And Before the First Round

I recall a particularly big night at Belle Vue in the early seventies when Gwynn Davies beat Tibor Szakacs in an eight man K.O. tournament for the British heavyweight title (Albert Wall had gone on an extensive tour of South Africa) and the supporting contest saw Les Kellett matched against Steve Haggetty. Kellett was presented with a bouquet of flowers for his wife which Haggetty admired then, once he had his hands on the bouquet, smashed over Kellett resulting in the aforementioned mayhem.

In one or two of his earliest matches John Casanova would walk to the ring with a bouquet of red roses and hand individual roses to ladies in the audience. Long before Casanova came on the scene, "Romeo" Joe Critchley was doing the same routine but (pennywise) was doing it with a bunch of daffodils. I have mentioned before on posts the surprise on the face of Ezra when he turned up at Walsall Football Club to do a show for me firstly to find that he was billed as Banana Bill and secondly that he was to walk to the ring with a bunch of bananas pulling them off as he made his journey and handing them to ladies in the audience. I well recall a lady from Walsall's Caldmore area being totally bemused upon receiving her banana from "Bill" and exclaiming, "What am I supposed to do with this?"

Finally, I mentioned earlier in the posting a bouquet of roses and I recall the absolute delight on the face of my ex-wife Fiona when, on the occasion of our first wedding anniversary, I entered the kitchen where she was cooking an anniversary meal and presented her with a bouquet of red roses. Much to my surprise she tore off all her clothes, jumped up onto the kitchen table and kicked her legs in the air. I said, "Darling, I'm sure we've got a vase somewhere!"

At Morecambe Winter Gardens in a televised bill in the early 1970’s, Les Kellett entered the ring and presented Rikki Starr with this large floral bouquet prior to his bout with Mal Kirk who promptly snatched it from Starr and repeatedly smashed it over Kellett’s head causing flowers to fly all over the place.*

The previous week Kellett had defeated Kirk at the same venue, so presumably bad blood was rife.

( * Starr went on to win by an aeroplane spin k o, to a neck lift submission by Kirk)

I recall this incident. I also recall the bout which followed between Butt and John Elijah which must be the most uninteresting bout I have ever watched on TV. It occurred in the period of Big Daddy and his hoo-hah so I do understand the need to present something which gave credibility to wrestling once again but this bout was agonisingly slow.

Hi Graham, if you have read Dynamite Kid's book, "Pure Dynamite", you might remember his story involving Butt, the weightlifting, and some laxatives.........

Although I used Joe Critchley on several occasions, I never booked him in a tag bout. But I did see him tagging with both Les Kellett and Pedro the Gypsy and one of his favourite tricks to amuse the audience was to vault in sprightly fashion over the top rope but "forget" to let go of the tag rope and come a cropper accordingly.

Of course, I recall that one of the most spectacular ring entrances and pre-match rituals was employed by Lord Bertie Topham and his valet Ponsonby.

In tag matches Joe would also arrange to land on his backside on the ring floor and his false teeth fly out with the impact. I remember seeing this happen once when he tagged with Frank O’Donnell against The Royal Brothers.

I recall one particular evening when Joe was wrestling for me against Melvyn Riss (who I had to bill as "Mighty Mel" because he was only wrestling occasionally at this stage of career and wished to avoid any involvement with the taxman) and I was refereeing at The Town Hall, Sandbach. He did the move where his teeth shot across the canvas but, on this occasion, they actually shot out of the ring. Joe climbed out to retrieve them and, for safekeeping, popped them down his trunks, climbed back into the ring, took them from the security of his trunks, popped them straight back into his mouth and carried on with the contest.