A few years ago I commented on a four-bout bill where three matches finished as No Contests and the fourth was a DKO. It struck me that No Contest was an exotic result, a surprise, to be used sparingly to save a champion's blushes, for instance, in a lucky retention of the belt. Three NCs on a single evening would send fans home thinking that there's something wrong with the rules, at the very least.
The Newsletter trumps that with the below Croydon report where four championship matches in a single night all finished 2-1 - that scourge result for wrestling that the Knockers enjoyed using as evidence that is was all fixed.
My query is whether, if any, through-the-card planning took place to avoid this type of embarrassment?
Such planning would be necessary not only at the level of results, but also moves. For existence, you wouldn't be wanting a Boston Crab submission in each bout.
Do you agree this is an important point?
Do you have any views or evidence of such planning happening - or, as in my examples, being blatantly absent?
I believe that my two examples prove a total absence of through the card planning.
I agree that Lincoln would have been attentive to this.
But otherwise I think it's the other way round: a smaller promoter, like our Graham, would have conceived a rounded bill from posters right through to the final bell, and sculpted the whole show as an event.
I see Joint Promotions, in this respect, as too big for their boots; and this a rare detail that slipped through their net. They, especially the non-northern member, seem to be the main culprit.
I think any evidence of the whole bill planning is beyond the scope of most of us, the only exception being the few wrestlers who join our merry ramblings. But lack of evidence has never held us back in the past. From what we've heard from wrestlers previously I would expect Paul Lincoln to have considered the bill as a whole when planning. Wrestlers have told us that Lincoln made them feel an important part of the bill even when opening the programme as they prepared the way for the main support and main event. Also, the limited number of workers on Lincoln bills suggest he carefully planned their work. The professionalism of all the original Joint Promotion members would make it very surprising if they did not plan the programme as an entirety. When it come to the independents I'm sure it was more of a mish mash with varying degrees of autonomy given to wrestlers.At the other extreme I was once told that Independent Joint Promotions (Rimer and Fury) did not dictate results but believed their workers were professionals who could be trusted to plan their own matches and conclusions.
I think the final bout, featuring Syd, or Catweazle or, for me seemingly always, Torontos was just a meaningless novelty bout that did the exact number of required minutes after more believable bouts had played out more .... believably.
I can't imagine what detail was planned by the promoter. The main thing seems to be the end of show time every week. This did make me suspicious , but I put it down to the four bouts roughly averaging out about the same. I should also imagine , if you got a couple of old pro's who had worked together dozens of times , that the path of the fight and the ending was perhaps free for them to decide. Makes me wonder how they could remember who had fought who , how many times at each hall of the country and the outcomes , knowing today that almost certainly no records were kept.
The well balanced card used to irritate me , as I was more of a fan of it looking real and rough. Yes , done well I loved Johnny Saint and Bert Royal , real masters of the craft and others too. Was the four or five endings thought about in terms of some sort of balance. I don't know Anglo. I have my doubts.