Wrestling golden boy who flew the flag for Bradford

Steven Tempest-Mitchell, son of the Bradford wrestler Dennis Mitchell, collects memorabilia about his father and the dynasty of Bradford wrestlers – Jim Breaks, Geoff Portz, Masambula, Alan Dennison, Les Kellett, the Rawling Brothers, Joe Hill, Ernie Lofthouse, Eric Taylor – that he belonged to.

During his lifetime, Dennis, born in 1929, made a name for himself as a wrestler in Britain and Europe and locally as a man deeply concerned with charitable good works, especially for children.

Through sport he redeemed himself from his upbringing.

Steven says: “His childhood was not happy. His dad was a compulsive gambler and his mother was a madam and money-lender.

“He would run away from home, and to earn money to survive he joined a travelling fair and fought in boxing booths against much larger men.

“He left home in 1946 and joined the Royal Marines 45 Commando and became an accomplished marksman and swimmer. On leave he met my mother Dorothy and fell in love.

“In early 1949 he left the service and joined the Bevin Boys down the mines in the Dudley Hill area to be with my mother.

“They married in December that year and he went to work in the open-air market off Leeds Road where, to keep fit, he would load and unload wagons of vegetables, especially potatoes, by himself, for bets against the clock.”

Steven adds: “He was at this time approached by people from the wrestling fraternity in Bradford as they had heard about this scrawny kid who was a natural athlete. He went to see a show and was immediately impressed and was keen to give it a shot.

“He was introduced to the man who ran wrestling in the UK for more than 30 years and who made and broke more wrestlers than anyone in the industry, Norman Morrell, who was also from Bradford.”

Morrell had been a wrestler himself, representing Britain in the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games. As a promoter, he was a shaping force in British post-war wrestling, instrumental in formulating the seven wrestling fighting weights and drawing up rules governing the sport.

From 1952 to the mid-Seventies, along with other promotors, including the brothers behind Dale Martin Promotions, Norman Morrell was part of the Joint Promotions cartel which dominated wrestling, especially its televising on ITV’s World Of Sport.

Self-styled ring villain Mick McManus was reportedly non-plussed on one occasion when he expected to win against Norman Morrell wrestler Peter Preston.

But the bout did not go according to expectation and McManus got himself disqualified rather than lose in front of a television audience.

McManus and ‘Mr TV’ Jackie Pallo had a long and bitter ring rivalry. In his book You Grunt And I Groan, Pallo gave the lowdown on how results were choreographed beforehand.

In 1987, Bradford’s Les Kellett told the T&A: “Jackie wasn’t clever enough to have written that book by himself. He was just telling a story in the hope he would get some money; but the book was a flop.

“No wrestler has ever finished up a rich man from wrestling. The rich men are the promoters and always have been.”

In an article entitled The End Of The Heavyweight Era? Norman Morrell wrote this about Dennis Mitchell: “When Dennis came to me and said he was giving up wrestling, I had need to ask him why. His reply was the ‘small box’ showed everybody of a size, no real distinction between heavyweights and lightweights.

“He was proud to have competed with the world-class heavyweights and did not relish losing top billing to the ‘small men of the screen’ with whom his great weight advantage prevented him from being matched.

“Dennis still believes the day of the great heavyweights will come again when people will pay to see what they watch and insist upon the best man being he who bestrides all others and reigns supreme in the open class – the heavyweight king.”

Big men did make a comeback in the late 1970s, when heavyweights became over-weights. Shirley Crabtree from Halifax – Big Daddy – and Giant Haystacks from Manchester, who could barely move about the ring, as different to Bert Royal, Vic Faulkner, Jim Breaks and Dennis Mitchell as chalk is to cheese.

At least that’s how it seemed to grunt and groan game fans.

Steven Tempest-Mitchell said when his father finally retired from the ring in 1976, “he threw his boots in the dustbin in disgust at the state of British wrestling under the new regime after Noman Morrell threw in the towel.”

At the age of 42, Dennis Mitchell told T&A journalist John Hewitt: “I have always enjoyed physical combat – one man against another. I ran away from home to join a boxing booth. We used to travel around fairs challenging all comers.

“I used to fight maybe 15 times a day for ‘nobbins’ – coins which were thrown into the ring when you put up a good show. We used to get all the local hard cases and I took some hidings, but it is very difficult for an unskilled man to knock out a skilled man in a limited time.

“And I knew if I did get knocked out I would be finished – out on my ear. I have always had this driving force behind me, and in 32 years of boxing and wrestling, I have never once been counted out.

“When I married, my father-in-law suggested that I tried wrestling. I needed money and I wanted it fast, so I joined Norman Morrell’s gymnasium and trained alongside wrestlers of the calibre of Norman Walsh, Les Kellett and Eric Taylor. In those days Bradford was known as the wrestlers’ city.

“Norman Morrell was a hard taskmaster – but he’d never ask you to do anything which he wouldn’t do himself.

“I remember the first day I came home from the gym, I had a finger broken and I was covered from top to toe with bruises and blood blisters so that you could hardly put the point of a needle between them.”

After Dennis finally binned his wrestling boots, he turned his hand to many things. He was a film extra, a publican, an area security manager for Asda and an SDP councillor at City Hall, representing Odsal.

Says Steven: “He worked until he was 64 and had to retire due to bad health with his heart. After a valiant fight, he died at the Manorlands Hospice in Oxenhope in October 1997, aged 68.

“He was a loving husband, father and good friend to all who afforded him the same courtesy; and he was one of the finest British wrestlers of his time and certainly the best Bradford-bred, technically-gifted professional wrestler ever to lace a pair of wrestling boots.”

Bradford champion wrestler Jim Breaks (32 titles), now retired and living in the Canary Islands, might have something to say about who was the best of the Bradford wrestlers in the professional ring.

* Anyone with wrestling memorabilia from the era Steven Tempest-Mitchell is interested in, especially anything to do with his father, can contact Steven on stm.sales@weldlag.co.uk, or call 07851744113.