10 Greats From The Golden Age Of British Wrestling
Back in their glory days, British wrestlers were huge - both literally and figuratively...
If you grew up in the UK in the '60s, '70s or '80s, there's a good chance that you'll remember sitting around the telly in your nan's front room to watch the wrestling on a Saturday afternoon. With big characters, great storylines and technical virtuosity, it was an action-packed pantomime that had a huge influence on later wrestling trends the world over.
Some of its greatest stars, like Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks and Kendo Nagasaki, are still household names in the UK, 30 years after the end of televised wrestling, but although the British wrestling scene still continues to thrive for fans of live events, there's no turning back the clock to the glory days when everybody (even the Queen!) was watching and talking about it.
Some British wrestlers, like Haystacks and Davey Boy Smith, managed to cross over successfully into the US market. Others remain only in memories and grainy footage of the smoky halls and gymnasiums of a lost era. But amongst them are some of the most interesting and complex characters ever to throw a half-nelson or press a fan's face into an electric fire...
10. Brian Glover
First up is Brian Glover, a very solid wrestler who came up against most of the others in this list over the course of his career but is now better known as an actor thanks to his roles in Kes, Porridge and Alien 3.
Born in 1934 into a wrestling family (Glover's dad wrestled as the "Red Devil"), he weathered a tough upbringing in Yorkshire to become a teacher of English and French, wrestling on the side. When a French wrestler failed to turn up to a match one night, Glover took his place and wrestled under his name for many years as "Leon Arras, the man from Paris." Glover liked to tell the story of how he met the real Leon Arras many years later and arm-wrestled him on French television for the rights to use the name (Glover won but always insisted that Arras let him).
Later, his value as a character actor came to the notice of big directors such as Ken Loach and David Fincher, securing his place in posterity. He died in 1997.