French wrestler Tiger Tim DeLisle was born in Marseilles on 7th May, 1905, but moved to Montreal in Canada when he was just six years old. He took up amateur wrestling aged seventeen and seven years later turned professional, having been taught the professional style by Eugene Tremblay, one of the world's top lightweights at the time. Our earliest record of the Tiger in Britain is in March, 1933, and from then on he seems to be a permanent fixture until shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War. One of the lighter men Tiger had some cracking bouts in Britain against Harold Angus and Mike Howley. Enjoyed and respected by the fans his rough style, sometimes outside the rules, did little to endear him to the British public. From the autumn of 1939 and throughout the Second World War DeLisle wrestled in Canada. He returned to Britain following the second world war in 1948 and 1949, with our last recorded match in Canada in 1955.
I'm still considered, among my fellow pensioners, that I retain a fairly decent memory so it must be that I was so jaded with the wrestling situation of that time. All the more surprising that Dennis Mitchell was on the bill as I was a great follower of him. Also that just a couple of weeks earlier I was completely enthralled by Kendo Nagasaki who stood out among the new batch of wrestlers emerging on the scene.