By David Mantell
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Since the end of ITV coverage, All Star had been undergoing a major hot period. 1993 was the final year of that hot period, mainly on account of the retirement by the end of the year of All Star’s top star, Kendo Nagasaki, but he would not be going out without several considerable bangs. At the end of the previous year, Kendo had found himself in a feud with the superheavyweight heel team of the moment, Giant Haystacks and Scrubber Daly (or the UK Earthquake as he increasingly called himself when working for Brian Dixon). Astonishingly, the cavalry would arrive in the shape of a man best known worldwide at that point for being a lovable cuddly white rapper who liked to lead crowds in the chant of “YO BABY YO BABY YO” Paul Neu had started 1992 still with his cushy job as PN News still intact, and in fact some parts of the UK media at the time of the WCW Roar Power tour had incorrectly picked him and Johnny B Badd up as being the two top stars of WCW! (To be fair, News did get two main event shots at WCW World Champion Lex Luger, on night one of the London Olympia residency and at the Sheffield show.)
It was all a far cry from his bad old days as Cannonball Grizzly, mowhawked scourge of the German/Austrian summer tournaments in 1989-1990. However the writing was on the wall after he injured and forced into retirement enhancement talent Dave Sheldon in late 1991 with his Broken Record finisher, and by Spring 1992, the master of the Broken Record had a broken contract. Away from WCW, Neu slipped back into his bad old ways and by the new year of 1993, he had arrived in Britain as the monstrous American Avalanche. (An interesting piece of irony, “Avalance” would later be the ring name in WCW of John Tenta, from whom Scrubber Daly had “borrowed” the Earthquake handle.) The Two Ton American Avalanche became Kendo’s secret weapon in his fight against Stax and Daly (although they could be a secret weapon against each other, given how one night Daly, put on as an emergency opponent for Giant Haystacks, actually managed to out-heel the big monster after bashing him with his steel horseshoe.) Neu’s career in the UK as the American Avalanche would prove to be a long one – as late as 2009, shaven headed and if anything heavier than ever, Neu was in a tag team of Brit-hating North American heels with former WWFer Joe E Legend that was the pride of the World Riot Squad, facing patriotic Best of British opponents in main events for All star.
Back in 1993 however, Kendo Nagasaki found himself with a whole new feud on his hands when he fell out with his manager and longitme devotee Lloyd Ryan. The two halves went to war, with Kendo quickly promoting another member of his entourage, Lawrence “Loz” Stevens as his new spokesman. Lloyd, meanwhile had to find himself a new Kendo. Luckily for him, longtime Naggers impersonator Bill “King Kendo” Clarke had been getting occasional dates for All Star since the previous year, so the two easily hooked up. Neither party particularly turned blue-eye – Kendo was still very much his old self when he teamed with Dave “Animal Legend Of Doom” Duran (also very much a heel despite the increasing blue eye popularity of his old team-mate “Legend Of Doom” Johnny South) to face the team of Johnny Saint and Micky Gold, in a match caught on camcorder and up on Youtube from this year. Saint versus Nagasaki had been something of a dream catchweight match for many, so it is rather a pity that Kendo did not get in some of the technical work seen in Round 1 of many of his 1970s fight when in the ring with Saint – Duran did get technical with Saint and actually elevates his standing as a technical wrestler in his own right in his exchanges with the legendary Lightweight (Who in June managed to take back his World Lightweight title from Steve Grey and would go on to be the final champion to date.) KK and Lloyd, meanwhile went about being just as heelish as Nagasaki and Lloyd had ever been, when they weren’t lobbying for their big Battle of the Kendos part II.
In the event, both Kendos ended their feud in a most anti-climatic way, by retiring just a few months apart. Still, as we shall see next year, Lloyd found himself yet another Kendo with whom to carry on his wicked ways. As for All Star boss Brian Dixon, he could at least console himself that his long-time rivals Ring Wrestling Stars (ex Joint Promotions) had also lost their top star this year. Despite his deteriorating health resulting from his stroke several years earlier, Big Daddy had carried on as the main event for RWS, with trainers instead of boots and a t-shirt under his leotard. In October, shortly before the end, he would make one more TV appearance when RWs bagged itself another couple of nights TV tapings for Grampian TV, which would see Daddy team with Tony Stewart to defeat Undertakers Doom and Gloom (father and son Dave Adams and Johnny Angel). This was also the match-up for Daddy’s final match on December 27th in Hindley, around which time Big Shirley was finally advised by doctors to quit. Meanwhile, Dixon had more reasons to be cheerful in that one man who was in no position financially to heed the call of his breaking body and quit was The Dynamite Kid, who this year swallowed his pride and came back to Dixon for less money. Dynamite was still working matches with Dave Fit Finlay, as well as working tag matches with both Legends of Doom, often as a headline blue-eye team with South, but sometimes as a team with an unusually well-behaved Duran, coming to the ring to the tune of The Final Countdown for matches against the Leeds Boys(“Tarzan Boy” Darren Ward and Richie Brooks also behaving himself when there was no Danny Collins around) or else Liverpool Lads Doc Dean and Robbie Brookside. This was not a good year for the Liverpool Lads incidentally. On the one hand, Doc Dean lost his British Welterweight title again, this time to the man to whom his partner gave a haircut the previous year, “Soldier Boy” Steve Prince. On the other, the Lads lost their British Tag Team titles that February in Norwich to the self same Prince and Vic Powers – and the title change received TV coverage from that by now seasoned broadcaster of top championship wrestling action BBC2.
“Robbie Brookside’s Video Diary” in filming all this year as part of the Video Diaries series in which all sorts of high and low folk (including, by the way, the kid brother of a classmate of mine at school) would take a camcorder around and make an hour long snapshot documentary of their lives. The Norwich title defeat proved to be quite the snapshot to kick off Robbie’s Diary. It’s not clear if it was a screw-up or the booked finish but the match came to a sudden conclusion when Dean and Brooskide accidentally clashed heads, knocking out Robbie cold and apparently leaving Doc Dean requiring stitches to the forehead (cynics may point out that this is the usual place to which wrestlers apply the blade.) Either way, they didn’t look happy bunnies backstage, (where, in time honoured British tradition, blue-eyes and heels were expected to co-exist in the same dressing rooms in ways which would give some old time US territorial promoters kittens). They received a dressing down from American Avalanche who told them not to be such babies (perhaps Kendo had been hypnotising Robbie again and got him to befriend Naggers’ new tag partner?). Prince and Powers, the Task Force, did not last long with their surprise tag title reign as they would soon lose the belts, again in Norwich to the Liverpool Lads’ arch enemies, the Superflies Jimmy Ocean and Ricky Knight. (This was a good year for Ocean as he also regained his British Lightweight title from Steve Grey. Not such a good year for the South Londoner as he went from triple champion to triple ex-champion as he also lost back to Mal Sanders the European Middleweight title he had won from him the previous year.) The Video Diary also shows as Robbie and Doc in a match against the Superflies where they go down by pinfall and afterwards in a backstage angle that would make Monday Night Raw proud, the Lads go to confront the Flies in their dressing room only to be cussed out by an angry Knight, who says he has had enough of Brookside’s “lip”.
This was, incidentally a pivotal year for Knight and his family as this was the year when he and his wife and valet Sweet Saraya Knight set up his own Americanised promotion, World Association of Wrestling (WAW) – ironically the same initials as Jackie Pallo’s disastrous Wrestling Around the World project three years earlier. Unlike other New school promotions, WAW has stayed the course of time – but then again, unlike most of them, WAW has largely made its peace with Old School British Wrestling to the point that by the early Noughties it was practically viewed as an Old School promotion. WAW was originally founded because Knight felt that the scene lacked the “action and pizazz” of American wrestling. (Some years ago I picked him up on how this could honestly be said about All Star’s golden era under Kendo, still just going at this point if in its final months. He replied that yes, things were still going strong but he could see the writing on the wall about how things would be “later”.) Still, WAW would prove to be a good addition to the British scene offering plenty of work for Traditional British talent. One of their early achievements was taking over the Norwich Corn Exchange in 1997 from All Star (under whom local audiences had dwindled to under a hundred) and rebuilding it as a hot venue – hot enough for the Norwich scene to continue doing thriving business at other venues after the Corn Exchange was demolished in 2001. WAW is now a thriving national promotion with a training school, the Academy, and the Knight family have continued to produce wrestling talent in the form of sons Roy and Zak who often team as the UK Hooligans (as heels in All Star, as blue eyes in WAW) and daughter Saraya Jade aka Britanni, later to find American success as Paige in WWE.
Talking of American success, one man who had plenty of that in 1993 was Steve Regal, or Lord Steven Regal as he was soon rebranded. While WCW gradually went cold on the idea of putting their World title on Davey Boy Smith, Regal quickly picked up the WCW TV title. All this WCW action, of course meant that he was back on Saturday afternoon ITV and also showing off his British technical style in his matches. This was all much to the disdain of the proto-Powerslam, Superstars Of Wrestling who slammed Regal for having a “boring”and “antiquated” style, and when they did applaud his getting ahead in WCW, they did so in order to slag the “dull and unprofitable” British scene – a comment that earned them an angry letter from Yours Truly. (They printed it, but got my name wrong – “A. Mantell”) Meanwhile Regal, as shown in the video diary, was happy to invite Brookside and his camera over to the United States and backstage at WCW to show them the high life. However, it cut both ways as Americans, meanwhile, seemed happy to live the life of honorary British wrestlers on the road. In the ring, Avalanche and Mongolian Mauler (back here again) were quite the merciless heels, with Neu cussing out fans and Mauler hitting Robbie with a chair (which was a step down from the flagpole from four years earlier – no police called this time!) but on the road in a transport café, the two were seen singing comic songs containing references to backstage drug abuse, fraternising with babyfaces (as also did veteran Skull Murphy – Brookside doing a very good impersonation of Murphy’s South Coast accent) and being generally loveable.
1993 was a good year too for Tony St Clair as he won his fourth British Heavyweight title. Unlike his previous wins over Gwyn Davies in 1977, Stax in 1979 and Naggers in 1988, this time St Clair actually won the belt via pinfall rather than by disqualification – perhaps unsurprising since the title change was a clean match against champion Dave Taylor. Mal Sanders also spent his time away from the European Middleweight title by winning the Welterweight title – finally vacated by Danny Collins after years of bookings for Roger Delaporte in France and Northern Spain. By the end of the year, he had lost the belt to Kashmir Singh – but just in time for his regaining the Middleweight title from Grey. The year also saw the debut of a young rookie who would go on to dominate the scene – fourteen year old James Atkins, later better known as James Mason. There were many promising talents emerging during the early 90s – Justin Hansford, championed by the Daily Star and sports minister Colin Moynihan, who would later become TWA splinter British Heavyweight champion as Justin Starr (and headline All Star shows circa 2002 as yet another UK undertaker), future champion and trainer to the stars Jason Cross, Welsh prospects Boston Blackie and Geraint “Gary” Clwyd/Welsh (both of whom sadly ended up as tribute wrestlers the UK Rock and Dunk the Clown respectively) but few managed to become quite the ambassador and leading face of the British scene as Mason would go on to be. Interviewed by Simon Garfield who was researching for his The Wrestling book (by the time he had finished, Mason already had championship gold, as we shall see in 1996) Mason recalled his earliest fights against Tony Walsh’s son Darren Walsh (later to be a local second generation hero in Warwickshire and the evil Thunder everywhere else) and the twenty stone Warlord, and how he was now starting to win matches more often. He would soon be winning more than just “often”.
1993 wrapped up with both major promotions having lost their top star, but 1994 would see Max Crabtree and RWS pull out one last ace in the hole. Unable to win the WCW World title, Davey Boy Smith – the other British Bulldog – came back home for a while to be a big domestic star and the nearest thing to Big Daddy mk2. Meanwhile All Star kept the action burning with the first of a series of shock heel turns, when Danny Boy became Dirty Dan …
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