Professional Wrestling Returns To City

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30288, 14 November 1963, Page 19

Professional Wrestling Returns To City

Professional wrestling returned to Christchurch last night, with a sort of United Nations night at the Civic Theatre. A Brazilian met a Pole, and then a Bulgarian was opposed by a genuine clean-cut Kiwi. All in all, it was not a satisfactory debate, and the audience applied its vigorous veto quite regularly. The evening began unhappily, with the ring announcement about the Brazilian Adonis (Braka Cortez) and the Polish Strongman (Joe Socalski). The announcer competed rather unsuccessfully against a verylively passage from one of the recorded works of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky which had been left on by mistake; and when he (the announcer) finally got to the end of his piece, and flung a dramatic arm out to welcome Socalski. no-one appeared. He tried again, a little later, with Cortez, and again there was an interminable wait. This seeming reluctance of the performers to appear was more easily appreciated by the audience a little later; their timing and miming was far below the more authentic standards set in some previous years.

However, there were some compensations. Cortez, not so stout that one would really notice, had a beautiful sombrero which, naturally, he took off before the bout began. Cortez, perhaps, was more athletic, and he became the crowd’s favourite. He won, rather unusually, by two falls to nil, something which never used to happen in the good old days. But the second one was a penalty fall, which somehow made it more reasonable. So that was that, and it brought Nikolai Zigulinoff, the Bulgarian Hangman, face to face with Al Hobman. It did not seem right—Zigulinoff, a man with 5 o’clock shadow all over, and clearly the veteran of many years of ring epics, against little more than a boy—a rather big boy to be sure, but one clear of

eye and, no doubt, of conscience. They met on what was undoubtedly the noisiest wrestling ring of all time: every board beneath the mat seemed to be loose, and banged about so freely that it seemed the Bulgarian Hangman might think he had been mistaken for one of the noted Pierpoint family of merrv England.

Zigulinoff. with his mass of hair almost on his shoulders, and his vast moustache, ,came to the ring in a sheepskin and the performance not unexpectedly, was rather like a western without the unnecessary complication of a love interest. It would, frankly, have been hard for any member of the audience to have loved Zigulinoff, whose most notable contribution, apart from his appearance, came from the anguished cries he emitted in moments of stress—a sound two gentlemen from Southland sitting beside the ring, stated firmly was the nearest thing they had ever heard to the sound of a stag in the mating season. There was not very much wresthng, but the audience ‘‘ked the way Zigulinoff consulted his second who, ultimately. took his place among the principals. Once Zigulinoff held Holman in the preliminary stages of the surfboard hold. “I like that ’• said his second, as Zigulinoff looked at him inquiringly But it was the second, throwing in the towel so that his man could haul himself to the sanctuary of the ropes, which really upset the crowd. It jeered, later it slowclapped, and Zigulinoff became a very vulgar Bulgar He was warned, earlv. about a grip he had on Holman’s hand. Slowly and painfully he counted his victim’s fingers, like a child with an abacus. It came out all right, and a little later, the Bulgarian took a fall with a bear hug. In the sixth episode, Holman had Zigulinoff in a corner, and the second pitched in, seizing a Holman leg with an eagerness which suggested he had found a Chippendale in an auction room. Holman stripped the second of his shirt and cleverly used it to blind his opponent. It seemed only right that he should have a fall in the next round.

The last round was a sort of Stomp, with each stamping on the other’s toes, and it ended in a draw when the bell saved Zigulinoff, who at the time was wrapped neatly up in the ropes, hand and foot. However, the second, again taking a hand had been dropped by Holman to the floor below the ring, and that, the audience felt, was eminently satisfactory. And if there is no hint of St. Crispin’s Day in this account of proceedings, it is for a very good reason.

Injured In Collision.— Mrs C. Judkin, of 2 Tancred street, suffered facial and leg injuries when a bus and the car she w’as in collided at the comer of Wordsworth and Gasson streets at 12.25 p.m. yesterday. Mrs Judkin was taken to the Christchurch Hospital by ambulance and discharged after treatment.