Does the Kidney Squeeze Hurt?

By HILARY SPURLING

I HOPE you can drink,' said my companion, I looking doubtfully at me on the steps of the Pub where he had promised to introduce me to I ommy Mann, undefeated world middleweight wrestling champion, 'Tommy can.' So could the Emperor Maximian, seven gallons of wine a day, (obbon says. Maximian was born a Thracian Peasant in the. third century AD, a man nearly nine feet tall, who could break a horse's 'leg with his fist and crumble stones in his hand, and who beat all the wrestlers in the Roman army when it passed through Thrace. Five emperors later he rose to seize the purple for himself. Tommy Mann is not nearly nine feet tall and was born in the East End of London, son of a butcher and grandson of a strongman, but he Could doubtless crumble stones in his hand and was certainly bending pokers before he took to wrestling as a means to fame and power.

Many strong men want to do the same. Nine times out of ten a would-be professional wrestler approaches the promoters rather than the other Way' round. If he has any experience of amateur wrestling, they have him in and dust him down, 'generally doing considerable damage, to test his guts. The promoters are unimpressed by a gorgeous physique acquired in health clubs. They say it makes a man too lazy to be much good M the ring. All he wants is to lift weights and fie in the sun, which is not how one learns to be a wrestler. Mr. E. J. Harrison, author of my wrestling handbook, offers some practical advice to students wishing to practise the spin: 'From ,t Prone position, face downwards, using feet and arms as levers, the pupil should raise himself with a swift motion on to his head and twist both head and body sharply to the right, letting himself down in a kneeling posture.' Once the

student has mastered this basic manoeuvre, it can, as Mr. Harrison says, 'often be advantageously utilised to escape from a nelson and crutch hold.'

Certain things, like gouging and strangling, are forbidden indulgences in professional free-style wrestling, but other devices are perfectly legal, like wrenching your opponent's arm up and kicking him in the armpit, or flinging him against the. ropes and catching him with both feet full in his chest as he rebounds—though, when you use the ropes as a catapult, he may very well fly back through the air like a stone to grip your chest between his knees and drive you into the ground in a body scissors. Of course, it doesn't hurt, and it's all fixed, says the cockerel in the crowd to his girl. The man to watch, as I was told by a champion wrestler, is not the one who reels across the ring from a forearm smash, but the one who dealt the blow.

The ordinary holds—the back hammer lock, the nelsons, splits and stretches, the kidney squeeze, cross-buttock and so on, all of which can be seen on cave walls near Nineveh, where they were painted some 5,000 years ago, are the basis of wrestling, _whether amateur or profes- sional. But good amateur wrestling, like fencing or boxing, is deadly dull to watch unless you are a connoisseur, so for television and show busi- ness the basic holds are eked out with lethal fancy practices (and harmless fancy names like the Jap Stranglehold, Lumberjack Stretch, Toma- hawk Chop). Inevitably, there are unwritten con- ventions accepted among the professionals. A wrestler who throttled his opponent between the twisted top two ropes had the crowd on its feet hurling anathema and the referee at his side threatening disqualification; when the ropes tightened dangerously, he shot across the ring to loosen the pressure on his victim's neck. at the same time stamping conspicuously on his free fingers. This kind of sleight-of-hand is at least more civilised than the genuine savagery which marked wrestling in ancient Greece as soon as it became a professional sport, and at best makes for grace and fluidity. The notorious Sicilian who, according to Pausanias, did not know how to throw his opponents, but defeated them by breaking their fingers, would have diffi- culty in making a career today, at any rate in Britain.

Television may have helped to encourage skill and sophistication, since it is extremely difficult to conceal faked ferocity from a camera lens, but it also fosters a kind of sadism which is not typical of live wrestling. A bout recorded on the screen is poor stuff compared with the same bout watched from the ringside. Only a limited, dehumanised appeal remains when you are seated in front of your TV set, just you and two scratchy figures panting and groaning on the box and the insidious voice of the commen- tator in vibrant crescendo: 'Watch out for that leg—oh, he's going for that bandaged right leg again—there are seven stitches under that bandage —I think he'll get that leg all right.' Admittedly, crowds can be cruel, particularly if a wrestler is old or over-confident—'You're past it, Fred(' 'Got you there, bighead!' or, to a stoic with the habit of hissing through his teeth in moments of excruciating pain, 'Wot you think you are? A steam-roller, mate?' They like skulduggery, but they are also quick to recognise skill and to respond with appreciative cheers.

The crowds come to be entertained and are naturally pleased when the wrestlers lay it on a bit'; though true sportsmen, like Mr. Harrison, approach with misgiving. A toe-hold applied seriously, or a blow delivered with the flat of the hand on the jugular vein, as in judo Weird, ought to render the opponent senseless if not kill him. As a TV sports director remarked: 'The Indian death-lock is most certainly a death- lock in India. But not, strangely enough, over here.' However, the crowd demands it, so the wrestler gives it, and since if he kills or even maims his man, no promoter is likely to require his services again, there is a certain amount of double bluff involved. A skilful wrestler may fool the crowd by appearing to be on the verge of unconsciousness, barely capable of stagger- ing to his feet to offer himself for the next smash, perhaps eight or nine times in succession;

but even his tormentor cannot always tell when the brute will straighten up as fresh as a daisy and deal him a chop in the stomach. Similarly, both partners in a submission hold (one which inflicts pain in order to weaken the victim or force him to submit) know very well that it is not meant actually to break the neck or wrist

or spine. It is generally a question of which is the more obstinate. If a wrestler goes too far with his death-lock or whatever, he is, they .say, dead next time he faces his victim in the ring. Wrestlers have memories as long as the heroes of Jacobean revenge tragedies. Kent Walton, `TV's Voice of Wrestling' and a keen apologist for the sport, recalled a man who had his, thumb broken, and, meeting the culprit again two and a half years later, shook hands with him before the bout, which never took place, because- the handshake exacted a thumb for a thumb.

A needle match or shoot is good for the box office, but almost never happens nowadays; though Billy Joyce, British and European heavy- weight champion, still limps appreciably on his.

• bandaged leg from a defeat by a leg submission in an earnest needle match which took place some seven or eight years ago. Most of the time the crowds have to make do with the men they love to hate (a hardworked tag which belongs by rights to Mick McManus). They also like Jackie ('Mind his curls') Pallo because, as he says, he is a great ad-libber.

'Name any town of 30,000 inhabitants and we've got wrestling there,' said a gentleman for Joint Promotions, the largest syndicate in Great Britain. The promoters claim that even before ITV took an interest they were playing to capacity houses all over the country; and they still rely for advertisement chiefly on lurid yellow posters and word of mouth. Their support comes from captive audienceswho book the same seats in the local swimming baths or town hall each week or fortnight. In the summer the wrestlers follow their patrons to the seaside, to Margate and Blackpool and Eastbourne and Hastings.

Atmosphere varies enormously from one hall to another, some crowds being gayer or more knowledgeable or nastier than others, but on the whole they are good-humoured, critical, fairly mixed in age and sex. At Wembley one after- noon I sat next to an infectious enthusiast, small, bright-eyed, sitting alone in natty check suiting and a yellow scarf, positively squirming in his seat and uttering shrill cries of encouragement: 'Wonderful, Reg! "Give him straight-lingers.' `Chuck him out the ring, Clay!' He was about six years old, I should think, and chuckled every time he caught my eye.

There are recognisable types among the wrestlers and gimmicks are in order—it is not for nothing that wrestlers are entitled to join the Variety Artists' Federation. Billy Two Rivers wears feathers to his heels, Jackie Pallo has a dress of scarlet and gold like a principal boy, the Sheikh (`the nomad of the mat') wears full desert fig, Masambula the witch-doctor peers from under the grinning head of his leopard skin; but such baubles haven't much to do with per- formance in the ring.

There are few first-class wrestlers, and, in a sense,• the better you are, the more you have to pander to the crowd. In an Olympic judo bout between evenly-matched contestants, nothing much happens. A wrestler like George Kidd is considered good enough to defeat most others in sixty seconds, but the crowd have paid for more than a minute's worth. Odysseus and Ajax, having reached deadlock in their spectacular match at the end of the Iliad, agreed that one or other must break the hold and try a throw, be- cause 'they saw that they were boring the troops' Mr. John Dale, of Dale Martin Promotions, cited Reg Harris's remark that in amateur cycling he had to win, but in professional cycling he had to win in a dramatic finish. At what point this kind of jollying along fades into actual faking it is hard to say, though the incentiv to fix the outcome of a wrestling bout negligible compared with boxing or footba since there is no noticeable betting. Wrestler who perform in night clubs between a son and a stripper can sometimes be overhea 'arranging' the bout beforehand in the dressing- I room; but the average wrestler,• who fights thre

miles in between, has usually worked out a nic0 to five times a• week and travels hundreds o

balance between routine and improvisation. The ' wrestler's life is not an easy one: a heavyweight counts himself lucky if he gets £10-£15 for a night's work, a lightweight if he gets £7-£8. Though they have been entitled So join the Variety Artists' Federation since 1962, few du, presumably for fear of injuring their careers. The VAF demands for its members a minimum fee per fight of £5 (£40 if any part of the programme is televised).

It is easy to describe the clowns and monsters (not that timing and skill aren't a sine qua no" to the clown), but hard, without some form of choreographic notation, to convey the grace and complexity of , skilful scientific wrestling. In a good programme there will generally be at least one excellent supporting bout, often lightweight, between two evenly-mati-hed wrestlers. At this point the atmosphere changes completely. The whole hall is gripped with an almost clinical concentration which belies the jeers and roars of a moment before. Plus ca change. . . . Reg Trood, a wrestler from Kensington, popular on TV, begins each bout in the same pose as the archaic wrestler sculpted on the pediment of the temple at Aegeria in the fifth century ac; Hercules, on a Greek vase in the British Museum, demonstrates a perfect 'flying mare' on the Nemean Lion.