At Wembley Arena on the 18th June, 1981 the biggest match in British wrestling history took place. Not just in terms of fan interest and TV coverage but in the sheer amount of weight in the ring.
The titanic clash between Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks completely took over the airwaves in the early 1980s. The two superheavyweights captivated a nation and changed how wrestling was viewed as a sport (either rightly or wrongly).
It saw the ultimate everyman, an overweight old man who could be everyone’s grandad taking on an Irish monster, towering over him and smashing any weighing scale he ever stepped on. The clash was like something out of a Godzilla movie come to life and was not something to be missed.
Big Daddy Was Dragged Out Of Retirement To Become Britain’s Biggest Ever Wrestling Star
Big Daddy became wrestling’s biggest star before he could face off against Giant Haystacks at Wembley Arena. It was something that nobody ever really expected, especially given that he had retired years earlier.
Shirley Crabtree wrestled originally from 1952 to 1966. He grew up tough, after being abandoned by his father at a young age and raised by a single mother.
Shirley was bullied due to his first name, which was a unisex name like Jamie or Leslie in that part of Yorkshire he was from. However, the success of Shirley Temple in Hollywood meant he suffered ridicule from a young age and even received dolls for Christmas from the Salvation Army.
Along with his brothers Brian and Max, Shirley Crabtree entered the wrestling business in 1952. Owing to his national service spent in the Coldstream Guards, he wrestled under the moniker of “the Battling Guardsman”, while his time lifeguarding on Blackpool Beach and his impressive physique earned him the nickname “The Blond Adonis”.
He was never a big star and dabbled in challenging for the British Heavyweight Championship, even winning a disputed version of the belt. However, a prolonged campaign of harassment by Bert Asserti ran him out of the business and into the world of running a nightclub.
Shirley Crabtree stayed retired for six years until his brother Max Crabtree took over the running of the northern portion of Joint Promotions. With business down, he coaxed his brother out of retirement and reinvented him as a brand-new character known as Big Daddy.
The name came from the character from “Cat On A Hot Tin Roof”. Big Daddy was a lot older and in worse shape than he used to be and was brought in as a villain to take on all the goodies of the era. Max even brought him together with Giant Haystacks as a villainous tag team, but Big Daddy’s popularity soon grew too much to ignore.
He was soon transformed into the ultimate working man babyface. Big Daddy, now in his late 40s and with a massive gut, portrayed a John Bull-type character. He represented the people of Britain and could have been the grandfather or uncle of any man or woman sitting in that crowd.
He accented his role by carrying a British flag to the ring, usually accompanied by local children as “We Shall Not Be Moved” blared through the speakers. Big Daddy was one of the few wrestlers with entrance music and it made him a huge deal in the UK.
He soon became a nationwide star as the wrestling on World of Sport captured the nation’s heart. Workers coming home from work on a Saturday afternoon, usually in manual jobs in factories or down the mines, would be back just in time to watch the wrestling a 4 pm on ITV, where Big Daddy was the star of the show.
However, as William Regal once said about Big Daddy, every dragon slayer needs a dragon. And that dragon was the six foot eleven, thirty-stone behemoth known as Giant Haystacks.
Giant Haystacks Was The Ultimate Bad Guy In British Wrestling
Giant Haystacks is possibly the largest man the world has ever seen and an icon of British wrestling. When there are talks of the greatest heels in British wrestling history, Giant Haystacks is the only man who can be named up there with Mick McManus.
At six foot eleven and billed at 645lbs (46 stone), Giant Haystacks was a sight to behold. He had such an aura and a presence that WCW even flew him over to America in 1996 for a planned match against Hulk Hogan.
Haystacks started wrestling in 1967 under the name Luke McMasters. For years, most wrestlers thought this was his real name even though the gimmick was intended to stoke the tensions between the UK and Ireland which were bubbling at the time.
He worked as a bouncer in Manchester where he was from before being introduced to Max Crabtree by Billy Graham (not to be confused with the American wrestler “Superstar” Billy Graham). He was 26 stone and in good shape at the time, so Crabtree brought him into the world of wrestling for the first time as Luke McMasters.
It wouldn’t be until he joined Brian Dixon’s Wrestling Enterprises (later renamed to All Star Wrestling) that he would be christened Giant Haystacks. Dixon was inspired by the great American Haystacks Calhoun and originally gave Haystacks that name wholesale. However, it was later changed to Giant Haystacks and he would keep that until the day he died.
The Englishman joined Joint Promotions in 1975 and formed a tag team with Big Daddy. These two behemoths teaming up was a sight to behold and one that nobody on the other side of the ring ever wanted to see again.
However, it soon became clear that Big Daddy was the most popular of the two. He began getting all the cheers and eventually turned babyface in 1977 by breaking up their tag team and starting a decade-long rivalry with Giant Haystacks.
The famous Big Daddy vs Giant Haystacks match at Wembley Arena took place four years after their break up. The pair faced off numerous times before that, including in the final of a tournament in September 1977. As the former partners were set to face off, Haystacks walked out of the ring with just seconds gone, handing Big Daddy the win by forfeit.
The matches between the two continued and were usually tag team affairs. Neither man was the most mobile at the best of times and needed a smaller, more agile wrestler to do the bulk of the actual wrestling for them.
They did still wrestle in singles matches occasionally, which included Big Daddy facing “Mighty” John Quin at Wembley Arena in 1979. That match drew over 10,000 fans and was the most attended match in Britain in nearly fifty years. Haystacks was in Quinn’s corner for the bout and watched on helplessly as Big Daddy belly splashed his way to victory over his foreign opponent.
Two years later, Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks stepped into the ring for one of the biggest matches in British wrestling history.
Big Daddy vs Giant Haystacks captivated audiences at Wembley Arena and Beyond
By 1981 the Big Daddy machine was in full swing. He was everywhere. You couldn’t turn on the TV without seeing Shirley Crabtree on the box, including on his very own episode of “This Is Your Life”.
ITV even planned for “The Big Daddy Saturday Show” to replace Tiswas on Saturday mornings, with a pilot episode even being filmed. Sadly, he pulled out at the last minute and the whole program had to be rewritten at the last moment.
Big Daddy had his own joke book released in 1981 and he was a regular feature in the Buster comics. Everyone was a fan of the portly wrestler, including Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. His reach was simply inescapable.
TV ratings and live audiences were strong with Big Daddy in charge. Wrestlers were paid more money for being on shows with him. This both showed how popular he was with the crowd and also how some wrestlers needed a bigger pay packet to lay down for Max Crabtree’s brother.
Meanwhile, Giant Haystacks had been a thorn in his side throughout Big Daddy’s run since their 1977 break-up and the score would be settled at Wembley Arena. The venue had previously hosted over 10,000 fans when Big Daddy faced John Quinn two years prior and would come close to reaching that number on 18th June 1981.
While they drew fewer fans to the arena, this match was by far much bigger than Big Daddy’s previous encounter. The entire country was captured by the image of these two giants crashing onto one another like a Godzilla movie brought to life. Big Daddy managed to toe the line between larger-than-life superhero and underdog everyman, which is one very few wrestlers have ever managed.
He has been called “The British Dusty Rhodes” to confused Americans, which sums him up quite well. Both Dusty and Daddy lacked the usual physique for wrestling but managed to captivate the audience in their own way. They were the hero of the working class and never forgot their roots, which was important to the general public.
Max Crabtree, who was now the top booker in Joint Promotions, promoted this titanic clash in June 1981 between Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks. The event was called the “Dale Martin Extravaganza 198” and saw a card filled to the brim with huge matches.
Wayne Bridges beat Jim Harris in the finals of a tournament to crown the British Heavyweight Championship, after the previous champion John Quinn made the jump to All Star Wrestling in 1980. Mark Rocco defeated Mal Sanders while Terry Rudge and Alan Kilby went to a time-limit draw to open the show.
However, the main event of the show was Big Daddy vs Giant Haystacks. And by main event I mean it was the match just before the interval. This was often the case in Britain at the time and it is a rather modern evolution for the biggest match on the card to go on last in wrestling.
Big Daddy made his usual spectacular entrance. Decked out in a very tacky sparkling hat and jacket, while “We Shall Now Be Moved” blares out through the speakers as a team of young girls twirl batons all around, Shirley Crabtree was undoubtedly the big star in British wrestling.
Giant Haystacks entrance was as subdued as most other wrestlers but it was once they got into the ring that the real issues would rear their ugly head.
The Match Was Everything Wrong With British Wrestling At The Time
The Big Daddy vs Giant Haystacks match did not last long. It saw a very long rest hold to open the match, a few bumps in the corner and a couple of punches (which were illegal) thrown by Big Daddy.
In a 2-minute and 30-second match, Big Daddy thrust his big belly into Giant Haystacks, knocking him through the ropes and out of the ring. The referee called for the bell and the result was decided; Big Daddy won by knockout.
The fans were thrilled. The roar of the thousands of fans who made the trip to Wembley was unmistakable and they couldn’t be happier to see their hero vanquish the dragon in one of the biggest matches of his career.
However, others weren’t so thrilled. There were complaints that Big Daddy had made wrestling into a spectacle and taken it away from its sporting roots. Fans were less excited to see the technical masterclasses between the likes of Marty Jones, Rollerball Rocco and Johnny Saint and just wanted to see the big fat men butting bellies for the three minutes.
That much is clear as nobody ever talks about the other matches on the card that night. The lasting memory from of Wembley Arena’s last great matches was Big Daddy running slowly into Giant Haystacks, not the wonderous grappling of stars like Terry Rudge or Wayne Bridges.
It would be hard to blame Big Daddy vs Giant Haystacks for killing British wrestling. It was a symptom, not a cause, of a change in the sport. Audiences were no longer drawn to the sporting aspect and wanted the lights, the flashy costumes and the big characters. This was evident when the WWE became the biggest promotion in the UK after The Wrestling was cancelled in 1988.
Did the likes of Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks kill what was left of kayfabe in British wrestling? Perhaps. Of course, people knew it wasn’t a real fight. But watching these two super heavyweights bumbling around showed you just how fake it really was.
People want a magician to at least pretend he’s being magic and perform the trick as if he’s not simply slipping a card into his pocket at the beginning of the act. But this match was more like a magician subtly cramming a bowling ball down his trousers while yelling “Look I’m hiding the bowling ball down my pants, not really doing magic”. It killed any credibility behind the sport and made it look rather a joke.
Saying that… the match did exactly what it needed. Actual viewing figures for the bout are hard to come by, with numbers like 12 million, 18 million and 20 million thrown around. Even at the lower end of that scale, it is a phenomenal audience to draw and the match has remained a lasting memory in the minds of the fans.
Every time AEW or WWE come to the UK, you can count the seconds before a hapless TV presenter on This Morning asks the latest stars “Do you remember Big Daddy vs Giant Haystacks?” despite them invariable not being born at the time.
Before both Clash at the Castle in Cardiff and All In at Wembley Stadium, the amount of old women asking “Is Big Daddy wrestling” or “Will Giant Haystacks be there” was staggering. Mainly because they died in 1997 and 1998, respectively, but also because this match has reverberated so much to still be relevant nearly 50 years later.
Was Big Daddy vs Giant Haystacks good? No. But it was amazing.
