All Star Wrestling: A History Of The ‘Opposition’ Promotion

All Star Wrestling is one of the longest-running promotions in British wrestling, now more than 55 years old.

Not bad for a company that grew up in the shadow of Joint Promotions. From 1952, Joint’s members ran a closed shop: work for them, or have no career. Anyone who worked for a promoter outside the alliance, known as “the opposition”, was blacklisted, and with Joint running hundreds of shows a year, that meant giving up a lot of work.

The business was too small for the Monopolies Commission to bother with, and Joint got away with it for nearly two decades. Then Brian Dixon came along.

Brian Dixon Founded Wrestling Enterprises In 1970

Brian Dixon had loved wrestling since he was a boy, going to Liverpool Stadium every Friday and even running a fan magazine for “Crybaby” Jim Breaks.

By the late 1960s he was working in the business, as a referee and behind the scenes for Welsh promoter Orig Williams, handling publicity and advertising for the British Wrestling Federation’s shows across Wales and Ireland. But he always wanted to be a promoter in his own right.

One day, a venue rang the office looking for Williams to run a one-off “spot show”. Dixon took the booking and kept it from his boss. He ran the show himself, it went well, and he ran another. Williams found out after the second, and the pair parted ways.

In October 1970, Dixon founded Wrestling Enterprises in Birkenhead. It started slowly, with the odd show here and there, so he brought in Monty Swan, who had left Joint Promotions, to run the wrestling side. Stars like Count Bartelli, Syed Saif Shah and Roy “Bull” Davis soon jumped ship too.

Dixon also took a huge young wrestler billed as Luke McMasters and, borrowing from the American Haystacks Calhoun, turned him into Giant Haystacks. But the star who really set the promotion apart was one of Britain’s greatest women wrestlers.

Mitzi Mueller Became All Star’s Headliner

Mitzi Mueller and Brian Dixon had a very close working relationship. In fact, they were a couple.

They met the way all good couples do: with her screaming in pain. Dixon was refereeing one of her matches in Wales in the early 1970s and accidentally stood on her hair. She gave him a dressing down in the locker room afterwards, and somehow that was the start of it.

Signing Mueller was a no-brainer. Women’s matches drew big crowds, but Joint refused to book them, and not one women’s match was shown on ITV in the entire World of Sport era.

Mueller became a big draw for the opposition, and so did the stars who crossed over from Joint. One was Kendo Nagasaki, who, with his manager Gorgeous George, was offered a full partnership in the company. That let it run two shows a night, with Dixon running one and Kendo and George the other.

It made business sense, but it didn’t suit the character. Kendo spoke to nobody but his opponent and the promoter, and giving orders and handling money would have destroyed his aura. When Swan left, Kendo and George soon followed, and Kendo went back to Joint through Wryton Promotions.

Mueller wrestled her final match at the Royal Albert Hall on 24 April 1987, on a show promoted by Dixon, after helping to get women’s wrestling allowed in London again.

All Star Got A Slot On ITV

In 1987, All Star achieved something it never expected: a place on ITV. World of Sport had gone, but wrestling still had its own slot, and for the first time Joint had to share it.

It wasn’t as grand as it sounds. Joint kept two weeks a month, All Star got one, and the WWF the other. Fans hated not knowing who they’d see, ratings fell, and ITV dropped wrestling altogether in 1988.

All Star carried on. By then it had attracted stars like Kendo Nagasaki, Mark Rocco, William Regal and Fit Finlay. Regal’s move was a particular blow to Joint, as he reportedly turned down the chance to team with Big Daddy to work with All Star’s top names.

The 1990s And Dynamite Kid

Both promotions kept running live shows into the 1990s, but business kept falling. Big Daddy was still the biggest draw in the country.

All Star lost Kendo Nagasaki and Mark Rocco to retirement, and William Regal to WCW in 1993. So Dixon brought back a star from the past: the Dynamite Kid. By now the two companies were sharing more and more talent, but Dynamite stayed loyal to Dixon, especially once his former partner, the British Bulldog, became the top star for Max Crabtree’s Ring Wrestling Stars in 1994.

Dynamite’s injuries were horrendous, and he retired in 1996. With Finlay following Regal to America the same year, All Star had few stars left. But it survived, running occasional shows and holiday camp tours.

All Star Lost The Butlin’s Tour In 2016

All Star ran the Butlin’s tours for years, the same tours Bryan Danielson still raves about. He has said that if it had paid better, he’d have happily wrestled there for the rest of his career.

It ended abruptly in April 2016. At a show in Skegness, Tony Spitfire, a flag-waving British hero, faced a villain called Hakim. The BBC reported complaints that Hakim was an “Islamic flag-waving baddie”, with one guest calling the match “an horrific race hate-filled 10 minutes with everything wrong on racial stereotypes”. Butlin’s apologised and ended its contract with All Star.

Dixon said the show had changed without his knowledge, and apologised:

“Saturday’s wrestling show was different to the agreed content, and Butlin’s were not made aware of the change. We regret this clear error of judgement, as well as the obvious offence and upset caused. We wish to apologise to Butlin’s and their guests, and stress that this will not happen again.”

All Star Wrestling statement

All Star Wrestling Today

Despite that setback, All Star is still going. Brian Dixon handed day-to-day running of the company to his grandson, Joseph Dixon, in 2022, and died in May 2023. More than half a century after it started as a breakaway from Orig Williams, the opposition is still standing, long after Joint Promotions disappeared.

Read more about the promotions that shaped British wrestling.