WCW should have brought in Pat Roach.

[IANdrewDiceClay]

Hogan vs Bomber at Starrcade would have been better than Ed Leslie vs the Hulkster. Bring him in as a bricky, like his character in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet and let him cut the promos he did on the show. "Bomber doesnt think much of the Dungeon of Doom's digs, Taskmaster."

Please give me some Bomber fantasy booking.

[The Maestro]

A man that's fought James Bond, Indiana Jones and Conan deserved a feud with another action hero in Hulk Hogan. Saying that, I think there'd be money in a Jimmy Nail/Pat Roach tag team. They'd be like the Twin Towers of Düsseldorf. Bricks and Mortal. 

[Devon Malcolm]

I think Bomber vs Hogan would work especially well if it had been able to take place in the last years and if Gary Holton hadn't snuffed it.

Because you could have Wayne do a run-in, grab a snog off Brooke Hogan and then Bomber could get the roll-up on the distraction.

[Alex Wright Mark]

After his losing to Hogan at Starrcade, I'd take Bomber off TV for a couple of months. 

Then as Hogan is defending the title against Vader at Uncensored, Bomber is shown at the entrance way. He then calls in the lads, who roll in a wheelbarrow full of weapons such as bricks, wood and hammers to batter Hogan with. 

They go on to form Auf Wiedersehen Hulkamania with The Dungeon Of Doom. They even do the place up on their off days. 

Feud ends with Kevin Whatley throwing cement in Jimmy Nail's eyes on purpose for shagging his wife or something because Nail looks like the type to shag his mates wife. 

[JNLister]

He was in the first Britain's Strongest Man, so that's your Kazmaeir feud sorted.

Once that's done you remind everyone he played one match for the Birmingham Bears (American football, not cricket) at which point you bring in Lawrence Taylor and beat WWF to the punch.

When that's done, you bring in Vic Armstrong who was the stunt double for both James Bond and Indiana Jones working against Roach and they do shoot-style promos about wanting to fight for real now, Zeus-Hogan style, after which you bring in Arnold Schwarzenegger.

All of this sets-up Roach at Hallowe'en Havoc 95 in the Hogan role, but rather than the Yeti he gets bummed by old enemy Mr Blobby.

[FireBrand]

At last some Pat Roach love, a man who had a look that could actually translate to television pretty well in the U.S. Personally I would give him that look in the Indiana Jones film where he was a German mechanic (or something) and present him as an insane German.

I would cast him as Alex Wright real dad, Pat would claim that Alex's English father stole him while Pat Roach was away training soldiers to be tough. They would form a father and son tag team and feud with Duggan and The Patriot or Sgt.Pitman.

I'd call Pat Roach, Pat ReIch.

[HarmonicGenerator]

Bloody love Pat Roach, always someone I looked forward to seeing pop up on World Of Sport on the Wrestling Channel. Big Daddy may have been a household name but Pat is the only person other than Harrison Ford who was in all three Indiana Jones films, so I think we know who the real crossover star was. 

[Daily Buzzard]

Did Pat ever wrestle in the US or Japan?

It's weird how Britain was an outlier in terms of wrestling, we had our own stars who weren't stars anywhere else, and very few stars from America or Japan or anywhere else wrestled here.

[BomberPat]

1 hour ago, Daily Buzzard said:

Did Pat ever wrestle in the US or Japan?

It's weird how Britain was an outlier in terms of wrestling, we had our own stars who weren't stars anywhere else, and very few stars from America or Japan or anywhere else wrestled here.

Depends what you consider "stars". 

Kendo Nagasaki worked Japan and Canada, Giant Haystacks worked the US, Canada and Australia, obviously Dynamite Kid and Davey Boy made it big in the US, Canada and Japan, Rollerball Rocco in Japan, and so on. Billy Robinson became a huge star in Japan.

In terms of "stars" from overseas working here, Stampede had a working relationship with Joint Promotions that saw Bret and Owen Hart work here, Kamala worked the UK, as did Adnan Al-Kaissey, and probably plenty of others. In terms of Japanese talent, it was a common destination for learning excursions from NJPW in the late '70s through to the '80s - Jushin Liger, the original Tiger Mask and Akira Maeda all worked the UK early in their careers. 

It's true, though, that you didn't see a lot of the "big names" from the UK and the US or Japan interact - no Haystacks vs. Hogan or Big Daddy tagging with Dusty Rhodes, or whatever. But there are reasons for that - wrestling in Japan was a US import, so relied a lot on US talent, while wrestling in the UK grew out of an entirely different tradition of catch and all-in wrestling, rather than having its roots in the amateur style that underpins most American wrestling. Throw in the difference of styles brought on by the introduction of Mountevans rules, and the fact that American wrestling wasn't on TV or otherwise accessible enough to UK audiences for the big names to draw a crowd here. The other way around - wrestling in the UK was relatively low impact compared to other styles, and paid well enough (with shows occurring often enough) that wrestlers were able to make a decent living without needing to go overseas to ply their trade; or if they did, it was usually to Germany, rather than further afield. 

With a few exceptions - those mentioned earlier, plus Adrian Street, Chris Adams, etc. - wrestlers from the UK didn't really try and take the risk to succeed in the US until after World of Sport was cancelled, and there was more impetus to try and work overseas. Some took more bookings in mainland Europe, some started working Japan (the weirdness of Johnny Saint in Michinoku Pro, for example), and others tried to break the States (Regal), because that's where the money was, and working full-time at home simply wasn't viable any more.

 

As for whether or not my namesake Pat Roach worked elsewhere, he did some US dates as Lord Patrick Roach in the mid-70s, and a tour of NJPW in the early '70s. While in NJPW, he wrestled several matches against Harold Sakata - better known as Oddjob.

[Carbomb]

2 hours ago, HarmonicGenerator said:

Pat is the only person other than Harrison Ford who was in all three Indiana Jones films, so I think we know who the real crossover star was. 

Also, apart from Ford, he's the only actor to have appeared four times in the series.

[returner82]

I would've thought Pat Roach in WCW would've been a bit like when Steve Regal initially debuted with no character, bad ring music, no build-up, insert promo to say how he's glad to be in WCW to show his talent and what the British could do. Wouldn't have gotten over without a character, so what would that character be?

 

About Kendo Nagasaki wrestling in Japan, did they allow him to maintain the credibility of the gimmick and the perception of invincibility over there or was he just another guy?

 

Just as an aside about Pat Roach, it's a shame nobody's preserved that Sky Sports series from the nineties with Jeff Stelling interviewing the features of the show after they were done in the ring. Pat Roach was on one, as was Tony Walsh talking about much he loved Maggie Thatcher, yet the only one that's on YouTube, as great as it is, is Bobby Barnes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiy70Nx8Us0

[Carbomb]

Did wCw ever have access to Schwarzenegger? They could've done something to do with the movies for Roach when he played that wizard in Conan The Destroyer too.

[BomberPat]

1 minute ago, returner82 said:

About Kendo Nagasaki wrestling in Japan, did they allow him to maintain the credibility of the gimmick and the perception of invincibility over there or was he just another guy?

He was over there in 1968 - so he'd been doing the Kendo gimmick a few years already, but hadn't yet been on ITV, so the gimmick and aura wouldn't have been anything like as significant. He didn't use the Kendo name over there, but wrestled as "Mr Guillotine" for (I believe) the IWE. Apparently they hyped him up by saying he'd killed a wrestler in Saudi Arabia. He seemed to be brought in with a decent amount of hype to put over Great Kusatsu, but ended up either on the losing end of most matches or going to non-finishes more often than not. 

Billy Robinson was, I believe, the booking agent for foreign talent in IWE, so they used a mixture of AWA wrestlers and European talent.

 

As for Pat Roach coming into WCW, it's obviously complete blind speculation, but I doubt they'd have given him the "happy to be here!" treatment when, assuming they brought him in in the early '90s, he'd have already been in Never Say Never Again, Clash Of The Titans, Red Sonja, Willow, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and three Indiana Jones movies. There was plenty more there to work with. With that behind him, I'd have almost rather seen him show up in Memphis as a foil to Lawler, just playing an adaptation any of his film roles, similar to Sakata wrestling under the Oddjob gimmick (including, to drag this back to a previous conversation, in the UK!)

[Dean Ayass]

11 hours ago, Daily Buzzard said:

Did Pat ever wrestle in the US or Japan?

It's weird how Britain was an outlier in terms of wrestling, we had our own stars who weren't stars anywhere else, and very few stars from America or Japan or anywhere else wrestled here.

Yes, he wrestled in California in the 70s as Lord Patrick Roach. I believe he was in at least one of the big San Francisco battle royals. I'll have a look to see if I can find any records.

EDIT: Just seen, he's listed as a competitor in the 1975 Cow Palace Battle Royal:
18 Man 12.000 Dollar Battle Royal: Pat Patterson defeats Andre The Giant and Angelo Mosca and Dennis Stamp and Dutch Savage and Haystacks Calhoun and Karl von Brauner and Kinji Shibuya and Kurt von Brauner and Lord Patrick Roach and Manny Cruz and Moondog Mayne and Mr. Wrestling and Pepper Martin and Peter Maivia and Raul Mata and The Brute and Victor Rivera

As well as the people listed above, there were a number of travelling wrestlers who passed through the UK in the TV era. Before Liger (who was called Fuji Yamada here) and Maeda (Kwik Kik Lee), there was Satoru Sayama, the original Tiger Mask, who had an extensive run here as Sammy Lee, doing fast paced offence that had never been seen here before.

Some Americans who became reliable journeymen also worked here, such as Rick Hunter, Bill Pearl (who became perennial Wrestling Challenge jobber Brian Walsh), as well as Daryl Karolet, better known as actor Tyler Mane, who actually faced Pat Roach on TV under the name Sky Walker. He had a brief run in WCW in 1989/1990 as Woman's bodyguard Nitron.

Lenny Hurst was a British star who regularly worked in America, including working for the WWWF and WWF, and he wrestled many times at Madison Square Garden.

In the post TV era, Satoshi Kojima had a one year long stay in the UK as the Japanese Mean Machine or Lion Satoshi before he returned to Japan. Togi Makabe also spent time over here in the early 2000s I think.

Big Daddy, to my knowledge, never worked abroad. He didn't like to venture far from home and always tried to return to his house in Halifax after a show where possible.

Marty Jones wrestled extensively in Japan and also had a run in the 70s where he had a huge hair vs hair match against Perro Aguayo. Pete Roberts was a regular for years in All Japan (which was where he got his Super Destroyer nickname). Wayne Bridges also made many tours of Japan and competed in the annual tag tournaments, including tagging with Andre the Giant and facing Hulk Hogan. I think Colin Joynson did several tours of Japan in the 70s as well. Tony St Clair worked for years and years in New Japan but was never a headliner.

Dave Finlay was a regular participant in the NJPW Best of the Super Juniors tournaments in the 90s. and Robby Brookside and the late Doc Dean also competed in one tournament, where the Doc beat Jushin Liger and Brookside faced a young Chris Jericho. 

And of course Bryan Danielson had a long tour over here in the mid 2000s as the masked American Dragon. 

That's all I can think of off the top of my head.

[returner82]

5 hours ago, BomberPat said:

He was over there in 1968 - so he'd been doing the Kendo gimmick a few years already, but hadn't yet been on ITV, so the gimmick and aura wouldn't have been anything like as significant. He didn't use the Kendo name over there, but wrestled as "Mr Guillotine" for (I believe) the IWE. Apparently they hyped him up by saying he'd killed a wrestler in Saudi Arabia. He seemed to be brought in with a decent amount of hype to put over Great Kusatsu, but ended up either on the losing end of most matches or going to non-finishes more often than not. 

Billy Robinson was, I believe, the booking agent for foreign talent in IWE, so they used a mixture of AWA wrestlers and European talent.

 

As for Pat Roach coming into WCW, it's obviously complete blind speculation, but I doubt they'd have given him the "happy to be here!" treatment when, assuming they brought him in in the early '90s, he'd have already been in Never Say Never Again, Clash Of The Titans, Red Sonja, Willow, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and three Indiana Jones movies. There was plenty more there to work with. With that behind him, I'd have almost rather seen him show up in Memphis as a foil to Lawler, just playing an adaptation any of his film roles, similar to Sakata wrestling under the Oddjob gimmick (including, to drag this back to a previous conversation, in the UK!)

Thanks for the info re Kendo in Japan.

 

Re Pat Roach, I just don't think the American audience would be as familiar with him through his film roles. We would, because he's one of our own. You can scratch any familiarity with him as Bomber for starters. I know it isn't an original idea, because it's what they did with Steve Regal and it's what they'd done with him in California according to the twisted genius, but I think the only way you bring him in is as a knight, like Lord Patrick Roach. Otherwise, he's just an English Reggie Parks.