The Reverend Posted January 22 Posted January 22 I've just delved into Jonny Storm's book 'The Unofficial Legend?' and he talks about his start at Hammerlock Wrestling, but ultimately doesn't have many good things to say about the promotion (although does highlight the amount of names who started there), nor about its owner Andre Baker. Hammerlock is very important when it comes to the legacy of British wrestling, but doesn't seem to get mentioned very much in the history of the sport in this country very much. I don't know much about Baker, other than he's quite a divisive character in all of it, many cite him as a visionary who was the first to actually have an open-door wrestling school, and one of the first (if not first?) to bring big name US wrestlers to this country. Mr Storm doesn't have much good to say about him (basically calling him a bully and a con-man), and talks about him being black-balled by the industry. Tbh it's hard to find anything on Baker prior to Hammerlock, It's not to say he didn't have a career, but where and what he did is hard to locate. It also seems that him setting up Hammerlock was a snub at the old school fraternity of the sport who had turned against him, and somehow he got lucky with it all. Hammerlock had a strange run, from being an exciting and different promotion to anything that had been before, to an NWA affiliate and then some odd stuff where it was tied into Dave Courtney. Along the way it also managed to get British wrestling back onto primetime TV with the absolutely awful Transatlantic Wrestling Challenge. It all seemed to crash and burn though with the promotion just disappearing, and Baker I believe going to prison before sadly committing suicide (Darkside of the Ring anyone?) It's hard not to push Hammerlock though as the catalyst for future promotions and the stars who started under its banner. It would be nice to have a full history of this influential promotion and I know that a number of people who were very involved post here.  Quote
The Dart Posted January 22 Posted January 22 (edited) My only experience with peak Hammerlock was reading about it in PowerSlam magazine. I nearly went to one of their shows in Hertford in 2002, but didn't. I did ring crew on one of their shows in Chatham in 2007/2008 but I think by then it was quite a different company to the one of Jonny Storm's day. I think their impact and legacy on the UK scene is definately hugely underestimated. Edited January 22 by The Dart Quote
Paid Members mim731 Posted January 22 Paid Members Posted January 22 Doug Williams, Finn Balor, and for better or worse, Alex Shane were among a large number of well known Hammerlock graduates if memory serves. I'm sure there was someone on here ages ago who said they trained there?  Might be a bit more insight there if that is the case. Quote
Paid Members Carbomb Posted January 22 Paid Members Posted January 22 Zack Sabre Jr. trained there too, I'm fairly sure. Although I think he only developed his current style after leaving, but I wouldn't swear to that. Quote
Magnum Milano Posted January 22 Posted January 22 (edited) I was going to post does Dean Ayass still post/read here as I'm sure he was involved with Hammerlock, and then when doing some Googling found this obituary he wrote about Andre Baker. Quote ANDRE 'SLEDGEHAMMER' BAKER - who died at the weekend aged 45 - was the man who gave me my first ever opportunity in the wrestling business. That's a sentence that one hell of a lot of people can also say. I first met Andre in the summer holidays of 1993 when I joined Alex Shane to travel to the Hammerlock School of Wrestling in Folkestone for a trial training session. After five hours of training in the ring, and five subsequent days of being unable to walk properly, I decided that physical wrestling wasn't for me. However, Andre evidently saw something he liked in me and kept in touch. By the end of 1993, he was putting on trainee shows at the gym and I was his nervous ring announcer. The school grew into an actual wrestling promotion, in actual wrestling venues, and flourished. One-off shows became mini tours. Mini tours became events with ex-WWE wrestlers as the star attraction. And everyone on those shows grew as wrestlers, as performers and as people, all under the overseeing eye of Andre. Back in the early 1990s, the wrestling world was very different to what we know today. There was no internet. There was no free exchanging of information like there is now. And the wrestling business was very much a closed shop. There weren't hundreds of small promotions running one venue twice a year or scores of training schools looking for students. But Andre ensured that Hammerlock was the first to really reach out, and people grabbed hold of that opportunity from all over the country. Andre Baker was a pioneer. He grabbed British wrestling and dragged it into a new, modern time. Hammerlock Wrestling gave fans wrestlers they'd never seen before, doing moves that weren't typical of the time. This was a time when a moonsault was virtually unseen in Britain. During that time, I was a tape trader and Andre saw a few ECW tapes from the mid 1990s. Inspired by this, he started to incorporate frying pan shots, table spots and chair assisted flip planchas into his matches. It was something that most fans at the time had never seen before. He was also the first promoter to recognise that bringing in ex-WWE stars could be lucrative. While All Star and Joint Promotions had used up and coming international stars for decades, Andre went to the opposite end of the spectrum and brought in established stars like Adam Bomb, Jim Neidhart and Jake 'The Snake' Roberts for shows. The American import business has boomed in British wrestling in recent years. Andre Baker started that. He was also very protective and proud of the business. He insisted that all trainees got themselves some training in shoot wrestling on a mat before they spent a lot of time in the ring itself. Not only did it make matches look more realistic, but if a fan decided to jump in the ring, he knew that the wrestler could handle himself and not embarrass the business. When I somehow got talked into agreeing to an angle where I would have a singles match with Jonny Storm, I still had to go through the shoot training first. And I've got to say that I'd never been fitter in all my life than when I had three months of training with Hammerlock. He also gave me my first opportunity to book shows, put the matches together, the timings, the running order and so on. And what always sticks in my mind is that he let me make mistakes and then picked me up on them afterwards, because making mistakes is the best way of learning something. I learned so many little things about the construction of a wrestling show from Andre that I took with me for years afterwards and have passed on to others since then. Andre's house would often be full of wrestlers, staying with him while we did a mini tour. After a show, we would have what I used to call "the post mortem", where we would look at what worked, what didn't work, and what needed changing. If we did one-off shows, Andre would often call me, or I would call him, to discuss things. He made you know that he valued your opinion, and you always knew where you stood with him and what he thought of things. But what I'll remember most of all is the out of the ring stuff, especially his wicked sense of humour, and I mean wicked in the literal sense. Andre and I both shared a love of finding humour in the most inappropriate and distasteful things. He was always playing ribs on people, like delaying my good friend Mike White, who was our referee, from getting changed until the last minute and then putting itching powder in his shirt so he spent the first match scratching himself like crazy and then bolting for the dressing room as soon as the bell went to end the match, leaving me, as MC, to fill in for five minutes. And you daren't fall asleep in Andre's front room before he went up to bed. If you did, you might wake up with a new haircut, a missing eyebrow, shaving foam around your face, or on one occasion, one of the promotion's top babyfaces had a very rude word written on his forehead in permanent marker pen. He spent all day the next day scrubbing it off, and by the time he came out for his match, the writing was gone, but he had a red raw forehead that made him look like he'd been attacked with a Brillo pad. When any of these things happened, Andre simply had his characteristic wry grin on his face, where one half of his mouth turned up and he raised his eyebrows. I can picture it as I write this and I've got a smile on my face as I think about it. So what is Andre Baker's legacy, apart from everything I've written above? Oh yeah, that list of wrestlers who he gave their first opportunity in the wrestling business to. You may have heard of some of them. International stars like TNA's Doug Williams, New Japan's Prince Devitt, former WWE superstar Katie Lea Burchill, Jonny Storm and Jody Fleisch. Not to mention domestic stars like Alex Shane, Johnny Moss, Jon Ryan, Justin Richards, Majik, Conscience, Zack Sabre Jr, Scott Parker and of course the only ever British NWA World Heavyweight Champion, Gary Steele. So rest in peace Andre. It's so very sad that you left us so early, but your legacy will live on in the work of those who you gave a start to. I, like so many others, went from a rookie to a pro, and from a boy to a man under your guidance. You won't be forgotten. Â Edited January 22 by Magnum Milano Quote
Paid Members Hannibal Scorch Posted January 22 Paid Members Posted January 22 4 hours ago, mim731 said: Doug Williams, Finn Balor, and for better or worse, Alex Shane were among a large number of well known Hammerlock graduates if memory serves. I'm sure there was someone on here ages ago who said they trained there?  Might be a bit more insight there if that is the case.  2 hours ago, Carbomb said: Zack Sabre Jr. trained there too, I'm fairly sure. Although I think he only developed his current style after leaving, but I wouldn't swear to that. And they were all involved in a tribute show which took place not long after he died. I got to see Devitt vs ZSJ in a community centre near Kent I believe. I am pretty sure Majik formerly of this forum was another trainee as he was also on the card. Quote
The Dart Posted January 22 Posted January 22 23 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said:  And they were all involved in a tribute show which took place not long after he died. I got to see Devitt vs ZSJ in a community centre near Kent I believe. I am pretty sure Majik formerly of this forum was another trainee as he was also on the card. Maidstone.  And it was a leisure centre rather than a community centre. Quote
Paid Members Hannibal Scorch Posted January 22 Paid Members Posted January 22 1 hour ago, The Dart said: Maidstone.  And it was a leisure centre rather than a community centre. Course it was, I even remember the massive swimming pool next to it! Quote
AnotherCrapUsername Posted January 22 Posted January 22 8 minutes ago, Hannibal Scorch said: Course it was, I even remember the massive swimming pool next to it! Evidently not well enough Quote
Paid Members IANdrewDiceClay Posted January 22 Paid Members Posted January 22 (edited) He slapped some fans about in the locker room, who posted a fantastic entry about it on here a few years back. Took them in the dressing room and berated them and slapped them one. Just because they booed him. Sounded like a small dicked wanker. Alex Shane is a cunt, so fuck him etc, but I remember he said decades ago "one day Andre will realise how much of a cunt he is and he'll not be able to handle it and kill himself." Which sounded vile, but apparently its not to dissimilar to what happened. Edited January 22 by IANdrewDiceClay Quote
LEGIT Posted January 23 Posted January 23 10 hours ago, IANdrewDiceClay said: Alex Shane is a cunt, so fuck him etc I've seen people post this for years. Why is he so unpopular? Quote
Vegeta Posted January 23 Posted January 23 Andre Baker trained my trainer, however I never met the bloke. My trainer who trained us under the NWA banner never mentioned Andre much either so never really felt the need to push it or ask. Quote
TimmyB Posted January 23 Posted January 23 4 hours ago, LEGIT said: I've seen people post this for years. Why is he so unpopular? Is any going to answer this? 😂 Quote
Paid Members Jesse Posted January 23 Paid Members Posted January 23 It's an incredibly long answer to give, if you want to detail all the things he's done to make himself so unpopular but at base level he at one point had a great deal of power within a nascent British wrestling scene to the point it was impossible to be part of it and not run into him, and afaik there isn't a person in his life he hasn't been willing to take advantage of for his own personal gain. Quote
Paid Members Carbomb Posted January 23 Paid Members Posted January 23 Also, the infamous incident when he scuppered another promoter's show by paying the ring guy not to show up. That's before we get into the execrable MeToo stuff of "the Wall of Shame". Quote
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.