One of my readers sent me images from this classic Brit Pro tag team match featuring the Baby-Face Hornets in their matching gold ring jackets. I liked what I saw so much, I went and found the match on YouTube (part 1 and part 2) and grabbed some more images.
The Hornets’ opponents are the two beefy gents in matching black singlets: Haggerty and Joynson, the dreaded “Danger Men.”
When the Hornets remove their jackets, we see that young Marty (wrestling in his debut Tag Team match) wore bright white trunks. His partner, Dane Curtis, wore black. We almost get the sense that Marty is out-numbered, all alone in white gear while his partner seems to side with their competition by wearing black like them.
Brit Pro wrestling fans seem to enjoy seeing lean young jobber-meat with zero hair on their chest and zero meat on their bones getting utterly butchered in the ring by much larger, meaner opponents. So the audience must’ve been swooning when Haggerty wrapped his thick legs around young Marty’s throat, interlocked his boots, and held the rookie in that degrading position for several minutes.
Young Marty enjoys some moments of control — the match is not a total squash (although I prefer one-sided matches, so I usually write these articles to make it seem that way.) The Hornets get into bondage, entangling Joynson’s arms in the ropes so Marty can deliver a series of flashy Flying Torpedoes to his gut. This move seems to hurt young Jones worse than it does his victim!
The Danger Men decide to focus on harming young Marty’s back, rabbit punching him in the kidneys to drop him to the mat, or bending him backwards across their knees or shoulders. The effect of a focused attack in pro wrestling is to multiply the perceived damage, each repeated assault on the same weakened body-part accumulating and compounding the pain.
The psychology of this Brit Pro match is more subtle than the typical American tag team bout. Here, the Heels don’t really cheat per se to maintain their advantage, but the roughness and viciousness of their moves, and their weight advantage, lend the sense of cruel unfairness.
Young Marty looks too skinny in his whitie tighties as the bigger Men-in-Black put him in holds and easily toss him around. They also “No-Sell” his moves to further degrade and disrespect him. For example, Marty’s partner snaps off an impressive Monkey Flip at 10:55 into the match, and 5 seconds later, the same opponent refuses to flip for Marty, instead slamming him down on his lower back yet again. No respect, I tell ya!
This Over-the-Knee Backbreaker is perfectly legal and commonplace, but seems cruel and unusual in this context. The fact that the big man lifts Marty so easily, the fact that this spine-snapper occurs after a series of other back attacks, the fact that ragdoll Marty appears so young and small and gullible, makes this seem vicious and unnecessary (and therefore kind of hot).
Marty is hoisted across Joynson’s shoulders in a gorgeous Hangman position and forced to submit. The Danger Men win the bout, which was actually fairly rare in Brit Pro wrestling where the heroic pretty-boys often rallied to win in the end.
If you want to get technical, this was actually a Best-of-Three Falls match. And this Over-the-Shoulder Back Breaker was the outcome of the first fall, not the end of the match. And the heroes came back to win the second fall. But I prefer the match the way it’s presented here. (When you start your own wrestling Blog, then you can write it up however you like.) (Just send me a link when you do…)
So I want to say “thanks” to the reader who turned me on to this fun little Tag Team squash. Marty Jones may have been a rookie, but I felt he did a fine job as the classic Face in Peril.
The big Heels in their black singlets used plenty of fun Back Torture moves and delivered that heartless, sadistic energy we love to see in villains. Just a solid, well-done classic pro wrestling performance with a satisfying finish.