G'day as you might of guessed by now, Ill watch almost anything pro wrestling related from just about anywhere, Ive got Mexican, Japanese Aussie, American stuff by the stack, Ive also got a fair amount of British stuff...and its pretty damn good ...We've all seen "famous" British workers like The Bulldogs, William(Steven)Regal, Exotic Adrian Street , Fit Finlay and the like and me being the history buff that i am I thought there must of been guys before that lot so i went digging and bought a dvd that had the golden era of pommy wrestling on it
The dvd was top heavy with the "Golden Era" blokes, names that may or may not be familiar like
BIG DADDY, KENDO NAGASAKI, JONNY SAINT, HAYSTACKS, BRIAN MAXINE, TALLY HO KAYE , MICK MCMANUS, ROLLERBALL ROCCO, VIC FAULKNER and KUNG-FU....and lets not forget the NWA World Midget Champion LORD LITTLEBROOK , who I met when i was a little tacker at a Sydney show many yonks ago. My personal favourite out of that lot would have to be Kendo, he had..it..and when he took his mask off on national tv the country Popped, Lots of people were fans of a bloke called Shirley, yep, Big Daddy was the go to guy for filling a building, and thats alright I suppose, except he had one less move than the Ultimate Warrior and that aint my cup of tea, I cant imagine what it was like when him and Giant Haystacks had their big fight, apparently it wasnt very good and only went for a few minutes after weeks of build-up, then there was a couple of real characters Peter "Tally Ho" Kaye who had a posh fox huntsman gimmick and the brilliant Catweazle, thus named after and with the blessing of the tv character..Your basic witch doctor Masambula was failry popular, if you liked "stiff" then Cyanide Sid Cooper and Pat Bomber Roach were your boys and on the other side if you wanted a laugh than Les Kellett was your man, manys the night Les was sent out after the white hot main event to calm down the crowd and of course their were the woman the one that comes to mind immediately is Klondike Kate, a dastardly heel who was attacked more than once by angry grannies she even got a foot and mouth injection jammed in her leg one night , now that's HEAT
than came the next generation .... There is a couple of other blokes on the dvd that peaked my interest were Mark "Rollerball" Rocco and a bloke called Kung Fu, who started out under a hood but wrestled Rocco, if you could call that war wrestling, in a real flash judo gi, there was Tony St Clair who went on to make it fairly big in Japan for Baba and Inoki, There was the war machine from Belfast Dave Fit Finlay, who almost got WCW booted off air after busting up Regals face on national tv, also one of my personal favourites Johnny Kincaid , billed from Barbados but actually came from Battersea, and was a "blue eyes " pom speak for face until he dyed his afro blond and started cheating, he had to fight his way out of many buildings alongside his tag partner Dave Bond as "The Carribbean Sunshine Boys" , then there was the one and only ,the flamboyant son of a Welsh miner . The Exotic Adrian Street, not only could he wrestle like a machine, he could ping off the punters something chronic, he was unique at a time when plain trunks and boots were in the majority, his flamboyance had many a punter think they could take him until they tried that was, after conquering Blighty Street buzzed off to the Colonies to see what was what and is still there today....speaking of pommy stars heading off to the colonies.
WWE/WCW/ TNA / ROH and their British contingents
Tommy Billington and his cousin Davey Boy Smith are the first I can clearly remember as I saw them on Vince's tv that eminated from that bulding in Allentown Pennyslvania , and they immediatley caught my eye mainly cause they werent working like your basic yank model that Vinny had they flew they grappled and they made the rest look a bit slow to be fair...than came the WCW contingent of Steven Regal , now William, Fit Finlay, who i had seen on a Super J cup dvd before, I can also remember seeing Regal and Dave Taylor tagging in WCW on that godawful Disneyland show they did, they apparently teamed up in WWE but i didnt seen any of that stuff.
To be sure there has been few poms enter into the States wrestling world, many vastly talented, mostly badly used or saddled with shit bad luck , for example I hear you scream, OK, howabout Nigel McGuiness , I had the pleasure to see Nige in Sydney, wrestling Brian Danielson, I thorughly enjoyed his work in ROH , I even enjoyed his work however time a short it was with TNA, due to injury/ illness, Nige never got to make the kind of money he thoroughly deserved, if you get a chance to see his doco "The Last of McGuiness " go watch it its a cracker....now to other Stateside based poms, The current leader of the League of Nations, Seamus "Sheamus" O'Shaunessy has ha a decent run in WWE ever since he got there, and then theres the bloke he has wrestled from one end of blighty to the other, Stu"Wade Barrett" Bennett is another great worker who keeps getting saddled with shithouse gimmicks, sure he gives it his best shot, but geez, sooner he gets back to Blighty ala Drew Galloway, (although Drew does do spots for various yank indies) it will be all the better for him I reckon, Although, maybe Wiliam Regal should be their mouthpiece, that would work too.
Other than the guys in League of Nations, Vince has a couple of deadset British stars at the moment, Adrian (Pac) Neville, the man gravity forgot, who I saw for the first time in The King of Europe Cup in 2007 and has continued to impress ever since, although I think the name change to Neville is just ridiculous, cause in Australia calling someone a Neville is actually short for Neville Nobody and he definately aint a nobody and the rising star of the famous Knight wrestling family, Britanni"PAIGE" Knight, who I think actually kickstarted the Divas revolution, has helped to build, cause everybody else in the place had to get UP to her standard to compete, and finally the current NXT champion, the leader of Balor Club Fergal "Finn Balor" Devitt, the superstar from New Japan, I never thought Id see him in WWE..wait a sec, I almost forgot "The Irish Lass Kicker" Rebecca"Becky Lynch"Quinn "The Irish Lass Kicker", who was trained by Fergal, she's pretty damn good too add her to the reason the Divas Revolution got kick started.
and then was over in Dixieland, a couple of years ago there was The British Invasion, who I thoroughly enjoyed, Nick "Magnus"Aldis, Doug "The Anarchist" Williams and the muscle bound sidekick Rob Terry, a great group, and besides I could watch Dougy Williams all day anyway, Magnus even had a couple of runs with the big belt before realising was a creative shithole TNA was and split for better opportunities, however there are a couple of battling brits who have stuck it out i Dixieland.... the current King of the Mountain Champ BRAM aka Tom Latimer, who started out stateside as Kenneth Cameron in FCW (WWE) but started out SWWA in Birmingham.....And then there is the mighty Rockstar Spud who I will speak more of in the British rebuilders chapter, but rest assured his size is no hindrance to his talent, he makes most guys look useless on the mic...and his suits are bloody FANTASTIC
THE RE-BUILDING OF BRITISH WRESTLING
Some sanctimonious arsehole, who thought he knew what was best for all and a assundrie ,called Greg Dyke dropped the axe on british wrestling and it was off tv in 1988, Big Daddys brother and promoter Max Crabtree tried like hell to keep going after losing his tv time but eventually pulled the pin on his company in 1995....The UK then put WWE programming on from that point, was wrestling in a downslide, I couldnt tell you but eventually some young guys came along with a dash of guts and brains and went OUR TURN ....Now, lets investigate the guys who attracted my attention and got me into British wrestling after I thought it was done for .....Sort of THE RE-BIRTH TALENT
Starting out with NWA UK Hammerlock , a bloke called Alex Shane decided he need to get British wrestling back to some of its former glory and started the FWA as well as eventually promoting big shows like the one at the Coventry Skydome, which is were I saw Spud for the first time, I grabbed the Skydome show on spec mainly cause of Samoa Joe, Styles Fallen Angel and CM punk being on it, but then I saw Spud and the evil heel Alex Shane do their stuff along with "The Anarchist" and James Tighe and I became a fan of modern poms at that point and have been ever since...Then I saw The King Of Europe Cup, which had a stack of yanks (Hero, Castagnoli, Trent Acid, Generico, Matt Sydal, ) BUT had a few OUTSTANDING poms on it, Pac, Martin Stone , Nigel McGuiness and Doug Williams and also Andy Boy Simmonz who beat Pac in a 1PW Title match during the cup, the final ended up being Doug Williams vs Nigel McGuinness and it was a cracker with N igel going over .....
So I was keeping an eye on the UK at this point and discovered some awesome talent ...RJ Singh and his mates in the Bollywood Express /Bhangra Knights, the brilliant Robbie Brookside, who had been around since Regal but somehow slipped my gaze until then, a couple of pre-Pac flyers Jodie Fleisch and "Wonderkid" Jonny Storm, I even discovered a gimmick that should of been huge BUT wasnt, The Dirtbike Kid looked like a good worker but ended up famous (or infamous) for gettinginto a shoot with Great Sasuke and of course I saw Spud , like I said I saw Spud aty the Coventry Skydome show and thought "shit, his gonna get broken" you know your small when you make Petey Williams look like Hulk Hogan, but he not only survived that match, he turned heel becoming "The Rockstar" and became a legend unto himself, he almost didnt make it though he got his neck damaged in a match vs Jonny Storm and Marty Scurll, but he soldiered on making quite the name for himself and eventually winning British Boot Camp and signing on with the TNA roster were he is as we speak.
POMMY WRESTLING DOCUMENTARIES
PINFALL, GRAPPLERS, GRUNTS AND GRANNIES, SUPERMEN, INSANE FIGHT CLUB 1& 2, THE BRITISH WRESTLER (Grado) and there is a new one available called TWO FALLS TO A FINISH which looks the good...geez, almost forgot the documentary about, who could be described as the UKs premier wrestling family( unless you count the Crabtrees), FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY, the story of The Knight family and in particular the daughter, Saraya - Jade, as she jets off to the U.S to join NXT as PAIGE...
as near as I can tell the Knights have been around forever and have been supplying talent just as long..which includes two sons Zak and Roy who are currently tagging as The UK Hooligans, Roy came to my attention, hell, the family came to my attention on a FWA show were Roy (The Zebra Kid) was in a no DQ match against his dad, Rowdy Ricky with mom Saraya also involved, talk about the family that plays together, youngest son Zak was also on the doco, as he was going for a WWE tryoput as well as his sister.....now to the guys that grabbed my attention recently
THE VERY MODERN ERA
I recently have been grabbing a few british show either on dvd or on Youtube and I tell you what, aint the talent cracking hot!!...a couple of promotions discoverys have been sheer fluke , PROGRESS was a chance find on you tube one day with them posting their chapter 13 show for gratas as it wasnt quite up to scratch for selling , nice of them I thought,
it was thats good a show I went and bought the Chapter 14 Thunderbastard dvd right away, some of the talent on that Ch 13 show was beyond brilliant, Dazzling Darrel Allen, Rampage Brown, Kris Travis, martin Kirby, Will Osperay, Prince Devitt, El Ligero, Zack Sabre Jnr , Mark Andrews and the then Progress Champ, Jimmy FKN Havoc ..I mean holy crap, how much more greatness do you want on one show, I ask you, ad Chp 14 was no worse, most of the fore mentioned along with Noam Dar , Mad Man Manson, Chuck Mambo, Pastor William Eaver, Eddie Dennis (Progress Tag champ in FSU along with Mark Andrews at the time) and quite possibly my favourite tag team at that point in time THE LONDON RIOTS (James Davis and Rob Lynch)....
I mentioned earlier about ICW doing a doco or two about themselves , well they made me go a hunt for stuff and I got a hold of Insane In The Membrane from 2012 and once again, arse deep in talent, the late lamented legend Drew McDonald was on hand to give Grado a hand also on the show was Jack Jester, Mikey Whiplash, Kid Fite, Wolfgang, Chris Renfrew, Jimmy Havoc, Jonny Moss, The Bucky Boys and Red Lightning
Once again an OUTSTANDING show and the commentators are piss funny besides, since then Drew Galloway has arrived in the promotion and jumped the fence a time or two to either have the faithful singing or riled up...I fully intend to go birko and purchase some extra ICW stuff soonish.
To be fair there are a few young poms that have impressed me no end, some even made it to Orstralya recently, those gents being Jimmy Havoc and Tyler Bate respectively, other names that have caught my attention of late include Big Damo, Flash Morgan Webster, Joe Coffey, Lionheart, Sha Samuels, Bubblegum, Dave Mastiff and Mark Haskins to name drop but a few...I thinks its safe to suggest that Pommy wrestling is in very, very safe hands and as long as they keep producing bang on shows they will keep the tradition alive.
Seeya Next time
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