I guess it's a case of being old enough , but Brian London was a massive name in British boxing. Battled with Our Henry Cooper and even fought Muhammed Ali.
So he is at Belle Vue on a Monday night in 1961 , big fight with Billy Hunter of USA. A brutal contest with Hunter stopped in the 8th round , bludgeoned to bits.
So what does a famous boxer do afterwards. He has a night out in Hulme's Russell club. How would he know about it.
Maybe from Jack Pye who also lived in Blackpool.
He gets a thanks from the Russel club on the Thursday , overshadowing the Evenings Wrestling Bill.
But also look at the bottom of the Belle Vue advert and you could get tickets from two other Wrestling venues. Princess Theatre Club in Chorlton and The Russels Club's rival , The Luxor Club.
All these parallels with wrestling alongside boxing.
Just makes me realise what a business brain Mick McManus must have had. This was a well thought out and long-term sixties marketing strategy. So many wrestling details, tiny things, finely tuned to mirror boxing and enhance credibility. Gowns, seconds, posters, national anthems, flags, rounds, programmes, RSF, checking feet and hands ....
Even now, any such bold marketing strategy demands discipline all the way through (or down...) the production line. Which created some friction, but far less that could be imagined.
These wrestling-boxing parallels seemed rooted in the South,
Any association with Boxing increased the credibility of wrestling
Ah!. The Brawl in Porthcawl. Thanks for bringing back those memories guys.
Brian London Brawl
Anglo , you and I REMEMBER THIS SO WELL and I know it is not wrestling , but I think some people will be amazed at his famous brawl and what a great piece of history. You can see why the man was deemed so famous and to find him in the Russell club , is the Wrestling link. Make sure you have sound on to hear the brilliant Pathe News Narration.
Brian London was a great sixties character from a time when heavyweights boxers fought four, five, six times a year. I was always a fan as I felt he was hard done by.
He probably influenced wrestling in some way. All the facts are that he was a straightforward decent chap and a good boxer who fought the world's best - Clay, Floyd Patterson, Ingemar Johannsen - and came up short three times against Henry Cooper. But he had great wins and titles, too.
Why do I say he influenced wrestling? In spite of all his heroics he was, probably unjustly, cast as the lantern-jawed villain of the decade. He dared to defeat Billy Walker and, as a result, history was rewritten about his 1959 brawl in Wales and he was made the perpetrator....even though he was the foreigner surrounded by sore-loser marauding Welshmen. Shakespeare did the same in making Richard III a villain.
The public never got behind Brian London in his international challenges in the way, in my opinion, they should have.
This all played out in parallel with the McManus & Pallo feud. Boxing fans needed villains alongside their golden boys to maintain their own pantomime in competition with wrestling's. Wrestling really threatened boxing for bums on seats at live sixties events.
Without villains and grudges, boxing risked being dull and repetitive.
Joe Bugner would realise it in the following decades.
Did the public, the press or the promoters turn Brian London into the villain he wasn't?
PS: Collin Johnson!!! Twice!!!! I thought Charlie Fisher was the only one who couldn't pronounce his name!