MICK MCMANUS - Big Daddy may be the most famous wrestler in Great Britain, but Mick McManus was undoubtedly the biggest star for the longest period of time. Wrestling on television over five decades, he was by far the most featured performer in British history, with more than 200 television matches, almost never losing. The man in second pace, Jim Breaks, had fewer than 150.
McManus was born Michael Matthews in New Cross, London, England, on January 11th. The year of birth has been a mystery for decades. “Official” publications listed his being born in 1927, but there was always suspicion he was shaving time off and he was really born in 1921. That was finally confirmed last summer when he celebrated his 90th birthday party at the annual British wrestler’s reunion organized at the Kane t public house owned by former star Wayne Bridges, meaning he is now just shy of being 92.
Until the Daddy era, McManus was, by some distance, the best known pro wrestler among the general public, with only Jackie “Mr. TV” Pallo coming close. And Pallo’s start faded by the early 70s when he was no longer featured on television. Many would name Daddy as the most famous U.K. wrestler, McManus would be the first name mentioned by almost everyone over the age of 60.
McManus was working as a printer and tried a number of different sports, before he started training as an amateur wrestler. He began as a pro wrestler in 1944, with his first recorded match coming against Al Fuller at King’s Hall in Belle Vue, Manchester. Three years later he made his television debut, not on ITV, which didn’t even exist, but on the BBC.
At the time, England had only one television channel. The BBC would air wrestling on rare occasions as a special during the 40s and 50s, usually featuring legendary names like Bert Assirati, Earl McCready and Edouard Carpentier. McManus appeared on one of those specials on May 26, 1947, against Al Lipman.
When wrestling began on ITV, McManus wrestled Chic Purvey on January 17, 1956, the fourth wrestling card on the new network. He soon became a regular headliner, being featured every four to six weeks. While that would be considered barely featured by U.S. standards, in the U.K. that was what the biggest stars got when there were hundreds of full-time wrestlers and one 45 minute show per week. McManus rarely lost, and when he did, it was always by disqualification.
He was the single most featured wrestler during the period from 1960-1964, from 1965-1968 and again from 1973-1976. He was No. 2 from 1969-1972 and No. 3 from 1977-1980.
Critics will note that McManus was the booker for Dale Martin, the promoter of the largest U.K. Circuit, which covered London and most of Southern England, for the latter years of that period. Generally the feeling among wrestlers and historians is that he may have pushed himself a lot at the end, but it was justified given his early stardom.
In the ring, McManus blended characteristics associated with heels in the U.S., but didn’t fit any stereotype. He was 5-foot-7 and between 165 and 175 pounds, so couldn’t physically dominate opponents. A usual match saw him display just enough skill that it would frustrate fans because he would cheat. His wins usually came across as a combination of wrestling talent, luck, and sneaky rule breaking. Among his most common heels moves were kidney punching and hair pulling. In the U.K., you didn’t have the distraction from the outside and heel behind the refs back, because of the belief you don’t want to make the referee look bad, but rather by McManus using his body, or his opponents’ body, to cheat while the referee’s line of sight was blocked.
McManus vs. Pallo, a fellow heel, was the biggest rivalry in the U.K. for more than a decade. It began in 1962, when Pallo was at ringside during a McManus match and issued a challenge with both men putting up 100 pounds, which was equivalent to what the average working man would earn in about six weeks at the time. The incident may have been the first angle that ever took place on the ITO wrestling show.
This led to a match a few weeks later on the biggest show of the year, the annual event that aired before the 1962 FA Cup Final, which would be England’s equivalent to the Super Bowl or World Series final. The match ended with each man taking a fall and it going to a draw. They followed it up with another draw in a non-televised match at Royal Albert Hall in London, the most prestigious and largest venue on the circuit at the time.
They met again on the show before the 1963 FA Cup, with McManus winning two of three falls. Legend has it that the two matches drew a bigger rating than the soccer game, but there is no evidence that confirms this. The most likely explanation (editor’s note: This is how I always heard it) is that wrestling may have outdrawn the ITO broadcast of the FA Cup, but the FA Cup also aired on the BBC, and the BBC broadcast drew the larger audience. But it is generally believed they were the two most-watched wrestling telecasts of modern times in the U.K. The 1963 match is most famous for Pallo leaving the ring to kiss his wife at ringside, even though many fans today incorrectly remember it as Pallo kissing McManus’ wife, or McManus kissing Pallo’s wife.
The television show the day of the FA Cup final shows McManus as England’s biggest star. The arena events were not promoted as major shows, often taking placing in a small hall near the soccer stadium. But the show was treated as the closest thing to a showcase card, always headlined by the biggest stars at the time and headlined with the company’s top rivalry. Only six or eight wrestlers would get to appear on the show each year. From 1962 to 1978, over 17 years, McManus appeared on 15 of those shows, missing only the 1967 show (there was no wrestling show on the day of the 1976 FA Cup). Eight of those were tag team matches with Steve Logan as his partner every time. Big Daddy appeared on eight FA Cup finals and Pallo on seven.
Even though they were the two major stars, Pallo and McManus only wrestled a handful of times. In that era, Joint Promotions would run a dozen or more shows every night, so using the two biggest stars on the same card would be considered a poor use of resources. Cards would feature part-timers who wrestled within a short driving distance of their home and had regular jobs, full-timers who would appear on shows within a wide region, bigger stars who would show up the company headquarters each day and take a bus to their show, and the biggest stars who would be booked out to major local promoters for a fee, very similar to how Mexico and to an extent still operates today. An appearance by Pallo or McManus would boost local attendance, and promoters often would increase ticket prices up to 33% if McManus would headline.
Their other high profile matches were a Royal Albert Hall match in 1967, where McManus won when Pallo quit after being cut open by a series of head-butts. The bout was built up by an appearance on the popular Eamonn Andrews show, one of the first British talk shows, where the two staged an argument that led to McManus walking off the set.
The feud ended with four different matches at Royal Albert Hall in 1972 and 1973. There was a tag match with McManus and his regular partner, Steve Logan, against Pallo and son Jackie Pallo Jr. Pallo then won a non-title singles match to set up two rematches for McManus’ Southern Area welterweight championship. The first ended without a finish and the second ended with a knockout win by McManus. It appears Pallo never beat McManus in a match unless it was a non-title match to set up a title match.
McManus didn’t have a lot of major championships during his career. He had brief runs as the British welterweight (165 pounds) and middleweight (176 pounds) champions in the 60s. He often held the Southern Area welterweight title, but that wasn’t taken particularly seriously at the time. That wasn’t unusual for a star of his caliber. During the 50s and 60s, and championships in the U.K. were usually reserved for shooters. When the policy of champions being shooters relented, McManus won the European middleweight title in 1968, and then had a long run from in the 70s. He beat Vic Faulkner on April 26, 1971, in Nottingham, and held it until losing via DQ to Mal Sanders on August 2, 1978, in Huddersfield. To those in the business, McManus’ most talked about match was January 14, 1967, a televised match against Peter Preston. Preston won the first fall. McManus was then disqualified for a low blow in the second fall. McManus had never lost on television before and the result was a huge upset that made no booking sense. The story within wrestling is Preston attempted a double-cross on television and McManus saw it happening, and got himself disqualified as a way to end the match without being submitted.
McManus was generally working for Dale Martin Promotions in Southern England, although he did dates nationwide, Preston worked for Northern promoter Norman Morrell, the mastermind who set up Joint Promotions, a group of promoters somewhat similar to the NWA of the 60s and 70s. Morrell promoted in Lime Grove, a London suburb, in the heart of Dale Martin territory, which was the venue for this bout.
Speaking to the Wrestling Heritage site a few years ago, the first time he had ever talked about the match four decades earlier, Preston said he was put into the match as a late substitute by Morrell. He claims he was never told by Morrell to take the victory, and claimed Morrell actually never gave him a finish. He claimed Morrell told him he should, “Go in there and make yourself known,” with the only caveat being not to hurt McManus or cause him to miss any bookings.
Based on the recollection of older fans, the match, taped a few hours before it aired, was shown in its entirely on ITO stations in the North, but it went off the air in progress in Southern England, suggesting the Dale Martin promotion was able to pull some strings. After the match, Preston was heavily pushed in Northern England and in Scotland as “The man who beat Mick McManus.” Dale Martin promotions never pushed that story. They did use Preston on occasion, but he was never booked on the same card as McManus for several years. The two eventually ran into each other in 1970 and are believed to have had a verbal, but not physical, confrontation.
McManus wasn’t hurt by the loss. He by this point made regular appearances on television shows where he was viewed as a celebrity, often posing for photos with movie and musical stars. He lent his name to a book on pro wrestling, wrote a weekly column for The Sun, Britain’s best-selling newspaper, where he talked about wrestling and would predict the winner of the biggest matches of the week. Although he had to have known the planned finishes, particularly during the period when he booked them, he made sure to get enough wrong to avoid suspicion. He also worked as a color commentator alongside Kent Walton, with the idea of giving a wrestler’s insight, but actually did a great job of explaining the psychology of the matches.
Besides his matches with Pallo, McManus’ most memorable matches in the 70s included beating Eddie “Kung Fu” Hammill to take his mask. The U.K. didn’t bill it as his mask at stake, but there was an unwritten rule that if a masked man lost a match on television cleanly, he had to unmask. In a later TV appearance, Kendo Nagasaki attacked Hammill, and McManus made the save. It wasn’t a babyface turn for McManus, but did set up a Royal Albert Hall heel vs. heel match with McManus & Steve Logan vs. Nagasaki and manager George Gillette.
Some claimed he pushed himself too much at the end of his career. He did use his star status in an attempt to make new stars by putting over Tony St. Clair in April, 1977, and Brian Maxine in December, 1978. His biggest rivalry was with Sanders. Sanders beat McManus in a non-title match on television on August 1978, and then won the European middleweight title from him. But even then McManus had outs. In the non-title match, McManus had a submission hold on and Sanders tapped him on the back. In that era, before MMA, there was no such thing as tapping out in wrestling, as submissions were verbal. When the referee heard the verbal submission, he would tap the wrestlers’ back for them to break the hold. So McManus released the hold, thinking it was the referee and he’d won, and was then caught in quick pinfall. The title match won by Sanders was a DQ finish, as British rules allowed for titles to change that way. McManus won a non-title rematch on television via knockout, but at house shows, the two traded wins all over the country.
McManus retired a few years later, at the age of 61, with his final television match taped on May 5, 1982, airing three days later, against comedy wrestler Catweazle. His final match is believed to have been the next day against Steve Logan (a younger wrestler and not the same man or even a relative of McManus’ old tag team partner in the 60s and 70s).
After retirement, McManus made semi-regular media appearances talking about wrestling, including lending his name to a home video, and appearing as a guest on several attempts to revive the popularity of local wrestling after ITO dropped coverage in 1988.
To this day, he still refuses to admit matches were worked. There is a running joke in British circles that McManus would no sooner admit wrestling was worked than he would admit that his trademark jet black hair, even in his 90s, was also anything but real.