Vintage Goldbelt Maxine - The Chosen One

I have just come across Goldbelt Maxine's early 1972 bout against the Wonder Boy. This year just about marks Maxine's peak, in my opionion.

Maybe we have overlooked his very special achievement in the early seventies. And I don't mean that he held the two British titles at the same time.

This was the one undercarder of the mid-to-late sixties who had the skill and creativity and, of course, work ethic, to penetrate that glass ceiling and rise up to the level of bill topper alongside the five ageing veterans: Masambula, Logan, Kellett, Pallo and McManus.

So many other contemporaries did not achieve this: P Szakacs, J Cortez, C Thomson, Syd, P Rann, McMichael, Iron Jaw, Peter Preston, Dennison, Leon Fortuna, Tony Skarlo, Kirkwood, Czeslaw, Penzy, Young Robby, Zollie. And many many others.

Clayton Thomson was very critical of Maxine's ringcraft. And judging by his show in this 1972 bout

any of those on my list could claim to have superior and more varied technique than Brian Maxine.

So I'm wondering just what got Maxine to this pinnacle? He wore a crown, and, in retrospect, he actually merited it, having risen to this unprecedented prominence so fast. A feat achieved by no other single wrestler at the time.

In the Wright bout, I do enjoy Maxine's selling of the youth's offence. Satisfyingly bewildered by speed and agility, taking any number of throws, creating heat through constant whingeing to the referee, relying largely on the forearm smash as an offensive, and, of course, coming back from the brink of defeat to claim a fortuitous victory. A delightful touch was offering his own portait card to the vanquished loser as he writhed in pain on the canvas. And all the while with that familiar and albeit slight supercilious grin. I still wince 51 years on as he lands painfully on the base of his spine every time.

This Chosen One of the promoters was deemed so special that he was the one wrestler Ricki Starr, receiving lumps of weight, did not defeat at the Royal Albert Hall - where even Pallo and McManus had succumbed. The undeniably skilled Thomson had even been required to give up his British Middleweight title that he had defended successfully against Pallo, McManus and many other very big names. And we can now confirm, decades later, that the promoters were of course right, as Maxine went on to wrestle reliably and professionally for many many years in the guise that he had sculpted, or that had been sculpted for him (?) as the sixties came to a close, thereby justifying their investment in him.

We have to dig deep to uncover and describe faithfully the skills of Goldbelt Maxine that allowed him to have achieved all these accolades in the early seventies. But skills in and out of the ring he most certainly did have, even though they may not immediately be obvious. I have listed some. Can anyone else add others?

Incidentally, I am fully aware that Barnes and Street can be classified as near equivalent contemporaries who did top the bill in tag. But, as singles wrestlers in 1972, they were not headlining bills in their own right, on the whole.