Dear Friends, I am confused with this bill, Anton Geesink (title holder) v Moran (challenger), match is for the world heavyweight championship. To the best of my knowledge on the Continent in the 70s the world champ pro wrestler was Otto Wanz, (German Rules - Catch). Was there any Dutch promotion where they had their own world champions? Any help would be highly appreciated. Thanks, Russian Concussion.
it was a couple of big lads in the ring because Moran was estimated o be 6'8"
Pro Wrestling was always more popular in Belgium than the Netherlands it is therefore quite possible this promotion was based in Antwerp or Ghent and had just ventured over the border
Geesink was a famous Judo expert, world class, a big lad at 6ft 6" and 20 odd stones, he won the Judo World Championship, the first non-Japanese to do so. He was spotted by Giant Baba and signed up AJPW (All Japan Pro Wrestling), Baba (and the Japanese pro wrestling crowd in general) liked real, legit sportsmen. Baba sent him to learn pro wrestling with the Funk family in Texas, and I think our own Les Thornton had a hand in this as well (and was his early tag partner, to keep an eye on him I guess).
If German Promotions weren't venturing into Holland and no German wrestling was shown on Dutch tv then the fans would be no wiser, remember this was pre internet days. I reckon it would be almost impossible to accurately find all the 'World Champions', remember a lot of individual independent promotions had their own World Champion. In a lot of cases the belt had absolutely no prestige apart from within the promotion itself.