Wrestling Heritage

Wrestling Heritage welcomes memories, further information and corrections.

Anglo Italian
Several years ago we coined this phrase and started a listing of  some of the very unusual things Kent Walton said in his commentaries.  Watching the recent new batch of reruns on the Men & Movies channel made me realise again what interesting distractions these were and how many of them popped up. I’m not going to go all through the 5 hours of tape again from these past couple of days alone, but just from memory on first watching: 

• he called Tony Charles the Southern England Heavyweight champion in his bout against Steve Viedor. 
• he told us Mick McManus had won the European Middleweight title from Jacques Lageat.  Lageat had lost the mid-heavyweight title to Billy Howes on tv in 1962, whereas McManus had won the Middleweight title from Vic Faulkner in 1971, untelevised.  Clearly not a slip this one, a deliberate lie, but why oh why? 
• overtrumping of the caption was Kent Walton’s Speciality Manoeuvre and Johnny Saint coming from Failsworth had to be contradicted to another suburb of Manchester. 

I’m sure there were loads more, did anybody spot any others? 

It could be fun to extend the list.  
 
I just watched a few more bouts. 

• Peter Szakacs, “the former welterweight champion of Hungary”.  Wasn’t it just fine to trot this stuff out 31 years after the wrestler’s arrival in the UK! 
• In the excellent Colin Joynson v Judo Pete Roberts bout, Mick McManus was doing the between-round analysis.  He generally had little of content to share, but did offer a few interesting German results for Pete Roberts.  Anyway, Mick came out with a great Waltonism of his own:  “After the rough stuff of the first two bouts, at last we can enjoy some proper wrestling.”  Spoken like the true technician … he wasn’t.  I do believe he was joking, but he always played things with such a straight bat. 
• In the same bout, Kent Walton was back to his usual overtrumping of the caption.  We all knew Colin Joynson was from Cheetham Hill. Ok the MC said Manchester, fair enough.  But Kent had to keep referring to Colin Joynson from Stockport.  This was a real obsession with Kent Walton.

 
In the bout this week between Alan Kilby & Steve Logan (Birmingham version) versus Skull Murphy & Dave Finlay Jr, yes, this is the bout where Kilby & Logan have the caption The Riot Squad when they are presented, well, Kent was pretty dismissive about this “fellow” Steve Logan.  It rather surprised me. 
 
Another great caption booboo in the Bobby Barnes versus Alan Dennison bout. 

At the beginning of the bout, Dennison’s caption read:  ALAN DENNISON – WINNER. 

Sure enough he went on to win.  This small point really interests me as it shows that all involved knew the result at the outset.  Unless of course they had other captions ready, but frankly I doubt that they would have doubled up the work each time. Did anyone else spot this? 
 
This week, from his own parallel universe, Kent Walton told us that Clayton Thomson had been the European Heavy-Middleweight champion.   I will be delighted to be told this is true but don’t hold out much hope…. 

​At the time, Kent Walton was able to take these regular liberties, and because nobody could contradict him with any authority, with no trade magazine and no internet and no press coverage, sometimes his stories developed into fact. 

Only in professional wrestling!!!
 
No internet, er.. well obviously. No press coverage..well that was even beyond the control of Messrs Morrell, Dale etc. No trade magazine… they had allowed The Wrestler to die. Both Morrell and Dale’s owned their own printing businesses. If they’d wanted a  trade magazine they could have had one. We can only think that for whatever reason they preferred to limit information for the fans, even if they controlled the information.  Maybe they thought it didn’t matter. They got the publicity they wanted from the tele, why spend money on creating more? 
 
john shelvey  
Kwik Kick Lee v Johnny England. McManus enters ring in civies and mouths off to Lee, Kent says of Lee ‘He doesn’t understand the English language at all” Right on cue Lee ‘talks’ to M.C. who announces that Kwik has challenged Mick to a match. At first silence, then a rather peeved Kent says ”I don’t know how he said that, hello and goodbye is all he knows” ! 
I know it isn’t a Waltonism, just an outright lie, but I just have to repeat what Sammy Menacker said of our Billy Robinson on his first tour Down Under… 
”Billy, you were originally’ from Bondi Beach right here in Sydney’? 
Billy, ‘That’s right Sam’! 

Anglo Italian
Here’s a twist. 

I have just watched a superb tag match between the St Clair Bothers and the Royals. 

Bert Royal’s creativity and use of the ropes were quite outstanding, and the Saints were well up to the trickery of the Royals. It was a perfectly clean bout, lightning fast.  It would have been impossible to describe every move like the frantic boxing commentators do.  Kent Walton just kept to his own pace, describing as and when he could. 
This was an old one, with that high camera fairly fixed throughout.  The whole ring was visible, may have been 1970? 

I thought the commentary was as exceptional as the wrestling, and proof, to me at least, that Kent Walton dumbed down a few years later and was required to say all sorts of nonsense.  On this performance you can tell why we often state that wrestling used to be run along similar lines as boxing. 

davidmantell
One thing I’ve always admired Kent for was that he was the only announcer on the planet who was prepared to voice his opinion – even if in code – when a bout was a bit substandard – particulary with comedy bouts and the more extreme examples of Daddy tags: 

“Quite an unusual exhibition of tag wrestling … not much wrestling just yet … Joynson doing well with the power stuff but I think the crowd want to see a bit more wrestling … not much to do with wrestling but the crowd like it anyway” (that last one was the notorious Daddy & Patton vs Anaconda & Rasputin bout from ’88) 

Anglo Italian 
Just seen the match between iron Fist and Romany Riley. 

Iron Fist from Jamaica, in a bright orange suit, with headband, bare bandaged feet, much lighter. 

Romany Riley in regulation plain trunks, much heavier. 

Kent Walton pointed out that we could look out for the tattoos on Riley’s upper arms to distinguish the two. 

​brookie
I’m not sure this is classed as a “Waltonism” but in a bout between Jim Breaks and Jon Cortez he sees that JB clearly holds the trunks of JC to gain the pin fall and then calls the ref over, who eventually disqualify’s Breaks who rants at Kent during the melee. During the time in calling to the ref, he repeatedly says he will get in trouble about intervening, but obviously wants to see justice down. 

As a commentator I did like his style , smiled at some of mistakes, but can’t quite understand why he needed to get involved unless it was staged. 

Not a great point of debate but if anyone has seen the bout and can offer a view it would nice to hear. 

Anglo Italian
Just watched Maxine v Pete Lapaque and Kellett v Bobby Barnes. In Kellett v Barnes, the wrestlers hardly touched each other.  The commentator’s skill here was making it believable.  His contribution was central and somehow made it work. 

​Lapaque v Maxine was a very strange bout.  Perfectly matched opponents, Maxine-s over/the&top niceness rather weird. Maxine didn-t s3ell much, Pete Lapaque was superb.  Again, the commentator absolutely made it.   He really tried to legitimize the weight differences and issues, given that the British Middleweight Champion was weighing in at Heavy Middleweight.  Don-t worry, Kent, there were very few nerds like me watching. 

​Couldn-t deny myself one little chuckle though  “Pete and Jon Lapaque are twins.  Or very nearly.” 

Come on Kent, there can-t be much discussion about this! 

Anglo Italian   
In the Big Daddy v Kendo Nagasaki match yesterday:  “Bobby Howes once got Nagasaki’s mask up and over his nose but we didn’t see his face.”  This was only four years after Billy Howes had taken the mask right off and Nagasaki had wrestled on a for about thirty seconds maskless with the tattoo visible.  Odd that Kent was so unclear on an event that we fans at the time had thought to be very important. 

davidmantell
Are you quite sure it came all the way off that time?  The biog on Kendo’s website says it just went up to his nose like Kent said.  And on the 8mm offscreen film on Youtube, he still seems to have something covering the top of his head as he staggers back to the dressing room. 

Anglo Italian   
I wouldn’t want to be too categorical about anything 40 years after the event.  But… Given that this was THE sensational bout, widely publicised around the land, something special definitely happened in it. My memory is that the mask came right off.

The Youtube film is intriguing as it just adds to the confusion.  A whole chunk seems to be missing between the mask reaching the nose and Nagasaki leaving the ring.  But when he does leave the ring, you can clearly see his face  and eyes. I’d like help from others in reminding me whether we really did see the tatto at that point, or whether I have confused this with 4 years later. 

The Nagasaki website is notoriously inaccurate and for years it said that Nagasaki-s tv debut was in a match with Howes.  I corrected this on their guestbook in 2004 …….Wayne Bridges was his first tv opponent.  But the site kept the Howes version.  The Nagasaki site has increasingly little to do with wrestling, certainly not from the Heritage years.   This site offers far more detail. 

So, help from other 1971 grapple gazers, please. 

Taking a conspiracy theory even further……..as if I would………..Nagasaki was keen to have it said that he had never been unmasked, especially once the excitement of the Howes bout had paid its way.  It would not be difficult to imagine that Kent Walton had been asked here, in 1975, to rewrite history by stating that the mask had never come off fully.  But why on earth would he have singled out the sensational Howes bout if the mask had just been raised as in most Nagasaki bouts?

Either a slip from Kent, or perhaps something more sinister………… 

Dave Sutherland 
Was it really as far back as 1971? I seem to recall it being a few years later and well within the same time scale as Shirley Crabtree’s total unmasking of Kendo but as has been said it was a long time ago.  However as I remember the bout in question Billy Howes, as uncompromising a hard man as you could find and one I never tired of watching, set out from the first bell on a mission of single minded determination to removed KN’s mask. He was doing a pretty good job of it too and the reason that he had it up over his nose is that he had caused Nagasaki’s nose to bleed and pulling the mask up into that vicinity was causing him great discomfort. So much so that Nagasaki employed a rapid series of karate style blows to KO Howes after which he removed the mask HIMSELF rushing into his corner to grab a towel to cover his face and bleeding nose. However it did allow us a brief glimpse of his face and the famous tattoo before he rushed off to the dressing room, prompting Kent Walton to remark that now we had seen his face we probably wished that we hadn’t. I remember watching it in black and white but then we didn’t get a colour set until around 1973 
 
 PJayBe 
In reply to this post by Anglo Italian 
“In Kellett v Barnes, the wrestlers hardly touched each other.  The commentator-s skill here was making it believable.  His contribution was central and somehow made it work.”

Unbelievable bout, from before the days of political correctness……… The right result, and both men came out looking strong, what more could they ask. 

​Anglo Italian 
In reply to this post by Dave Sutherland 
Dave Sutherland wrote
“Billy Howes, as uncompromising a hard man as you could find and one I never tired of watching, “
I agree Dave, but Kent Walton had clearly forgotten him by 1975 and called him Bobby Howes. 

Anglo Italian
I’ve just seen Gwyn Davies versus Dennis Mitchell. 

Kent Walton called it an “international” heavyweight bout. 

I know promoters used to take that line, but I was surprised to hear Kent following suit.  I suppose you could always argue that just like football and rugby, wrestling disregarded generally agreed definitions of what a country is, all in the cause of “exoticness”.  It’s hard not to laugh, though. 

​More to the point:  was Gwyn Davies Welsh?  Did he have any true connections to Wales?  Apart from being Heavyweight Champion of Wales! 

Good bout, lovely sneering from Davies, exciting suspension holds, and smooth roll-outs from Mitchell. 

davidmantell
Anglo Italian wrote
“I’ve just seen Gwyn Davies versus Dennis Mitchell. Kent Walton called it an “international” heavyweight bout. “
Plaid Cymru no doubt agreed. 

​Anglo Italian   
In Lee Bronson versus Kendo Nagasaki in the giant Croydon ring, the match with the handshake, I was waiting for some comments about Norman the Butcher Ansell being Bronson’s father.  No comments came this time, which surprised me a little.  Nagasaki knocked Bronson out via a Kamikaze Crash. 

I was then astonished to see, with his son writhing in agony in the ring, Norman the Butcher appeared ringside to escort Nagasaki safely away from several angry fans, including a Jim Breaks lookalike. 

They must have been pretty sure of Norman’s low profile at the time, and it just makes me wonder whether even this little minding detail had been discussed beforehand to keep a lid on Kent’s usual remarks. 

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