Pat Roach v Wayne Bridges
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This was the pair’s fourth and final television match up and Pat Roach would go on to appear with great regularity through the eighties, the credible face of hard-hitting super-heavyweight wrestling.
All the way through to his famous final small screen match against Caswell Martin, in which he made the farewell Final Bell speech, Roach would only lose one more televised bout, from scores of appearances, Tiger Singh claiming the notable curly scalp.
Roach and Bridges, in parallel, had been losing with some regularity over the previous ten years to the likes of Mike Marino, Rocky Wall, Gwyn Davies, Georges Gordienko, Billy Robinson and Tibor Szakacs.
1979 was a watershed for them both and Bridges, too, would go on to enjoy five immediately ensuing glory years, crowned by winning the World Heavyweight Championship, and enlivened by the occasional majestic heel turn.
Judo Pete Roberts would claim the occasional televised verdict over Bridges in their captivating feud, and Bridges would at most other times enjoy the glamour championship role he had served a very long apprenticeship to obtain.
On the basis of this humdinger of a heavyweight bout, both truly deserved these overdue upward thrusts.
The fact that this was actually a return match from an exciting double-disqualification four months earlier unfortunately went under the commentator’s radar.
Guildford’s Civic Hall was hosting its first televised wrestling presentation, and started at the top with this bout aired on FA Cup Final Day 1979.
This bout also marked 42-year-old Pat Roach’s final appearance as a villain, and he sure was adept at the role. His full length purple gown on his 6.4” frame was an awesome sight as he approached the ring and he had the spectators in uproar before the action had even started, simply by virtue of refusing to shake hands with MC John Harris.
In wrestling, the villains have every chance to entertain and be creative. As spectators we can easily be drawn into neglecting the role of the blue-eye opponent. Wayne Bridges’ style was quite magnificent here for a man so big. He rolled around the ring like a lightweight, struck action poses when not locked in combat, and took some heavy bumps as early as Round One from his heavier opponent.
Especially creditworthy was a small point, overlooked by the commentator but appreciated by us at Wrestling Heritage: in those introductions, it was already predictable that Roach would not offer a hand for the handshake.
So often, the blue-eye opponent offered his hand only to feign surprise at the rejection, a gesture aimed at fans with no prior knowledge of the contestants. Here, Bridges treated the audience with respect: of course, from these antics and their previous bouts, Roach would be rule-breaking, so he didn’t offer his hand at all, and this seemed more credible than other options.
Roach’s style also escaped Kent Walton To be fair, it would have escaped us, too, but the rewind button enables us to dissect his work in some detail. He engages the referee in eye contact while some other part of his body is misbehaving, for instance when standing and protesting his innocence, he has the prostrate Bridges’ head scissored six feet below.
Another deft touch to complete these interchanges is the smug sneer as his clean wrestling opponent gets wrongly admonished. After the controversy surrounding Wrestling Heritage’s induction of Max Ward to the Number One Official spot, this was also a chance to review his work again. Portly but dwarfed by Roach, he pointed animatedly to his badge, insisting the rule-breaker respect the authority. Again, a small point, but the ensemble of this multitude of small points is what made this bout a cracker.
A spectacular base of the spine knee-drop at the end of Round Two saw Bridges weakened and further damage was inflicted to his throat mid-round. Once again, Bridges sold both attacks magnificently and when the action resumed he ensured he kept rising to his feet quickly to allow the flow of action that led to again impressive opening fall on the 17-stoner by virtue of Roach’s crotch hold and slam, followed by a clever press.
Mid-round, Roach identified an audience member to take particular issue with. In Round Four Bridges delivered two magnificent flying head butts and went on to reciprocate the base of the spine knee-drop and equalise in the same way as Roach had opened the scoring. We were set up for an exciting finish, looking for a verdict one way or another over the remaining four rounds.
Round Five saw a flurry of false finishes, and frustrations for Bridges and the crowd. The pair indulged in almost no back to canvas interlocks and kept the tiring high-flying manoeuvres going for the spectators’ entertainment. The third flying head-butt of the bout left Roach sprawling satisfyingly against the ropes, with shades of Bruno Elrington.
When Bridges kicked him out of the the ring, Roach then took the chance to get up close to the fan he had been remonstrating with, always a tense moment in bouts at our local halls, but on this occasion for the tv cameras, he managed to restrain his ferocity. The round finished with this delightful cradle press from Roach, delivered in the twinkling of an eye, but Bridges managed to extricate himself before the count reached three.
As in so many professional wrestling bouts, the two wrestlers worked unscriptedly on the precise same wavelength. Seemingly with energy still to burn, the pair started the sixth round in a blaze of action once again. Roach took this posting sideways and managed to end up straddling the top ropes.
Bridges laid into him to the crowd’s delight and Ward skilfully tried to stop them with great gesturing, whilst making sure he made no impact at all on the exciting spectacle.
Roach then laid Bridges low with a high kick before delivering an unambiguous punch, for all to see, and summarily receiving his marching orders. Bridges was unconscious, the second tried to revive him with water. Within a trice he was up and taking the plaudits of the crowd.
These two big men gave their all and must have been absolutely wrecked at the end of their work. They had provided a 100% credible display of multi-faceted professional wrestling to balance the unathletic theatrics of Big Daddy in the centrepiece bout on the card.
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