POSTER DATED FOR NEWSLETTER-6TH JULY!

There are some good workers there, but I’m not keen on the match-ups!

I know that there is a long tradition of stage wrestling going back to music hall days, and for sure Paul Lincoln getting the Grenada contract was a master stroke, but I never liked it that much. Just did not seem "proper". I wonder what the wrestlers thought.

Thank you Main Mask!

Alan Garfield now billed from Surrey. What's that all about? Sydney, Beckenham, London ok... but vague Surrey?

And what's this all about: Big Head Al Fontayne? Big Head? He didn't perform as a big head. Very odd. I can only guess this was a promoter's in-joke about, perhaps, something real in negotiations. Not a wrestler we have covered at all, really.

Just looking at those double-half-a-guinea seats, I can share a detail that may surprise Members.

The White Rock Pavilion was also a stage wrestling set-up, with just two rows of proper and expensive ringside seats along the back of the stage. This side was the big drop, about ten feet, where no wrestler ever fell. In fact it was so high that it was all very dark this side at ground level. I have often mentioned the time Pat Roach and Kendo Nagasaki got stuck at the top of the corner post, quite dangerously, and remained there for a full five minutes, neither giving in.

So, the seating started only about 15 to 20 feet back. Anyway, my share is that some of the cheapest seats were right at the front; because you would have to crank your head up and still not be able to see the far side of the ring. Heaven knows how many of the uninitiated bought seats eagerly from the floor plan only then to be disappointed. And go home with a pain in the neck.

Might Bill Stirling have been Bill Ross?

1968:

1963: