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Pat Madden was a Lancashire tough un. His dad was born in Platt Bridge, Wigan and moved to Coppull as a coal mine hewer. It was here that Pat Madden was born on 14th January, 1911, the ninth child of Thomas and Mary, with the name Alfred Prescott on the birth certificate. He followed in the footsteps of his father, working as a shot blaster in Bradford Colliery. By 1939 he was living in Ardwick, Manchester, and on the 1939 Register stated his occupation as a brickworks labourer.
They made them hard and Pat was no exception, "Reputed to be the roughest and toughest welterweight" proclaimed the posters, but nonetheless skilled in the art of wrestling and described as "A class wrestler." He was usually billed as Irish. There's no obvious Irish connection, but we guess there was a limit to how many Lancashire wrestlers those promoters wanted on their programmes.
Not one of the biggest names in the business but he was by all accounts an accomplished performer who worked regularly around the north of England throughout the 1930s and 1940s.
Quite a few of those contests were at two of the biggest stadiums in the country, the St James Hall, Newcastle and Belle Vue, Manchester, where opponents included Red Brokau, Frank Manto and Lew Roseby.
The quality of opponent suggests that Pat Madden was indeed a tough and knowledgeable wrestler – men like Jack Beaumont, Rashid Anwar, Joe Reid and Jack Alker were not the sort to be messed with.
Pat was one of those wrestlers whose careers spanned both sides of the Second World War, with our last sighting of him being this 1947 outing against Billy Fogg at Blackpool Tower. Pat Madden moved to Bradford, where he died in 1976.
Never a Madden (other than in wrestling circles) Alfred Prescott did change his surname to Pullen (the family don't know why) in 1965. Pat Madden did bestow one more gift on the wrestling world. His son, Graham Pullen, was one of the finest amateur lightweight wrestlers of the 1960s. He was tipped for a place in the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico, finally pipped to the post by Roger Till.
Page added 14/01/2024
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