Wrestlers and Bullworkers

I remember watching wrestling on ‘World of Sport’ in the 70’s. The boundaries of good v’s evil were always made very clear in wrestling and even as a child I knew that there was nothing in the least bit real about the performance art. That’s why I was always bamboozled by the types of people in the crowd, that being mainly adults and people who should know better. And why was it on ‘World of Sport’? Maybe the contender to ‘Grandstand’ should have been renamed ‘World of Prancing About and Being a Dick’.

When they tried to reinvigorate the performance art with WWF (World Wrestling Federation, not World Wildlife Fund!), that became even more puzzling to me. I can understand your little kids getting excited about the goodies beating the baddies but Jesus! I used to play football with 2 large lads. They had beards and jobs but used to get very excited about rumbles and smackdowns, and they used to stop up until the early hours of the morning and do the old pay per view thing. Mental!

And whatever happened to the ‘Bullworker’? When I were a lad all teenage boys had a bullworker, you never see them nowadays yet they’re still going. The reason I mention the Bullworker is because all portraits of wrestlers when I were a lad looked like someone one had just nicked their bullworker and it had made the wrestler very angry or a little bit sad.