WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.439 Welcome back to another deep dive. So today we're 00:00:02.439 --> 00:00:04.519 tackling a phrase that for a lot of you listening 00:00:04.519 --> 00:00:07.580 probably brings up a very specific image. Oh, 00:00:07.620 --> 00:00:10.279 for sure. If I say all in wrestling, you're picturing 00:00:10.279 --> 00:00:13.900 a huge stadium, right? Yeah. Fireworks, 80 ,000 00:00:13.900 --> 00:00:15.939 people. The whole modern spectacle. And that's 00:00:15.939 --> 00:00:18.059 a fair connection to make. It really is. But 00:00:18.059 --> 00:00:20.399 and this is why I just love this stuff. That 00:00:20.399 --> 00:00:24.199 phrase has a much older, much weirder origin 00:00:24.199 --> 00:00:26.839 story. We are not talking about Wembley in 2024. 00:00:27.640 --> 00:00:31.519 We're going back. way back we're going back nearly 00:00:31.519 --> 00:00:34.119 a century we're in the 1930s the lost world of 00:00:34.119 --> 00:00:38.140 british wrestling exactly and all in in the 30s 00:00:38.140 --> 00:00:40.939 it wasn't a marketing buzzword it was a legal 00:00:40.939 --> 00:00:43.719 definition almost a distinct style of fighting 00:00:43.719 --> 00:00:46.850 that was frankly chaotic It sounds like a movie 00:00:46.850 --> 00:00:48.390 script. I mean, we're going to trace how British 00:00:48.390 --> 00:00:51.549 wrestling went from this like stiff, formal Olympic 00:00:51.549 --> 00:00:54.850 sport to a total spectacle with mud and weapons. 00:00:54.990 --> 00:00:57.390 And then it got banned. Banned by a judge who 00:00:57.390 --> 00:00:59.670 literally said this is not a sport. And then, 00:00:59.670 --> 00:01:02.270 and this is my favorite part, it had to be saved 00:01:02.270 --> 00:01:05.129 by an admiral. A literal admiral of the fleet. 00:01:05.230 --> 00:01:08.049 It's an absolutely wild ride. But to get the 00:01:08.049 --> 00:01:10.650 chaos, you have to understand what all in actually 00:01:10.650 --> 00:01:13.769 was. It was a hybrid, right? Kind of a Frankenstein's 00:01:13.769 --> 00:01:15.709 monster of wrestling styles. That's a great way 00:01:15.709 --> 00:01:17.609 to put it. It took catch -as -catch -can, you 00:01:17.609 --> 00:01:19.870 know, that really gritty submission -based style 00:01:19.870 --> 00:01:21.890 from Northern England. From Lancashire, yeah. 00:01:22.010 --> 00:01:24.450 Right. And it injected it with American -style 00:01:24.450 --> 00:01:27.430 showmanship. So you take a legit painful sport 00:01:27.430 --> 00:01:30.349 and you just sprinkle some glitter on it. And 00:01:30.349 --> 00:01:33.159 some gunpowder. But the key thing, the thing 00:01:33.159 --> 00:01:36.060 that made people nervous was that it was billed 00:01:36.060 --> 00:01:39.939 as no holds barred. Which in the 1930s sounds 00:01:39.939 --> 00:01:43.299 incredibly dangerous. Well, yeah. And that danger, 00:01:43.420 --> 00:01:46.040 whether it was real or, you know, manufactured, 00:01:46.219 --> 00:01:48.680 is why it took off. But let's back up for a second. 00:01:48.859 --> 00:01:51.439 The before times. Right. Before the 30s, the 00:01:51.439 --> 00:01:54.459 big style in the UK was Greco -Roman. The Olympic 00:01:54.459 --> 00:01:57.859 style. No leg grabs, all upper body. Correct. 00:01:58.140 --> 00:02:01.560 Lots of clenching. Very technical. But, I mean, 00:02:01.579 --> 00:02:03.099 if you don't know what you're watching, it can 00:02:03.099 --> 00:02:05.239 be. A bit boring. A bit of a stalemate, yeah. 00:02:05.340 --> 00:02:08.340 Two big guys leaning on each other. And by the 00:02:08.340 --> 00:02:10.560 time World War I was over, the audience for that 00:02:10.560 --> 00:02:12.860 had just vanished. So there's this vacuum in 00:02:12.860 --> 00:02:15.419 British sport. And entertainment abhors a vacuum. 00:02:15.800 --> 00:02:18.400 Precisely. And the spark came from the U .S. 00:02:18.439 --> 00:02:20.759 The Americans had already figured out that, you 00:02:20.759 --> 00:02:22.939 know, pure competitive wrestling is a tough sell. 00:02:23.219 --> 00:02:26.199 So they introduced the work. The showmanship. 00:02:26.889 --> 00:02:29.870 the gimmicks, free determined outcomes. All of 00:02:29.870 --> 00:02:31.949 it. And British promoters saw that and thought, 00:02:31.990 --> 00:02:34.330 we need that energy. But they adapted it. And 00:02:34.330 --> 00:02:36.330 that's where switching to Catch's Catch Can was 00:02:36.330 --> 00:02:38.830 so important. Because Catch is a totally different 00:02:38.830 --> 00:02:40.969 animal from Greco. Oh, completely. Catch came 00:02:40.969 --> 00:02:43.650 from the coal miners, the mill workers. You can 00:02:43.650 --> 00:02:46.370 grab legs. You can twist joints. It's dynamic. 00:02:46.889 --> 00:02:49.349 If Greco was a chess match. Catch is a fist fight. 00:02:49.469 --> 00:02:52.090 Perfect analogy. And for a crowd, it looks so 00:02:52.090 --> 00:02:54.349 much more impactful. You get big throws, dramatic 00:02:54.349 --> 00:02:57.030 submissions. So you mix that gritty northern 00:02:57.030 --> 00:03:00.090 style with American theater. And you've got a 00:03:00.090 --> 00:03:03.569 business model. You do. And the talent was already 00:03:03.569 --> 00:03:05.490 there. You just had to go to Lancashire and find 00:03:05.490 --> 00:03:08.650 guys who were tough. And that brings us to the... 00:03:09.080 --> 00:03:11.520 architects of this whole thing. Sir Athol Oakley. 00:03:11.599 --> 00:03:14.740 What a name. Sir Athol Oakley and Henry Erslinger. 00:03:15.039 --> 00:03:17.400 Now Oakley was a legitimate amateur wrestler 00:03:17.400 --> 00:03:21.120 but he was also a showman and he insisted his 00:03:21.120 --> 00:03:24.840 whole life that his all -in promotion was 100 00:03:24.840 --> 00:03:28.759 % legitimate sport. Yeah but he also conveniently 00:03:28.759 --> 00:03:30.740 won a tournament to become the first British 00:03:30.740 --> 00:03:32.659 heavyweight champion. Yeah funny how that works 00:03:32.659 --> 00:03:34.240 out the promoter always seems to get the belt. 00:03:34.419 --> 00:03:36.810 Oldest trick in the book. But hey, it worked. 00:03:36.930 --> 00:03:40.229 It worked like crazy. And Oakley understood you 00:03:40.229 --> 00:03:42.569 needed characters. You needed heroes and villains. 00:03:42.909 --> 00:03:45.490 Your roster names from this time are just, they're 00:03:45.490 --> 00:03:48.090 incredible. You had Black Butcher Johnson. Very 00:03:48.090 --> 00:03:50.949 subtle. And Norman the Butcher. Apparently it 00:03:50.949 --> 00:03:52.409 was a good time to be a butcher in wrestling. 00:03:52.689 --> 00:03:55.699 I guess so. But my favorite is... College boy. 00:03:55.819 --> 00:03:58.520 Just college boy. That's it. You could see the 00:03:58.520 --> 00:04:00.840 whole story. The rough working class butcher 00:04:00.840 --> 00:04:03.740 versus the, you know, the educated snob from 00:04:03.740 --> 00:04:06.939 a good family. It's brilliant. It's pure archetypal 00:04:06.939 --> 00:04:09.860 storytelling. And people ate it up. The business 00:04:09.860 --> 00:04:13.819 just exploded. At its peak, there were over 40 00:04:13.819 --> 00:04:17.360 regular venues in London alone. 40. That's a 00:04:17.360 --> 00:04:19.360 show in every neighborhood every night of the 00:04:19.360 --> 00:04:21.720 week. It was a mania. But here's the problem. 00:04:22.529 --> 00:04:25.250 that creates a huge supply and demand issue. 00:04:25.449 --> 00:04:27.629 You run out of butchers and college boys. You 00:04:27.629 --> 00:04:30.550 run out of skilled wrestlers, period. You can't 00:04:30.550 --> 00:04:32.910 fill 40 venues a week with top -tier talent, 00:04:32.990 --> 00:04:36.509 so the quality of the actual wrestling just plummets. 00:04:36.550 --> 00:04:38.629 And the wrestling gets bad. You have to distract 00:04:38.629 --> 00:04:40.610 the audience, you turn up the violence, you turn 00:04:40.610 --> 00:04:43.370 up the spectacle. The descent into mayhem begins. 00:04:43.689 --> 00:04:46.610 This is where All In really earns its name. They 00:04:46.610 --> 00:04:49.459 started introducing weapons. Chair shots became 00:04:49.459 --> 00:04:51.980 a thing. In the 1930s. I think most people assume 00:04:51.980 --> 00:04:55.259 that's like a 90s invention. Nope. It goes way 00:04:55.259 --> 00:04:57.139 back. And it wasn't just chairs. It was the whole 00:04:57.139 --> 00:04:59.360 environment. They introduced women wrestlers, 00:04:59.399 --> 00:05:03.160 which was hugely scandalous. And the mud. The 00:05:03.160 --> 00:05:06.259 mud wrestling. Why? I mean, just why? Pure spectacle. 00:05:06.500 --> 00:05:09.220 Imagine it. Black Butcher Johnson sliding around 00:05:09.220 --> 00:05:12.339 in a ring full of mud, swinging a chair. It completely 00:05:12.339 --> 00:05:14.959 removes any pretense of this being a sport. It's 00:05:14.959 --> 00:05:16.939 a carnival sideshow. So you've got this image 00:05:16.939 --> 00:05:21.480 of stiff upper lip, 1930s Britain, tea and crumpets. 00:05:21.579 --> 00:05:24.740 Right. But on a Friday night, thousands of people 00:05:24.740 --> 00:05:28.060 are crammed into a smoky hall watching two guys 00:05:28.060 --> 00:05:30.350 try to drown each other in mud. It's a total 00:05:30.350 --> 00:05:33.290 rejection of polite society. But, you know, you 00:05:33.290 --> 00:05:35.769 can only poke polite society for so long before 00:05:35.769 --> 00:05:37.730 it bites back. The authorities finally stepped 00:05:37.730 --> 00:05:40.769 in. They did. The backlash from churches, newspapers, 00:05:41.149 --> 00:05:44.990 local councils. It was huge. But the final nail 00:05:44.990 --> 00:05:47.329 in the coffin came from the courts. The 1938 00:05:47.329 --> 00:05:50.569 ruling. Yep. Justice Charles of the King's Bench 00:05:50.569 --> 00:05:53.350 Division. He presided over a case and just flat 00:05:53.350 --> 00:05:55.350 out declared that all in wrestling was, quote, 00:05:55.470 --> 00:05:58.839 not a sport. Wow. That's a death sentence. Legally. 00:05:58.839 --> 00:06:01.079 It is, because once it's not a sport, it's just 00:06:01.079 --> 00:06:04.199 public disorder. The London County Council immediately 00:06:04.199 --> 00:06:06.740 used that ruling to ban professional wrestling 00:06:06.740 --> 00:06:08.560 entirely. So the biggest market in the country, 00:06:08.699 --> 00:06:12.220 gone. Overnight, gone. And the dominoes fell. 00:06:12.540 --> 00:06:14.800 Permits were pulled everywhere, even in places 00:06:14.800 --> 00:06:17.620 like Johannesburg. By the time World War II starts, 00:06:17.839 --> 00:06:20.959 the whole business is in ruins. So the war ends, 00:06:21.120 --> 00:06:23.899 things start to get back to normal. People are 00:06:23.899 --> 00:06:26.060 looking for entertainment. The promoters must 00:06:26.060 --> 00:06:28.740 have tried to bring it back. They tried in 1947. 00:06:29.060 --> 00:06:31.740 But the stink was still there. The press just 00:06:31.740 --> 00:06:34.660 jumped on it saying, oh, it's that fake, violent, 00:06:34.759 --> 00:06:37.279 mud wrestling nonsense again. They needed a total 00:06:37.279 --> 00:06:39.680 rebrand. They needed legitimacy. And this is 00:06:39.680 --> 00:06:42.199 where the story gets so strange and honestly 00:06:42.199 --> 00:06:45.800 so British. They formed a committee. Not just 00:06:45.800 --> 00:06:48.379 any committee, though. No, they brought in Admiral 00:06:48.379 --> 00:06:51.860 Lord Mountevans. An admiral to save wrestling. 00:06:52.220 --> 00:06:54.480 A respected naval hero. A man of discipline. 00:06:54.740 --> 00:06:56.139 We've got a problem with these wrestlers. Get 00:06:56.139 --> 00:06:58.180 me the admiral. And look who else was on it. 00:06:58.500 --> 00:07:01.040 Commander Campbell, a regular on a highbrow radio 00:07:01.040 --> 00:07:03.740 show called The Brain's Trust. A member of parliament, 00:07:04.019 --> 00:07:07.040 Maurice Webb. and an Olympic wrestler, Norman 00:07:07.040 --> 00:07:09.740 Morrell. An admiral, an MP, and a radio star 00:07:09.740 --> 00:07:12.300 walk into a wrestling ring. It sounds like a 00:07:12.300 --> 00:07:15.060 joke, but it was genius. Wrestling was seen as 00:07:15.060 --> 00:07:18.339 dirty and low class, so to clean it up, you brought 00:07:18.339 --> 00:07:20.319 in the most respectable people you can possibly 00:07:20.319 --> 00:07:22.899 find. So what did they actually do? They created 00:07:22.899 --> 00:07:25.220 the Mount Evans rules. And if you've ever seen 00:07:25.220 --> 00:07:27.639 that classic British wrestling from the 70s and 00:07:27.639 --> 00:07:30.660 80s, the world of sports stuff, you were watching 00:07:30.660 --> 00:07:32.759 the Mount Evans rules in action. The biggest 00:07:32.759 --> 00:07:36.670 change was... Rounds. Like boxing. Exactly. Before, 00:07:36.949 --> 00:07:39.790 it was just a chaotic free -for -all. Mounted 00:07:39.790 --> 00:07:42.490 vans introduced a structure, three -minute rounds, 00:07:42.750 --> 00:07:45.509 rest periods, public warnings for rule -breaking. 00:07:45.769 --> 00:07:47.850 Ah, so the first public warning thing comes from 00:07:47.850 --> 00:07:49.769 this. It does. It's naval discipline applied 00:07:49.769 --> 00:07:51.889 to grappling. It gives the referee power, and 00:07:51.889 --> 00:07:54.649 it creates drama. The bad guy can cheat, get 00:07:54.649 --> 00:07:57.629 a warning, and the crowd gets invested. It turns 00:07:57.629 --> 00:07:59.850 the chaos into a story. And most importantly, 00:07:59.990 --> 00:08:03.060 they killed the name. They had to. All in was 00:08:03.060 --> 00:08:06.180 a toxic brand. It meant mud and riots. The committee 00:08:06.180 --> 00:08:09.879 disowned it. They rebranded the style as modern 00:08:09.879 --> 00:08:12.040 freestyle. Sounds very clean, very respectable. 00:08:12.339 --> 00:08:14.899 That was the point. They banned the weapons, 00:08:15.100 --> 00:08:17.459 banned the mud, and enforced these strict sporting 00:08:17.459 --> 00:08:19.959 rules. But you can't just kill a word, can you? 00:08:20.019 --> 00:08:23.579 The public doesn't just forget. No. And for decades, 00:08:23.759 --> 00:08:25.800 even though the promoters called it modern freestyle, 00:08:26.220 --> 00:08:29.360 the press and the public kept calling it... all 00:08:29.360 --> 00:08:32.399 -in, but the meaning changed. It became derogatory. 00:08:32.799 --> 00:08:35.700 An insult. If you called it all -in, you were 00:08:35.700 --> 00:08:37.940 saying it was fake. You were saying it was lowbrow. 00:08:37.940 --> 00:08:40.100 Yeah, you were looking down on it. And that's 00:08:40.100 --> 00:08:42.480 where you get that amazing Monty Python sketch. 00:08:42.820 --> 00:08:45.519 All -in cricket. It's perfect. You have cricketers, 00:08:45.620 --> 00:08:47.620 but they're in a ring beating each other up with 00:08:47.620 --> 00:08:50.039 their bats. That sketch tells you everything 00:08:50.039 --> 00:08:52.879 you need to know about what the term all -in 00:08:52.879 --> 00:08:55.600 came to mean in the British psyche. It meant 00:08:55.600 --> 00:08:58.059 the complete breakdown of rules and fair play. 00:08:58.620 --> 00:09:01.240 And it was even reinforced in like high culture. 00:09:01.820 --> 00:09:03.860 Roland Barthes, the French philosopher, wrote 00:09:03.860 --> 00:09:06.120 that famous essay on wrestling. In mythologies, 00:09:06.200 --> 00:09:08.600 yeah, a brilliant piece of writing. But he was 00:09:08.600 --> 00:09:11.080 writing about French wrestling, le catch. But 00:09:11.080 --> 00:09:14.019 when it got translated into English. The translators 00:09:14.019 --> 00:09:16.460 looked for an equivalent and they landed on all 00:09:16.460 --> 00:09:19.440 in wrestling. So even in academic circles, the 00:09:19.440 --> 00:09:21.940 term became associated with this predetermined 00:09:21.940 --> 00:09:25.269 theatrical spectacle. So to wrap it all up. You 00:09:25.269 --> 00:09:28.929 go from the boredom of Greco -Roman to the anarchic 00:09:28.929 --> 00:09:32.750 explosion of All In, the crash, the ban, and 00:09:32.750 --> 00:09:35.029 then this very formal resurrection by an admiral. 00:09:35.169 --> 00:09:37.289 It's the perfect illustration of that eternal 00:09:37.289 --> 00:09:39.889 tension in wrestling. It's always a war between 00:09:39.889 --> 00:09:42.450 sport and spectacle. When they lean too hard 00:09:42.450 --> 00:09:46.490 into spectacle in the 30s, the weapons, the mud, 00:09:46.590 --> 00:09:48.990 the whole thing just collapsed on itself. But 00:09:48.990 --> 00:09:50.830 without any spectacle, it's just two guys in 00:09:50.830 --> 00:09:53.509 singlets and nobody watches. The Mount Evans 00:09:53.509 --> 00:09:56.210 era found the balance. They made the rules part 00:09:56.210 --> 00:09:58.309 of the show. Which, and this is a final thought 00:09:58.309 --> 00:10:00.190 to leave people with, brings us back to where 00:10:00.190 --> 00:10:02.970 we started. The modern all -in shows. Right. 00:10:03.070 --> 00:10:04.409 I mean, when you look at modern wrestling, what 00:10:04.409 --> 00:10:06.889 is it? It's spectacle. It's weapons. It's drama. 00:10:07.070 --> 00:10:09.629 It's pyrotechnics. It is basically everything 00:10:09.629 --> 00:10:12.529 Seraphil Oakley was trying to do in 1930, just 00:10:12.529 --> 00:10:14.909 with a much bigger budget. That's a really great 00:10:14.909 --> 00:10:18.950 point. The chaotic, anything -goes style of the 00:10:18.950 --> 00:10:22.220 1930s. That's kind of what won in the end. That's 00:10:22.220 --> 00:10:24.159 what wrestling became all over the world. So 00:10:24.159 --> 00:10:26.399 maybe Oakley wasn't just some chaotic promoter. 00:10:26.399 --> 00:10:28.179 Maybe he was just, I don't know, 60 years ahead 00:10:28.179 --> 00:10:30.320 of his time. Or maybe he just needed an admiral 00:10:30.320 --> 00:10:31.960 to tell him when to take a five -minute break. 00:10:32.200 --> 00:10:35.500 That too. Structure is everything. Thanks for 00:10:35.500 --> 00:10:37.519 listening to this deep dive. We'll see you next 00:10:37.519 --> 00:10:37.799 time.