Professional wrestling in the United Kingdom spans over 100 years but became popular when the then new Independent Television station - ITV began showing it in 1955 firstly on Saturday afternoons and then also in a late night mid week slot. It was at its peak of popularity when the television show World of Sport was launched in the mid-1960s, making household names out of Mick McManus, Count Bartelli, Giant Haystacks, Jackie Pallo, Big Daddy, Steve Veidor, and Kendo Nagasaki. The sport remained a mainstay of British culture until World of Sport's cancellation and then finally as a stand alone programme until 1988. Despite the end of ITV coverage, a largely untelevised live circuit - with some promotions featuring the traditional British style of professional wrestling and others more fashioned after the contemporary American independent scene - survives and indeed thrives in this territory to the present day.
Famous quotes containing the words professional, wrestling, united and/or kingdom:
“If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people—including me—would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.”
—Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939)
“We laugh at him who steps out of his room at the very moment when the sun steps out, and says: “I will the sun to rise”; and at him who cannot stop the wheel, and says: “I will it to roll”; and at him who is taken down in a wrestling match, and says: “I lie here, but I will that I lie here!” And yet, all laughter aside, do we ever do anything other than one of these three things when we use the expression, “I will”?”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“The city of Washington is in some respects self-contained, and it is easy there to forget what the rest of the United States is thinking about. I count it a fortunate circumstance that almost all the windows of the White House and its offices open upon unoccupied spaces that stretch to the banks of the Potomac ... and that as I sit there I can constantly forget Washington and remember the United States.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 18:3.