Mr. Mal Occhio and WrestlersRamblings.com is proud to introduce our newest staff member – direct from England – ladies and gentlemen, I humbly present . . . The British Bruiser. We are extremely excited to bring our fans a different perspective of professional wrestling by adding this fine European correspondent, and look forward to your comments about our newest family member. Comments can be left at the bottom of each post. And don’t forget – we are looking to add even more correspondents to our site! Join the fun! Leave your name and email address through the comments link below (it will not be published, so please do not worry) and we will get back in touch with you – soon! Again – a big welcome to The British Bruiser. Here, here, old boy!

The British Bruiser
Wrestlers Ramblings.com wrestling blog

When people think of British wrestling, no matter where they are in the world,  they usually think of technical, mat based, no-frills submission wrestling. Well, in the olden days, 9/10 times . . . they wouldn’t be wrong in thinking that. In fact, many stars of Britain still practice that style today. First off, Johnny Saint is a very popular British wrestler who most technical wrestling fans and wrestlers alike both appreciate. Coming out of Manchester, England he debuted in 1958 against his trainer, Colin McDonald and went on to enjoy much success (including British, European and World Lighweight championships) and popularity for over 38 years mixing it up with younger technical British greats such as Robbie Brookside & Steve Grey. At the time in wrestling these were quite some achievements for someone who was 5′8″ and around 150 lbs. In his later years he enjoyed wrestling over in Japan where he eventually retired. His infamous methods of frustrating opponents and entertaining the fans including spectacular looking bridges and rolling up into a ball to escape his opponents rath are still echoed today and for sure will never be forgotten.

A little more upto date now, Doug Williams, who in his mid-30s has already traveled the world, started off at the NWA UK Hammerlock Academy based in Kent near where he comes from, but not before being a British Judo champion in 1992 at the 72 kilogram weight class. Slowly, he went on to become more and more popular - defeating the late, great Eddie Guerrero in 2002, then, in the same year, competing in a 4-way 60 minute Iron Man match to crown the first ever the ROH World championship along with Spanky, Christopher Daniels & Low Ki. A couple of years later he won the ROH Pure championship by defeating Alex Shelley in a tournament final. While he hasn’t had success over in the United States as of yet, in Japan, he become one half of the NOAH GHC Tag Team championships with Scorpio and has remained a regular over their ever since, not to mention winning multiple British championships in his own country where he is proudly put under the moniker of “Best in the UK”. He still has many years left in him and no dout we will be hearing alot more of him to come.

There have been many other greats to enter British rings and rings around the world such as Johnny Kidd, Steve Grey, Mal Sanders, Jim Breaks, etc. and many stars of today such as Robbie Brookside, Darren Burridge, Jonny Storm and Jody Fleisch - all of whom have yet to flaunt their full potential to the world but should be heard from in the years ahead. I look forward to telling you more about them – and the entire British/European wrestling scene – in the days and weeks ahead. Thanks for visiting!

The British Bruiser was born in Hertfordshire, England and first began watching wrestling in the mid 90s at a young age. His earliest memories are of WCW watching stars like the nWo, Sting, Filthy Animals, Goldberg, Ric Flair, DDP and Randy Savage. Now residing in Derbyshire, England, Bruiser remains a fan of wrestling from all over the world, with a natural predilection to the Britain/European scene.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 26th, 2006 at 4:24 pm and is filed under Wrestling History, British Pro Wrestling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.