Did anyone else see handicap matches?We had Handicaps in team matches ,tag matches and single one v one matches at Newcastle in the 1950's.
They never made sense to me. Anyone liked them?
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Unknown member
Aug 18, 2023
The first one I remember was this on World Of Sport in the early 80s:
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Unknown member
Aug 18, 2023
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Stax was supposed to take on Skull Murphy, King Kendo (Dale Preston) and Lloyd Ryan in Croydon in late '95 but Ryan cried off with a "broken arm" so it was down to Skull and KK 2 on 1. They smuggled a foreign object into the ring, took turns hitting Haystacks with it then palmed it off onto him so the referee found it on him and DQ's him. The crowd at Croydon RIOTED!!!
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Unknown member
Aug 18, 2023
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A few years earlier in Croydon I remember Kendo and Blondie Barrett taking on 4 opponents - I think it was Pat Roach, Flash Barker and the Liverpool Lads - and gradually whittling the numbers down on the blue eye team by using salt, planting salt bags on opponents and finally a Kamikaze Crash.
They popped up, here and there in the States. An early one I watched back in the sixties, when Channel 10 in Sydney trying to pinch some of rival channel 9s wrestling audience, aired 'Texas Wrestling'. An earlier episode featured Killer Kowalski, before his turn to vegetarian, looking like a Greek God, up against two Japanese, I think they were Arakawa and Shibuya. The Killer was the blue-eye, yet lost! It was the heroic grappler mostly, who would make the original challenge (bad guys would be considered too cowardly to challenge two men to take on at one time) yet it would be the hero, the crowds favourite who lost. He ended up looking silly for making the challenge! Didn't make sense to me as a teenager and still doesn't make sense to me in my dotage!
In more recent times there is the senario were one wrestler takes on three or four opponents one after the other with the original wrestler usually winning.Does not make much sense to me either!
They are normally billed as winner stays in, I have seen them as you said but also longer where the staying in wrestler changed a couple of times where the two guys you wanted to see end up facing each other.
I saw MrX (Ed Wensor) taheon the masked team of The White Phantoms at Ventnor Winter Gardens (IW) twice. The duo won the first time, but lost the re-match. I believe that the bout was doing the rounds atthe time.
After your time and mine Bernard. As Powerlock suggests , ideal for Haystacks and other big men.
They tried it with good wrestlers hoping it would work. The Royals working with Haystacks !!!!
Below Marty Jones does it , and away from 2 v 1 Mick and Wayne Bridges. Can just imagine Wayne going groggily to one knee while Mick lays the forearms on him.
There's one out there on the Tube of Marty doing a far more credible "one fall of a start" against a young fellow by the name of Roy Regal. Wonder whatever became of him.....
Seen a couple, invariably a big man against two lighter wrestlers , they weren't good, thankfully short both times, for me nothing more than a card filler, a glorified squash match.
The first one I remember was this on World Of Sport in the early 80s:
They popped up, here and there in the States. An early one I watched back in the sixties, when Channel 10 in Sydney trying to pinch some of rival channel 9s wrestling audience, aired 'Texas Wrestling'. An earlier episode featured Killer Kowalski, before his turn to vegetarian, looking like a Greek God, up against two Japanese, I think they were Arakawa and Shibuya. The Killer was the blue-eye, yet lost! It was the heroic grappler mostly, who would make the original challenge (bad guys would be considered too cowardly to challenge two men to take on at one time) yet it would be the hero, the crowds favourite who lost. He ended up looking silly for making the challenge! Didn't make sense to me as a teenager and still doesn't make sense to me in my dotage!
So we all agree that Handicap matches are, and have always been, nonsense.
Just shows that the person in the promoter's chair is detached from what fans want from their wrestlig.
In more recent times there is the senario were one wrestler takes on three or four opponents one after the other with the original wrestler usually winning.Does not make much sense to me either!
I saw MrX (Ed Wensor) taheon the masked team of The White Phantoms at Ventnor Winter Gardens (IW) twice. The duo won the first time, but lost the re-match. I believe that the bout was doing the rounds atthe time.
After your time and mine Bernard. As Powerlock suggests , ideal for Haystacks and other big men.
They tried it with good wrestlers hoping it would work. The Royals working with Haystacks !!!!
Below Marty Jones does it , and away from 2 v 1 Mick and Wayne Bridges. Can just imagine Wayne going groggily to one knee while Mick lays the forearms on him.
My own verdict..........NOT FOR ME
Seen a couple, invariably a big man against two lighter wrestlers , they weren't good, thankfully short both times, for me nothing more than a card filler, a glorified squash match.
No Bernard I never saw any of these.