Professional wrestling in the United Kingdom
Professional wrestling entered the mainstream British culture when the newly-formed independent television network ITV began broadcasting it in 1955, firstly on Saturday afternoons and then also in a late-night midweek slot.
Domestically produced professional wrestling was at its peak of popularity when the television show World of Sport was launched in the mid-1960s, making household names out of Adrian Street, Mick McManus, Giant Haystacks, Jackie Pallo, Big Daddy, Mark Rocco, Steve Veidor, Dynamite Kid, and Kendo Nagasaki.
[11][12][13][14][15] At the start of the 20th century, wrestling was introduced to the public as part of a variety act to spice up the limited action involved in the bodybuilder strongman attractions.
One of its earliest stars was a Cornish-American ex-miner named Jack Carkeek (world Cornish wrestling champion in 1886[16][17][18]), who would challenge audience members to last ten minutes with him in the ring.
The development of wrestling within the UK brought legitimate Greco-Roman grappler Georg Hackenschmidt who was born in the Russian Empire to the country, where he would quickly associate himself with promoter and entrepreneur Charles B. Cochran.
With Lancashire style catch-as-catch-can already a major amateur sport particularly in Northern England, there existed a ready-made source of potential recruits to professional wrestling.
The great demand for wrestling, however, meant there were not enough skilled amateurs to go around, and many promoters switched to more violent styles, with weapons and chairshots part of the proceedings.
In the late 1930s, the London County Council banned professional wrestling, leaving the business in rough shape just before World War II.
The revelation of this, and the general chaos which had surrounded "All In" Wrestling prior to the War prompted Admiral Lord Mountevans, a fan of the sport, to collaborate with Commander Campbell (a member of the popular The Brains Trust radio panel show), member of parliament Maurice Webb and Olympic wrestler Norman Morell to create a committee to produce official rules for wrestling.
Similar rule systems were adopted by most major promotions in mainland Western Europe (although French wrestling abandoned rounds early on.)
The closure of Harringay Arena in 1954 was the last straw for Atholl Oakeley, and Joint Promotions were the only major player left to benefit when Chancellor Peter Thorneycroft abolished the entertainment tax in the 1957 budget.
While the World and British titles had some credibility (particularly as they were often placed on the more legitimate wrestlers), the addition of European, Empire/Commonwealth, Scottish, Welsh, and area championships got out of hand, and at one point there were conceivably 70 different titleholders to keep track of within Joint Promotions alone.
The first show aired on ABC and ATV (the weekend franchise holders on ITV) on 9 November 1955, featuring Francis St Clair Gregory (9 times Cornish wrestling heavyweight title holder[22] and father of Tony St Clair) versus Mike Marino and Cliff Beaumont versus Bert Royal live from West Ham baths.
[20] Heels made up a minority of the roster, with most shows containing an abnormally high proportion of clean sportsmanly matches between two "blue-eyes" (as faces were known backstage in the UK).
Although Joint Promotions considered the title vacant and held a tournament for a new champion (won by Billy Joyce), Assirati continued to claim it within the BWF.
After an initial transition period as a heel/tweener in the mid-1970s (most notable for his tag team partnership with future arch-rival Giant Haystacks and a heel vs heel feud with legendary masked wrestler Kendo Nagasaki, whom Daddy unmasked during a 1975 televised bout), from the summer of 1977 onwards, Big Daddy became a larger-than-life fan favourite of children and pensioners alike.
Due to his popularity, Crabtree's run was extended by carefully positioning him in tag matches, allowing a host of young partners (which included Young David,[25] Dynamite Kid,[26] Chris Adams,[27] Sammy Lee,[28] Kwik Kick Lee[29] and Steve Regal)[30] to carry the match before tagging Daddy in for the finish.
While Big Daddy was a massive draw in terms of family audiences, in equal part he alienated much of the existing adult fanbase for wrestling.
The promotion, renamed Ring Wrestling Stars (RWS) in 1991, continued to tour the old venues with Big Daddy in the headline slot until his retirement in December 1993 after suffering a stroke.
By contrast, All Star had used its two years of TV exposure to build up a returning Kendo Nagasaki as its lead heel and established such storylines as his tag team-cum-feud with Rollerball Rocco and his "hypnotism" of Robbie Brookside.
Headline matches frequently pitted Nagasaki in violent heel vs heel battles against the likes of Rocco, Dave 'Fit' Finlay, Skull Murphy (Peter Northey) and even Giant Haystacks, or at smaller venues teaming with regular partner "Blondie" Bob Barrett or “Ravishing” Robbie Hagen to usually defeat blue-eye opposition.
[9] Meanwhile, the WWF continued on Sky television, while its chief rival back home in America, World Championship Wrestling (WCW) made the jump from late-night ITV to British Wrestling's old Saturday afternoon ITV timeslot, where it stayed until moving to Super Channel at the end of 1995 and then Channel 5 on Friday evenings from mid-1999 until WCW's demise in 2001.
Both major 1990s US promotions made several arena tours of the UK while the WWF held the pay-per-view event SummerSlam 1992 in London's Wembley Stadium before a crowd of around 80,000.
Conditions in the British scene would remain at a low ebb (with some smaller promoters resorting to "WWF tribute" shows[34][note 1]) until the early-2000s, when a new generation of domestic stars would emerge, amongst them Doug Williams and Nigel McGuinness, who would split their time between performing in the United Kingdom and appearing for American promotions such as Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA).
New promotions such as One Pro Wrestling and the FWA commonly featured a mixture of British and American performers, beginning a trend that would continue for the decades to come.
By the early 2010s, wrestling stars such as PAC, Britani Knight, and Martin Stone continued to gravitate towards immigrating to the United States, however not before having spent several years performing in the UK first.
[43] Ultimately, the attempted revival would flounder and in 2019 a frustrated ITV moved on from the project, opting instead to begin airing programming from the newly created American promotion All Elite Wrestling.
[46] Through these partnerships, professional wrestlers such as Zack Sabre Jr and Will Ospreay were able to split their time between performing in the UK and Japan, helping to develop their prominence in both countries.
During the 1960s, World Lightweight champion George Kidd was a successful television broadcaster, hosting his own chat show in Scotland's ITV regions.
Due to The Troubles, in the 1970s and 1980s these wrestlers and others would migrate to mainland Britain and find success there (in Hamill's case, under a mask, billed as Kung Fu.)
