It's sometimes strange how certain things can come full circle in a surprising & fulfilling way. Back in 1998, myself and a friend attended a live British wrestling event at Tameside Hippodrome and would later each write reviews of the show. At 15 years old, I saw this as practice for what I hoped would be my future career as a wrestling journalist. Unfortunately my review must have been lost at some point over the years, but what I remember most is that when we compared reviews, each was particularly positive regarding the tag match involving Ricky Knight & Tarzan Boy Darren. It was the same friend who would send me a website link 16 years later, which resulted in me writing articles for my first website, & now I am proud to present an interview with one of those wrestlers who featured in the show-stealing match, 'Tarzan Boy' Darren Ward. He even filled in the blanks in my memory as to the other participants when I told him the story of my first time seeing him perform:
"I remember that tag match. It was me & The Canary Kid (Bruce Solomon) Vs Ricky Knight & Ian Wilson."
Darren Ward's wrestling experience started as a fan growing up in Leeds. At the time, wrestling in the UK was a booming business as homegrown British talents were showcased on the highly rated World Of Sport TV show on ITV. As well as being one of the most watched shows on television, live shows were always packed to capacity and even those not regularly featured on television were able to become stars in their own right by making the rounds on the circuit, or by being afforded opportunities overseas. The TV stars were of course the main draws for shows around the country, but the quantity and quality of talent which was being turned out made the UK a focal point for promoters around the globe who were looking to recruit from our hotbed of quality workers. Promoters around the country were able to make decent money and stay in business for prolonged periods during the golden years of British wrestling, both inside and outside of Joint Promotions, the conglomerate which controlled the World Of Sport TV output. The fanbase of the sport was at an all-time high and it was respected as a sport as well as a form of art or entertainment.
"My earliest memories of wrestling are of course World Of Sport, like most people born in the 60's. My early favourites were Les Kellett, Mick Mc Manus and Jim Breaks. The first live show I remember seeing was at Blackburn Hall in Rothwell near Leeds, promoted by the man who would give me my start in the job, Cyril Knowles. It would have been around 1970 and the wrestler who stuck out in my mind was a comedy wrestler called Pedro The Gypsy, who I would later become great friends with. Pedro was an absolute legend in the game, once seen never forgotten!"
The young Darren Ward would become hooked on the industry and with his dedication as well as his natural size, was able to make headway in preparing himself for his future career from an early age.
"I always wanted to be a wrestler from the very first time I saw it. I was always big for my age, and strong too. I started doing Judo at 8 years old, then amateur wrestling at Green Lane A.W.C. in Bradford. I won the Yorkshire Junior title at heavyweight and the English novice title, both in 1981. I then trained with Professional wrestler Little Prince Mohammed Alam at his gym in Leeds."
The business has changed in many ways since the time that Ward was breaking into wrestling, especially in terms of the nature of how people actually get their start. He would elaborate on this as he shared his early experiences and offered some advice for anyone who is looking to start their own career:
"I'd say to any new starters in the job do your homework as regards finding a good trainer - Marty Jones, Ricky Knight, Danny Collins etc."My first pro bout was in March 1985 against Johnny Angel's dad, Crazy Dave Adams. There were no training schools back then so you went to an amateur wrestling club to make a man out of you, so to speak. But amateur and pro are like chalk and cheese, and usually the better amateur wrestlers made the worst pros. There were notable exceptions, like Breaks, Haward & Jones, but amateur made you more tense and stiff, which is just the opposite of professional wrestling. One interesting fact about my career though, is that I am the only wrestler I know of that his first taste of going in a proper wrestling ring was when I stepped in there for my first professional bout. I had no idea of what the ropes, posts, boards or canvas felt like! Talk about a baptism of fire! That would be unheard of today with all the training schools around. Plus, I had the added pressure of having my first bout locally and sold 200 tickets to my friends and family! It was a good job I wore brown trunks! [Laughs].
"You just learned the game as you went along, but I kept having breaks in my first few years because I could make a lot more money at my other job....A male stripper/kissogram! another unusual occupation to say the least!"
Even during the periods of British wrestling's highest success, it was not unusual for workers to also have day jobs to fill out their paychecks, however this is admittedly a relatively different choice. This was probably even rarer in that era because the bodybuilding look was not as widely sought out as it has become today in professional wrestling, so the opportunity for such a crossover would not perhaps as been readily available. Tarzan Boy Darren was one of the most muscular workers on the British circuit at one time, with many others having athletic, but more rugged appearances. This was no doubt a contributing factor in his ability to rise through the ranks and get the bookings that started toi make his dreams come true.
"My favourite venue was Leeds Town Hall, because that was the place where I saw all the stars of TV from the mid 70's onwards. My dream/ambition was to be a professional wrestler and walk out from the dressing room there, so when I did it the first time it was the equivalent of a schoolboy football fan walking out at Wembley captaining his team in the FA Cup final."
Not all venues and audiences were inkeeping with the dream image of the job, especially as the crowds diminished in the wake of World Of Sport's departure from television. Ward would tell of some of the tougher jobs that came with the territory of being in the business at that time.
"Some stranger venues I worked at were during a tour of Zambia in 1994; converted cow sheds and the like in the back end of beyond in bandit country. Over here, I wrestled Greg 'The Hammer' Valentine in the Goldthorpe Community Theatre near Barnsley - a decrepid, run down building in the middle of nowhere. The fans were straight on my side, which wasn't the plan as Greg needed to sell his Polaroid pictures. It took about ten minutes to switch the fans over, but Greg came to me when he came backstage, thanked me for being able to pull it off and said 'I didn't think they were going to stand for it, have you got friends that live round here?' That was nice of him (he didn't give me a few quid for my efforts though!)."The worst crowds were at Blackpool pleasure beach because they weren't wrestling fans as such. They had come in to see a fight, so you had to work extra stiff and hard to make it look like a real fight. They sometimes jumped the ring or joined in if you went outside the ring. I saved Tony St. Clair there one time when a punter went for him; I nipped in smartly with a right hook on the fellers chin, he went over and Tony and me carried on. I saw William (then Steven) Regal, Richie Brooks, Dave Duran, Colonel Brody, myself and even Klondike Kate deal with punters there. The only wrestler I saw coming close to getting beat by a punter there was The Mongolian Mauler, who had a right struggle with a tall wiry bloke who lasted the full 3 rounds, costing promoter Bobby Baron £30." [Laughs]
"The travelling was stupid mostly. One weekend that sticks out in my mind was leaving Leeds at midday on Friday for Irvine in Scotland (on past Edinburgh). We left there at 10.30pm for Portsmouth(!) to catch the 10am ferry for Guernsey for a Saturday night show. Sunday it was a 10am boat ride to Jersey for 2 shows; afternoon and evening, then up again at 10am for a Catamaran boat ride to Weymouth. Then we drove 80 miles across the south coast to the car at Portsmouth for the trip back up to Leeds. I got in the pub at the bottom of my street at 10.15pm on Monday night. WHAT A FECKING TRIP!!!"
As well as performing in the ring, Tarzan Boy Darren would try his hand at promoting shows, and was usually successful in his efforts. Fans still remember his shows, as evidenced by the recent attempts of some fans to have his contributions noted on the Wrestling Heritage website:
http://www.wrestlingheritage.co.uk/apps/forums/topics/show/13116964
(The administrators state that the only reason he is not included is that he did not perform during the time period covered by their site.)
"When I was promoting big shows I always got the double sized crown posters. I did well and made good money 90% of the time. I used the best wrestlers of the time: Dynamite Kid, Kendo Nagasaki, Giant Haystacks [known to American wrestling fans as Loch Ness from Stu Hart's Stampede Wrestling & Ted Turner's WCW etc.], Pat Roach, Marty Jones and all the other TV names.
"Wrestling can't recover to the World Of Sport days. Things have moved on and times have changed, although wrestling is thankfully thriving again. The type of audience watching it has gone from men in suits and old ladies at ringside, with no kids in sight to exactly the opposite; loads of screaming kids with adults only there because they are forced to bring their 5 and 7 year old to watch."
In the midst of plummeting attendances due to the lack of exposure for homegrown talent, promoters resorted to largely putting on tribute shows to the American wrestling which monopolised wrestling on TV. Wrestlers would assume the roles of their WWF counterparts, with Tarzan Boy Darren becoming the UK's answer to Kane. The move was a neccessity at that time and successfully reinvigorated business to a level which was able to keep shows afloat. While the period is not looked upon fondly by British Wrestling purists, there was simply no other way to get enough people in seats to break even at that time and it served the fans well to have a cheaper and more readily available alternative to taking their kids to the comparatively expensive and sporadic WWF European tours.
"I didn't mind too much doing the tribute shows. It was easy work, better paid than before and you performed to sell-out houses in towns that wrestling had struggled to get 100 punters in previously. We were doing afternoon matinee shows, sometimes working 3 venues a day. One or two of the boys did Kane before it passed on to me and I made it my own role. I would rather have been wrestling as myself but that was the 'in thing ' at the time, and business had never been so good in my time. I met some great guys from abroad, The Bushwhackers, Yokozuna, Greg 'The Hammer' Valentine, The Barbarian etc. So yes, we did prostitute ourselves and forsake our English style, but we had a blast doing it!"
"The memorabilia collection started off when I was about 9 years old and I got Les Kellett's autograph at Rothwell sports centre. It might as well have been Elvis Presley's, Michael Jackson's or Muhammad Ali's; that's how much it meant to me. There was never much memorabilia to collect, apart from programmes and posters at the shows, and Ringsport magazine, which came out bi-monthly in the 70's and 80's.
"One funny thing about my collection, when I turned professional and was at a show the boys would take the piss something rotten if I picked up the unsold programme and put them in my bag, or took the posters down from the walls, but move forward 25+ years and the same boys will ring me and ask 'Daz, did you ever pick anything up with me on ?', and I'll say 'Aww sorry mate you were the one person I never got anything on'! [Laughs].
"When eBay started, a friend of mine started picking up all sorts for me like the full set of The Wrestler magazine, but the biggest thing was when Leeds promoter Ann Relwyskow moved out of the family home after 70 years in 2004.
"I had to get the police involved to stop [some people] posting things about me on their forum - claiming I was a sex offender, drug dealer, thief and a police informant!!!! That turned out to be jealousy because I got Anne Relwyskows memorabilia! You couldn't make it up!
"There were literally thousands of items in the house to do with wrestling, right from George Relwyskow Snr winning the Olympic gold medal in 1908, to the late 1990's when she retired. I cleared the whole house over a couple of days, [which] took me 4 trips in a big estate car crammed full of stuff each trip. Absolutely everything you could ever want as a fan of wrestling. Leeds was the place that was the centre of wrestling in Europe, if not the world.
"I have everything on the history of the game going right back to 1908 when George de Relwyskow won his Olympic gold medal. I have lots of posters of George Relwyskow going round the whole of the U. K. In theatres etc. topping the bill between 1908-25 and offering £50 to any man who could pin him, apparently he never lost ! 50 quid was probably a years wages for the average man in 1908. Sometime between 1926 & 1932 he must have realised the value in taking it off a mat and into a ring and adding the showmanship to make good entertainment. His posters in the 1930's were the best of any era in Pro Wrestling.
Darren Ward is now the Wrestling Historian for Fighting Spirit Magazine, as well as being one of the organisers of the British Wrestling reunions in Leeds. His collection is becoming the stuff of legend, as well as being an invaluable source of reference for wrestling historians, and by taking an active role in the reunions he is ensuring that the colourful and fascinating history of British wrestling continues to live on. Having been a fan, wrestler, promoter and historian, he unquestionably has a unique persective and insight to an industry which has captured the hearts of millions of people.
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