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:
“The relationship between mother and professional has not been a partnership in which both work together on behalf of the child, in which the expert helps the mother achieve her own goals for her child. Instead, professionals often behave as if they alone are advocates for the child; as if they are the guardians of the child’s needs; as if the mother left to her own devices will surely damage the child and only the professional can rescue him.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“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)
“What lies behind facts like these: that so recently one could not have said Scott was not perfect without earning at least sorrowful disapproval; that a year after the Gang of Four were perfect, they were villains; that in the fifties in the United States a nothing-man called McCarthy was able to intimidate and terrorise sane and sensible people, but that in the sixties young people summoned before similar committees simply laughed.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)
“I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love which was more than love --
I and my Annabel Lee.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)