominant UK promotion being rapidly eclipsed, Joint continued using the only business model Max Crabtree really knew, with Big Daddy at the helm. When last we saw him, Daddy had destroyed the mystery of the Masked Spoiler within a couple of matches, unmasking him both times, the second time revealing him to be Drew McDonald. Early in the year, Daddy and Marty Jones easily squashed the face-painted judo jacketed rookie team of the Barbarians, Karl and Wolf Kramer. A decade later they would both bulk up to superheavyweight and Karl would be riding high as British Heavyweight champion.
At this point however they seemed like the most overmatched Daddy opponents since Rocco and Walsh in 1980, only without even the consolation of a weaker Daddy partner. With the red jacketed duo duly dispatched (to more sympathy than any other emotion from Kent Walton) an irate McDonald came running in the ring carrying a pair of scissors, demanding a hair vs hair match against Daddy. Hair cutting was a hot issue in wrestling at the time after Roddy Piper’s retirement match win over Adrian Adonis and the resulting new career of Brutus Beefcake as a Barber, so perhaps it was no surprise to see Joint do its own take-off of this angle.
In the event, Daddy and Drew fought accompanied by the same tag partners from their previous encounter, Kashmir Singh and Rasputin respectively. The match ended with Drew in the barbers’ chair, despite screaming protests from Monika, having tiny bits of his hair snipped off by a blonde lady hairdresser. How this was meant to render Drew bald in time for Christmas is anyone’s guess; he still had plenty of hair left when the cameras cut (and perhaps strode off in anger to do it all again in another town) but by the time Drew and Monika were next on television, the former Spoiler was divest of another layer of his head, even if its actual removal most likely was self-administered by Drew in the privacy of a bathroom. The match in question was a battle royal and something of a reunion of anti-Daddy forces, as Rasputin, the Spoiler’s fellow masked partner King Kendo and Giant Haystacks were all involved. Bald Drew ended up eliminated by Rasputin with the two partners having a war of words; somewhat ironic in view of what was to follow, as the last two men in the ring, Stax and Rasputin, acted out their own version of another WWF angle, the Bad News Brown/Bret Hart double cross at the end of the Wrestlemania IV battle royal. While the trophy was taken home by Stax, Rasputin did get a measure of revenge as, cheered by the fans, he got a DQ win over Haystacks not long after.
This did not impress in Daddy’s eyes, however, as having done with bald Drew and new partner Syd Cooper in a match where Daddy partnered Tom Thumb, the People’s Champion denounced Rasputin as “yellow” for having supposedly wimped out of his share of the head shaving, not to mention having not come back for the one last fall in the match which had seen the Spoiler unmasked. An irate Rasputin brought in Anaconda to help him prove himself against Daddy but the duo were humiliated in a rather messy match that Kent Walton denounced as “little to do with wrestling” and, sat at home in Wigan with a film crew (making the First Tuesday documentary on Riley’s Gym “The Wigan Hold” screened in early 1989). Snakepit legends Tommy “Jack Dempsey” Moore and Ernie Riley snorted with derision at the lack of wrestling holds and what Assirati would have done with Daddy. Big D’s other line of business was his new feud with the stable of Tony “the Brain/the Weasel” (yes another WWF poach) Francis. When he wasn’t inadvertently giving away his identity as the masked El Diablo (by wearing both mask and lounge suit together when in McDonald and Rasputin’s corner alongside Monika for the hair match) Tony was busy putting on a kufiyah and calling himself Sheik Ayatollah (after Fred Blassie in 1983) to lead the triple team of Task Force Three (Ian Wilkie, Syd Cooper and Bulldog Brown) to defeat against Daddy in matches around the country. This included the final ITV Big Daddy tag (where they all walked out) and for the benefit of a BBC News crew who turned up to crow over the supposed “downfall” of wrestling, an appearance also notable for Max Crabtree harping on about the mention of wrestling in Irving Berlin’s “There’s No Business Like Show business.”
Further down the bill on Joint Shows, however, 1988 was a happier year for the purists. One of the standout events of the year was the Golden Grappler trophy tournament which ended in a final between father and son King Ben and Kid Mc Coy (or Philip and Mark Boothman to the Inland Revenue). In America, a match between father and son would have been accompanied by a long prior storyline about family falling out and strife. But this was Britain – father and son had a classic technical match which the father won (the son being the holder from 1987). This was a more satisfying finish for the TV audiences than the 1988 Grand Prix Belt, stuck at the semi-final stage by the end of TV with Greg Valentine still awaiting a finalist opponent from either Pete Roberts or Terry Rudge. Another treat for fans of scientific wrestling was the visit to Britain of legendary French star Marc Mercier, later to become the business partner and heir to Roger Delaporte (the French Max Crabtree) as co-owner and eventual outright owner of the FFCP (back in the day the French Joint Promotions, nowadays pretty much the French Premier Promotions.)
In 1988, Mercier was a top technical star and put in an impressive effort before going down 2-1 to Marty Jones. Mercier lost his shot at the title but gained a whole new following on this side of the Channel as the initial booing handful of xenophobes in the crowd quickly changed their tune as they saw Marc’s skill. Another high profile defence saw Jones beat an ageing Colin Joynson in a clean match that was a million miles removed from their first TV bout, Jones’ second ever TV match in the 1972 tag confrontation between the doggish Dangermen and the youthful Hornets.
However, this was very much All Star’s year and they too had their share of skilled matches to underlay the violence of the top of the bill Kendo matches. Johnny Saint put up a tough performance before going down to the much heavier Fit Finlay in Croydon and later that year would regain his World Lightweight title from Mike Flash Jordan after a heated series of matches, the latter getting rather into the spirit by turning heel as part of his feud. Saint also made the finals of a tournament for the straight-to video taping of a Croydon show as the Mick McManus World of wrestling – hosted by McManus and a young gold jacketed MC called Lee Bamber who still works as an MC and referee for All Star to this day.
Finlay also had a tough time from Danny Collins that year, going to a double knockout in one TV match while needing to be helped to victory by Princess Paula at Croydon on the Mick McManus tape. Soon Collins – already outgrowing his British/European Welterweight double crown – would be a real threat to Finlay’s British Heavy Middleweight championship as the following year would show. Danny also became a threat to the World champion in the division – Rollerball Rocco, giving him a hard time in a match in Cheshire before going down to submission after tangling his leg in the ropes.
This show was also notable for former British Ladies champion Mitzi Mueller serving as MC, making her ITV debut a year after her retirement from competition. Back in 1984 on a Radio 4 documentary, her daughter Letitia had talked about “following in my mum’s footsteps” and in this regard Mitzi’s appearance as MC was important as it set the pattern for her daughter’s long-time career as hostess with the mostess at All Star shows in the 21st century. Mitzi’s old British Ladies belt, meanwhile would get a major boost when the opponents from her final match, Klondyke Kate and Nicki Monroe (now a clean wrestler a million miles removed from her Soho Sex Kitten gimmick) faced each other for the vacant belt, with Kate taking home the title and Nicki a serious injury that would put her out of wrestling for a good few years. The match was the only time the ladies’ title changed hands on national TV – not on ITV of course, but on a BBC2 documentary, Raging Belles, documenting both womens’ lives away from the ring (Nicki the care worker, Kate the parent) leading up to the big match and the championship win. The TV exposure was enough to secure Kate a position as a star attraction on All Star shows for years – even decades – to come.
The star of All Star’s year however was very much Kendo Nagasaki. Having established himself as lead heel the previous year, this year Naggers triggered off two crucial storylines which would run into the 1990s. The first was the collapse into a feud of his tag team with Rocco. A year after they beat Clive Myers and Fuji Yamada, Myers was back with a new tag partner, the giant Dave Taylor, scion of the Taylor wrestling family that included Uncle Eric, long-time undefeated British Heavy Middleweight champion. The future CWA dancing good guy and further future WCW squire had already teamed with brother Steve the previous year to get a DQ victory over Bully Boy Muir and Mighty Chang (the only TV appearance in the long career of veteran heel Crusher Mason).
Now a year later with no falls scored in the Croydon match, Taylor had Nagasaki’s mask half off after moving out of the way of Rocco’s flying knee drop and letting Kendo have it. Keen to make amends, Rocco first tried to pull Taylor off, then tried to pull the mask back down, only for a blow from Taylor to floor him, taking the mask off in his hands! AS the good guys celebrated and Rocco stared at the mask in shock, Kendo raced back to the dressing room and returned in his black mask. Things could have carried on, but an enraged George jumped into the ring and denounced Rocco as a traitor and a “scoundrel” who was now “top of Nagasaki’s hit list,” leading to Kendo and Rocco being disqualified for failing to cooperate. (“Face it Nagasaki, it’s your first loss” taunted Taylor incorrectly “and it won’t be your last.”) An enraged Rocco responded “Never mind I’m the top of your hit list… You’re the top of MY hit list! Hey… Nagasaki! This was an accident, but next time it won’t be! I’m going to take this home as a souvenir! And every time I meet you I’m going to add another one to my collection.”
So was born the ultra-violent Kendo vs Rocco feud that would take in cage matches, ladder matches, building brawls, spilled blood by the ocean and some of the deepest darkest heat ever seen in British rings, even extending to punch-ups between regular fans and Kendo Fan Club members. TV audiences did get to see one toned down fragment of the violence and chaos as Kendo and partner (and future WWF tribute show promoter) Psycho Shane Stevens faced Rocco and the man Kendo won his World title from, Wayne Bridges, with Kendo’s team going down after Stevens took two falls. (Bridges around this time would regain the title from Kendo on a reverse decision DQ after Stevens interfered to help Kendo win.
According to disputed accounts, Nagasaki also won and lost Tony St Clair’s version of the British Heavyweight title – not recognised by ITV who instead saw Joint claimant Dalbir Singh as the rightful champion. In some ways it is a pity that Kendo was not kept on as a defending world champion taking on challengers, which would have added a lot of extra spice to the feuds in the years ahead.) However this match was diluted compared to the notorious brawl at Croydon between Kendo and Rocco that spilled out of the ring, up and down the stairwells and ultimately out of the door. In theory, the two should last have been seen brawling off into the sunset, but unfortunately fans followed the pair out into the corridor, cutting off their access to the locker room and forcing them to brawl off down the corridor towards the upper lobby of the Fairfield Hall. The venue staff would not put up with this and finally intervened to end proceedings – but not without Kendo walloping a member of staff and earning himself a ban from Croydon not lifted until July 1990. Croydon had already suffered its share of Nagasaki-related crowd chaos – the Kendo and Skull Murphy vs Pete Roberts and Steve Adonis main event of the Mick McManus tape had seen angry crowd scenes including a lady throwing the timekeeper’s bell into the ring (a shot improbably included in the video title sequence.)
South London was not to be deprived of its Nagasaki chaos however as the nearby Lewisham Theatre Catford was to be the home of many Kendo-Rocco wars and many accompanying crowd riots to the point where the venue has gained a notorious legend in the wrestling business as a trouble spot.
The other big storyline of the 1990s set up on ITV by All Star involved one of the hardiest perennials in the company’s history. Robbie Brookside had journeyed from promising youngster to star of classic scientific matches against Johnny Saint and Chic Cullen in 1987. In 1988 he had formed a tag team, the Golden Boys with fellow Blackpool Pleasure Beach carny shooter Steve Regal. The duo already held a classic clean tag match draw against Danny and Pete Collins and a win over the Road Warriors (Dave Duran and Jim Monroe, at the time just a minor name rip-off, but one which would give birth to one of the most successful tribute acts of the 1990s.) As part of All Star’s final TV taping, they would face the “dream team” of Kendo Nagasaki and Blondie Barrett (who would later trade the British Welterweight title with Brookside’s Liverpool Lads partner Doc Dean, who made his debut on TV this year against Steve Prince, the man who ended his second reign in 1993, after another promising youngster Spinner McKenzie refused to appear on TV.) Kendo and Barrett, incidentally, would go on to become long running tag partners throughout Nagasaki’s run in All Star and would eventually reunite for LDN in 2008.
In Bedworth, however, they found themselves in some trouble against the Golden Boys – Barrett eliminated from the contest by an equalising KO from Brookside’s flying kneedrop and then Kendo – dressed in the same light blue as his 1975 Solihull win over Big Daddy – found himself receiving the same treatment. Like Daddy on that past occasion, Brookside went for the mask and got it off successfully, but unlike 12 years earlier, Kendo responded not with a series of chops and a flying tackle for the pin but with a powerful hypnotic glare. The last time Kendo had done this on TV in 1978 he had frozen Rex Strong to be a standing target for a flying tackle. This time he went further, compelling Brookside to seemingly turn on Regal, dragging him into the ring and bashing him in the head, setting him up for the winning Kamikaze crash.
At first Regal thought that Brookside was ripping off another US angle of that year – Barry Windham’s heel turn on Lex Luger to join the Four Horsemen. But Robbie protested his innocence – “Hey Referee – that man’s just done something to me!” and George confirmed this by saying that Brookside should not “meddle in the mysterious… There’s an awful lot more to Nagasaki than meets his eye!” Sceptics of British wrestling have had a lot of fun jeering at this angle – it ended up in a book of the 50 weirdest matches ever – but the truth is that it was an angle that would be repeated over and over again, mostly with Brookside, in an astonishing number of different creative ways, over the next few years. On some occasions, zombie Brookside would even find himself tag partnering Kendo with his hair draping down over his face like a triffid.
So that was the year of Kendo Nagasaki – loved by his fans, but the most hated wrestler in the sport as far as all other fans were concerned. His TV appearances were red hot and set the fires that would burn over the next five years as new twists and turns and shocks were added to the controversy. His ringside table and bell antics in the Croydon match would be just the start of the violence he would generate in matches against Rocco, Brookside and others – violence that would have been too hot to handle for the now cancelled small screen but which burned live venues down across the UK for the next half decade.
There was one man, however, who would take that violence a step further, a huge man with a top-notch, a flagpole and a pair of scary “alien baby” contact lenses from the US state of Mongolia, who would rival even the mighty Kendo for chaos and heat. Never mind venue staff, this man would get the police involved – British wrestling got ready to meet The Mongolian Mauler!
Rasit Huseyin Continues
1988- the final year of ITV Wrestling. Notable events included for All Star Promotions Nagasaki and Rocco falling out at Croydon, and then eventually facing each other in a tag match.
Mike Flash Jordan holding on to his World Lightweight Title, by defeating Johnny Saint by a technical knockout, but angering the fans by taunting Saint at the end of the bout about who was the Champion. Saint soon after retained the title. Not on TV, but Wayne Bridges also retained his World Heavyweight Title, defeating Kendo Nagasaki by disqualification at Cheltenham, also untelevised was Clive Myers beating Keith Haward at Croydon for the European Middleweight title.
Rollerball Rocco and Marty Jones faced each other for the first time on TV for seven years, for me it was the last truly great TV bout as both men showed us what we had missed for years. The result ended in a double disqualification, and unfortunately a televised re-match didn’t happen.
In September, The Mick McManus World of Wrestling was recorded at Croydon, with Fit Finlay beating Danny Collins controversially, a 4 man KO tournament between Steve Grey, Mal Sanders, Johnny Saint and Clive Myers. Grey beat Sanders, and Saint edged out Myers by a points decision. The final between Grey and Saint ended in a no-contest, with referee Mal Mason getting injured by falling out of the ring. In the final bout Kendo Nagasaki and Skull Murphy beating Steve Adonis and Pete Roberts, Nagasaki and Murphy almost causing a riot with their antics.
Less then 6 months later though, they fell out after losing to Tony St Clair and Dave Taylor at Hastings I think. And in the last All Star show Nagasaki teamed up with Blondie Barratt in a long standing tag partnership, beating Rob Brookside and Steve Regal, with Nagasaki using ‘hypnosis’ on Brookside to get him to turn on his tag partner.
Brian Maxine also returned after a 7 year absence, beating Lucky Gordon by a knockout, and Marty Jones and Steve Taylor beat Skull Murphy and Johnny South by a disqualification verdict.
For Dale Martin Promotions , the Golden Grappler Trophy heats were started off at Burnley, Richie Brooks beating Ian McGregor, Kid McCoy beating Blackjack Mulligan, King Ben beating the Little Prince Mohammed Alam on a points decision, and then Lucky Gordon beating Steve Fury in the quarter finals. In the semi finals Kid McCoy v Richie Brooks ended in a double KO, and the referee awarded McCoy the match on a points decision. King Ben beat Lucky Gordon by a KO to set up a father v son final, which won by the father Ben.
Mighty John Quinn, after eight years, returned to Dale Martin Promotions to face Steve Casey, twice. The first bout ended a dull draw, but the second was an enthralling, fractious, ill-tempered match which ended in a double disqualification.
Marty Jones twice defended his belt successfully, against Colin Joynson at Burnley and then against Frenchman Marc Mericer at Walthamstow.
In the Grand Prix Belt heats, Alan Kilby beat Steve Logan by a technical knockout, Ian McGregor beat Barry Douglas on a points verdict, Skull Murphy beat John Elijah, Richie Brooks beat Chris Cougar, Greg Valentine beat Mel Stuart, Terry Rudge beat Mohammed Afzal on points. Pete Roberts started his defence of the title by defeating Mal Sanders, despite being on the wrong end of much of the bout, and Mr X (Pete Ross) beat Johnny Kidd, by a knockout, controversially using a sleeper hold. In the quarter finals at Dartford, Ian McGregor avenged his Golden Grappler trophy defeat to Richie Brooks by defeating the popular West Countryman, but angered the crowd with his arrogance throughout the match. Terry Rudge was due to meet Alan Kilby, but Kilby was unable to appear and Rudge went through on a walkover, and faced Bully Boy Muir instead. Greg Valentine beat Mr X by a knockout, and in the last of the quarter finals, Pete Roberts beat Skull Murphy by a disqualification, a bizarre decision, the referee initially allowing Murphy to put on his famous gator submission, but then disallowing the submission and disqualifying Murphy. In the semi-finals at Bridlington Roberts faced Rudge in a bout so evenly matched the referee couldn’t separate them on a points decision. Greg Valentine disposed of Ian McGregor, McGregor again resorting to tactics which annoyed the crowd in his last bout, but Valentine won the match by a knockout. And that’s where the tournament ended, Valentine being the first finalist but we will never know who the other finalist was. Terry Rudge or Pete Roberts?
Clive Myers beat Mal Sanders by a disqualification in an exciting bout at the same venue. And the last ever bill on ITV was broadcast at the Watersmeet theatre, Rickmansworth.
In truth it was a poor bill, like many of the televised bills that year, and the last ever bout was between Bomber Pat Roach and Caswell Martin, Roach winning the bout 2-1, and then making an emotional, gut wrenching speech about the end wrestling on ITV.
Quite a few times that year, no wrestling was shown, replaced by athletics, hockey and one or two other things.
Wrestling was axed despite viewing figures of around 6 million people, and what did they replace wrestling with?
You’ve got it, repeats of Knight Rider, Street Hawk, The A Team and Chips.
I bet they pulled in the ratings (not)!
Wrestling Heritage 