Oh, well, the main event on a Dale Martin programme was always listed at the bottom. The programme order did not reflect running order in any way.

Don't twist things, Hack. I didn't write regardless of days worked. I said they each had an agreement to work whatever was stipulated, probably 20 to 26 evenings a month. And their agreement/contract was paid accordingly. You're worse than McManus at bending the rules.

Torontos, Baron, Logan, Czeslaw and the rest - these wrestlers worked for Dale Martin for decades, with occasional days out. I've seen their booking sheets. They couldn't be reinventing the wheel every month. How they were paid is another matter. I could imagine they issued invoices, absolving the promoter of any tax obligation. Same goes for the refs and mcs.

Confused, me? You're confusing me with someone else! Now then, you were an occasional for Dale Martins - though I do have a poster of you as an exotic northern bill-topper in Croydon - and you were probably paid per bout. But Dale Martin had plenty of shows every night and couldn't be counting out the LSD for wrestlers who only worked for them. The guys wanted a regular wage and their names went down first in the planning. They were trusties. They had guaranteed work all year round. With occasional farm-outs to the north. (Did Robby Baron ever go north?) Tell us what you mean by retainer payment and we can see if we have common ground. I don't know, but I don't imagine any single non-Southern promoter ran enough shows to be able to promise full-time work to 20 or more wrestlers. Dale Martin could - and they needed to. The commitment was two-way. Look around Dale Martin bills around, say, 1971, and a core of wrestlers are always there: those I mentioned + Kirkwood, Bruno, Kowalski, Myers, Iron Jaw, Syd, Artful Dodgers, Kwango, Trood, Hurst etc. Matchmaking would have been a nightmare if you had to contact each wrestler to ask if they were available for each individual night. The farm-outs are interesting in themselves. I always imagined that when they met in Leeds every fortnight the conversation went something like: Mick: "I'll give you Torontos for 16/17and 18 Nov." Norman: "Ok, and I'll give you McMichael those same days." Mick: "You pay McMichael and I'll pay Billy." Norman: "Agreed." Had to be something like this, the payroll department would have been gigantic and confused otherwise. Small promoters like Pallo generously bunged "an extra fiver" for a good show. But Dale Martin there was probably never any exchange of cash in the changing rooms. That brings us back to the question of: did anyone at all in the wrestling business ever pay tax?

Scoff at your peril, Time Cop. I'll root out that northerner promoting in Bognor. Definitely from north of Tunbridge Wells. And now you've been and gone and done it again....you've thrown a Zarpa into the works. Zarpa on a Lincoln bill? Fair play to you, though, you've won the ITV 7 there: a February 1964 bill where "we" don't know any of the wrestlers. Must have caught the eye of Paul Lincoln to muscle them out the following year. It was all going on in 1964 promoters' offices. Wrestling being included in World of Sport must have been more influential than we have realised so far.

Wasn't there a northern promoter who ran shows in Bognor Regis?

The likes of Czeslaw, Torontos, Baron, Barnes, Elijah were on monthly salaries and just had to do their 20 or 25 bookings, whatever was agreed. The talk has always been of bonuses for tv and Albert Hall appearances, but I don't know how that worked, and in any case, they are exceptions.

I had mentioned that Bakshis was perhaps Gunga but excluded because Gunga was billed separately. I suggested Wryton for that Redruth bill because they look like Wryton wrestlers. And now this Wolverhampton programme lists Redruth as a "regular" Wryton venue. That's a late November bill, way outside the tourist season. I think there is much to be deduced from all this. Even today the population of Redruth is only 15,000. That was some committment on Wryton's part to commit to regular year-round shows so far from home in such a small place. Lincoln was doing the same in Newquay, resident population 13,000 in 1963, but sensibly focusing on summer bills in the tourist season. I deduce that Wryton acted based on that 1962/63 peak we are well aware of. Business was booming, and they could put on shows everywhere and couldn't fail. There was only a limited dose of televised wrestling, just enough to whet the appetite for a live show. Those peak years also made ITV sit up and take notice. In 1964 the amount of televised wrestling more than doubled. I deduce that for some fans this meant they had their fill on the small screen and didn't need to go live. I note that Wryton and Lincoln continued in 1965 to plan based on 1962/63 figures but were ultimately disappointed and pulled stumps in some of these more costly venues. In the case of Lincoln, the increased tv output was probably responsible in some way for his decision to quit while still ahead late 1965. So I put the case that the very success of professional wrestling, showcased through the ITV contract, also led to the downturn from 1964 precisely due to overexposure. If we consider a grander scale, Premier League soccer grounds remain packed because it's a product fans cannot see on tv.

Hi Ron I just want to mention that other Cornish venue. We always say Nagasaki didn't wrestle in the South in his first years, but I have him on 27th November 1964, in his second week, facing Ahmed the Turk in Redruth. Do you think that was a Wryton bill far from home?

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Which poster, Peter?

You're right. The football club were probably happy to have the grockles flooding the bar in the summer heat, maybe Lincoln wangled free hire. Andy yes, Lincoln kept it so fresh; even Jack de Lasartesse was there. I never had a snifter of seeing him. Reference the Christian names of the Singhs, the obvious thought is whether Bakshis was The Wildman under yet another name? But Gunga is billed on Whit Monday. I'll answer you then: yes, Cornwall was the farthest flung outpost of Lincoln promotions. I would have expected to see Roy Bull Davis on at least one of those bills; but no.

Fascinating for me is Jacques Lageat. As I mentioned this week, although French, one of the promoters of the German Tournaments. But Jacques has really gone native. He was on the tv bill of Pallo v McManus I in 1962, wrestling Billy Howes for the European title; clearly for Dale Martins. Here he is a year later probably taking the family on a summer holiday, with two appearances in Newquay. A pound to a penny he was in Redruth, too. Bakshis Singh???? The tag match has really got mangled. Incredible to be making discoveries from plain sight 62 years on. Well done, Ron.

Yes, great additional detail. But I cannot see Le Monde getting an obituary so wrong. Once a guy has passed, I do think the press tell the truth. I can see all these things happening, the repackaging of Ducrez, it's just the sequence that needs straightening out. Another point: L'Ange Blanc feuded with Le Bourreau de Béthune throughout France and in his late fifties heyday. They wrestled scores of times, maybe hundreds, I don't know. But they were equally weighted. Jacques is a much bigger guy as we can see on Youtube. I'll believe the articles that Freddy was the original as Jacques was busy being Jacquerez. I also have to concur with Hack that Freddy was replaced in his Kensington bout. The 1958 replacement is incredible in itself - a very very young Judo Pete Roberts. They wouldn't have billed him at that time so probably a very last minute substitution. Perhaps. Fascinating twists all round. (I hope the French historians come to this site to learn French history 😜)

You got me started about the German tournaments, Alan. And I am delighted to have found this BW 1980 match with Ed in against the Italian/Belgian we know from the 1973 Fanfare for Europe matches. Given the comments about pimping, it's astonishing to hear the crowd going crazy for their hero Axel Dieter! Ed comes in with a stetson and has the longer blond hair. He takes plenty of bumps to put over his smaller, ageing employer. He seems to have favoured the racist sterotype: in Europe as a cocky cowboy; and in the USA where he played a Boer. I noticed that all the big tournaments were promoted by famous wrestlers we know. I had been aware of Austrian Otto Wanz but here Dieter in Hamburg; Saturski and Lageat too. Did Wiskowski wrestle in UK? Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pu7SxuQVDM4

Nice find. I think he wrestled as Ed  Wiskoski. I see him in a 28-man 1980 tournament where he came second. He wrestled a remarkable number of scoreless draws - it seems the local promoters wanted to really make him work.  I see him wrestling against Haystacks and Tony St Clair and Steve Wright and Caswell Martin in 1987. He seemed to lose most singles matches though I do spot a win against Judd Harris. He also tagged with Harris and also with John Quin. So he kept good company. I always find it easier to believe their ramblings. Part of being a wrestling fan!

Yes, I had it saved as a youtube favourite and watched and rewatched the film multiple times. But it's been removed. It was one of those pre-video films where someone had used a cinecamera placed in front of the tv screen.

And no prizes for guessing that Pallo probably won. My understanding is that McManus and Pallo wrestled the likes of Kirkwood, Czeslaw, Joynson and Zimba to underline their superiority over the middleweights. Each fought the much heavier Ricki Starr and Quasimodo at the Albert Hall.

Great poster and great bouts there. The sloppy modern matchmaking is evident with the Zimba/Kaye bout repeated three weeks later and not even the wisdom to present it as a return. The rarity of a Big Daddy poster without a picture of Big Daddy. But almost no Southerners. Zaranoff an exception and one who went more than once. We can identify all those Bolton and Manchester wrestlers who were closely affiliated with Wryton. Maybe we overlook the obvious. In the sixties, going to the seaside for a day out was a treat, and getting paid for it too! Some may have taken their families along.

Thanks Ron, All those gaps we have in our records, wondering where the wrestlers were on those empty evenings, you are now starting to plug the gaps with this tip-top research. I would just say that they did have foreigners: Two Rivers, Zaranoff, Bartelli, Majid Ackra ... not to mention all those Englishmen! I am intrigued by the claim that Dr Death was a TV favourite. On the one hand he was nobody's favourite, but on the other, he was never on tv. His fame must have skyrocketed early sixties. Agree, the finances are intriguing: Royal, Mann, Albert Wall, Eric & Ernie (who I always confuse, never having seen them) ... the big names wended their way to Aber. So many snouts in the trough for any show. For this to have lasted several years the hall must have been packed. In amongst it all - my earliest sighting of Tiger Ryan. Great stuff!