"Good afternoon, Grapple fans..." Those immortal words from the late, great Kent Walton and which started every WoS wrestling programme at 4 o'clock on a Saturday afternoon. Halcyon days indeed. R.I.P., Kent and wrestlers too many to mention.
I miss those Saturday afternoon s . Wrestling followed by the football results and the switching over to the BBC for doctor who and the generation game simple days but truly happy days.
please do not let this extensive clarification distract you from the fact that in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer’s table.
Cheers for the upload! Classic nostalgic stuff! Never used to miss it back in the day. Watching this in 2024 - omg, it's so quaint! It has such an innocence to it! Very British and very polite!
I absolutely loved watching this at home with my dad!! It brings back sooooo many good memories for me. I was taken in by all the moves and kicks! I thought it was for real...😃😂
cassiesmum Me too my Nana loved the wrestling on a Saturday afternoon, great memories. My dad hated it and used to wind her up that it was fake but she wouldn't have it.😂
Mid eighties Yorkshire TV....Saturday 12:45 Knight Rider, 13:45 world of sport..Big Daddy belly bouncing a couple of mincers....all washed down with a soggy burger and coke....Nice!!!!
Yeah British wrestling always had its own unique style which was completely different to what the WWF/E did, to what WCW did, to what New Japan did, to what Mexican lucha libre feds did, and so on. There is currently no British wrestling company that does British style wrestling, like the heydays of World of Sport in the UK. Instead, in all the British wrestling companies that currently exist, they all seem to do Ring of Honor style indie wrestling, which is distinctly not British. Probably because every good British wrestler has wrestled in ROH at some point anyway. And that's perfectly fine, it's a good and entertaining type of wrestling too just like British style wrestling is and WWE style wrestling is. But it's just a shame that the British style of wrestling has completely died out and it's extremely doubtful that it'll ever get revived, because it's so alien to what every current British wrestler knows how to do.
Soo many happy memories as a young child watching the wrestling bouts on telly with my Dad!. Even then I knew it was 'fixed', but! they were entertainers! Happy days!. Nuff said. 🙂
Nobody believed me when I told them we had a robot on TV called Metal Mickey, a TV presenting Rat called Roland, and a Bin on legs called Dusty Bin. We lived in strange times.
Went to the wrestling in early 80,Serving in the army,big daddy Vs a big Canadian.He was about 2mins in the ring.Then left the kids waiting for his autograph and did one.Adrian Street,and the big Canadian and others were superb in the bar after,nice guys👍🇬🇧🏵️
So I guess this was what Regal was talking about when he referred to as "Daddy Fodder" when talking about the guys that Max Crabtree found on the street
@@hiddensword9387 Well yeah that's fair, a guy that big isn't going to be able to go through the ropes and to the ground like that without some training. Falling out of the ring properly is way harder than it looks!
Incredible entertainment and sadly missed. Has anyone got a copy of the great Big Daddy vs The Iron Greek which was shown twice due to a strike at ITV?
That`s pretty much spot-on! My neighbour was a wrestler in Britain during the 70/80`s. He said behind closed doors, Shirley(Big Daddy) wasnt a nice guy to be around and yes, he hated kids. But as soon as it was time to perform, he could turn the Big Daddy character on. Ironicially, his arch-nemesis Giant Haystacks was the complete opposite. A really nice, approachable guy
@@criticalbill2090 I don’t believe Big Daddy wasn’t a nice guy. - He was friends with Haystacks and they used to sit down for fish n chips together in cafes after the bouts.
I'm seeing a lot of comments about how Big Daddy couldn't wrestle on here. Admittedly at this point of his career he probably couldn't do a lot but at one time he was pretty good. Big Daddy was actually trained in part by the great George Hackenschmit who was the first recognised World Heavyweight Champion in professional wrestling.
MrMetalover666Thanks mate. Good to see someone knows their wrestling, which is a rarity on RU-vid. The Russian Hackenschmidt, revolutionised the wrestling game. Early on in Shirley's career, he became popular as the blue-eyed "Blond Adonis Shirley Crabtree, where he learnt his ring craft. Whether people liked him or not, the Big Daddy gimmick put bums on seats and generated a lot of revenue for up and coming wrestling superstars. It's a shame people feel the need to berate the poor guy, who brought nothing but positivity and joy into people's lives. Growing up as a kid on a council estate, we didn't have fancy holidays in the Sun nor could we avoid expensive gifts. Every Saturday afternoon watching the wrestling as a kid was the highlight of my week.
@@Aerojet01 ,Shirley Crantree was a very accomplished wtestler and was British heavyweight champion long before the Guardsman/Big Daddy days.He was also a weightlifter and lifeguard.Really annoys me when people think he was all about belly butts and splashes.
You can keep your American wrestling. This is real showmanship! It's about as convincing as a primary school play. I enjoyed it back in the day though.
Nah as a modern wrestling fan this is incredibly boring and cringe worthy compared to modern British wrestling like Progress. Don’t understand why anyone would watch this over say Jimmy Havoc vs Will Ospreay no dq 2 out of 3 falls match from the last chapter show
@@PlayboiCommie Even then it was pretty cringeworthy. The other stuff that WOS had to offer like Johnny Saint, Fit Finlay, Rollerball Mark Rocco et al had some semblance of a genuine athletic competition. Daddy and Haystacks were more about the freak show. You can no more use a Big Daddy match to judge what British wrestling was about in the 80s than you can use the Fingerpoke of Doom stuff to judge what American wrestling in the late 90s was about - this was when British wrestling started to decline, once the novelty had worn off from the Daddy/Haystacks stuff and they were too old/immobile to be remotely convincing anymore, and it took away from the much stronger stuff elsewhere on the card. People like Will Ospreay and Zack Sabre Jr have huge influence from the WOS stuff, but it's the stuff like Johnny Saint. Just as late 90s WCW still had great stuff like the Guerrero/Mysterio matches, Malenko and Jericho in the mid-card and so on, but the main events included some hokey shit like Hogan/Warrior II, the super heavyweights in the UK scene were a special attraction full of 2-3 minute matches of, really, nonsense compared to the technical undercard.
That was bloody pathetic even for a Big Daddy "fight". The guys who really used to train hard for their matches must have been shaking their heads forlornly.
I grew up in America on Piper, Hart, WrestleMania, Andre, Road Warriors, Flair, and Rhodes. I have to admit that in these times 2018, we need us another Big Daddy. No Way Jose and New Day are close but still how could anyone not love this guy? Not a model but a heart as big as his size!
I’m making a scale model of this ring and it seems to be 10 feet wide. Anyone out there that might have some details about the ring construction or where it may have ended up? To adventure!
You can see why do many other wrestlers hated Daddy. He was the face of the sport across the country, but couldn't work at all. Three shoulder charges, an Irish whip and he's done. Biggest payday for not working at all. Meanwhile guys lower down the card were working their asses off and delivering brilliance for far less pay. I know wrestling doesn't pay on who the best workers always are, but at least Hogan took a bump every now and then.
mostly all televised wrestling is a pantomime these days same as most was back in the day..........but had to love big daddy when I was a kid and didn't know any better......GO BIG DADDY
Ok, thank you for replying. What I meant was the fact that at this point he was too old. I agree that he didn,t need to wrestle, much like Hogan rarely did suplex and abdominal stretch like early 80,s Japan. In those days, pro wrestlers came from amateur and I believe in UK catch as catch can and hooking background, so everyone could wrestle. Not like former football players and bodybuilders who just want to be on TV. I agree with your statement, he could wrestle but didn,t need to.
I’ve seen interviews where wrestlers say at this point big daddy was actually the match maker so decided who won and lost that night , hence why he was unbeatable
@@benp5528 The Cratered controlled much of wrestling the usual script had Daddy letting his tag team partner take most of the "punishment" then tag Daddy to come into the ring for about 5 minutes and do his splash, meaning lights out for his opponent.
Really, this is so different from what we had in north america in that time lol! Everything in style, the music, the mannerism, the crowd, the announcing. It's so foreign to me! But that's why it's so interesting as well!
