The Privileges of Mick McManus

What? .... What?...

A proposal that McManus kept headlining in the 70s?

By then he was well past his sell by date and would have discredited the business he had given so much to if he had carried on. He had the grace and sense to bow out, arguably a few years too late, but no more than most. Let's give him credit for that. I will.

As for suppressing the heavies. Well, in the seventies they were well and truly suppressed. The big names on the block were mostly lighter men, Anglo Italian doesn't need me to name names and dismiss this nonsense.

"Heavyweights were expensive, capricious, slow on the small screen". There you have a statement worthy of discussion in a thread of its own. Personally I wouldn't cheapen the comment by insulting a couple of our heavyweight greats.

Since we are discussing wrestling's FA Cup this week and wondering why it fizzled out early seventies, when it could have been a long-term televised bonanza on tv, rather like the football cottoned on to, I propose a wild but, in this context, regrettably possible theory:

McManus suppressed the heavyweights as he had started to do 10 years earlier, keeping headlining and tv and the spondulicks for himself and his lighter trusties.

Heavyweights were "expensive, capricious, slow on the small screen, and disrespected their own titles through Robinson and, soon, Wall." Maybe Rocky's writing was indeed already on the Wall mid-72.

Thanks John, DJ Mask,

So out of his 100+ (was it 173?) tv bouts, we can find one on a midweek show.

Not that we need it after all the examples in this thread, but this is the clearest evidence possible of how McManus prioritised his own personal prestige over the good of the business and other wrestlers.

He appears to have been reasonably well-liked by the Dale Martin wrestlers, certainly respected for his work. But our collective approach and the benefit of the internet give us insight advantages "the lads" didn't have 50+ years ago.

A case could easily be put that he ran Dale Martin Promotions as a one-man ego trip.

Plenty of entrepreneurs and business owners share this approach. They might argue that it is their right. But what mystifies me about McManus is that he was not openly the owner of Dale Martins. How on earth did he manage to maintain this Putinesque position of absolute power for 15+ years? Maybe he seized the opportunity by snitching but that can hardly explain the sheer scale of his reign.

According to the ITV wrestling site Mick Mcmanus did indeed contest a Wednesday night wrestling bout on the 16th of December 1970 against Dave Barrie. Interestingly the same wrestlers also fought on a Friday which was on New Years Day 1971.

(Can't see a direct reply button, but this is to Anglo Italian.) I had a quick look through the listings from the era of midweek shows and McManus was almost exclusively on a Saturday.

Something has come up today.

Did Mick ever wrestle on the mid-week tv shows?

Or were Saturday afternoon prime-time slots the only ones he deemed fit for himself?

It's easy for us on the outside, to judge someone still hanging around when it appears to be obvious he should go. However, if you have been working at the same career for so long as McManus had, I would guess, that unless he disliked what he did and could afford to retire, then to give it up, would be difficult. How do you go about it, do you take yourself off the tele, start to lose matches here and there? Wouldn't that lower your value to the game and thus to the promoters? Wouldn't people comment 'McManus hasn't been on t.v. for a while, well he is getting on' or 'McManus is on, but he's lost on t.v. the last couple of times and then again when I saw him at the Hall a few weeks ago, so I won't bother going'

In all entertainment as well as many sports, there are those who just don't want to go and won't be pushed out either. Sometimes it appears that getting into showbiz/sports is much harder than staying in, until a crippling disease or death finishes the performer off. Mick would have been proud of what he achieved and hung around as long as he could, as did Max Bygraves, Sinatra, Jackie Pallo and a multitude of others in the entertainment business. (In the mid-seventies a girlfriend laughed at me for being a Shirley Bassey fan, saying she was over the hill. Yeah, I wonder what became of Shirl)? Most people at the top of their game, will accept any 'privileges' that they feel entitled to. Most of us can just look on in envy. Mick didn't travel in luxury chauffeur driven cars, nor fly around the country in jets, live in a palatial home or, book himself to win the Heavyweight Title, he just took what he could and what was given to him. I don't think we can begrudge him that, can we?

Thanks for that John. I too heard the same rumour some years back. It was from a wrestler, but he admitted himself that he didn't know if there was any truth in it. Sounds like there may well have been.

I made a post on this forum topic on 1st July to say that I had once read (on the old 1 Stop Wrestling website, I think) that Mick McManus had been given the job of matchmaker at Dale Martin's and all his special privileges had started after he had grassed on some wrestlers (Mike Marino, Judo Al Hayes etc) who were planning to move to Paul Lincoln promotions. I did say, at the time, that it was only something that I had read many years earlier on a forum posting by somebody else, so I could not vouch for the truth of this rumour.

However, I have just read Adrian Street's book 'So Many Ways To Hurt You' and was surprised to read him tell this exact same story about Mick McManus, on page 191 of this book. Adrian Street says that Mick 'was invited to join their exodus and was sworn to secrecy but instead walked into Les Martin's office and blew the whistle on the renegades plot before it was fully hatched'. Street say that 'Les Martin gave Mick the job of matchmaker and from that point on he didn't lose a match'.

So this story does appear to be true and may well explain Anglo Italian's question of why Mick had all his special privileges.

I suppose one very early privilege was to appear on BBC TV versus Al Lipman 26 May 1947.

If you look at the main promoters could it be that within these Mick was the most powerful younger interloper , a threat and a source of envy.

We know Conroy , even Bartelli held sway at Wryton , I should imagine maybe Jim Hussey , Francis Gregory and more. But they were in the background.

Morrell had his men , champs who could shoot if needed , but they knew their place.

Dale Martins were allowing this guy to call the shots.

Like I say , was he the biggest or the first to get this privilege.

So those comments remind me of a couple of other privileges:

• he was always on in the second bout on any Dale Martin bill, for a quick getway. I'd imagine he wasn't accorded this treatment when working outside DMs?

• As Dave says there just reminds us how often Mick wrestled Alan Colbeck. His favoured opponent for sure, without them ever creating any spark natiionwide. I might have suspected this was a treat accorded to him on Dale Martin bills, but it is clear that even in Newcastle he could name his opponent. Colbeck must have been glad of Mick. At least Newcastle saw a nice little feud with Colbeck finally gaining the "surprise" victory (though he beat Mick plenty of times). All we got was McManus v Colbeck ad infinitum without feud.

I suppose I started this thread also with an eye to others' reactions to McManus's privileges. It was only just over a year after that Colbeck feud in Newcastle that Colbeck's tag partner double-crossed McManus on tv. We have often discussed that double-cross but perhaps not the motivation for it. Maybe the privileges we list here account for why Peter Preston did what he did.

I remember watching Mick McManus, being half throttled by the great Tony St. Clair in a televised bout. St. Clair was mad with Mick’s devious tactics and proceeded to throttle McManus with a towel, or so it seemed....

children, it is worth noting considering the position mick McManus held. he would have done work in office as matchmaker and other responsibilities plus working an evening shift. it is bit like holding down a day job and working behind a bar at. how many hours do you think he put in a week. as years rolled on his body would be getting knackered so he would have started taking it easy. also being a king pin within organisation he would have been entitled to some perks to relieve the pressure. so he got lifts which meant he could relax or sleep. also meant by not travelling by public transport he would not get approached by fans etc getting home fairly relaxed. don't envy him with hours and work he did having the so called perks. end of the day mick McManus was a professional

I have Mick McManus appearing on three occasions at St James’ Hall, Newcastle in 1965 (thanks again to Ray) each time against Alan Colbeck:-

29th May 1-1

3rd July 2-1 McManus

18th September 2-1 Colbeck

Oddly enough I can only remember the first encounter which is surprising as each night would have provided a bumper payday for us lads!

On the first one as it was 1-1 at the end of eight rounds, following an acrimonious exchange in the ring, it was decided to add one more round. At the end of this the score was still the same and the match declared a draw. I had nipped upstairs to get more stock of something for the last twenty minutes and emerging from the office I encountered Mick on his way to the dressing rooms/shower complaining that “they’ll have you working all bloody night up here” for the benefit of nobody else except for Jock who looked after the baths and me.

mr Hayes had a flash yankee car at the time

Hello Matey Dave, as I said earlier, this rumour that McManus had grassed to the promoters on the wrestlers who were planning to leave to go to Paul Lincoln is just something I read on a wrestling forum (perhaps the 1 Stop Wrestling forum) years ago, so I do not know if it is definitely true.

Do you know when he become godfather to one of Judo Al Hayes children. If it was after the Paul Lincoln split, it does bring into doubt the rumour I had heard. However, it might still be true as they might have made up later?

this talk of snitching on wrestlers leaving and going with Paul Lincoln sounds interesting. if true, why was mcmanus godfather to one of Judo Al Hayes kids

McManus was on TV (or at least billed in the TV Times) pretty consistently in the second half of 1965, so he may have been picking his schedule carefully to lighten the load but maintain his public standing. I have always wondered who decided what matches would be on TV in that era. In theory it would just have been the local promoter putting on a (six-match) bill, and you had some obvious variation based on the region of the country, but surely Joint Promotions as a whole must have worked together to decide which wrestlers needed the exposure.

If we want to piece together Mick's missing period (otherwise he wrestled 250 nights a year) I need to tighten up my vague memory that I mentioned above.

So I have fished out details sent to me by dear departed Ray in May 2005.

McManus seems to have been inactive from June to December 1965.

A further thought is that this was the period when he was changing his name by deed-poll, but I wouldn't have thought this would have stopped him wrestling. Maybe he was romancing.

None of this fits in at all with the car crash comments above.

Muddier still..

Need a lot more input from others, please.