Blood and Ballyhoo

A question that I am frequently asked is, "How come that someone who has read all those books and even done that Open University, how come that you can take so much interest in something that is such an obvious load of bollocks as professional wrestling?" For if all professional sports have at least a touch of show business in their make up, wrestling would appear to be show-biz with just a hint of sport. The mat game is a kind of athletic three card trick,existing on the cusp of  cheap con and genuine skill; and that is the attraction.

For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated with the margins of society, the less than respectable fringes of popular culture. I remember being taken to the Tower of London as a kid. The old weapons and suits of armour were interesting enough but for me more interesting by far were the escapologists working the cobbles of TowerHill. Hidden in a canvas bag, trussed up with chains and with rusty WWII bayonets stuck in the chains for good measure, the showman would escape in " three, but no more than three and a half minutes". After all these years I can even remember the patter. I was hooked. The circus, fairgrounds, street entertainers, burlesque this was the milieu  that gave birth to pro wrestling. For the street con-artist, the punter who is about to be taken for a ride is known as a "mark". It's no coincidence that the same expression is used in wrestling to describe a fan. 

If wrestling was nothing more than choreographed fighting and cheap showmanship it would be easy to dismiss, but amongst the phoney mayhem of drop kicks, forearm smashes and referees becoming mysteriously entangled in the ropes, hidden in all this nonsense is a kernel of genuine competitive wrestling. There are two strands to this tradition of  "shoot" wrestling.

The first strand goes back to the American carnivals of the late 19th and early 20th century. In the carnies the wrestlers would  "work" exhibition bouts with each other as well as taking on all comers from the public. In the Mid West farming communities, with strong wrestling traditions, this could turn out to be no easy task so most of the wrestlers in the troupe would be "shooters", capable of real wrestling. A "hooker" was a master of  crippling submission holds that could be used to deal with local heroes who proved to be a bit of a handful, as well as with  aspiring fellow pros with a tendency to deviate from the script. It must have been a tough old game and of course all this ability went with the wrestlers when the business was later transferred from the carnival to the auditoriums.

The second strand of the tradition comes from this side of the Atlantic and may well have predated the American carnies. By the middle of the 19th century English wrestling had evolved into a number of local styles the most famous of these being Devon and Cornwall, Cumberland and Westmoreland and Lancashire catch as catch can. Unlike most styles, Lancashire Catch emphasised not only the clean throw and pinfall but also the use of painful submission holds. Yes, the Lancashire miners were masters of submission fighting long before anyone in this country had heard of jujitsu.

Eventually, rather like Rugby League/Union,  the style split into amateur catch as catch can without the submission holds (this would later evolve into Olympic Freestyle) and the hard as nails Professional Catch. This last was the style that the working wrestlers took with them as they climbed through the ropes to do the business in yet another choreographed bout. This was also the style nurtured in the tough environment of Billy Riley's Wigan gym, the Snake Pit.

No doubt about it, old time professional wrestling was a three card trick alright, but a three card trick with attitude. It was a secret smoke and mirrors world and in looking at it's history it really is pretty difficult to separate fact from fiction. Many years ago I had the privilege of sharing a dressing room with the late Jackie Pallo.  "All wrestlers are liars" the old luvvie confided, "and the first lie is when they tell you that they can fucking wrestle".