I'm Sorry, I Love You: A History of Professional Wrestling: A must-read' - Mick Foley

Gordon Solie. The man who coined the term ‘crimson mask’ and pronounced ‘suplex’ as ‘suplay’

Haystacks was even bigger than Daddy, standing at six feet 11 inches and weighing nearly 700 pounds. With a big beard and overalls, he terrified audiences around the country (and briefly, in the latter stages of his career, in the USA) but I can’t watch footage of him now without remembering stories William Regal has told me about him refusing to s

Adonis would be dead just over a year after this match – back on the territorial circuit after being let go by the WWF, he was thrown from the window of a van as it swerved to avoid a moose on a road in Newfoundland and plummeted off a bridge.

I sat on my own, watched an amazing show and got chatting to a couple of Japanese fans next to me. One of them was obsessed with the town of Wigan.

In a tag match against Nagasaki and Blondie Barrett, Brookside would be – and I’m not making this up – hypnotised by Nagasaki mid-match and then go after his own partner.

in 1985, the opening theme was an instrumental version of Easy Lover by Phil Collins, proof that this was as 1980s as 1980s could be.

he attacked Jimmy Snuka with a coconut

In 1947, a bunch of tweed-wearing wrestling luminaries drew up a set of rules to govern wrestling. Named after the chair of the panel, they were dubbed the Admiral-Lord Mountevans rules, defining what holds were legal and how falls within matches could be won: by pinfall, submission, knockout, TKO or disqualification.

Sorakichi Matsuda moved to the USA in the 1880s, living his life virtually in poverty as he pursued his dream of becoming a professional wrestler.