Wrestling Heritage

By David Mantell

Wrestling Heritage welcomes memories, further information and corrections.

At the dawn of a new decade, three men were making All Star burn incandescent with violence – Kendo Nagasaki, Rollerball Rocco and the Mongolian Mauler. Kendo and Rocco had once been tag partners before falling out spectacularly in 1988. The Mauler, it seems, had been a fan of the team and desperately wanted to get them back together. Mauler started by forming a heel tag team with Rocco. After earning themselves the reputation of being as violent and destructive as the earlier team had been, Mauler took it upon himself to be peacemaker and get Kendo and Rocco reunited. And it worked, for just one triple tag match, before Rocco again fell out with Kendo and the feud began anew, with Mauler now taking the side of Kendo. As well as facing Kendo and Mauler in a great many tag matches, Kendo and Rocco also faced each other in many unusual speciality matches that mainstream British Wrestling would in the past not have touched such as chain and cage matches. On one occasion, Rocco cut a promo for the WrestleCall hotline in which his hyperactivity memorably reached new heights. “I’m all ready to take on Kendo … (deep breath and then scream all in one go) … AND I’M GONNA KILL HIM!!! Inevitably these matches ended with Kendo finding a new and inventive way to escape as the winner.
 
One particularly memorable night was on 17 July 1990 at the Fairfield Hall. The main event was a ladder match as far removed from the jolly disco ladder match Kendo had with Clive Myers in his TV return debut as it is possible to have. The night was significant for two reasons – firstly because Kendo’s ban from the Fairfield Hall had finally been rescinded after two years and secondly because the prize that night hanging from the lights above the ring, was the actual mask of Kendo’s that Rocco had walked off with on television two years earlier at the same venue in the incident that started the feud in the first place. Once the mask was bulldog clipped to the chains hanging from the overhead lighting of the Fairfield Hall, the two men rapidly descended into a brutal slugfest that left Rocco dripping with blood from being smashed into every hard item that could be found at ringside. Not to be deterred, Rocco fought his way back and came marching back to ringside from the doorway carrying the ladder with a crazed gleam staring though a crimson mask of his own that was no kind of hood. The ladder itself then became the main weapon of choice as both men hit each other about the head with it. In the end, Rocco got up to the top of the ladder and grabbed the mask, but as he did so, a street clothes clad Blondie Barrett (whom the fight report of a local Croydon paper described as resembling the Professor from Back To The Future) attacked the referee, knocking him down. As Rocco got down the ladder, Kendo blasted him with a bagful of ceremonial salt – now commonly in use as a weapon in the style of American Japanese heels such as Mr Fuji and Mr Saito. Kendo grabbed the mask off Rocco and ran off, finally reunited with his stolen property. The referee recovered just in time to see Kendo by the exit way holding the mask and award him the victory before doing a bunk himself. This left Rocco and an outraged South London Hellcrew filling up the space around the ring, getting into punch-ups with Nagasaki fan club members, all ready to riot at Rollerball’s command. Rocco got the microphone and screamed about how “Nagasaki knows who the real winner was” and that next time it would not just be Kendo’s mask that came off but his head too, still inside it.​

Rocco needed all the verbal firepower he could muster because Kendo, silent though he was, had a brand new weapon for generating heat. Sadly this year George Gillette finally passed away, having been badly ill throughout the time of Kendo’s comeback. In his place came a new spokesman, a burly London motormouth drumming tutor called Lloyd Ryan. Ryan’s first connection to Kendo had been back in the mid-1970s as the composer of Kendo’s theme in 1976, a minor hit instrumental which served, on and off, as a ring entry music for Kendo down the ages. Lloyd had been in Kendo’s entourage all the past three years and after George’s death it was he who inherited the microphone. Apart from the odd spangly jacket, there was none of the old Gorgeous George glitz about Lloyd; he was simply a big ferocious angry venomous toad of a man who could commit a total breach of the peace with just a few barks of his cockney growl down the “stick”. “I was disliked, really hated. George they just laughed at,” recalled Ryan in a mid-1990s interview.​

The fans at Kendo and Rocco matches weren’t the only ones going out of control in Croydon. The unlikely figure of Danny Collins snapped one night after being thrown out of the ring during a defence of his British Heavy Middleweight title against Richie Brooks. Dazed from a head first landing, Collins got back into the ring, attached the referee and wildly blazed away at Brooks with punches, earning himself a disqualification and a title loss and leaving Brooks as champion. “It is not the way I wanted to win the title, because I know I have the beating of Collins” admitted Brooks in a programme interview not long after, but he was nonetheless proud of his new belt and wanted to make Danny chase him. A recovered Danny was full of remorse and desperate to make amends for his behaviour by regaining the belt. And that he did, finally that autumn, but it was to be only the start of the Collins-Brooks feud which would rage on through the early 1990s with Brooks – “The Man Who Fights Fire With Fire” increasingly adopting a heelish outlook – ironic since it had all been triggered by Danny letting loose.​

When Danny wasn’t going berserk and losing his belt for a couple of months, he was out forming a quite unlikely alliance with British Ladies Champion Klondyke Kate. Kate herself was having a bit of a wild time – she spent several months with her title held up and the whole of Ladies wrestling in the UK suspended after she developed a killer new submission hold which crunched its way through several challengers, landing them in the hospital. I am still not sure to this day if this was legitimate or just storyline – certainly Kate did have the reputation backstage of being “an accident waiting to happen” and the multiple hospitalised opponents could have been just a case of this. While serving her suspension, Kate ventured over to Joint Promotions as a heel manager and finally got herself on ITV, albeit only in the Grampian region. A series of two TV tapings was carried out by Joint in Aberdeen in October, with a rather subdued Kent Walton back in the commentary spot. These shows were headlined, inevitably, by Big Daddy (with a T-shirt on under his leotard) who faced such opponents as Count Von Zuppi (Martin Warren), Mad Dog Ian Wilson, Kamikaze (not Ian Gilmour, a new heel Kamikaze) and The Destroyer in a rare stint in front of the cameras for Keith Myatt. Mistressmind behind this whole gang of (except for Wilson) masked men was a ferociously face painted Kate, often interfering in matches and getting body-checked and splashed herself. “You have to be prepared to be humiliated in this business” mused Kate some years later on the 1stopwrestling forum recalling this whole episode. The Scottish tapings were not without their attractions for the purists however – Collins beating promising newcomer Tony Stewart in a fine clean technical match for example. 

But what of this partnership between Danny Boy and Kate? This was as part of what was billed as the first ever mixed tag match in British wrestling history, although as some irate historians have pointed out, it was nothing of the sort – to which I can only plead with people not to shoot the messenger. First ever or not, it was certainly promoted as a British First as Danny and Katie took on the husband and wife team of Dave Fit Finlay and Princess Paula – and came away with the short straw. It wasn’t Finlay’s only big win that year as in February he also took the All Star British Heavyweight title – by now once again the undisputed title after Dalbir Singh renounced his claim. Danny and Finlay also took their feud to Reslo, with Finlay making up for the previous year’s title loss by narrowly winning a capture the flag chain match over Collins. Meanwhile, the European title finally came back to our shores as Pat Roach won the title and started a feud over the belt with Giant Haystacks which would run on through the decade. This feud was generally spread between Orig Williams’ Reslo show and Joint Promotions, with Roach quickly making a name for himself as the second man, after Daddy, that Haystacks was afraid to face. Daddy himself also put in an appearance on Reslo, teaming with nephew Scott Valentine to face yes another masked duo, Dau Dihiryn. More happily, there were plenty of classic clean matches on Reslo this year such as a magnificent Johnny Saint vs Kid McCoy World Lightweight title match. In fact this was a good coming of age year for young talent, as Doc Dean not only formed the highly successful mk1 version of the Liverpool Lads with Robbie Brookside this year, but also bagged himself Collins’s old British Welterweight title, taking it from Mal Sanders in November. Another promising youngster, Boz Berry, reached the final of a British Lightweight title tournament (McCoy having vacated the belt) only to lose to Steve Grey in the final at the Southampton Guildhall in October. Grey also beat Jim Breaks for the European title in Derby in March.
When Danny wasn’t going berserk and losing his belt for a couple of months, he was out forming a quite unlikely alliance with British Ladies Champion Klondyke Kate. Kate herself was having a bit of a wild time – she spent several months with her title held up and the whole of Ladies wrestling in the UK suspended after she developed a killer new submission hold which crunched its way through several challengers, landing them in the hospital. I am still not sure to this day if this was legitimate or just storyline – certainly Kate did have the reputation backstage of being “an accident waiting to happen” and the multiple hospitalised opponents could have been just a case of this. While serving her suspension, Kate ventured over to Joint Promotions as a heel manager and finally got herself on ITV, albeit only in the Grampian region. A series of two TV tapings was carried out by Joint in Aberdeen in October, with a rather subdued Kent Walton back in the commentary spot. These shows were headlined, inevitably, by Big Daddy (with a T-shirt on under his leotard) who faced such opponents as Count Von Zuppi (Martin Warren), Mad Dog Ian Wilson, Kamikaze (not Ian Gilmour, a new heel Kamikaze) and The Destroyer in a rare stint in front of the cameras for Keith Myatt. Mistressmind behind this whole gang of (except for Wilson) masked men was a ferociously face painted Kate, often interfering in matches and getting body-checked and splashed herself. “You have to be prepared to be humiliated in this business” mused Kate some years later on the 1stopwrestling forum recalling this whole episode. The Scottish tapings were not without their attractions for the purists however – Collins beating promising newcomer Tony Stewart in a fine clean technical match for example. 

But what of this partnership between Danny Boy and Kate? This was as part of what was billed as the first ever mixed tag match in British wrestling history, although as some irate historians have pointed out, it was nothing of the sort – to which I can only plead with people not to shoot the messenger. First ever or not, it was certainly promoted as a British First as Danny and Katie took on the husband and wife team of Dave Fit Finlay and Princess Paula – and came away with the short straw. It wasn’t Finlay’s only big win that year as in February he also took the All Star British Heavyweight title – by now once again the undisputed title after Dalbir Singh renounced his claim. Danny and Finlay also took their feud to Reslo, with Finlay making up for the previous year’s title loss by narrowly winning a capture the flag chain match over Collins. Meanwhile, the European title finally came back to our shores as Pat Roach won the title and started a feud over the belt with Giant Haystacks which would run on through the decade. This feud was generally spread between Orig Williams’ Reslo show and Joint Promotions, with Roach quickly making a name for himself as the second man, after Daddy, that Haystacks was afraid to face. Daddy himself also put in an appearance on Reslo, teaming with nephew Scott Valentine to face yes another masked duo, Dau Dihiryn. More happily, there were plenty of classic clean matches on Reslo this year such as a magnificent Johnny Saint vs Kid McCoy World Lightweight title match. In fact this was a good coming of age year for young talent, as Doc Dean not only formed the highly successful mk1 version of the Liverpool Lads with Robbie Brookside this year, but also bagged himself Collins’s old British Welterweight title, taking it from Mal Sanders in November. Another promising youngster, Boz Berry, reached the final of a British Lightweight title tournament (McCoy having vacated the belt) only to lose to Steve Grey in the final at the Southampton Guildhall in October. Grey also beat Jim Breaks for the European title in Derby in March.

When Daddy wasn’t appearing on Scottish or Welsh TV, he was contenting himself with such opponents as the masked Undertakers, Doom and Gloom or visiting American Bill Pearl (teaming with Rasputin as The Mighty Yankees) or with a “20 stone Polish monster Iron Tallin” who turned out to be none other than Cyanide Syd Cooper! While All Star burned brightly, Joint mostly trotted out the old formula of a roadshow revolving around one household name. Still, things could be worse – consider the sorry saga of Jackie Pallo who this year set up what was probably the very first New School/Americanised promotion – Wrestling around the World. Two shows had been taped the previous November for £80K but after spending the year shopping the pilots around to TV companies, Pallo and son were only able to make back £15 on their venture with a couple of regional ITV screenings. The “Americanised” wrestling “entertainment” and Pallo’s flaunting of breaching kayfabe around his product drew condemnation from both All Star and Joint, who utterly disassociated themselves from the product and threatened to blackball any talent who worked for Pallo. Actual fans of American wrestling not only had Sky this year but also the sudden appearance of WCW on late night ITV to keep them happy (I personally believe that if Saturday afternoon wrestling had continued, WCW would have replaced WWF in the American specials sometime around 1989.) On top of this, the Sky-affiliated Eurosport channel was showing matches from France and Germany giving British wrestlers yet more TV exposure including showing British fans just how popular Danny Collins was in France as he battled against such heels as The Superflys (Jimmy Ocean and Ricky Knight – who won the British Tag titles from King Ben and Kid McCoy this year) while giving the British another taste of the style of stars like Owen Hart and Bull Power aka Big Van Vader before they hit the US big time in the next couple of years. (Bull Power lost to Otto Wanz this year in the latter’s retirement match, before going on to beat Luc Rambo Poirier for the vacant title that November.)​

Kendo however remained absent from all this TV, his violent weapon laden blood-soaked brawls too big and scary for TV. He soon fell out with Mauler and faced him too – and Finlay, who had been feuding with Rocco, as well as Finlay’s old Riot Squad partner Skull Murphy with whom he had tagged on the McManus video. 1991 would see Kendo take on the biggest heel of them all for a world title claim – and if that sounds like Dynamite, then a legendary Kid of the British Wrestling world was heading home from WWF stardom to finally take his place at the top of the UK bill. 1991 was set to be an explosive year