In my twenty-year voyage of discovery as an internet fan, some of the most satisfying revelations have been when one wrestler compliments another, thereby revealing to me their professionalism in all those bouts I witnessed 50+ years ago. At home once with Heritage favourite Bob Kirkwood, the most self-deprecating of anyone we name on this site, the Portsmouth Adonis shared the revelation that "Alfie could make a broomstick look good." I lapped that up. Maybe you lap it up likewise if you are reading this for the first time. So my mind wanders to wonder what other satisfaction I can derive from similar peer praise, just like those comments about Judo Al Hayes. Steve Best's family shared with us a few months ago that Mick McManus was Steve's favourite opponent: such a light worker who could arouse such heat. Bob also nominated Mick in a bout where the Dulwich Destroyer had to whisper: "Too much heat; you go over." And a dq duly ensued. I have enjoyed Paul Mitchell trying to defend "Puffing Billy" whilst not being completely, or even partially, convinced. This (blind) camaraderie is also interesting. However, as a dedicatedly objective OUTsider, with no aspirations to ingratiate, I will continue to look for wrestling truth, be there such a thing, above loyalty or, in the case of some fans, mere adulation. In the BBC TV documentary, Johnny Kincaid was complimentary about Nagasaki in a way we are not accustomed to. His words still resonate with me. Most surprising of all is that, at this point, my list starts to dry up. Oh they all loved Vic and Bert ... after their passings. This list needs to embrace more than polite obituaries. Poring over the hundreds of pages of the Nagasaki book, one remains hard-pressed to identify just who the wrestlers were that he most appreciated for putting him over. Bruno gets some kind of mention, but not exactly enthusiastic. I just cannot recall any wrestler recording comments about how skilled the likes of Masambula or Sid Cooper or Tibor Szakacs were. I would love to extend my list with others' further contributions. Hope you can help?

Just watching the Hackenschmidt bout on mats and I was surprised they weren't in a roped ring. This sets me to wondering: when did the first ring appear for wrestling? In UK and elsewhere. Maybe there had been wrestling rings before the Hackenschmidt bout we see. It's not as if it was a mind-blowing innovation, merely copying boxing. But some of the simplest discoveries have been based on common sense, like Isaac Newton's.

Very rare for "our" wrestlers and wrestling still to hit the headlines in 2024, but: https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/30111209/worlds-oldest-wrestler-flogs-mega-mansion/ Sweet implication that he Kamikaze crashed Haystacks! I find the language strange as written by someone who was no doubt born this century. Like World of Sport was a tv "show." Terrible to be so young and so out of touch.....

I can think of a handful who wrestled in UK, clearly limiting myself to proper masked wrestlers, not fly-by-nights: The Ghoul The Exorcist The Outlaw Le Bourreau de Béthune And of course giving a wide berth to Mexicans who would do my head in. Unsure about The Professor and 1973 Black Angel. Any others?

Ron's analysis of Sheffield today has really made me sit up and view Relwyskow & Green Promotions in a new light. They did things their own way right up the eastern seaboard and with bills packed with star names. Nevertheless, I can clearly see the quality of bills in Sheffield is superior to their bills in holiday towns such as Bridlington. So we discuss and simply mention the Joint Promotions promoters so regularly and we examine the various venues, but the sheer quantity of bills can make analysis quite blurred. Therefore I invite you to share what you consider to be the ten major venues for the JP organisations, in order. An impossible task but maybe a fun talking point. I'll start with the promotion I am most familiar with: DALE MARTIN PROMOTIONS. 1. Royal Albert Hall 2. Fairfield Hall, Croydon 3. Colston Hall, Bristol 4. Sophia Gardens, Cardiff 5. Guildhall, Portsmouth 6. Chelmsford (Chancellor & Odeon) 7. Seymour Hall, London 8. Drill Hall, Coventry 9. Brighton Sports Stadium 10. Torquay Town Hall Am I near the mark? Which have I omitted? I have included some based not only on the quality/quantity of bouts but the fact they were used for championship bouts. Please share a list of one of the other Joint Promotions.

As just mentioned elsewhere, South Americans galore masqueraded as Orientals, Spaniards, Americans and other. But who were the ones who wrestled in British rings when actually billed from South America? I was chuffed to get Rolando Aguirre's autograph so he tops my list. Jacobo was billed from Argentina. Indio Guajiro is another. Columbian but billed from somewhere else, I seem to recall. Can any others be added to the list? And of course Prince Kumali was billed from South America!

Boxers traditionally wore and still wear gowns with hoods on their ring entrances. Aside from pushing it a bit with Quasimodo and Nagasaki, for the life of me I can't think of any wrestlers who had hoods. There must be some. Please let me know.

Discussion today of Aaron Stone brings to mind numerous wrestlers who were around only for a brief period of less than a year, clearly excluding international visitors and silly masked fodder. Great things were clearly envisaged for Aaron with that Who's Who inclusion, so he must have disappointed the promoters. I mentioned the beguiling photo of Yorkie Walker, clawing his way terrifyingly off the page. But I don't see him on any of the bills we examine. I suppose the reasons for such fleeting ring careers can be summarised in: Did he jump or was he pushed? If they failed to fill engagements, that was surely curtains. But for some, unsurprisingly, it probably just wasn't what they'd hoped. The bumps, the travelling, the jobbing, the necessary showmanship. A few years later I recall Jack Armstrong, very efficient but timid and couldn't work the crowd. He disappeared, Dusty Miller, Mr Big of 1969 (brief return ten years later), Jim Fitzmaurice, one of The Shamrocks .... quite a few others. I guess we deserve a badge of honour for seeing these fleeting fossils live. Can anyone add to the list? Can you add other reasons why they'd stop? Some went abroad (Robert Bruce); in rare cases others passed away after very short careers (Ezzard Hart.) Maybe there were other reasons? One even found his way the the cover of The Wrestler, Ted someone, the name escapes me right now.

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.

In the 19 years I have been commenting about my fewer years in the sixties and seventies as a wrestling fan, one ongoing theme amongst fellow fans has been about shooting and hooking and scurfing ....and all the rest. Whilst we lap up those occasional moments where things went wrong and tempers really flared, we have to concede that 99+% of the time the wrestlers were doing their jobs in a way they could perform five or six times a week - and we hardly every saw anyone with a bruise or a genuine in-ring injury. Blading just earnt them a couple of extra quid and was voluntary. This serves to underline that the true day-in-day-out of being a professional wrestler included wrestling light. Wrestling light was therefore the greatest skill to master. It's a skill I have seen relatively neglected on here over these 19 years alongside the focus on those rare "shooting" (or whatever) moments. I have been mulling over starting this thread for a few weeks since Steve Best's family posted that Steve most of all liked wrestling Mick McManus because he was so careful and light - yet provoked such outrage amongst the fans. Having seen McManus's routines so many many times live and on tv, I cannot deny affection for him and I am glad that for once we can place him at the top of a list. His routines included taking precisely three cross ring throws per bout. He was also noisy with what I called Tellytubby anger years ago; all this to camouflage the lack of force applied. And he had the delicateness of a cat in contacting just enough to make it look real - but never enough to hurt. I enjoy watching back as the likes of Clive Myers, Mal Sanders and Best himself exaggeratedly sell their boss's offensives. Their reactions highlight, for me, the respect they had for McManus's in ring skills. Getting that force/contact balance right is a real art. I know this because I can see others who were too light, Dick Conlon springs to mind. At the same time I am probably overlooking others who were also skilled light wrestlers because their camouflage was so good. So I am wondering who else can be listed as adept light workers? And does this valuation also mean that the likes of Keith Martinelli and Hans Streiger and Billy Robinson were not so skilled as professional wrestlers since they knew only the heavy-handed approach?

We have discussed numerous ways wrestling copied boxing. But were there any ways in which boxing took a leaf out of wrestling's book?

Well, we all know so much more now than we did 50 years ago. Who is brave enough to record impressions and even beliefs from the sixties and early seventies? I knew that Kendo Nagasaki really was Japanese. Johnny Kincaid was clearly from Barbados because that was the island of the blonds. Johnny War Eagle actually was a Red Injun Chief. Steve Logan really was a great technical wrestler (thanks Kent!) Julien Morice was the Lightweight Champion of France. Even though he was a bit arthritic in the ring, Mike Marino's fizzog assured that he really was invincible. The Dennisons' wristbands had been approved as admissible by the Board of Control. When Saint or Kidd rolled into a ball, the opponent had no way at all of attacking them. Can anyone add their own? (Anything to do with Kwango's headbutt is beyond gullible, so please do not include.)

Following on from Hack's skepticism about Count Bartelli's book: "Bartelli's book, which was the world as he would want us to view it," a comment with which I wholeheartedly agree, I'm trying to think of any wrestling book that we feel we can actually trust. Whether you want to call it marketing or mind manipulation, these guys were ahead of their time in creating stories that the fans gobbled up. They were masters of such manipulation on the mat; and seem to have been equally adept on paper. At worst, these books, in no particular order: - omit - invent - twist - thread in truths to give the impression all is true (eg Shakespeare's "Henry VIII") The Mick McManus Wrestling Book takes the biscuit for absurdity; the following year The Who's Who of Wrestling unjustifiably assumed almost Burke's Peerage status. In more recent times, I have read many comments that Adrian Street's writing is heavily weighted in his own favour. Even dear dear Judo Alf carried to his grave the myth that there was ongoing bad blood between himself and the Iron Man (loved by all "the lads.") Kendo Nagasaki's book fascinates me. Certainly it feeds me interesting snippets that I had not been aware of. But my overwhelming impression in reading it was of the omissions, and few comments about wrestlers who worked hard to put him over in the course of twenty years. Stalwart Tibor doesn't get a mention. Nagasaki spent more than twenty years manipulating or, at the very least in my own case, confusing fans with tales of mysticism, healing and the rest. Then he whipped his mask off, published his book and the mysteriously hypnotic faith healer, not to mention paradoxical villain of the ring, turned overnight into a "lovely bloke." I have noted his ongoing skills at managing fans' adulation with his very generous accessibility over recent years, but the end result is in large measure to cement his book as gospel. He is very very successful judging by many many loving comments on here, and once again I risk being the minority of One. (For my own small part, this is one reason I keep out of it. I retain the unseduced integrity of my complete objectivity in his regard.) So I am wondering whether anyone feels they have read a legit book by one of our UK pro wrestlers? I set out from the standpoint that this is impossible due to the strength of the omerta that prevents "the lads" revealing much at all about each other, or the business. But I'll be interested to read others' opinions.

We have several related threads on the go at the present time, but one of the key aims is to establish who is the oldest living professional wrestler from our beloved Heritage years. We are dealing with nonogenarians and, irritatingly, with very elusive characters. We have seen the title pass from Joe D'Orazio, and on though our uncrowned king, Spencer Churchill, who has sadly passed away today, before his coronation. Let's hope the latest King Charles III fares better. So what may seem like ancient history to many is in fact a game of chess on ice on wheels, on a turntable, just trying to keep up. And therefore at the time of writing - but nothing remains stable - we appear to have as contenders for the title of Father of Professional Wrestling: GORI ED MANGOTICH BOBO MATU SYED SAIF SHAH Hack has mentioned a visitor, Mohammed Yakub. But in the absence of any strong support movement for him, such a fleeting visitor cannot be considered for such a prestigious crown. He's no Bonnie Prince Charlie, after all....another claimant to the title of King Charles III. Can anyone out there let us know about the well-being of Gori Ed and Bobo, before bKendo chimes in with another RIP?

The original post and contributions remain below; but let's keep the latest list at the very top now and update today, 24th May with the insertion of Lorant Baranyi: 1933 Dave Cameron - a visitor 7.7.1934 Lorant Baranyi 1934 Lee Scott 1934 Don Robinson 1934 Bob Sweeney 1935 Horst Hoffman - a visitor 1935 Blackburn Roberts 1936 Linde Caulder 1936 Bob Kirkwood 1936 Sean Regan 6.4.36 Dave Finlay Senior 1937 Bob Anthony 1937 Tony Scarlo 1937 Alan Serjeant 1938 Brian Crabtree 1938 Brian Maxine 1939 John Cox 1939 Bobby Barnes 1939 Mark Wayne  23/03/1940 Eddie Rose 1940 Jon Cortez 1940 Tony Costas 1940 Maurice Hunter 1940 Al Miquet 1940 Mel Stuart We still need to investigate Barry Douglas Ray Fury Al Nicol Lou Ravelle - Unsure if he's alive but could be right up there at the top Judo Pete Roberts Dean Stockton - Possibly 1942 Peter Kaye Joe Murphy Gordon Smith Update of 7th April 2024 at the passings of Barry Douglas, Dwight J Ingleburgh 1933 Dave Cameron - a visitor 1933 Dave Finlay Senior 1934 Lee Scott 1934 Don Robinson 1934 Bob Sweeney 1935 Horst Hoffman - a visitor 1935 Blackburn Roberts 1936 Linde Caulder 1936 Bob Kirkwood 1936 Sean Regan 1937 Bob Anthony - a Kamikaze still outwitting us in 2024 1937 Tony Scarlo 1937 Alan Serjeant 1938 Brian Crabtree 1938 Brian Maxine 1939 John Cox 1939 Bobby Barnes 1939 Mark Wayne 1940 Jon Cortez 1940 Tony Costas 1940 Maurice Hunter 1940 Al Miquet 1940 Mel Stuart We still need to investigate Ray Fury Al Nicol Lou Ravelle - Unsure if he's alive but could be right up there at the top Judo Pete Roberts Dean Stockton - Possibly 1942 Peter Kaye definitely alive April 2024, we need his birth date from his daughter-in-law. Joe Murphy Gordon Smith Pinned at the top we have the two threads listing our Living Greats. Below I copy the latest list of living fifties greats. Any ideas as to sequencing them age-wise? Update of 21st August 2022 at the passing of Bert Royal Bob Anthony Bobby Barnes Jim Breaks Jon Cortez Spencer Churchill. Brian Crabtree Max Crabtree Barry Douglas Seamus Dunleavy Ray Fury Horst Hoffmann Dwight J Ingleburgh Gori Ed Mangotich Al Miquet Al Nicol Lou Ravelle Judo Pete Roberts Blackburn Roberts Johnny Saint Tony Scarlo Lee Scott Roy St Clair Dean Stockton Adrian Street Esq. Bob Sweeney Billy Two Rivers Uncertain whether active in the 50s Jim Green (The Monster) Peter Kaye Sean Regan Uncertain whether still alive Bobo Matu Joe Murphy Gordon Smith

When you see Bruno Elrington body slammed by Shirley Crabtree, he lies flat in the centre of the ring with his arms noticeably held in parallel with his body. This is a clear sign to his opponent that he is braced to accept a body splash. This leads me to notice the same behaviour, less obvious, in other wrestlers' work I have seen referees in American rings make an X sign with there arms to indicate that someone is hurt for real and to send in the physicians. My dad used to maintain that when you saw a wrestler tapping the other's back, this meant "go easy, it hurts." Not so sure dad was on the ball there, but never mind. So I'm wondering what other signs or indications there were to indicate something was real? That something hurt, or someone was injured, or that it was time to wrap up, or that it was perhaps time to start some pre-planned stunt? Some things must have hurt a great deal and there needed to be ways of communicating this. Has anyone else ever noticed anything like this?