Dave Reviews British Wrestling — page 2

When I look for things to review for the site, I try to pick things that nobody else would as a point of interest. Case in point, Reslo, the Welsh wrestling programme that outlasted World of Sport. Orig Williams became the face and voice of the show, alongside actor Bryn Fon. I believe the majority of the shows were filmed in North Wales, where Welsh is more commonly spoken alongside English, rather than South Wales, where it’s not. I’m three quarters Welsh, based on my antecedents, with my family being coal miners that moved up to the West Midlands from South Wales for better jobs and houses, and I couldn’t tell you a single Welsh word except for araf, so no remarks to be made on the commentary!

I got one or two votes recently in the Doomies and have had some nice comments for my previous British wrestling reviews, so I thought I’d look at something I’ve had in mind for a while.

1991 – British wrestling is effectively long gone from TV, having been cancelled in 1988, but the legend still lives on, and the promotions still active probably were thankful for the WWF having exploded on the scene, meaning that the average punter would just see ‘Wrestling’ on a poster and go see it again regardless of whether it’s Hulk Hogan or Robbie Brookside.

There’s a reason why when you talk about British wrestling it’s still equated to Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks, because those were the big stars during the TV era, but not far behind was the likes of Kendo Nagasaki. In this episode of the long-running BBC arts show Arena (and check out how cool that intro and theme tune is), reporter/producer Paul Yates seeks one of the most desired and hard to get commodities in all of wrestling – a recorded interview with the masked samurai warrior.

This is a British wrestling group/show from the early nineties, 1993 unless I’m wrong, and I believe the person running the show and who trained most of the guys was John Holt, better known as Johnny “Muscles” England from the World of Sport day. His whole deal was that he was a preening and posing bodybuilder, based on having been a competitive bodybuilder in his earlier days. I think he’s said that he recruited a bunch of bodybuilders from a gym he worked out at as well as assorted hard nuts he knew. They’re trying to capitalise on the American wrestling boom in the UK around this time, which was just petering off in favour of other stuff. Mixed results, not for lack of trying, but we’ll get there.

Saw this pop up on the front page of the Network and was interested in one of the matches listed, so thought I’d check the whole show out. I have zero familiarity with the current product, so thought I’d give it a look, might have a different perspective on it.

Let’s have a look, as requested in a previous review, at some tag team wrestling from World of Sport.

Tomorrow I’m going to do a tag team turmoil review, with matches including the likes of Owen and Bruce Hart, William Regal and Robbie Brookside, and Rocky Moran and Fit Finlay, but today I thought I’d have a look at this documentary featuring Finlay and his family talking about their history in wrestling.

One more day in tribute to Rollerball Rocco.

Seeing as the review yesterday of some of Maniac Mark Rocco’s matches were enjoyed, I thought I’d have a look at some more of his matches from Screensport, which was a satellite channel in Europe. Most of the matches are from the North Staffs area unless noted. There’s a bit of a WWF and American influence with interviews and little angles and a bit of “bedlam”. The announcers are Vince Miller and Maxton G. Beesley. Neither actually had a wrestling background, Miller was a pub singer and comedian and Beesley was an actor (his son, Max Beesley, ended up becoming quite famous in the nineties for a cup of tea), so they’re a bit ropey at time. Rocco was running an angle with them where he was threatening to and would sometimes beat them up, mainly focussing his ire on “NB” Beesley (NB for Nancy Boy) for wearing a pink bow-tie.

I was sorry to hear that Mark ‘Rollerball’ Rocco has died. Pretty much a legend in British wrestling, he fought all over the world, including in Japan (and MSG) as Black Tiger. His dad, grandad AND great-grandad were wrestlers. By the time I got into wrestling he had just packed it in as his heart was failing him. In fact, one of the first wrestling shows I ever went to, in August of 1991 at a seaside theatre in Rhyl, had a programme that detailed his heart surgery. Sorry to see him go, but nobody lasts forever as we’re getting to realise more and more. I thought I’d have a look at a selection of his matches with some stars we all know of.