Ron Historyo
Pat Roach. I have him right at the start of 1963. Cutting his teeth in the Midlands for Opposition Promoters.
Judo Pat Roach the Gimmick and I very much recall quite a bit later when he went on tv, Kent Walton pushing how mystified he was, as to the crowd jeering at him. Was it that Beard. They seemed to want to make him a bad man and he argued with them about it.
But it was all to change, Tv and Film work, but it was his character in Auf Wiedersehen Pet as Bomber that really made the fans love him. He could do no wrong after that.
I show him at the end of the Century and I think he went just over into 2000. A great career. They were slow to make him Champion.
He had the integrity to not be belly butted about and helped hold wrestling together after it went from TV.
Hack
Pat Roach was what a heavyweight should be like. He looked the part and could rough it or play clean. I never really saw him as a rule breaker, though didn’t like his tendency to argue.
Genuine judo credentials too, reports of him in the 1961 British championships so I would think your early 1963 find must be very close to the start. Yes, he went on late too. I bought my first computer around 2000 and found Pat wrestling for Premier Promotions. Woodlow should be able to help with that one. He died in 2004 and was reported to have been diagnosed with cancer three years earlier, so probably wrestling when he was very ill. In his last series of Auf Wiedersehen he didn’t look Well.
Anglo Italian
In that case, mustn’t he have played judo alongside Kendo Nagasaki in 1961?
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