(and hopefully many more way into the future!)
By David Mantell
Wrestling Heritage welcomes memories, further information and corrections.
As I stated, by 1997 I was out of regular contact with the UK wrestling scene for the first time really since toddlerhood. With the pessimistic – in fact fatalistic – ending Simon Garfield decided to give his book The Wrestling, as well as my own inability to find any local shows other than pure WWF tributes in the Coventry/Warwickshire area, it was easy to believe that at some point recently, British Wrestling had come to a quiet and ignominious end. (And indeed, for a while Brian Dixon decided to supplement his income by promoting male strip shows for the ladies, which he would later recall as “a real education!”.)
The only real indication during the “dark years” of 1997-2001 that things were still trotting along was an article in style magazine Sleaze Nation, mostly focussed on an interview with Karl Kramer but also including photos of Dirty Dan Collins, Sweet Saraya, Arthur The Second, Dunk The Clown and others. There was also one sneery letter printed in Powerslam in about 1999/2000, slagging off a Robbie Brookside/Skull Murphy headline match and also accusing Alan Kilby of not really being deaf. Web resources for British wrestling in those days were very limited, to say the least – there was a British Wrestling website but it mostly seemed to be about shifting the last remaining stock of the old ITV video releases from the turn of the 80s to 90s. Until the launch of 1stopwrestling.co.uk in 2002, there were no “smartened up” websites dealing with old school British Wrestling on its own terms – the message boards on the personal websites of Robbie Brookside, Drew McDonald and a couple of others being odd islands of news. There was a rather well organised Kendo Nagasaki website by 2001, which dealt, among other matters with his recent comeback of which more below. Otherwise it was just American Wrestling fans being sarcastic about old British wrestling on resources such as the fledgling UKFF or else sites like one annoying little git from Bristol who ran “Colston Court” about the local shows at the Bristol Colston Hall, inevitably putting the boot into the matches before “sentencing” the wrestlers to jail terms for daring to continue to work such an “antiquated” style.
But just because I myself was out of contact with the British scene doesn’t mean that life didn’t carry on. Before looking to the longer term future, I would like to first spell out the continuing stories of your heroes, at least those I have not satisfactorily covered in the previous articles. Sadly, two men for whom there were no more continuing story were Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks, who both passed away in 1997 and 1998 respectively. Since his retirement at the end of 1993, Daddy had spent the last 14 months of RSS’s existence sat at ringside cheering on Davey Boy Smith and other blue-eyes, occasionally getting up to administer the odd body-check for old time’s sake. With the ex-Joint closed in February 1995, so followed the gradual close-down of big Shirley until his hospitalisation in late 1997 and death. Haystacks’ time at WCW was cut short not long after a pay per view loss to Paul “the Giant” White, when he was diagnosed with cancer and flown home. Stax turned up at a benefit show for his family in 1998 with his hair and beard all gone from chemotherapy. Several months later he died on the operating table.
One legend who lived on, however, was Kendo Nagasaki. In 1998, he reunited with Arena documentary maker Paul Yates to produce what was perhaps the strangest and most arty wrestling promotional video ever. Filmed at a hotel in Ireland, the video show the preparation and enactment of a ceremony designed to separate Kendo from the Samurai spirit that the man behind the mask believed guided him. Held in a glass ring in the middle of a garden, presided over by a butler in a black Nagasaki mask and a tuxedo and featuring Lawrence Stevens, a top hatted undertaker, a mysterious veiled lady and two gravediggers in theatrical mummers’ masks, Kendo sat in a throne in full ring entry gear while the butler sliced off his pony tail (causing a thunderclap). The ponytail was fastened to a firework and blasted into the sky at sunset. The next day Kendo, in black mask and smart street clothes, left his full wrestling gear on a bed as if it were a warrior on his deathbed. Loz and the undertaker then strolled into the room, loaded the whole lot into a body bag and, that night, lowered it into a hole in the grounds of the hotel. The two gravediggers then filled the hole before Kendo, in black mask and leather overcoat, threw salt over the “grave.”
The salt must have kept the evil spirits away from the buried ring gear, because two years later Kendo would be requiring his gear again for the first of two comebacks and it looked in good nick for something which had been two years in the ground! Kendo had been voted Wrestler of the Millennium by Russell Plummer’s Wrestlecall hotline (which Russell would continue to run into the early 2010s) and the ceremony to award him the trophy was to be held at the now renovated and once again a wrestling venue Victoria Hall, Hanley. Legendary Lonnie, the former wrestling manager turned local radio DJ and guitarist on Big Daddy’s old recording of We Shall Not Be Moved, was on hand to present the trophy. The only problem was when Lloyd Ryan got into the ring and announced that Kendo was not at the hall! As a row simmered between Lloyd and the MC, Darren Walsh came into the ring carrying a note from Marty Jones insisting that if anyone should have been wrestler of the Millennium, it was himself! The argument between Lloyd versus Walsh and the MC boiled up until Walsh grabbed Ryan by the jacket lapels at which point – finally – Kendo, in a cape, ran into the ring and salt-bombed Walsh before delivering a Kamikaze Crash to him. Finally presented with his trophy, Kendo strode around the Hanley ringside as Lloyd warned that anyone who tried messing with Kendo would get the same treatment.
Far from being warned, Walsh and Jones came back for more. On 16 June 2000, again in Hanley, they got into the ring looking to face Kendo and Lloyd. However Lloyd, like in Croydon in 1995, cried off with a “broken arm” so the long suffering ring announcer went backstage and found two villains willing to tag with Nagasaki. Kendo and Lloyd chose Vic Powers to be the tag partner and went on to win the match 2-1, leading to eighteens months of Kendo special appearance matches around the country (including several teamed with Drew McDonald) before he returned to Hanley for a December 2001 retirement match in which Kendo beat Dean Allmark, James Mason and Doug Williams. In a sign of the times, Kendo won by blasting Mason, sabu-style, through a table with his Kamikaze Crash. (In another sign of the times, camcorder footage of the 16 June 2000 show reveals a Union Jack bedecked with D-Generation X’s “Suck it!” slogan draped over a balcony by audience members.)
Jones seemed to have kept on wrestling despite reports of his 1996 retirement. Still as a villain he lost his World Mid Heavyweight title to Legend Of Doom Johnny South at Colston Hall, Bristol on 27th May 1999. What became of his British Heavyweight title run is less clear – according to the Sleaze Nation article in 1998, Karl Kramer held the title at this point although Karl denied any memory of this when I asked the man after a show in Leamington in the late Noughties. Robbie Brookside had TWA recognition by 1999-2000 and may also have been All Star champion by this point (the title no longer being undisputed). What I do clearly recall was that Doug Williams, who was All Star champion by 2001-2002 (and regarded as Universal Champion after winning a tournament of old and new school British Heavyweight title claimants) was defending against Robbie Brookside in what were billed as return matches where Robbie was out to “regain” the title. (Rob lost his TWA claim to Drew McDonald who lost it to Justin Starr – ex Hansford – who vacated the belt which Robbie regained, then was sacked from TWA and stripped for organising his own defences outside of the company).
Certainly when Robbie beat Doug Williams for the title in a much touted match at Liverpool Empire on 29th September 2002, the big headline on all the website was “Robbie regains the title”. Robbie would hold the belt until losing to Drew McDonald in 2005 – along the way becoming a heel in the Warwickshire area while feuding for the belt with Darren Walsh – known everywhere else as the evil cybernetic Thunder but in Leamington Spa as the second-generation local hero, only later reverting to blue-eye at this venue in 2007. Drew would lose the title in time to Sonic Steve Lewington who would vacate the belt for a WWE try-out, leaving it to be won by James Mason, marking his coming of age moment. The All Star “Superslam” title continues to this day, a decade later. The TWA version meanwhile dwindled down until by 2003 the dreaded Alex Shane won it for two days before being stripped for heel misbehaviour in a match against an ancient inebriated Jake The Snake Roberts, who eventually had to flee the UK to escape prosecution after letting one of his snakes starve to death in his flat.
Jones’ British Tag Team title meanwhile was in the hands of the Superflies until they spectacularly fell out in 1998 (at around the same time as Jimmy Ocean finally lost his British Lightweight title back to Steve Grey, who would still be claiming it by 2003). The two men fought for the belt in a singles match which Ocean won, and then chose The Canary Kid as his new championship partner. Ricky would be champion again in 2001 when he and son Roy, as the New Superflies, won a tournament for the title in TWA. Another member of the Knight clan who would win championship gold was Sweet Saraya. After Nicki Monroe vacated the British Ladies title in 1996, Julie Starr won a tournament for the belt in 1997 before losing it to one Miss Britannia who lost it to Saraya in 1998. Starr soon regained the belt but then lost it to Klondyke Kate, who would then spend the next few years until 2002 trading the belt back and forth with Saraya. The title came to an end in 2002 when Kate vacated the belt to concentrate on her new European Ladies championship.
Another title still active in the new era was Alan Kilby’s British Light Heavyweight title. Having regained the belt from Dirty Dan Collins in 1997 Kilby would lose the belt one last time on a WAW show in Norwich in October 1998 to Mad Dog Ian Wilson, before regaining the belt at the following month’s show. Kilby would continue to wear the belt for appearances in the ring until his retirement aged 60 in 2004, after which the belt stood vacant for a decade until being revived by All Star in 2014. Another champion who retired with his belt was Chic Cullen who hung up his boots in 2002 still as World Heavy Middleweight champ. In 2003 a tournament was held and future WWE World Champion Brian Danielson aka the masked American Dragon won the belt, beating Mason (then the heel Bad Boy James Mason) in a Croydon tournament final. The plan was for the title to be booked internationally with promoters in Calgary and Japan, but All Star soon dropped recognition of the belt in favour of a People’s Championship. By 2008 however, the title resurfaced in France when another masked man, Metal Master (Chad Collyer/Malenko) dropped the title to local wrestler Thomas LaRuffa, who then came to England to job the belt to Mikey Whiplash (Mike Gilbert) on 23rd March 2009 in Croydon. Whiplash is still the current champion as far as your author is aware and the belt was last seen being defended as late as 2012.
By the early Noughties, TWA was doing a lot of good for preserving Mountevans titles. On the negative side, they set up a British Hardcore title which was quite unnecessary since there was never a British Brass Knuckles title in the 60s/70s/80s. On the plus side, they also reactivated the British Welterweight and British Middleweight titles last held by Steve Prince and Brian Maxine. (Neither Prince nor Maxine disputed the new titles – a match for Maxine’s belt in 2002 against Johnny Kidd for Premier in 2002 was promoted as strictly only for the belt, not the title.) While the Welterweight title got traded back and forth between New Schoolie spot performers Jodie Fleisch and Jonny Storm, the Middleweight title was passed back and forth between Mal Sanders and James Mason, until Steve Grey won the belt in 2003 only to resign it to concentrate on the Lightweight title he still claimed.
One reason for TWA having all these solid title feuds was that the company itself was in a feud, having fallen out with All Star in 2002 over its continued policy of putting tribute acts in headline slots. Although tribute guys occasionally popped up for TWA, along with the ageing real deal such as Jake, the Bushwhackers (triple tagging with Frank “British Bushwhacker Casey), Earthquake, Yokozuna, the Honky Tonk Man and the original American Greg Valentine, the constant diet of shows headlines by the UK Undertaker and Big Red Machine, as well as having Jones drop his belt to the Legend of Doom, was too much for Scott Conway. Disaffected by this and other matters (such as the inclusion of former WWF World Champion Yokozuna on advertising posters over a year after he had died, the continued advertising of Davey Boy Smith months after his planned tour fell through and the use of a photo of the original WWF Kane to depict the tribute performer “Big Red Machine”), Conway cut his links with All Star and declared a promotional war, aiming to lure away fed up fans with the promise of more serious wrestling, just as All Star had done when in competition with Joint and Daddy nearly two decades earlier.) Unlike Joint which just sat and sulked until it fell from the top, All Star fought back with a new generation of stars such as Dean Allmark (originally Dean 2Xtreme until he grew out of it), Robbie “The Body” Dynamite (Rob Berzins), Kid Cool, Mikey Whiplash and Playboy Johnny Midnight. Allmark and Dynamite in particular caught the attention of the public after they fell out with Dynamite proving to be THE mega heel for the Noughties as he and Allmark feuded over Mike Marino’s old British Mid Heavyweight title (revived after 21 years) as well as a British Tag title feud in the mid noughties pitting Dynamite and Midnight against the UK Dream Team of Allmark and Kid Cool.
The promotional war would come to an abrupt end in 2003 when Conway went off to Thailand, briefly trying to restart the company out there as the Thai Wrestling Alliance. Meanwhile RBW would emerge as the new alternative to All Star in 2004-2006, rebooting the Welterweight and Middleweight titles. While the company did very little with its British Middleweight champion Jorge Castano, the Welterweight title was passed around a variety of young talent including Kid Regis and future American star Spud, not yet a Rockstar but still in his blue eye Holy Spud phase. The belt would later be carried on by new school promotion LDN and was last seen being won by Alan Travis in 2008. LDN initially did a lot of good for old school British wrestling, putting on a Johnny Saint vs Johnny Kidd match in 2007 and bringing back Kendo Nagasaki one last time for the Sword of Excellence angle which eventually saw Kendo and Blondie Barrett beat Travis and Hakan for the British Tag Team Title. However the company blotted its copybook when it sent a long whinging letter the next day to Nagasaki about his stiff handling of poor little Travis and Hakan, and Kendo broke with LDN in disgust. By 2010, LDN was trying to run head to head with All Star at all of its top venues including Croydon but was never really able to keep the momentum going, although it still somewhat tours today.
Premier Promotions has kept afloat over the past 20 years despite the recent loss of Worthing Pavilion. It has carried on holding the Worthing and Ken Joyce trophies each year from 1996 when Danny Collins beat James Mason for the Worthing trophy and Mal Sanders beat Ian Wilson for Ken Joyce’s cup, through the Noughties when Doug Williams dominated the Worthing event and all the way to 2017 when Sid Scala won a Last Man Standing event for the Ken Joyce trophy and Doug Williams was once again Worthing Trophy winner, this year beating Show stealer Mark Haskins. Premier has had a couple of pieces of mainstream exposure along the way – in 2000, sports journalist Ian Stafford approached Pat Roach about getting into the ring for a match which he could write up for a new book about trying out professional sports. Roach was delighted to be able to beat up a journo (well, wouldn’t you?) and spent a week putting Stafford through his painful paces in Big Pat’s Birmingham gym before driving him south for a Premier main event clobbering against Pretty Boy Mal Stuart and Dick “the Bruiser” Harrison, before Roach made the save for the win. Stafford wrote with beaten-in respect for the wrestlers in his book, In Your Dreams. Premier would also get onto TV on BBC3 in 2003 as part of Johnny Vaughan’s short lived revival of World OF sport. Another promotion which has gone from strength to strength has been WAW – home of the Knight family, whose youngest scion Paige achieved WWE stardom. After Orig Williams’ death in 2009, two Welsh promotions Welsh Wrestling and Britannia Wrestling would continue his legacy, with the latter even running an Orig Williams Memorial tournament in the 2010s.
Americanised promotions – known as “New school” after the much hyped FWA’s “New School versus Old School” storyline which involved an invasion by a troop of Trad Brits including Brookside and McDonald – continued to pop up and burst throughout the 21st century and will doubtless continue to do so. From the said FWA which saw Alex Shane deliver a babyface promo slandering British Wrestlers as fat old men in swimming trunks, causing Fin Martin to mark out like something out of the Aptermags, to the New Years’ Eve “World Of Sport Wrestling” ITV broadcast, they came and went, each one mendaciously portraying itself as the Grand Revival of the supposedly “dead” British wrestling. The truth is that All Star have remained alive and on top of the UK scene for 29 years now. Unlike Joint, they have lineage ready to pass on ownership of the company, with Brian and Mitzi’s daughter Letitia (from the Not A Night For The Squeamish radio documentary) now indeed following in her mum’s footsteps as a ring announcer, married to Dean Allmark and bringing up their children starting with young Joe Allmark, in the tradition of the business. Indeed, my ghost for one will not be surprised if it rises from the dead in the 2100s to find that some descendant of the Dixon/Muller/Allmark dynasty is still running some form of All Star Wrestling.
But now is the time for me to tag out, just as Hack and Anglo Italian tagged me in for 1977. I leave the gauntlet laid down for any younger writer who wants to take up the challenge of writing A Year In Wrestling for the years 1997 to 2017, a year which ends this day as I write this, just as a year or so ago, I took up Hack and Anglo’s challenge to write more Years OF Wrestling until 1988 and challenged myself to extend it to 1996. The moral of this whole story has been that – despite the pessimist old-timers, the sneer new schoolies and the lazy journalists, TRADITIONAL BRITISH WRESTLING LIVES ON!!!
David Mantell
Wrestling Heritage 