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At a time when the nation was going to war a youngster from Tunstall in Stoke on Trent had another sort of fighting on his mind. John was just sixteen years old when he first stepped into the professional wrestling ring in 1941. It was the start of a long career for this popular and handy wrestler who was also a skilled engineer.
John was one of a group of wrestlers from Stoke turning professional around that time: Jack Santos, George Goldie, Bill Ogden and Brian Aherne (later to become Jim Mellor).
John watched the wrestling at the Ideal Skating Rink in Hanley. Along with his friends George Gould, Ken Woods and Bill Ogden they persuaded referee Jock Anderson to teach them how to wrestle. They trained in a room above the Black Boy pub in Cobridge Road, Burslem.
For the first few years most of John’s matches were against these local wrestlers with whom he trained and travelled. Following the war he began travelling further afield and meeting a wider range of opponents that included Danny Flynn, Tommy Mann and Jack Beaumont.
John was signed up by Joint Promotions when they formed in 1952 and continued working for them until 1957 when he moved across to the independents. The move to the independents didn’t mean any lessening of the workload and when the boom years of the independents began in the late 1950s John Hall was in the thick of it, travelling up and down the country working for the major opposition promoters Cape Promotions, Jack Taylor and Paul Lincoln.
John finally hung up his boots in 1971, some thirty years after first stepping into the professional ring. His sporting ambitions didn’t fade, and at the age of 58 whilst working in the offices of British Gas, he completed the Stoke Around The Towns Marathon in under four hours.
At the time of John’s death Manchester wrestler Eddie Rose told us: “John was one of the stalwarts of wrestling and had a long career during which he produced some great bouts. That group of Potteries lads were good company and good workers. Sorry to see the numbers fade away.”
John William Hall, born 1924, died 4th January, 2014
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