Love him or hate him? I guess I have to reluctantly tip my hat to the fact that he was a good businessman, however from the stories I hear not a great manager of people, and I don’t think I can ever forgive him for the Big Daddy circus. Not sure how well he did out of wrestling but I know none of his wrestlers earned much. What ya think?
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Wrestling all over Europe was on the demise in 1980s. Max kept it going in uk... but in the end its popularity fell away.
Quinn left ... then st Clair... the daddy success papered over the cracks. Banger went to the sun ....Kirk died
.. then itv decided they didnt want the content as it was keeping them down market.
Daddy attracted new fans... but they didnt keep coming... while real fans got fed up with the daddy pantomime. In the end when daddy couldn't go on... there was a summer with dave boy smith and then that was about it for max.
So, could max have done the daddy thing along side more authentic bill's? Could he have avoided the itv cancellation?
IMO it's yes and no.
A more forward looking guy could have seen the signs and taken action earlier.
I think the issue of pay is probably debatable, Max seems to get the brunt of negative remarks for being a wee bit tight shall we say because he was the prominent promoter of the day, but many of his stalwarts remained and even drifted between Joint and the Independents. I would imagine many promoters have been accused of being thrifty over the years but we only here about Max Crabtree. You only have to look on "Youtube" to here Jake “The Snake” Roberts Less than complimentary description of Brian Dixon to discover this.
I do think a big Faux Pas on Max’s part was allowing John Quinn to leave in 1980 for the Independent circuit. MJQ was a massive attraction and filled halls nation wide, but that’s entirely my opinion as an armchair promoter lol. Quinn subsequently encouraged Tony St. Clair & Wayne Bridges to join him, which they of course did, and the rest is history. It did always appear that if you left Joint the door was open for a return in the future though.
A lot has been said about Max Crabtrees' promoting days, but not his wrestling. I never saw him wrestle, I would like to have done. Did anyone at Heritage see him wrestle. I would like to know how good or how bad he was.
I thought that Max Crabtree was a brilliant promoter and I think he revitalised British wrestling in the late 1970's.
He often seems to be blamed for British wrestling being taken off TV in the late 1980's but I think that this was inevitable once the American WWF wrestling with Hulk Hogan became available to British TV viewers. I believe that the previously successful French, Spanish and German wrestling scenes all faded away at about the same time for the same reason.
Whenever I have heard Max Crabtree speak (on The Big Time in 1980, on Everything Stopped at 4 O'Clock in 1998 and on Timeshift in 2012) I have found him to be very interesting to listen to and I thought that he always spoke very sensibly.
I heard somewhere that his real first name was Gerald,dunno if that is true or not
Does anyone know if max's wife beryl is still alive?
He kept televised wrestling going longer than it would have. He probably squeezed another 10 years out of it.
I would like to think he extended the Industry before it almost completely had to be rebuilt in a much smaller form.
He had lots of imagination and good ideas and I think spoke well on Timeshift (BBC)
However all my thoughts are counter balanced by many in the game who would say differently.
This aspect , I have never really tried to analyse and am not the best to do it.
I saw some awful cheap bills at Belle Vue and I bet the wages were low , but what could he do when gates might have been not even been a thousand.
He presided over a period of general decline and personal excess.