While I do not claim any authoritative qualifications on the matter I have, as most of my acquaintances will affirm, been at the sharp end of promotions over the last few years and have spoken in detail on the subject to others with decades of memories to draw upon. The answer to this ever more important question cannot be confidently given without the facts being fully investigated.

What made British Wrestling as "big" as it once was?

I firmly believe that the "old school" TV programmes, although a success in audience numbers, were a product of the times in which they evolved and that they ran their natural course with audience ratings dwindling as alternative Saturday afternoon pastimes became available.

Most of us can list ten to fifteen things we normally do on Saturday afternoon. None of these would involve watching TV. The odd one or two percent may watch horse racing but most of us are in the pub, on the football terraces, at the snooker or pool hall, shopping, travelling, playing sport of some kind, or just hanging out chilling somewhere.

The Saturday afternoon wrestling audiences in the fifties and sixties were almost captive as most people had only two TV channels to pick from so if you didn't bet on or have an interest in the horses you watched the "other "side. What was on there? Why, it was Professional Wrestling, of course.

Other than the "captive" audience on TV there were no 30,000 + crowds at the shows. The wrestlers were poorly paid with most of the admission charges being used for rent, insurance, and promotional purposes much as is happening today. There may have been an occasional Albert Hall show but this was the high point for any career wrestler in a very downmarket events schedule.

Was British wrestling ever as "great" as we are led to believe?

There were certainly a lot of people making a living but never to the extent of the multi millions paid to today's stars of the American giant WWE. Talking to most of the older wrestlers I have met reveals a life permanently on the road scraping out an existence. Houses were directly related to the roster for the evening. Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks, Mick McManus, Les Kellett, and most of the TV favourites would draw well and everyone made a little. Your local star may fill your local theatre but the majority of Indie shows did little better than today. So are we all chasing a non-existent dream? I do believe we are! I discuss here the problems I have been asked about and my objective (I hope) solutions where I am able to offer them.

Without TV shows we have no "stars" to offer to the public but without "stars" we will never get wrestling back onto mainstream TV so what can we do about this?

Yes indeed, it is the ever-popular "eternal triangle". I regret to say there is absolutely nothing any of us can do. It is a situation we all have to accept. We are "banging our head against a great big brick wall" on this one. No one federation has a sufficiently "professional" product to attract the attention of mainstream TV so we must forget TV for now and work on filling halls first. When the largest and biggest spending promoter in the country has low audience levels with his "stars of British, American, and Canadian wrestling" then we (the Indie feds) have one hell of a mountain to climb.

There is no magic solution and even hard working promoters cannot guarantee prolonged full houses. A typical Indie promotion starting today with a few "experienced" men and their trainees will get full houses for two or three shows. They become ambitious and book a few outsiders for the next show and, hey presto, only fifty punters turn up. When they start, they are selling tickets to relatives and friends of themselves and their workers who are not particularly attracted to wrestling. They will come to their sons'/mates' first couple of shows but then find every excuse imaginable to avoid elevation to "wrestling fan" status. This begs the question:

What is a wrestling fan and how do we get them to our live shows?

There is a serious deficiency of wrestling fans in the UK. I have a theory that the fans from the old days were a "captive" audience. Ask anyone reminiscing the old days how many times they went to live shows and they will mostly reply "never". They were a TV audience not a live one. The biggest shows involving all of the TV stars drew 3-4000 at, say, The Royal Albert Hall but the average crowds throughout the country were probably nearer to 200 unless a TV "star" was involved.. The grannies now have cars and large shopping centres to keep them happy. The adult male has the pub open all day and most of the kids manage to work their way into a pub or club before they reach 16. The catchment group is, by default, younger looking under 16's accompanied by their grandparents (who probably only watched it on the telly in days gone by).

This is a completely different audience to the WWE which is largely made up of people who would be in the pub if they lived over here but cannot drink until they are 21 over there.

We in Britain have a different audience than the States and require a different product. We cannot "copy" the Yanks. They stole wrestling from us but have now reduced their background storylines to the dramatic level of an Australian soap opera. All this coupled with the most awful "acting" imaginable. It has become unwatchable at times (the word pathetic springs to mind).

This argument brings us nicely to the next point to be considered:

How can we change what we are doing so that we attract a wider audience?

We have to get back the "magic" of wrestling. We need to restore the audience's doubt over the "reality" of what happens in the ring. Who would have openly accused any of our old time stars of collusion to produce the desired outcome of a bout. There are far too many people "talking" about the arrangements normally in place to prevent serious injury and assumed to be the "fixing" of bouts. Some high-risk bouts are so obviously rehearsed that they should always, in my opinion, be billed as "exhibition" matches.

While our "wrestlers" insist on marking the WWE talent, we have little chance of improving the reality factor in our shows and this is the only way we will regain the "magic".

The spectacle of a live stunt show becomes very predictable after a while. One longs for the Heel to challenge the littlest guy in the audience to see him outside afterwards or to tell the audience to shut up before he walks out because it is too noisy etc.

Why do new breed heels insist on being allowed to wrestle with a skill only previously associated with faces?

The reason is that the psychology long associated with wrestling is lost on most of the new lightweight breed who prefer to risk maiming themselves. "Missing" a high-risk move is, to them, the modern equivalent of the age old tradition that heels cannot wrestle, they can only cheat. This attitude makes things difficult. The face involved then has to carry out even more risky moves to convince the audience of the superiority of "good" over "evil" which is, of course, the basic script for all wrestling matches.

We must first persuade our workers toward the traditional format and start saving the high-risk moves for use as high spots instead of using them as regular moves. We may then go someway to reversing this trend.

This does not give us the answer we need though.

We have all come away from a show having really enjoyed it but failed to analyse properly why it was so much better than the last one. It is normally a case of improved psychology because the stunt wrestlers have already worked three nights on the trot and have calmed down their spots because they were tired. This leads to more audience participation and some of the "magic" as I call it returns.

What do I mean by the "magic"?

I define the "magic" as being the apprehension felt but the audience as two larger than life characters enter the ring to do battle. I have been to far too many shows where the audience can "predict" the winner with unerring accuracy.

YES! I do believe we have to stop the rehearsing and put on "real" matches. This is the first step to regaining some credibility and to renewing the audience's apprehension for what they are to witness. The "MAGIC" has to be found and, this time around, must be preserved for posterity.