As I stated earlier this is not my era and a number of the wrestlers mentioned mean nothing more to me than names mentioned on the bills from the eighties that I see published on Facebook. However as soon as you become accustomed to the fact that this is mainly a catalogue of matches seen on television, fought at the Royal Albert Hall and some outstanding facts from other venues, Joint and Independent, around the country throughout the decade you will appreciate that this is a well assembled, diligently recorded and essentially readable account of UK wrestling from that time.
It also, rather sadly, documents the relentless chronology of the decline of professional wrestling as a spectator sport. Television was rapidly losing interest and if any other sport could replace wrestling in its given time slot then it would shown instead; we read that the scheduled matches are recordings from weeks gone by and the amendments to published bills are staggering in comparison to my experience of wrestling in the sixties.
The same names appear with such regularity that it suggests that there was a much smaller pool of wrestlers at that time than earlier years (plus more and more wrestlers were moving to other promotions) and the book also suggests that the traditional format of one versus one was becoming stale and therefore a plethora of knock out tournaments, and more bizarre encounters, were making up many a bill.
Throughout the book Tony observes the highs and lows with an honesty inherent of someone who has been deeply involved in the movement and questions how such a decline could be allowed to happen.
Being more familiar with the seventies scene I look forward to the next publication.
Hi Tony, I have just received my copy of your book from Amazon and have started reading it. The book is a mine of interesting information and I think it is great. If you were able to write a book about the wrestling in the 1970's, as already suggested by alanapally in his above post, I would definitely buy it.
It is a great book for bringing back memories and providing background information. After each chapter I picked out a few matches of interest and watched them on YouTube. Have a look at Dalibar Singh and Terry Rudge losing their tempers, Greg Valentine pole-axing Mr X, Dynamite Kid busting Mark Rocco open, Pat Roach knocking out Ray Steele and Diamond Shondell perplexing Alan Kilby.
My copy arrived last weekend and i read it from cover to cover. Thoroughly enjoyed it! Like Norfolk Snake states the book is very much like an almanac of the 1980's.Includes quite a few incidents that i previously wasn't aware of along with details of both Joint and the Independent promotions. Great read. Any chance of something similar about the 1970's era ???
I enjoyed the book too. It was the era of wrestling I grew up in, I too at the time meticulously recorded all the bouts and results in note books. I guess this book could be described as that - a fan's view of what happened throughout the 80s, nothing more, nothing less. It is very easy to criticise, but I think Tony should be applauded for creating such an 'almanac' of all goings on. It does come across as a bit samey , but it would be difficult not to, such is the nature of trying to encapsulate so many bouts with descriptions into one book, it must have been quite a challenge and would have been for anyone attempting that. I suppose more pictures of the wrestlers would have been good, but as I guess we all are on this site, I always find old posters truly fascinating time capsules of what happened around the country or should we say what should have been happening around the country? Bad News Allen Brown v Wayne Bridges.....what a bout that would have been. Was the hard hitting American really booked to appear of was this another fictional pipe dream of the promoters I wonder ?
What really comes across in this book is how very sad TV wrestling started to become. Say what you like, this seems to be purely down to Max Crabtree and his lack of respect for his audience. The more you read this book you realise how he really shafted his own audience. Big foreign stars who were nt foreign, promised bouts that never happened, stars billed who never were going to be there, repeated bouts, repeated finishes and so it goes on. It really was insulting to those who wanted to see great wrestling...of which there was still plenty of, make no mistake. TV formatting left a lot to be desired and was undoubtedly as much to do with the demise as the quality of the wrestling some times. The Big Daddy 'show' was of course always slated latterly and put down as the reason for the demise. To my eyes there was more to it than that and that's quite clear upon reading this.
The other great dilema with wrestling in the 80s was of course the upward trajectory of Brian Dixon's promotion and his stealing all Crabtree's greatest talented wrestlers. Being a regular at his shows through the 80s, they just seemed so much better, more exciting than what we were seeing on the telly. Its a real shame that the 2 promoters did nt work together throughout that era, because the tops stars on both promotions mixed up as they would have been in the distant past would have made unmissable viewing. I think St Clair and Rocco for example were at their peak when they left Crabtree. Similarly after TV wrestling finished completely, Dixon's shows in the halls were still fantastic with a great selection of wrestlers. It was a big shame the TV era did not go a bit longer as we would have seen some great bouts with Finlay, Taylor, Collins, Cullen etc then at their peaks.
Back to the book, I'd liked to have seen more mention of Dixons shows off air, but it was great to see mention of the Screensport shows on cable. Despite what has sometimes been said on here about them, I thought they were brilliant. A different style of entertainment, show, theatre, call it what you will, with more violence than ITV and a bit more American influenced without totally going down a WWF circus route. And personally I liked the commentators.. a bit of humour thrown and very different from our Kent !
No matter our different views on particular decades in British wrestling, the 1980's is certainly within the World of Sport era and huge numbers watched it on ITV.
Tony gives a comprehensive and interesting account of the matches screened on ITV as well as important developments elsewhere, including at the Royal Albert Hall and on the independent scene. He also throws in "inside" snippets of information which were not necessarily known to us all.
I think we can count on Tony's comments as being more accurate than those of Kent Walton in his commentary.
Thank you, Tony, for all the hard work and the excellent result.
There'll be many out there who will appreciate Big Shirley displayed on the book cover and dare i say including members of this forum who never post in fear of ridicule. Won't stop me from purchasing a copy.
I can understand the publishers saying "let's have the best-known wrestler on the cover", after all it is true that in most cases a good cover helps in selling a book. Whether it's Big Daddy or someone else in the eyes of the publisher doesn't really matter. After saying all that I would have preferred having an array of say:
I think we should all read it first, rather than being judgemental...covers sell books...but many covers are not necessarily totally representative of the contents. It sounds like an interesting read from an era that I grew up with and at over 300 pages its got to be worth a go ?
As I stated earlier this is not my era and a number of the wrestlers mentioned mean nothing more to me than names mentioned on the bills from the eighties that I see published on Facebook. However as soon as you become accustomed to the fact that this is mainly a catalogue of matches seen on television, fought at the Royal Albert Hall and some outstanding facts from other venues, Joint and Independent, around the country throughout the decade you will appreciate that this is a well assembled, diligently recorded and essentially readable account of UK wrestling from that time.
It also, rather sadly, documents the relentless chronology of the decline of professional wrestling as a spectator sport. Television was rapidly losing interest and if any other sport could replace wrestling in its given time slot then it would shown instead; we read that the scheduled matches are recordings from weeks gone by and the amendments to published bills are staggering in comparison to my experience of wrestling in the sixties.
The same names appear with such regularity that it suggests that there was a much smaller pool of wrestlers at that time than earlier years (plus more and more wrestlers were moving to other promotions) and the book also suggests that the traditional format of one versus one was becoming stale and therefore a plethora of knock out tournaments, and more bizarre encounters, were making up many a bill.
Throughout the book Tony observes the highs and lows with an honesty inherent of someone who has been deeply involved in the movement and questions how such a decline could be allowed to happen.
Being more familiar with the seventies scene I look forward to the next publication.
Looking forward to the next Tome Tony. Best wishes.
Thank you John for your kind words, the next volume is going to be the 70's and has already in the planning stage
Hi Tony, I have just received my copy of your book from Amazon and have started reading it. The book is a mine of interesting information and I think it is great. If you were able to write a book about the wrestling in the 1970's, as already suggested by alanapally in his above post, I would definitely buy it.
Thank you for writing this book.
The next volume is in the planning thanks to the great success of this one, thanks to everyone who has bought it
My copy arrived last weekend and i read it from cover to cover. Thoroughly enjoyed it! Like Norfolk Snake states the book is very much like an almanac of the 1980's.Includes quite a few incidents that i previously wasn't aware of along with details of both Joint and the Independent promotions. Great read. Any chance of something similar about the 1970's era ???
The book has just arrived from Amazon.
Bought it yesterday, will get around to reading it later this month (hopefully!)
Have not read the book Norfolk,but what you say seems to be a great summing up.Thanks
I enjoyed the book too. It was the era of wrestling I grew up in, I too at the time meticulously recorded all the bouts and results in note books. I guess this book could be described as that - a fan's view of what happened throughout the 80s, nothing more, nothing less. It is very easy to criticise, but I think Tony should be applauded for creating such an 'almanac' of all goings on. It does come across as a bit samey , but it would be difficult not to, such is the nature of trying to encapsulate so many bouts with descriptions into one book, it must have been quite a challenge and would have been for anyone attempting that. I suppose more pictures of the wrestlers would have been good, but as I guess we all are on this site, I always find old posters truly fascinating time capsules of what happened around the country or should we say what should have been happening around the country? Bad News Allen Brown v Wayne Bridges.....what a bout that would have been. Was the hard hitting American really booked to appear of was this another fictional pipe dream of the promoters I wonder ?
What really comes across in this book is how very sad TV wrestling started to become. Say what you like, this seems to be purely down to Max Crabtree and his lack of respect for his audience. The more you read this book you realise how he really shafted his own audience. Big foreign stars who were nt foreign, promised bouts that never happened, stars billed who never were going to be there, repeated bouts, repeated finishes and so it goes on. It really was insulting to those who wanted to see great wrestling...of which there was still plenty of, make no mistake. TV formatting left a lot to be desired and was undoubtedly as much to do with the demise as the quality of the wrestling some times. The Big Daddy 'show' was of course always slated latterly and put down as the reason for the demise. To my eyes there was more to it than that and that's quite clear upon reading this.
The other great dilema with wrestling in the 80s was of course the upward trajectory of Brian Dixon's promotion and his stealing all Crabtree's greatest talented wrestlers. Being a regular at his shows through the 80s, they just seemed so much better, more exciting than what we were seeing on the telly. Its a real shame that the 2 promoters did nt work together throughout that era, because the tops stars on both promotions mixed up as they would have been in the distant past would have made unmissable viewing. I think St Clair and Rocco for example were at their peak when they left Crabtree. Similarly after TV wrestling finished completely, Dixon's shows in the halls were still fantastic with a great selection of wrestlers. It was a big shame the TV era did not go a bit longer as we would have seen some great bouts with Finlay, Taylor, Collins, Cullen etc then at their peaks.
Back to the book, I'd liked to have seen more mention of Dixons shows off air, but it was great to see mention of the Screensport shows on cable. Despite what has sometimes been said on here about them, I thought they were brilliant. A different style of entertainment, show, theatre, call it what you will, with more violence than ITV and a bit more American influenced without totally going down a WWF circus route. And personally I liked the commentators.. a bit of humour thrown and very different from our Kent !
I have purchased it and am very much enjoying it.
No matter our different views on particular decades in British wrestling, the 1980's is certainly within the World of Sport era and huge numbers watched it on ITV.
Tony gives a comprehensive and interesting account of the matches screened on ITV as well as important developments elsewhere, including at the Royal Albert Hall and on the independent scene. He also throws in "inside" snippets of information which were not necessarily known to us all.
I think we can count on Tony's comments as being more accurate than those of Kent Walton in his commentary.
Thank you, Tony, for all the hard work and the excellent result.
Although it isn't my era it is going to be the next item up on my Kindle; hopefully at the weekend latest.
Matey
You could send an email via Hack to say what you thought and why. It does help writers.
In what way were you disappointed ?
Hope the book sells well,I'm sure that many people will order it
purchased as kindle, was rather disappointed
There'll be many out there who will appreciate Big Shirley displayed on the book cover and dare i say including members of this forum who never post in fear of ridicule. Won't stop me from purchasing a copy.
Can I get a signed one please?
I can understand the publishers saying "let's have the best-known wrestler on the cover", after all it is true that in most cases a good cover helps in selling a book. Whether it's Big Daddy or someone else in the eyes of the publisher doesn't really matter. After saying all that I would have preferred having an array of say:
Jackie Pallo
Mick MacManus
Bert Royal
Cheers
I think we should all read it first, rather than being judgemental...covers sell books...but many covers are not necessarily totally representative of the contents. It sounds like an interesting read from an era that I grew up with and at over 300 pages its got to be worth a go ?