It is agreed that the first televised "American style tag match" took place at The Festival Inn, Trowell in the autumn of 1963 which had everyone talking about it and rubbing their hands in anticipation of the next one to be seen on TV. However looking at the plethora of wrestling bills that are published here and on Facebook etc. it would appear that this format was doing the halls for some years before this. Why did it take television so long to show such an exciting event?
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Welcome back, Dave.
I imagine it was like masked wrestlers, women's wrestling - anything that wasn't mainstream.
We have to abandon the benefit of hindsight and try to remember how things were then. Wrestling promoters were dreaming of elevating wrestling to the level of boxing - and all the money that entailed.
They were trying to get on tv, into World of Sport, as happened in 1964.
I believe they pursued a strategy of caution.
Then, once it was on WoS, lots of people realised something wasn't quite right with wrestling, the promoters started sniffing their pensions - and they opened things up to quick-fix income with no long-term development ideas.
Let's face it, tag-match rules even in an all-clean match (yawn) were pretty blurred. Only Kent seemed to have any clarity - in his own dreamworld.