ITV Wrestling commentator Kent Walton R.I.P

DMC

Anyone old enough to remember "real" wrestling, every Saturday afternoon at 4pm on UTV/HTV, will remember "Greetings, grapple fans". The voice of wrestling on World of Sport, Kent Walton, died recently at the age of 86.

The Times obituary.

Kent Walton
The voice of ITV wrestling which for 33 years entertained viewers with its potbellied men in leotards


Kent Walton once ruled supreme over Saturday afternoons on ITV — well, at least over the slot between the half-time and full-time football scores. For 33 years he was the wrestling commentator on World of Sport. During the sport’s heyday in the 1970s, millions of viewers tuned in to watch the likes of Mick McManus, Giant Haystacks and Big Daddy (né Shirley Crabtree) perform head-locks, half-nelsons and three falls on each other — guided throughout by a floor-slapping referee. “Greetings, grapple fans,” Walton would announce at the beginning of the show in his smooth transatlantic baritone, welcoming viewers to live coverage from the Bellevue in Manchester or Wolverhampton Civic Hall.

This was one of his trademarks. Another was getting carried away during bouts at some perceived injustice. Walton would yell in disbelief as Jackie Pallo or Les Kellett received his “first-ah, public-ah, warning-ah” — while a cheating adversary looked on with a triumphant grin. ITV wrestling’s theatrical style fascinated the sceptical and credulous alike, and divided pub bores up and down the country as to whether the game was fixed or not. At any rate, it certainly stood out.

Despite his accent, Kenneth Walton Beckett was not from North America. He was born in Cairo, the son of the Minister for Finance in the colonial government. He grew up in Surrey and attended the Embassy School of Acting in London before joining the Royal Air Force upon the outbreak of war. He lost his public school accent and picked up his drawl after mixing with Canadian airmen.

After hostilities, he returned briefly to acting before moving to tennis and football commentary. He made his first ITV wrestling commentary from West Ham Baths in November 1955, by which time he had adopted his new television name.

Even if it was never as transparently theatrical as America’s World Wrestling Federation (WWF — now World Wrestling Entertainment, WWE), the British version did push the boundaries of feasibility, with its affected vendettas and exaggerated displays of pain. Despite invariably being referred to as a “sport” within those mocking inverted commas, its antics gripped the nation. As Roland Barthes famously observed, it matters not to the crowd whether wrestling is authentic or not; they simply care that justice is seen to be done in this spectacle.

At its peak, ITV wrestling commanded an audience of 12 million viewers, an impressive tally for a Saturday afternoon. The really big clashes could attract more viewers than Cup Finals, while the programme was said to boast among its devotees Margaret Thatcher, Frank Sinatra and the Queen.

Not everyone shared the enthusiasm, however, and in 1988 ITV’s head of sport, Greg Dyke, took the show off the air, saying it presented “the wrong image” to the channel’s viewers and advertisers. The late Giant Haystacks was, by his own account, so upset that were it not for the law, he would have killed Dyke.

Besides the wrestling show, Walton was a disc-jockey on Radio Luxembourg and briefly presented two popular music shows, Honey Hit Parade and Cool for Cats.

His honeyed voice proved ideal for commercial voice-overs, and he was also one of the founders of Pyramid Films, responsible for making the forgettable Virgin Witch (1971) and Keep It Up Downstairs (1978).

Walton remained a fan of wrestling after it was taken off the airwaves, but the game suffered greatly from the loss of exposure. Wrestling was at one time firmly rooted in working-class culture, and could easily fill the Albert Hall on big occasions. Its stars earned thousands and became household names. Today, however, with the waning of interest and sponsorship, British all- in wrestling tends only to be found in end-of-the-pier shows, where performers earn as little as £15 a night.

It has suffered from competition too. The far slicker and more exotic Gladiators and WWF became the televised quasi-sports of choice, the latter’s razzmatazz epitomised by the bronzed, muscled figure of Hulk Hogan. It was all a far cry from the days when grannies in hornrimmed spectacles climbed into the ring to belabour with their handbags some potbellied unfortunate in a leotard.

Having had a romance with Michael Grade’s mother Winifred, Walton subsequently married Lynn Smith in 1949. She and their son survive him.

Kent Walton, wrestling commentator, was born in Cairo on August 22, 1917. He died on August 24, 2003, aged 86.