Article From Our Club Journal

This article appeared in our club journal “The Cumberland Claptrap” in the “Across the years” section.

Many people in our club are aware of our concert chairman as an affable and friendly character, always on hand to lend a hand, and a smile for everyone, - but alas this wasn´t always the case. Back in the 70´s he was once drafted in at the last minute to wrestle a true legend of the sport, - Mick McManus. The Chairman himself takes up the story.

“Aye, it were a right funny do were that. This were around 1971 and the wrestling on ITV´s World of Sport were all the rage and I had this idea that it would be a good idea to set up a ring in the games room and try and get a couple of wrestlers down and fight it out - and my wife Elsie used to go to the bingo with Kent Walton´s wife, and he could pull a few strings in them days. We needed a goody and a baddy to do it right so we booked Mick McManus who not many people had heard of at the time, - he looked a bit different then, he didn´t have his pot belly and he had a big bushy beard, and looked quite scary as it goes.- He actually got Wilf our doorman in a boston strangle hold when he asked him to sign in. The other one we booked was Les Kellet who was a very funny man and always put me in mind of Charlie Drake.

 Anyway, everything was set for the Saturday night, we´d arranged everything just right. We´d got Tom Staples to introduce it cos he looked a bit like Dickie Davis, and we´d sorted it so all these vicious looking old women with umbrellas (Ladies darts team) were sat in the front row and we plied em with a few port and lemons to fire em up. When it came for the time to start there was no sign of Les Kellett. It turned out later that some bloke had accidentally brushed him with his elbow in the supermarket and Les had stumbled across the aisle as if in a daze and bouncing in slow motion off the shelves sending dozens of tins of marrowfat peas and packets of Birds Custard scattering in all directions. He then collapsed theatrically to the floor, and staying down as if shot, then springing to his feet at the count of 9 leaping across the bacon counter and wrestling the poor bloke to the floor in a pin fall. – Anyway he was arrested.

That left Mick with no opponent and it all went a bit quiet when I asked for volunteers to fill in, so it was down to me to strip down to me Y-fronts and do the business. I were a bit out of me depth to be honest, I just tried to remember a few moves I had seen from the following week when there had been a tag match between the Royal Brothers versus Jim Brakes – who always said “No,no not the ears” - and Kendo Nagasaki, who never had a problem with his ears cos he wore a mask. Anyway, I started off ok, crouching down slightly and slapping him around the face a bit like I´d seen Mark “Rollerball” Rocco do once, but it soon went pear shaped when he grabbed me by the throat with one hand and shoved his other hand down me pants and squeezed me testicles until me face went blue – that can´t be right surely? But the referee didn´t seem to see it. The next thing I know he´s bouncing me off the ropes whilst he bounced himself off the ropes at the other side and then flattened me with a fore arm smash as we met in the middle,- just as I was pulling me underpants up. He then got me in a headlock and shoved me head in the water bucket, pulled me head out by me hair and then dunked me head in again several times. Just as I was getting me breath back he battered me around the buttocks with his stool, flattened me with a punch on the blind side of the referee and then stamped on me foot as he went to shake hands. – I thought I´d done quite well actually considering the only un armed combat I´d done before was with the wife, but the referee saw it differently. Fortunately I was in a position to prove that Mr. McManus hadn´t signed in and therefore I was pronounced the winner, - so I retired there and then with a 100% record."