Johnny Locke/Johnny Palance and Jake Foley in Stampede Wrestling

Last night (5th August 2025) I had a conversation with Johnny Palance for the second week running.

Living not far away, Johnny attends the weekly wrestling shows at Rhyl Town Hall during the summer season.

Last week we shared memories of the late Eddie Hammill who was a dear friend of Johnny (despite their hard hitting matches at Liverpool Stadium).

Whilst not deliberately cross questioning Johnny, I did discover several interesting points:

Johnny trained as a wrestler at a gymn in Crosby (north of Liverpool)

He had a day job as a qualified electrician, which he had throughout his wrestling career. He would work his wrestling engagements around his job as an electrical contractor, using holiday leave when he went on wrestling tours abroad.

Johnny had been planning to retire as a wrestler in the early/mid 1980's. However, Orig Williams persuaded him to stay on a little longer to wrestle on the early tapings of Reslo (the weekly wrestling programme on S4C). We agreed that it was great to have some video footage of John wrestling (there as well as on the Satelite Wrestling shows), but he pointed out that it was unfortunate that at this stage he wasn't at the peak of his powers as a wrestler.

Johnny only retired finally as an electrician in his late 70's.

Johnny came across as a very friendly and likeable man. He continues to be surprised and heartened that people remember him so fondly. He feels that although people booed him a lot, they respected him for his wrestling ability.