Joint Promotions: The Complete History of British Wrestling’s Monopoly

Joint Promotions was the most powerful company in the history of British professional wrestling.

Formed in 1952, this alliance of promoters carved Britain up between them and ran a closed shop for more than three decades. If you wanted to wrestle on the big halls, or on television, you worked for Joint, or you didn’t work at all.

It took wrestling to its greatest heights, with Saturday afternoons on ITV, Big Daddy and audiences in the millions. And it was still in charge when the whole thing fell apart.

Before Joint: The Chaos Of All-In Wrestling

In the decades before Joint Promotions, British wrestling was a mess.

All-In wrestling had taken over in the 1930s, turning the sport into an outlaw free-for-all where promoters competed to put on the most violent show. It got so bloody that wrestling was banned in London.

It took the Mountevans Committee to turn things round. Its 1947 rules gave British wrestling weight classes, rounds and a rulebook, and made it respectable again.

The other key moment came in 1948, when Dale Martin Promotions became a limited company. Brothers Jack, Johnny and Billy Abbey, who wrestled under the surname “Dale”, joined forces with Les Martin to build a London-based wrestling business. It would become the biggest promoter in the country.

Joint Promotions Was Formed In 1952

In March 1952, a group of northern promoters formed Joint Promotions, with a registered office in Bradford. Its first directors were Norman Morrell, Ted Beresford, George de Relwyskow and Arthur Wright.

The model was the National Wrestling Alliance in the United States, where promoters had carved America into territories and agreed not to tread on each other’s toes. Joint did the same to Britain, with each member controlling its own patch.

In January 1953, the alliance became truly national when London’s Dale Martin Promotions and Bill Best joined. The core of Joint was now in place:

• Dale Martin Promotions (London and the South)
• Morrell-Beresford Promotions (Norman Morrell and Ted Beresford)
• Relwyskow & Green Promotions (George de Relwyskow and Arthur Green)
• Wryton Promotions (Arthur Wright), later merged into Best-Wryton with Bill Best

How The Closed Shop Worked

The point of the alliance was to keep the wrestlers in line and take away their bargaining power. The members agreed to:

• Stay out of each other’s territory, and never poach each other’s talent
• Share wrestlers between them, booked through monthly directors’ meetings
• Blacklist anyone who no-showed one member’s show, so they lost their bookings with all of them
• Ban any wrestler who worked outside Joint, so rival promoters couldn’t use their stars to sell tickets

Joint also controlled the titles. The Mountevans rules split wrestling into weight classes, and each one had British, European, Commonwealth and area champions of its own. That meant there was never any shortage of title bouts to put on a poster, and at one point there were reportedly more than 70 championships to keep track of.

They Quickly Built A Monopoly

Joint soon hoovered up the best talent in the country. A wrestler who signed with one member could work for all of them. A wrestler who didn’t could be shut out of every major hall in Britain. As more and more signed up, rather than risk being unable to feed their families, Joint’s grip tightened.

The post-war entertainment tax helped. Promoters lost a large slice of their takings to the taxman, and plenty of smaller outfits went under. Joint’s members could ride it out, partly by paying their wrestlers less and less.

Adrian Street told Simon Garfield that Dale Martin originally paid him £5 a match, which soon dropped to £4 without warning. He also had to hand back 10% for a manager he was forced to have.

If that sounds like a monopoly, it’s because it was. But while other monopolies were broken up, Joint always got away with it. As Bill Abbey of Dale Martin put it in Garfield’s book The Wrestling:

“We were threatened by the Monopolies Commission a number of times. But we always fought it off because it was never worth their while doing anything. It was probably illegal but we stuck to it and that was that. Everyone hated us for it, especially the wrestlers.”

Bill Abbey, Dale Martin Promotions

The competition faded away. The British Wrestling Alliance, the last major rival, closed in 1954, and All-In pioneer Sir Atholl Oakeley left the business for good. So when the entertainment tax on live events was scrapped in 1957, Joint was left to enjoy the extra revenue almost on its own.

There were attempts to push back. A wrestlers’ strike led to the creation of the Wrestlers’ Welfare Society, but it did little to loosen Joint’s grip. Promoters who stayed outside, like the ones covered in our history of the opposition, were left fighting over the scraps.

In 1964, the Hurst Park syndicate bought Dale Martin Promotions, the biggest member, although the Abbey and Martin families kept running it day to day until 1971.

Television Made Joint A Household Name

Joint’s real power came from television. It held the exclusive rights to wrestling on ITV, and its shows became part of British life, even turning up on FA Cup Final day.

From 1965, wrestling had a permanent home at 4pm on World of Sport every Saturday. For the next twenty years, that slot was as much a part of the British weekend as the football results.

Big Daddy Became Joint’s Biggest Star

Shirley Crabtree came out of retirement in 1972, aged around 42, and returned to Joint Promotions. His brother Max joined Joint as northern booker in 1975, took over the Dale Martin shows a couple of years later, and built the whole product around him.

As Big Daddy, he started out as a villain, forming a monster heel tag team with Giant Haystacks in 1975. When the pair split, it set up the feud that would define British wrestling.

Daddy became the archetypal British hero, a John Bull figure in a top hat and Union Jack. He was one of the few wrestlers with his own entrance music, marching to the ring surrounded by children as “We Shall Not Be Moved” blared through the hall.

In 1975 he even pulled off Kendo Nagasaki’s mask during a televised match in Solihull, although Nagasaki won the bout moments later.

The peak came in 1981, when Big Daddy finally faced Giant Haystacks at Wembley Arena. It’s often claimed that around 20 million people watched it on television. Whatever the real number, it was the high-water mark of British wrestling.

The Decline Began When World Of Sport Ended

Two cancellations ended the boom years. The first came in 1985, when ITV axed World of Sport. The second came in 1988, when ITV boss Greg Dyke took wrestling off the air altogether.

The trouble started before World of Sport ended. Despite reportedly pulling in around 8 million viewers a week, the wrestling was moved out of its 4pm slot, which it had held for twenty years. It was shuffled around the schedule before settling at lunchtime.

For a working-class audience, many of whom worked Saturday mornings, that was a disaster. Viewing figures fell sharply.

World of Sport ended in 1985. Wrestling kept its own slot on ITV for three more years, but Joint lost its exclusive hold on televised wrestling in 1988, and then the cameras left for good.

To be fair to ITV, the product had problems. It had barely changed in two decades, and Big Daddy, still the top star, was ageing and could barely move around the ring. With stars like Dynamite Kid and Davey Boy Smith making it big in America, British wrestling looked old-fashioned next to the WWF.

In 1986, a management buy-out left Max Crabtree as the owner of Joint Promotions. He had the keys to the kingdom just as it started to crumble.

Ring Wrestling Stars And The British Bulldog

Joint Promotions Ltd was formally dissolved in October 1992, but Crabtree carried on promoting, from 1991 under the name Ring Wrestling Stars. Big Daddy was still the main attraction, even into his sixties.

By the end, he could barely get through a match, often entering the ring only to hit the Big Daddy splash and get out again. It was a sad sight, and almost a mercy when he retired in December 1993.

Crabtree needed a new star, and found one in Davey Boy Smith. The British Bulldog was one of the most famous wrestlers in the world. In August 1992, he had beaten Bret Hart for the WWF Intercontinental Championship in front of a reported 80,355 fans at Wembley Stadium.

WCW released Smith in December 1993, which left him free to headline for Ring Wrestling Stars in 1994. It worked for a while, but by the summer he was back with the WWF, and Crabtree had no top star left.

The End Came In 1995

Without television, the audience Joint had built over decades had drifted away, and British wrestling would never get it back. Fans wanted the modern, American style, and an old-fashioned British show couldn’t compete. There was little wrestling on terrestrial TV for the average viewer, and interest kept falling.

Max Crabtree retired in February 1995, and with him went the last of what had been Joint Promotions.

Joint left British wrestling in a far worse state than it found it. Wrestling had become a dirty word, and the millions who used to tune in every Saturday had gone. The monopoly had killed off countless rival promotions and ended the careers of wrestlers who couldn’t afford to work outside it.

It also built the golden age. Was British wrestling better off for Joint Promotions? That’s a complicated question, with an even more complicated answer.

Joint was never the only show in town. Read the history of All Star Wrestling, the opposition promotion that outlasted it, or see how every major British promotion fits together.