The World Of Sport presents: The Best Of ITV Wresting

Release Date: 6th June 2005
RRP: £15.99
Format: DVD
Running Time: 90 mins approx
Certificate: tbc

Turn back the clock to the 1970’s when Saturday afternoon meant one thing and that was Wrestling. With the chants of “Easy, easy” and commentary by an over excited Kent Walton, this was British sport at is best (or worse). Now for the first time on DVD the heady mixture of bizarrely named characters watched by a hysterical , audience of handbag yielding beer swigging grannies in local town halls the length and breadth of the UK, is captured in 90 minutes of non stop action.

Presented by Dickie Davies , ITV’s World of Sport’s long running presenter (1965 – 1985) the DVD features an array of familiar names and bouts. Wrestlers such as Big Daddy (real name Shirley Crabtree) who bounced off his stomach his long time enemy Giant Haystacks who at 6ft 11inches tall and 45 stone was not most peoples idea of an athlete. The masked man of mystery Kendo Nagasaki, a trained samurai who would stalk the ring brandishing a sword and enact an ancient ceremony that the audience booed at.

A combination of pantomime and farce with heroes and villains enthralled the nation for over a decade with a regular tv audience of over 10 million. The DVD includes all the classic bouts including the final grudge match between Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks, the unmasking of Kendo and much more. Tag team action from the man in the big black pants (and hair to match) Mick McManus and Steve Logan versus Kendo and Gorgeous George and the late Pat Roach who went onto star in TV’s Auf Weidersehen Pet and Leon Arras (the great late actor Brian Glover) plus Jackie Pallo the pony tailed hero the girls loved to hate.

The DVD extras include more tag team action plus Jimmy Saville relives his time as a wrestler plus a featurette on the wrestlers views on Les Kellett, the hardest man in wrestling and Ricky Starr the ballerina wrestler.