Also known as Tarantula, Arachnamaniac, The Barbarian, Spider Turner
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Professional wrestling was full of strange and colourful characters and few were stranger and more colourful than the Masked Mummy. Who could have imagined that a home made costume could arouse such emotions? Not that there was anything strange about the man beneath the costume, he was one of the nicest men you could wish to meet. He wasn’t the only Masked Mummy, there had been at least one previously and others to follow but the man mostly associated with The Masked Mummy persona is Allan Turner.
As a base for the Royal Navy the city of Portsmouth was a prime target for bombing raids during the Second World War. It was here that Allan was born in 1942. Having completed full time education at Portsmouth Technical College in 1958 Allan was accepted for an apprenticeship as a fitter and turner in Portsmouth Dockyard.
In 1959 Allan met Bruno Elrington, a man he greatly admires and remembers with much fondness. Allan joined Bruno’s gym where he met a great collection of wrestlers who became firm friends and influenced his future career, among them Danny Quinn, Dave Larsen, Bob Kirkwood, Roger Wells, Mick Sullivan and Lee Nolan.
Early wrestling experience came his way in the fairground wrestling booth. The booths were a place of learning for many who went on to become successful professional wrestlers. It was here that Allan learned how to read an audience, develop a story and hone the skills that would earn him a living for more than thirty years.
Allan made his professional debut in the halls in 1970. Although some halls had pretty basic facilities they were luxurious compared to the long hours and no facilities at all endured by the fairground workers. In the early days he was known as Spider Turner.
Regular work for Verdun-Leslie Promotions was something of a milestone for the young wrestler. Verdun-Leslie was run by wrestlers Judo Al Hollamby and Roger L Sandilands (they made use of their middle names to create the authoritative sounding Verdun-Leslie). Having filled out and looking more aggressive Verdun-Leslie transformed Spider Turner into Tarantula. It was a transformation that was an immediate success.
But Verdun-Leslie wanted more. They wanted a new masked man, someone who was a bit different from the run-of the-mill. Between them Al Hollamby and Allan came up with the idea of a new persona, he was to become The Masked Mummy. Verdun-Leslie certainly got what they wanted, a unique masked man who was a huge success on their shows. The costume itself magnified the 6’4″ and 17 stones girth of the man beneath. THe fans loved him, or loved him in the way wrestling fans loved to hate the greatest of villains as they eagerly anticipated his favoured throat clutch, followed by frantic and ineffective waves from the referee and the almost inevitable disqualification.
If one persona wasn’t enough promoter Brian Dixon chose to revert to an unmasked Tarantula when he started a twenty-one year professional relationship with Allan, though he did later use the Masked Mummy persona also.
It was Tarantula that appeared in one of Allan’s most memorable and proudest moments. He was chosen as the final opponent of Count Bartelli. At the Victoria Hall, Hanley, on 18th January, 1986, Tarantula wrestled Bartelli and gave the legend the send-off he deserved after forty-six years of service to wrestling. It was a match enjoyed by satellite television viewers around Europe.
Another opponent that stands out for Allan is another wrestler that greatly influenced him, Dangerous Danny Lynch. “Real blood and guts matches,” Allan told us. There was always blood flowing in those matches, Dangerous Danny’s blood that was.
Yet Masked Mummy, Tarantula, Arachnamaiac (a name used by Brian Dixon in later years) wrestled all the well known names, including Tony St Clair, Johnny Kincaid, Les Kellett, Pat Roach and Kendo Nagasaki. A ladder match against Ricky Starr is still one that stands out for Allan.
Yet another identity came along, working for Klondyke Jake and Max Crabtree when he became The Barbarian.
It was a career that was to take Allan far from his Portsmouth birthplace and fill his passport with stamps. Allan wrestled in India, Bangladesh, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Beirut, Qatar, Dubai, and Germany.
More than thirty years after it had all begun Allan decided it was time to hang up his boots for one last time. By then he had moved to Birmingham and trained a young wrestler by the name of Darren Walsh, son of Banger. In 2002 Allan gave Darren the privilege of wrestling him in his final match in Redditch. As always, Allan did the right thing. He lost
Following retirement from the ring he went into security work, employed by Tony Walsh’s Mayfair Security.
Page added 05/11/2022
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