Yup, those same knobbly knees we saw twenty years later. Hardly looks like a British champion - and he'd been a ref! A very surprising renegade title within Joint Promotions.
Unfathomable for us to see Kellett as champion but possibly a renegade promoter getting a bit carried away. Probably a very early straying away for Kellett after his split from Morrell. Not so very far from Newcastle.
Back to my 1952 poster below. It strikes me from the very pose that this Gentleman Jim Lewis is the earliest sign of any British wrestler copying Gorgeous George. And this is a couple of years before the great Alan Garfield first wrestled in America.
I wonder how that show would have gone down in 1952 Northern Ireland? There would have been protests to the Mayor, for sure.
Yes Bernard. It also seems he went off the boil in terms of the Gorgeous George look by the early sixties and left the vanity antics up for grabs: first used by Garfield; and then by plenty of others after the 1968 change in legislation.
Mind you, apart from a clip against Jimmy Savile, I never saw GJL wrestle, so probably don't really know what I'm on about!
Peter Rann against Joe Murphy may have been some contest as there always appeared to be some genuine "needle' between these two very tough individuals.
Yup, those same knobbly knees we saw twenty years later. Hardly looks like a British champion - and he'd been a ref! A very surprising renegade title within Joint Promotions.
Kellett was cruiserweight champion for de Relwyskow at that time. William Little booked his wrestlers through de Rel.
Unfathomable for us to see Kellett as champion but possibly a renegade promoter getting a bit carried away. Probably a very early straying away for Kellett after his split from Morrell. Not so very far from Newcastle.
Back to my 1952 poster below. It strikes me from the very pose that this Gentleman Jim Lewis is the earliest sign of any British wrestler copying Gorgeous George. And this is a couple of years before the great Alan Garfield first wrestled in America.
I wonder how that show would have gone down in 1952 Northern Ireland? There would have been protests to the Mayor, for sure.
Time for a rethink.....
16 September 1961
The British middleweight championship match between holder Tommy Mann and Chic Purvey in Manchester ended in a No Contest verdict.
That's a great bill without any big names. Would have been a great night.
I think Czeslaw was very versatile and could scrunch those eyebrows to be a baddie as necessary.
Ginsberg would have had to learn that there is no edge in professional wrestling, against the perfect pro that was Bob Kirkwood.
As for Pasquale v Kalmen - what a delight!
Great to look beyond the mere superficial to see how these bills would have panned out.
Here's another bill with better presentation from twenty years earlier, but I feel Main Mask's would have been the better fun on the night.
Czeslaw tagging with a villainous Borienko, not often I recall seeing Johnny Czeslaw as a bad guy?
Another Mick v Bert fight at the Fairfield Halls in 1975.
Wrestling overseas on this day, John Foley drew with Osamu Kido, in Tsuchiura, Japan, on this day in 1972.
On our TV screens, on this day in 1964: -
Farmer John Allan v Hans Streiger
Bob Steele v Jack Dempsey