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It’s all about the memories, as we constantly remind our Wrestling Heritage readers. For those of us that saw him there are fond memories of Deep River, a wrestler that might otherwise be forgotten.
Gian Chand was a colourful character who we remember seeing in the summer of 1969 whilst working for Wryton Promotions, though he had been working for the independent promoters in the midlands for a few years before then. One year earlier, in February 1968, we found him wrestling on an independent show at Walsall Town Hall against Birmingham’s Frank Taplin in a match billed as a “Black v White Contest,” a hard to believe and unforgiveable description of a match at the time the Beatles were riding high in the charts and the Americans and Russians were reaching for the Moon.
Gian Chand wasn’t the name on the posters. In the wrestling world he was known as Deep River and worked for both the independent and Joint Promotions from the 1960s until the 1980s. The move from the independents to Joint Promotions came in April, 1969 under the guidance of Martin Conroy, whose appointment to the Wryton Promotions board heralded quite a few talented performers from the independent circuit.
Deep River’s opponents included some of the top lightweights, Johnny Saint, Jim Breaks and Zoltan Boscik amongst them, and we remember a cracking bout with Boscik in Southport during the summer of 1971. Although Boscik was known as a hard man amongst the lightweights Deep River gave him just as much as he got. He had speed, agilty, grittiness an all action wrestler with a rather nifty drop kick speciality.
Despite the occasional win over the big names, and frequent victories over others, Deep River was never given the .”big push” by the promoters. Still working for Joint Promotions in 1976 he was back with the independents by 1978.
We find him for the last time in November, 1983, losing to World champion Johnny Saint in Birmingham. There may have been a few more matches following that, but retirement came soon afterwards.
From 1985 until 1987 Gian Chand was licensee of a public house, The Black Eagle, in the Hockley area of Birmingham.
Gian Chand, born 9th March, 1943, died in 1990, survived by his wife and three children.
Page added 23/04/2023
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