For once I agree with Simon Cowell: it’s time to bring back the wrestling to terrestrial TV. Not American style wrestling entertainment but proper British wrestling.
I was brought up with the wrestling. Every Saturday afternoon, I watched the wrestling from 4.00 pm at my grandparents’ house. It was part of ITV’s World Of Sport, which comprised of the ITV Seven, seven horse races from two courses introduced by John Rickman, an obscure ‘sport’ like log-rolling from America or Speedway followed by the wrestling. I remember it was always winter in those days because my memory is that I watched the wrestling with my grandad and then my grandma cooked crumpets (pikelets) stuck through a fork on a real coal fire. We were allowed two each. I could have eaten 10 and become as fat as my grandad.
The wrestling went as follows: there would normally be a ‘preliminary bout’ between two blue eyes (goodies) who would carry out acrobatic moves and then shake hands at the end of each one. The match would always end two falls to one. Never a submission or a knockout. My grandad loved these clean matches, or at least he said he did. I hated them. I wanted the main event. The second match might have a mild heel against a blue eye. There would probably be a hint of controversy with the referee looking the wrong way at the worst (best?) possible time. A good wrestling referee would always know the best time to be looking the wrong way to get the crowd going!
And then the main event: a classic baddie v goodie match. Mick McManus, Jim Breaks or Jackie ‘Mr TV’ Pallo against someone good looking, young and ‘clean’, as my grandad was fond of saying. As a child, it did not occur to me that this wrestling malarkey might not actually be a proper sport and as a senior citizen my grandad was as sure as eggs are eggs that it was all real and the when the newspapers carried out secret investigations on the legitimacy of wrestling, he wouldn’t accept anything they said. “You can’t believe what you read in the papers, son!” He was still simmering with anger about the latest dirty trick McManus had carried out to retain his European Middleweight Title.
The wrestling I watched bore no resemblance to the WWE stuff we see today. We watched middle aged men, often with beer guts, carrying out complex holds and manoeuvres, carefully and lovingly described to us by the commentator Kent Walton. It turned out that he made up many of the names of the holds but even when I began to doubt whether it was all real, I suspended my disbelief. I was quite happy watching the wrestling and ignoring the fact that it was probably not real. Why spoil my own fun by asking too many questions?
Cowell wants to bring it back now and good luck to him. I am not interested in the gigantic lumps of steroid from America. That’s for the kids and good luck to them. I want to see the new Royal Brothers (who weren’t really brothers) and Rollerball Rocco, who closely resembled Bob Carolgees, the man who controlled the legendary Spit the dog. And Les Kellett too. It’s not wrestling as we know it today but it was a lot of fun. Even though there was no ‘wrestling board of control’ and titles were made up, I forgot and ignored all that.
I loved The Wrestling and if you did too, do yourself a favour and buy Simon Garfield’s truly wonderful account of British wrestling called, believe it or not, The Wrestling and hope that the other Simon – Cowell – can bring it all back.
