A forgotten hero of the mat.

A wrestler from the 1930s who was a product of the Stepney Workers Sports Club, a committed socialist who was Britain's only representative at the Anti-Fascist Games held in Paris and would go on to have many adventures including a spell in the French Foreign Legion. Just the kind of tale that you might expect to find on this blog. Alas, I can take no credit for unearthing the story of Harry Rabin, a real deal grappler and a larger than life character from the old Jewish East End. I have mentioned before that my efforts to write a little wrestling history are a small and amateurish thing compared to the wealth of information that can be found over at Wrestling Heritage and once again it's a big hat tip to the best source of wrestling history on the web.

A bear like no other.

There is an old saying in the circus. "Rissley kids and slanging buffers, only the Lord knows how they suffers." A rissley kid is a child tossed about by a foot juggler and performing dogs are known as slanging buffers. The saying is referring to the exploitation of children and animals that has been a cornerstone of show business since the first strolling players plied their trade in the Fertile Crescent. Performing animals are a contentious issue but it has to be admitted that there is a world of difference between something pretty harmless such as dog obedience trials or performing budgies and the savage cruelty of dancing bears. Controlling a dangerous wild animal is problematical at the best of times and working with bears and big cats is always going to have the potential for things going terribly wrong. That frisson of danger is what draws the punters in. Only having complete control of the animal can keep the trainer safe and in the case of performing bears this was achieved by such delightful practises as nose rings and the removal of teeth and claws.
For many years there was a tradition of wrestling bears on the American wrestling circuits. The creature was usually muzzled and may have been de-clawed. The wrestler who worked with the beast would rely on his speed and skill to stay out of harms way until the time was up. It was not an edifying spectacle and certainly had very little to do with wrestling but I suppose that it got a few bums on seats. In the late sixties a young Scottish wrestler called Andy Robin was working the Canadian circuit when he took part in one such exhibition. Andy was fascinated by the experience and was determined to not only train a bear of his own but to do so by befriending the beast and making it a part of his family. The history of wild animal training is littered with the bones of trainers who lost concentration for a moment and paid the ultimate price. As the Grizzly Bear is considered to be one of the world's most dangerous animals there must have been many who thought that Andy Robin had taken leave of his senses when he obtained a grizzly cub and proceeded to play/wrestle with it as it grew up. Andy and his wife Maggie formed a bond with Hercules the bear that might be unique in the annals of animal training. Together the three of them had an adventure that went far beyond the usual wrestling bear act. Hercules became a film star and when he disappeared when on location in the Outer Hebrides the nation held it's breath until he and Andy were reunited weeks later.
Animal behaviourists don't seem able explain why this potentially deadly, 30 stone animal never betrayed the trust that the Robins had in him. You can keep Paddington, Phoo and the rest - Hercules was the bear for me.

Dirt tracks and dropkicks.

Between 1928 and 1930 two sporting spectaculars, the like of which had never been seen before, arrived in Britain. Neither the dour working class sporting world of mud and fog shrouded football pitches or the Corinthian values of the public schools were any preparation for what was to come. First on the scene was Aussie ex-boxer, circus performer and WW1 flying ace, Digger Pugh who was to be the man to introduce motorcycle speedway to UK. No one had seen anything like it. Teams of riders hurtled around an oval dirt or cinder track at breakneck speeds. "Broadsiding" into the corners one leg trailing along the ground, No Brakes - No Fear was the catchphrase of the speedway rider. Speedway fever gripped the nation, tracks and stadiums opened all across the country and soon every town of any size seemed to have a speedway team.

No sooner had the British sporting public got it's breath back from the excitement of speedway when another sporting entrepreneur arrived on the scene. Henry Irslinger was no stranger to these shores.
The globetrotting wrestler and promoter was born in Vienna but had first made a name for himself on the London music hall stage during the Edwardian wrestling boom. Later he would decamp to America to ply his trade and also made a name for himself in Australia and South Africa.

 By 1930 Islinger was back in London with American wrestler Benny Sherman and together with Sir Athol Oakley and Bill Garnon would launch the next sporting sensation on an unsuspecting public. During the previous decade America had seen the emergence of an entirely new style of professional wrestling. Gone was the old school Greco-Roman that had become so popular in the past. The new "Slam Bang" style that would come to be known as All-In in Britain was something completely different. There seemed to be few rules with the  wrestlers free to hit and kick their opponent at will. It all happened in All-In. Wrestlers hit over the head with buckets and corner stools, unlikely submission holds, blood everywhere, some matches degenerated into full scale riots and certainly no evening was considered to be a real success unless the hapless referee became entangled in the ropes.
The Second World War more or less put paid to speedway and wrestling but both sports would experience a post-war revival. Wrestling was given a brush down and put on it's best behaviour and would eventually experience it's biggest ever boom. By that time Athol Oakley had retired and was running guided tours of the Lorna Doone country of Exmoor and trying to convince holidaymakers that R D Blackmore's novel was based on fact. Compared to convincing punters of the authenticity of wrestling it must have seemed like money for old rope. In the 1950s Digger Pugh would once more take centre stage with his latest brainwave, stockcar racing. You can't keep a good man down. Speedway would go on to survive many ups and downs and is still alive and well albeit on nothing like the scale of years gone by.

Speedway and wrestling were the brainchild of sporting showmen and had histories deep in the tradition of the music halls and the wonderful smoke and mirrors world of the circus, wall of death and fairground sideshows. A not quite respectable, not quite the done thing world that introduced a touch of danger and excitement to the hum-drum lives of the many.  
                                                                     

Billy Robinson. RIP.

Wrestling historians never tire of unpicking the tangled web that is the relationship between the bizarre, make believe world of showtime wrestling and the genuine competitive sport. One man who earned respect as both a wrestling entertainer and as a 100% real deal "shooter" was Manchester's Billy Robinson who passed away yesterday at the age of 75. Building on a successful amateur career that culminated in winning the 1957 light heavyweight championship, Billy was also schooled in the wonderful, almost lost art of Wigan catch as catch can and he made the most of his genuine skill when he turned professional. Recognised as the British Heavyweight Champion before decamping to the USA and Japan,Billy would have a long and successful career and brought an air of dignity to the sometimes tawdry world of pro-wrestling. He was a first class athlete by any standards. When Mixed Martial Arts arrived on the scene it was to Billy Robinson that many top cage fighters turned to for coaching. The man was a walking encyclopedia of submission wrestling knowledge and a true credit to the mat game.

Old catch wrestling. The real deal.

The grand old sport of Wigan submission wrestling was all but lost and might have disappeared had it not been for a dedicated band of enthusiasts. None knew more about this hard as nails style than Billy Riley and he was to pass on his knowledge to a man who would become a shining beacon of skill in professional wrestling's world of smoke and mirrors - Billy Robinson. You can see them both in this rare piece of footage.

Jim Wango and the Nazis.

The left's habit of labelling all and sundry as "Nazi" has always struck me as less than clever. The cops who shrugged their shoulders at Stephen Lawrence's murder, spent years covering up their ineptitude and even mounted undercover operations to discredit the grieving family, these people may have been deeply racist but that is not "Nazi". The history of what befell those who failed to live up to Nazi racial ideals is long and harrowing. It includes mass murder and individual stories of bigotry and injustice that are not so much horrific as just very sad. I came across one such story on the Wrestling Heritage site. Jim Wango was a globe trotting black professional wrestler who made the mistake of upsetting top Nazi  thug Julius Streicher on the eve of the Berlin Olympics. It's a little bit of history on the margins and one of thousands of such stories that formed the true narrative of what "Nazi" really means.

RIP The Man They Loved To Hate.

Post-War British professional wrestling reached the peak of it's fortunes during the early sixties. Apart from the weekly television exposure there were literally hundreds of live shows being put on in venues ranging in size from the local corn exchange or public baths to the Royal Albert Hall. At times the quality of the wrestling was such that it was almost possible to believe that the game really was as straight as table tennis, and certainly more straight than racing or politics. Some of the wrestlers became household names and none more so than welterweight champion Mick McManus.who died this morning aged 93.  Archetypal wrestling villain and South London dodgy geezer with an interest in  antiques, Mick was the epitome of the mat game. Turning pro in 1947 he had a career that spanned three decades. Such was the secretive nature of the business that McManus' true role was shrouded in mystery but it was generally acknowledged that as the Dale Martin "booker" or matchmaker he could make or break careers. Upset Mick and a wrestler could have a very lean time indeed. The product of a strange smoke and mirrors world of deceit, subterfuge and genuine hard men, Mick McManus was also that other paradox, a true died in the wool working-class Tory. Ah! well

Gorgeous George - A wrestler like no other.

What on earth could George Galloway, Muhammad Ali and the late godfather of soul James Brown have in common? Well all three owe something to a man who was at one time the most famous professional wrestler in the world.  The Respect leader's nickname, the ring persona of "The Greatest" and James Brown's stage act all owe something to Gorgeous George Wagner, and both Brown and Ali have been the first to admit it.
In the early 1930's George Wagner was a fast moving young light-heavyweight wrestler working the Mid-West venues night after night. The long hours of travelling, the hard bumps and uncertain pay made for no easy ride and George was only too well aware that he was never more than a serious injury or a dishonest promoter away from the poverty of his youth. It was to take a full decade as a journeyman wrestler before George and his wife Betty came up with the idea that would change their fortunes and transform wrestling forever.
These days the arrogant, high-camp heel is a stock in trade of the wrestling business but when George started perming his bleached locks and entering the ring in flamboyant gowns it was ground breaking. In a few short years George and Betty had honed the act to perfection and had taken America by storm. Gorgeous George, AKA "The Human Orchid", would strut down the aisle accompanied by his valet who would be called upon to spray the ring with perfume (Chanel No 10,  "Why be half safe?" claimed George) before his master would deign to climb through the ropes. The crowd would be having fits as he carefully folded his robe and went through a long pre-match rigmarole of prancing and preening. When the action finaly started George, schooled in the tough and unforgiving world of the carnival wrestling booths,  would prove to be a fast and skillful grappler as well as the consummate showman.

Victor Hugo would probably have recognised in George's outrageous act  "an idea whose time has come'' because as luck would have it the Human Orchid blossomed just as television was becoming the home entertainment choice of the nation.The new industry was on the lookout for cheap mass appeal programs and wrestling fitted the bill a treat.  When someone remarked that George was made for TV he retorted that in fact TV had been made for him. Whatever. The fact remains that Gorgeous George would become an institution and a major part of American blue-collar post war culture who's name would live on in popular usage long after his ring career was forgotten.  By the late 1950's George's wrestling days were drawing to close. He had earned and spent a fortune, could no longer bounce around as he once had and his lifelong heavy drinking was beginning to take it's toll. By 1963 a flat broke Gorgeous George was dead of liver disease and heart failure. He was forty eight years old, had lived his life to the full and had broken the mould of popular culture in the process.

                                                                                              

Grapples, Grunts & Grannies.

                                               
Documentaries that take a serious look at professional wrestling are few and far between so historians of the mat game as well as fans of the golden age of British post-war grappling will need to make sure that they don't miss this opportunity to relive again the innocence of our youth. My own efforts to record some moments from wrestling history here on this blog are a poor and amateurish thing compared to the output of the Wrestling Heritage site and I'm delighted that 'Hack' and 'Anglo Italian' have been able to have a major input into the program. So, on Thursday 13th December settle down in front of the box for an hour of nostalgia. It's just a shame that Watney's Party Specials and Vesta Curry are no longer available to complete the evening.

When Maxick topped the bill.

The Victorian and Edwardian music hall provided the backdrop for a great many larger than life characters but few would capture the imagination of the public quite like the contingent of Japanese jujitsu exponents and continental wrestlers and strongmen who sought fame and fortune on the British music hall stage. Some of these strength athletes were far from being one dimensional figures. Yukio Tani was a tiny little man who would take on and defeat all comers as part of his act. When he retired he devoted his life to the establishment of judo as an integral part of what he saw as the development of a rounded human being. Eugene Sandow was in his day probably the most famous man in the world. Weightlifter,  wrestler and  physique star, Sandow was a household name. He rubbed shoulders with the movers and shakers of the age but he used his fame to highlight a tireless campaign for social reform that included establishing a Ministry of Health, sanitary inspectors, free school meals, family allowances, physical education in schools and pre-natal exercise clinics. The mighty Russian Lion, Georges Hackenschmidt was the most famous wrestler of his time and caused London's first ever traffic jam when he fought Madrali the Terrible Turk at Olympia in 1904. When Hack finally retired from the mat game he went on to write a number of books on philosophy. The era of music hall strength athletes was beginning to draw to a close when a Bavarian "pocket Hercules" who went by the name of Max Sick stepped ashore to seek his fortune. You did not need to be the sharpest show-biz entrepreneur to grasp that the newcomer was in need of a name change if only to spare him the worst excesses of the rowdier elements in the cheap seats. Farewell Max Sick and enter Maxick. The little man was an outstanding weightlifter but the most spectacular part of his act was his mastery of muscle control. He could isolate and control individual muscles in a way that had never been seen before and it went down a storm with the hard to please music hall audiences. Not long after he made his London debut Maxick teamed up with fellow strength artist Monte Saldo and together they produced and marketed a postal muscle building course that they modestly named "Maxalding". Amazingly enough Saldo's son continued to sell the course, complete with sepia photos of the founders, right up until the 1970s. A free online treasure trove of Maxalding books, courses and memorabilia can be found here. Many of these old time strongmen were very influenced by the new science of psychology and none more so than Maxick who placed great emphasis on the correlation between mind and muscle; commonplace in today's world of sports psychology but innovative at the time.
When the First World War broke out Maxick was interned, not that he had any intention of returning to fight for those he described as "Prussian bullies". Upon his release from internment he sold his share of the business to Monte Saldo and set off to explore the Amazon and Orinoco rivers. Maxick was approaching eighty and living in Buenos Aires when he passed away. After an afternoon spent arm wrestling in a local bar the old strength athlete cycled home and knowing his body so well, realised that the end was near. The farewell note that he left concluded with the words,"Remember that the infinite is our inner freedom manifested through the consciousness." An epitaph that I hope will mean more to some readers of this blog than it does to me.

Mr TV remembered.

The most highly prized skill for the old time professional wrestler was the ability to work a crowd. To be able to generate emotions ranging from humour to fury by a few simple moves was the mark of a real pro. In the heyday of post-war British wrestling in the 50's and 60's nobody could work a crowd like Jackie Pallo. Born into a boxing family, his father and uncle were well known trainers and seconds, Jack was a useful fighter but at a time when useful fighters could be found no further away than the next dressing room and so he decided to have a go at the mat game. Unlike his cousin Reg who would go on to become a TV boxing commentator, Jackie was denied use of the family name of Gutteridge in such a disreputable career as wrestling but if Reg Gutteridge was to be recognized eventually as one of the most knowledgeable of TV boxing pundits it was Jackie Pallo who would come to be known as Mr TV. How we loved Jack's appearances on the box, especially if he was matched against his arch rival Mick McManus. Pallo was not a skilled wrestler, in fact I think I'm right in saying that he had very little background in competitive wrestling, but when it came to selling himself as a tough, competent grappler who was the archetypal cheeky cockney Jack had no rival. A typical Pallo match would see him in a series of lucky escapes and outrageous rule bending all accompanied by a stream of banter with the crowd.

Toward the end of his career I had the privilege of sharing a dressing room with Jackie Pallo (it's a long story) and amongst the many pearls of wisdom he shared was the following comment on McManus, "Miserable bastard. Lovely worker though." No higher praise could be given to one old pro by another. Jack was also a lovely worker who enlivened many an otherwise dull Saturday afternoon by his appearances on ITV World Of Sport. A great performer in a more innocent age.

Carver Doone and Atholl Oakely.

I'm off to Exmoor again next month. During my previous visit early on in the summer I bought a copy of Lorna Doone and this time intend to walk up the East Lyn as far as the Doone Valley. I have discovered that just as Sherlock Holmes fans used to walk up and down Baker Street in search of the fictional detective's lodgings, so too do Doone fans roam the landscape between Exmoor and the Bristol Channel seeking out the location of RD Blackmoor's classic tale; and that is turning out to be a tale in it's own right.

The history of old time show business is littered with fake titles. "Count" this, "Sir" that. "Colonels" who never made it to Lance Corporal. Indian "Rajahs" who never ventured east of Mile End and more "Professors" in theatrical digs than in any town of dreaming spires. Naturally the hall of mirrors that is the world of professional wrestling has been home to it's fair share of fake Earls and phony Lords but one, Sir Atholl Oakeley, was the genuine article. Oakeley introduced modern professional wrestling to this country in 1930 and went on to become British Heavyweight Champion and one of the leading promoters. His autobiography, Blue Blood On The Mat, mainly concentrates on the authors involvement in the wrestling business but does mention in passing his interest in Lorna Doone and I believe that as a promoter Oakley once had a wrestler billed as Carver Doone. Quite what Sir Atholl Oakely Bart. was doing in the almost exclusively working class world of grunt and groan is a bit of a mystery. When he retired from the mat game he ran sailing holidays on an old Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter and also tours of Doone country; or at least that's what I have heard. I suppose that compared to the duplicity of the wrestling game, convincing people that Lorna Doone was based on fact was money for old rope.

Now I discover that RD Blackmoore wrote his most famous book just ten minutes walk from where I live. Unfortunately there is no overgrown Gothic mansion to explore but just a dull 1920s development with the only link to the past being a Blackmoore Close and a Doone Road.

So a short break in North Devon, a new found interest in Lorna Doone, my long time fascination with wrestling history and a couple of streets of unassuming 1920s semi-detached, have all come together to reafirm once again that most profound of philosophical cogitations - the interconnectedness of all things.

How an Admiral saved wrestling.

I think that it was Christopher Isherwood in Goodbye To Berlin who said regarding the Weimar nightclub scene and the rise of Nazism, "a people who believe in wrestling could believe in anything". A bit harsh on wrestling fans perhaps but certainly one of the problems confronting promoters in the hundred year history of pro wrestling has been how to keep the show believable and convince fans that they are witnessing a genuine contest. People who only know the game from the ludicrous world of WWE might be surprised to learn that the grunt and groan business was ever anything but a form of children's entertainment; a kind of tasteless Blue Peter without all that milk bottle top collecting. The modern day promoter knows that the multi-million dollar product is just a bit of nonsense and knows that we know as well; and doesn't care. But there was a time when the industry bent over backwards to convince the punters that they were witnessing a genuine contest. Huge efforts were made to keep the secret including a wrestlers language that could be used to exclude outsiders . As late as the 1980's British wrestlers were using the expression "queens" (Queens Park Rangers = strangers) as a warning if an uninitiated member of the public was within earshot. If in this country the secret lingo was based on rhyming slang, on the other side of the pond wrestlers used kafabe, the old hidden language of the carnivals. Wrestling was on the one hand a tough world of highly skilled athletes and at the same time a massive con that operated in a no man's land between sport and burlesque. For the promoter the challenge was always to put on shows that had enough gimmicks and esoterica to keep the fans interested while at the same time sending them home happy in the knowledge that they had just witnessed some genuine wrestling. It was never an easy task.
The business had a number of tricks up it's sleeve. One was to keep the press on side and this was successfull right up until the 30's when the excesses of many promoters persuaded sports writers to jump ship and transfer their loyalties to less contentious sports. Another was the fact that very many professional wrestlers were, no matter how choreographed their nightly exhibitions, very much the real deal and every bill would include at least one "hooker", a master of crippling submission holds who could be relied upon to uphold the integrity of the sport. You think it's all fake? Step right up mister and have a go. Finally,no matter how many expose there might be regarding the pre-arranged nature of wrestling it could always be argued that although that particular form of the sport was as bent as a nine bob note, this was the genuine article and the kind of wrestling that had been the norm in the "old days" before "the fall" and the bringing into disrepute of the game by dishonest promoters. The precise historical time of this supposed wrestling Garden of Eden could be adjusted to suit.
The style of wrestling that came to be both loved and despised was very much an American invention but it's roots lay in the catch wrestling of the Lancashire pitmen. But Britain can claim not only the mother lode skill base but also credit for one of the game's most outrageous scams. By the mid 1940's the British wrestling scene was in trouble. Such had been the depths that pre-war All In wrestling had sunk to and such the disregard for the public that the London County Council had finally banned it from the capital. If there was to be a post-war revival it would have to take the form of a born again wrestling that could cleanse itself of the recent past and by showing itself to be linked to the golden age of real wrestling, enter the halls in a cloud of sporting integrity while the product remained essentially the same as before. Could the promoters pull it off? Yes they could and a group of them put their heads together and came up with a plan.
A committee would look into wrestling and although this committee would be made up in the main of the promoters themselves, people from outside the business, and people of some standing, would be needed to give the proceedings authenticity. Admiral Lord Mountevans KCB DSO was approached and agreed to chair the committee. Mountevans was a naval hero, had been second in command on Scott's ill fated Antarctic expedition and was not the sort of chap to have any truck with fake wrestling. Commander Cambell, a popular radio broadcaster at the time also agreed to join this august body. Cambell did a sort of common sense, man of the people type act on The Brains Trust, predecessor of Any Questions. There is some doubt if Campbell was ever actually a Commander and some would have it that his seagoing career was as a purser on passenger ships. He would fit in a treat. Labour MP Maurice Webb was to complete the non-wrestling element. The Lord Mountevans Committee as it was to be known couldn't very well meet in the upstairs room of a pub so the boys went for broke and hired a room in the Houses Of Parliament. The committee discussed and decided on rules, weight divisions, championship belts (Lord Mountevans Gold Belt nach) and at the close the Admiral shuffled his papers together, thanked the members for attending and disappeared once more into the margins of history. The designated champions were authentic Wigan shooters, the masks and clowning around were kept to a minimum, the LCC lifted it's ban and for a while some semblance of respectability was bestowed on the grappling game. It couldn't last of course. Public taste is too fickle for that. In a few years the promoters would be forced to return to their old ways. Was Mountevans an innocent dupe or a willing accomplice? Perhaps he was a star struck fan who just wanted to hang out with the boys. We will never know but can be grateful I suppose that His Lordship would depart this mortal coil in 1957 and was thus spared the embarrassment of having to watch Big Daddy on World Of Sport.

Gyms ain't wot they used to be.

These days it seems that there are chromed and mirrored gyms everywhere and people talk of "going to the gym" in much the same matter of fact way that they would previously have said that they were going down the pub. It was not always so. Attitudes toward physical training have changed hugely over the years, and so sadly have gyms themselves. Weight training was very much the preserve of a particular type of athlete; weightlifters, bodybuilders and some wrestlers. Boxers never used weights as it was considered a sure fire way of losing speed and sports coaches in general felt that weight training would make you slow and "muscle-bound". I think that Arsenal were the first football club to put players under a weights coach and in the 50s this was considered pretty radical. As for physical culture as it was known, training for it's own sake or because it might be healthy to do so, well this really was considered to be pretty cranky.
Dedicated gyms were few and far between and most were housed in youth clubs or church halls. Some, like Billy Riley's notorious Snake Pit in Wigan, were little more than tin shacks. Boxing gyms were frequently on the top floor of a pub; the Thomas a Becket in the Old Kent Road and Canning Town's Royal Oak being famous examples. The Dukes Head in Putney must have been unique housing as it did a famous bodybuilding gym upstairs where wrestler Spencer Churchill could frequently be found, and the basement being home to Putney Town Rowing Club. Don't even think of visiting any of these once famous hostelries. The first two are no more and the Dukes Head is now an overpriced gastropub.
What the old time proponents of the benefits of physical fitness would make of the modern fitness industry I don't know. All that chrome. Mirrors everywhere. So many pot plants the place looks like Kew Gardens. Machines that would appear to have more to do with space travel than the old fashioned business of building muscle. Legions of grim faced yuppies driving to the gym in order to go on a walking machine. Do some of them walk to go on a driving machine I wonder?
It's all a far cry from one particular wrestling club that I used to train at. Amenities were what you might call modest but there was a refreshment facility. Half way through the evening a halt was called to proceeding and a primus stove was fired up and a kettle boiled. After a mug of tea and a roll up (breakfast of the champions at one time) we got back to the job in hand of bouncing each other off the walls. And not a potted palm to be seen.

The Islington Hercules

All that is solid melts into air....Karl Marx wasn't referring to the mat game when he wrote that, but he might have been. In the smoke and mirrors world of old time professional wrestling few things were as they appeared. What looked incredibly dangerous was highly crafted make believe but the injuries sustained were real enough and many wrestlers retired to a life of crippling arthritis. The characters that matmen portrayed in the ring frequently bore no relationship to their real life personas and wrestlers who appeared as little more than flamboyant showmen or brutal thugs might in reality be highly skilled shooters. Jack Pye was an example of this. By the same token someone put over by the promoters as being a "scientific" master grappler might be nothing more than a clever worker with little or no background in real competition. One man who really was what it said on the tin was the Islington Hercules - Bert Assirati. I only saw Assirati wrestle once. I was a callow youth and Bert was at the back end of a career that had spanned three decades. At five feet six or seven inches tall but weighing in at eighteen stone he was an awesome sight. At one time recognised as one of the strongest men in the world with an 800 pound deadlift and a 200 pound straight arm pullover to his credit, he also had the agility of the professional gymnast that he had been in his youth. A globe trotting grappler of the old school he wrestled all over the world against anyone the promoters chose to put in front of him. Known as a "stiff worker" with a violent and unpredictable temper, Assirati could and would really hurt opponents and was treated with a wary respect both in the ring and in the dressing room. At various times holding versions of World, European and British Heavyweight Titles, Bert became somewhat of a celebrity in the 50s and was recognised as a "London Character" at the time. When not wrestling he would do a bit of door work and I don't imagine that many punters argued about his decisions on dress code.
Bert Assirati was that most unusual of wrestling phenomenon - the real deal.

Sport and Class.

As Wimbledon and Henley approach their respective annual climaxes of champers and strawberries this seems like a good time to ponder that most English of obsessions, sport and class. At first glance it all looks pretty straightforward. Polo for the toffs, tennis for the middle class and football for the proles is surely just a reflection of the expense involved in participating in each of these sports and anyway with more money sloshing around in a single Premier League club than it takes to stable the world population of polo ponies , isn't all this a bit dated?  Professional and amateur, gentlemen and players  seem like concepts as old fashioned as the belief that victory at Waterloo really was assured on playing fields on the outskirts of Slough. Even the class division between  league and union is not what it was. But don't let anyone tell you that class is irrelevant in modern sport. It's just that the distinctions are no longer quite so clear. Anyway, as in so many areas of life, it's in the margins, on the cusp, the interface of this and that, here is where the interesting stuff is to be found.

The truth is that sport has always crossed class boundaries. Two examples where the upper and working class have shared a common love of a sport disapproved of by the middle class are found in boxing and horse racing. Not that this shared love of ring and turf has led to any kind of equal relationship; far from it. In the case of boxing it was in the old time prize ring that the nature of the relationship was at it's most transparent. The aristos did the backing and the workers did, and received, the beating. In the multi-million pound industry of racing one class owns the racehorses while the other cleans the stables for the minimum wage. The stable-lads all hope to make it as jockeys, but of course few do. The two sports come together in the annual stable lads boxing tournament when the young lads perform for the entertainment of owners and trainers. I say "young" lads because the term is used to describe stable hands of any age; much like the colonial and Southern States "boy".

Rowing is usually perceived as a posh sport, and so it is but less well known is the strong working class tradition that has always existed in the sport. This tradition had it's roots in the tough world of Thames Watermen and Lightermen and these men might have been good enough to act as Royal Bargemasters but no way were the toffs going to have them competing at Henley. Just to be on the safe side the Amateur Rowing Association defined as professional anyone who worked at all. This led to the establishment of working class rowing clubs ( the clue is in the names, Putney Town and Thames Tradesmen for example) and a National Rowing Association that ran a parallel world of rowing totally segregated from the one dominated by the public schools and the universities. To give you a flavour of this I will just mention that an old mate of mine who was for a long time captain of one of these clubs once started his annual report in the club newsletter, "Dear Comrades" 

This state of affairs continued until the 1950s when the ARA finally relented and allowed working class rowers to take part in the "official" sport. It was a merger not without incident. The story is still told on the river of the first time that Putney Town competed in the posh Molesey Regatta. The public school types were having fits as the oiks romped home in race after race. Finaly the Putney Towners set off to the committee tent to collect their prizes only to find, as the ultimate snub, the trophies standing on a table in an otherwise deserted tent.

Playing fields of Eton or not, they don't like it up 'em.

The Mat Game's Lost Years.

Researching the early history of professional wrestling is not always a straightforward task. One problem is the lack of very much reliable written history. An American writer pretty much hit the nail on the head in remarking that wrestling history was something more at home on the front porch rather than in the library. We are dealing with an almost entirely anecdotal history more suited to a Studs Terkel rather than an Eric Hobsbawn or an E P Thompson.

Another problem is that until very recently we had two distinct histories on offer, one for public consumption and another, oral "true" history that was the preserve of those inside the business. Some writers, such as  Charles Mascall, had an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of the mat game but their position in the industry ensured that excellent although much of the work was, it had as a corner-stone the assumption that the punters must be constantly reassured about the genuine competitive nature of wrestling and must never be allowed to have their suspicions about the game confirmed.  

After many years of reading everything available and spending a fair bit of time talking to "old timers" I think that I have a reasonable grasp of British pro wrestling history but there are certainly many questions that remain to be answered. One of the mysteries that has been bugging me for a long time concerns what I refer to as the "lost years" of British wrestling; 1914 to 1930?  

We know that the golden age of wrestling started to go into decline after Hackenschmidt's defeat at the hands of Frank Gotch and that by the start of the First World War in 1914 the business was in a poor state. The outbreak of hostilities was the final nail in the coffin of big time wrestling in the UK. We also know that in 1930 Athol Oakley and Henry Irslinger introduced to the UK the "new" style of wrestling that had been popular in the USA for the previous ten years. Rebranding the product as "All-In Wrestling" Oakley, Irslinger, Garnon et all launched a major revival of the mat game that was to rival anything that had been seen during the heyday of music hall wrestling.  The question that puzzles me is what happened during the intervening years ? 

When wrestling started to go into decline on this side of the Atlantic many of the top stars decamped to America to reappear on the new circuits that were being set up by the likes of Toots Mondt. What happened to the bulk of British journeymen wrestlers that survived the war? Did they simply go back to work in the pits and mills and keep the skills alive by having a pull around with their mates? One thing is for sure the rigid and class bound segregation of professional and amateur sport would have meant that a return to the amateur ranks was out of the question.  None the less all those skilled wrestlers who made All-In the huge success that it was must have come from somewhere. Certainly the Lancashire catch wrestlers and Cumberland and Westmoreland stylists would have been wrestling for side bets and no doubt troupes of grapplers were working the travelling fairs taking on local lads in the time honoured way, but British professional wrestling in the sense of a form of entertainment for paying customers seems to have disappeared in the years leading up to the First World War only to reappear in a completely new form at the height of the inter-war depression.  1914 to 1930 really are the lost years.

The gloves come off - and the show goes on.

The problem of how to get those elusive bums on ringside seats is one that has exercised the minds of wrestling promoters from the early days of the sport. The result has been a long catalogue of gimmicks, some more successful and certainly some more tasteful than others. Terrible Turks, Masked Marvels, midgets,  tag wrestling, mud wrestling, even real wrestling, it's all been tried at some time or another. 

An old favourite is the appearance in the ring of celebrities from some other sport or even show-biz. This is not as difficult to pull off as you might imagine and any skillful working wrestler should be able to make a reasonably agile novice look tolerably competent on the mat.

In British rings two of the more bizarre examples of cross-over celeb grapplers are show-jumper Harvey Smith and perennial DJ Jimmy Savile.  In the States there has been a long tradition of former American Football stars turning to the mat game on retirement from the gridiron, Bronko Nagurski, Wayen Munn and Gus Sonnenburg being just three of the many ex football heroes recruited to the pro wrestling ranks.

By far the best draw has been famous ex-boxers and I can think of at least four former World Heavyweight Champions who have performed in the wrestling ring with varying degrees of success. The great Jack Dempsey had a go and seems to have been genuinely interested in wrestling as a fighting art. Joe Louis, perhaps the greatest heavyweight of all time, had a less happy introduction to the mat game. Forced into trying anything to earn enough to pay his back taxes, Louis was advised by doctors to call it a day after only a handful of matches. This must have come as a relief not only to the Brown Bomber but also to his army of loyal fans. Other fighters of the Joe Louis era who had a go at the grunt and groan business included Two Ton Tony Gallento, Jack Doyal and former world champ Jersey Joe Walcott.

Boxing writers have tended to lament the supposed humiliation of formerly great fighters being forced by financial circumstance to clown around in the wrestling ring. It's a fair point but the loss of dignity is no greater than the annual panto appearance, if not as much fun. The main thing is that today's boxers are far more savvy financially than those of yesteryear and more likely to retire with a large amount of their ring earnings intact. 

In 1951 when our own Randy Turpin outpointed the legendary Sugar Ray Robinson to win the World Middleweight title few sitting in Earls Court that night can have suspected that ten years and twenty nine fights later Randy would be wrestling for fifty quid a show. Turpin was a wonderful boxer but not what you would call astute when it came to financial matters. 

The story of Primo Carnera is one that professional boxing has little to be proud of. At six eight and twenty stone the former circus strong-man looked threatening enough but was a cumbersome and one dimensional fighter. None the less the amiable Italian giant met with some success in European rings and was eventually persuaded to try his luck in the States. The Ambling Alp as he was known soon fell into the hands of The Mob who were to manipulate Carnera's career for the rest of his stay in America. Probably no one will ever know the truth about Carnera's boxing record and how many opponents took a dive on instructions from the Mafia bosses. One way or another he ended up as Heavyweight Champion of the World before being thrown to the lions and destroyed by the hard hitting Max Baer who knocked the hapless giant to the canvas eleven times in as many rounds. Finally he was to receive another beating at the hands of the up and coming Joe Louis. His humiliation complete and his usefulness at an end Primo Carnera was returned to Italy; broke. The mob had swindled him out of most of his earnings. 

The story might have ended here but in 1946 Primo returned to America this time to take up a career in wrestling. He was an instant hit. The fans loved him and not only did he earn good money but he was actually allowed to keep it. The wrestling provided a stepping stone into lucrative film work and Carnera was to appear in a number of movies including a major role with Diana Dors and Joe Robinson in A Kid For To Farthings, Carol Reed's tale of life and wrestling in the 50s East End. Whatever we may think about the dubious world of professional wrestling we have to be pleased that it was around to give Primo Carnera that most unusual of life experiences; a second bite of the cherry.

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".

Who is that masked man?

The masked man has long been a favourite character in popular culture. In Victorian "penny dreadfuls", comic books and films,the Lone Ranger, Zorro and that perennial anti-hero Dick Turpin have all swung from chandeliers,fought their way out against seemingly overwhelming odds, leaped from the balcony onto their trusty steeds and rode off to do battle against the forces of darkness once more. I suppose that there was a kind of historical inevitability about the emergence of masked wrestlers. It's as if the mysterious heroes and villains of pulp fiction had been waiting all along for that call from the wonderful burlesque world of professional wrestling.  It was a match made in heaven.

Well actually, as far as I can tell, it was a match originally  made at New York's Manhattan Opera House in 1915 on the occasion of an international tournament that had been set to run for a couple of weeks. Many of the top American and European names were there including Alex Aberg, Ben Roller, Wladek Zbyszko (brother of the more famous Stanislaus),  Strangler Lewis and a host of lesser grapplers. It should have been a sell out but for whatever reason the old luvvies just weren't  getting the bums on seats and at one stage it looked like the wrestlers might be in danger of outnumbering the punters. Something would have to be done.

One evening, just as proceedings were about to get under way, a man stood up and announced that the gentleman sitting next to him, a gentleman who he had the privilege of managing and who was, at this moment in time wearing a  black mask, this gentleman was in fact a wrestler of such outstanding quality that not one of the assembled athletes would be able to prevail against him if only the powers that be would give him a chance. It was an outrage that this great wrestler was being barred from the tournament just because of the need for him to remain anonymous.

Eventually the Masked Marvel (for it was he) and his manager were escorted from the building,only to repeat the performance the next night, and the next. When the promoters relented and allowed the mystery man to compete it was standing room only. Night after night he played to a packed house and never looked like being beaten. Toward the end of the run the Masked Marvel was finally defeated and forced to reveal his identity. The audience waited with baited breath. Did the mask hide hideous disfigurement? Was our hero an estranged member of the British Royal Family? He turned out to be one Mort Henderson a jobbing wrestler from the Midwest. 

 In the the wonderful smoke and mirrors world of professional wrestling, Mort Henderson deserves a nod of recognition as the founder of a tradition that has endured to this day.  A tradition that has reached it's final, if not necessarily logical, conclusion in Mexico where all wrestlers wear masks. Mexico was also the home of the most famous of all masked grapplers. A man who during a fifty year career became a national hero, as well as the hero of thousands of matches not to mention countless B movies and comic books; El Santo.

The masked wrestler was always a favourite with British promoters. Apart from the obvious  marketing appeal it also had the advantage of allowing a wrestler to work twice on the same bill: once as himself and later, after a quick cup of tea and a fag, as the Red Scorpion or whatever. There have been many notable British masked warriors. Count Bartelli stood the test of time. Kendo Nagasaki had a nice line in mysterious occult knowledge and random bits of martial arts equipment, but for me the one who stands head and shoulders above the rest was the one and only Doctor Death. There was a real air of menace about the Doctor. Mind you, coming from Hollywood as he did it was good of him to make the effort to get over here and work Walthamstow Town Hall as frequently as he did. Doctor Death's alter-ego was in fact well known wrestling promoter, owner of the famous Two i's Coffee Bar and Tommy Steel's first manager, Paul Lincoln.  Smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors.