(Sorry, no belts or titles in this niche topic)
So just a sideline, but it has always intrigued me and I'd be glad of any answers.
The wrestler goes to the ring is a state of almost total undress, all his belongings left behind in the dressing room. Wallet, car keys, documents. The lot.
Back in the dressing room we have at least six other guys. Some perhaps buddies, some perhaps unknowns. Maybe all are unknowns. Maybe our wrestler hasn't even hit it off with them - or maybe he "doesn't speak a word of English."
Are we expecting an excessive amount of communal honesty that over the years nobody's personal effects were ever tampered with or stolen?
As in any work scenario, there must have been some guys who were down on their luck and trying to make ends meet; perhaps ex-cons struggling to avoid temptation.
How did this aspect of the business work?
Thanks for your replies but I just cannot accept it was all so hunky-dory as you all say.
Only this week we have wrestlers swigging the raffle whisky.
Lots of wrestlers didn't get on, but just at a simple level of leaving your wallet, car keys, money, ID, even with local "Queens" - it just doesn't work. Every time McManus went in the ring, half of the other wrestlers or more would have wanted to "do" him.
Thanks for your answers, but I am not convinced it could all have been so hunky-dory as you make out.
If I walked into an office of all new work colleagues I would not go out for lunch and leave all my belongings on my desk. Without mistrusting anyone, it's just not a good way of going about things.
Just saying that all the lads were honest and there were never any problems .... sorry, no.
Take McManus when he was the unpopular booker, or Nagasaki with all his demands, guys simply getting more money than the others .... there simply had to be times when security was an issue. Plenty would have wanted to rummage through their belongings. If not amongst the wrestlers, well, amongst others with access to the dressing rooms, perhaps local staff and seconds, security had to be a consideration.
A splendid original topic Anglo Italian, though one in which few of us could meaningfully comment. Thanks to a couple of insiders, Phil and Graham for their insight. Let's hope for more. My only addition is that if anyone did take liberties there were plenty around to sort them out.
Eddie Hamill confirmed that story to me, though I don't remember if he mentioned Jordan by name. He also noted that the wrestler asked some other people in the dressing room why nobody had stopped him doing it and got the pretty reasonable response "Would you confront an angry Eddie Hamill when he was holding a knife?!"
Word got around pretty fast if there was a locker room thief
No wages ever went missing on one of the shows I promoted because I didn't pay the wrestlers until their bout was over and they were ready to go home. Had a wrestler wished to steal from another wrestler it would have been difficult to do so as there would rarely be a wrestler on his own in the dressing room. Also, as the game required a great deal of trust, even with workers who may have done "naughty things" outside of the ring, there was a cameraderie within the game which would stop such things happening.
Although I never had anything stolen from me, when I refereed some shows for Bobby Barron I was the recipient of "dressing room pranks" and would come back to the dressing-room at the end of the show to find my outdoor shoes filled with shaving foam for example. I forget his real name but Barron used a kung fu style wrestler who worked as Omar Khayam who loved playing these practical jokes. He was a crazy lad and loved nothing more than cutting himself and bleeding all over the place. Bobo Matu also enjoyed the world of practical jokes.
I have mentioned before on this site the story of Eddie Hamil who was very protective of his kung fu identity and really didn't like it when Max Crabtree teamed him up with Mike Jordan in similar attire as The Kung Fu Fighters. After the bout Jordan took a shower and, when he came out, he found his kung fu attire had been ripped to shreds by Hamil. As we all know, he soon after "lost" on TV to Mc.Manus which freed him from wrestling under the bonnet and allowing imitators (such as Miquet and Gilmour) to copy his gimmick. This is a story which was widely circulated in the mid-seventies but, like everything in wrestling, should probably be taken with a pinch of salt.
I would imagine like it would in most places,either report crime to management or shop floor justice, either way once caught a lot of people would refuse to work with them or the management would no longer use them.
In my day when everything was finished and it was time to go home some wrestlers complained that their wage for the evening was “missing”. Thank God this didn’t occur very often, but it still occurred.
This might be joke (or even not 😊), but Dicky Swales once told me this never happened to him, because he always hid his money under the bar of soap!