But watch YouTube clips of 64in-chested Big Daddy and 6ft 11in Giant Haystacks in the ring now and the phrase that leaps to mind is “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down”.
“They were the most popular wrestlers of all time,” says Brian Mitchell, co-writer of this homage to the days of ITV World Of Sport and the giants of the wrestling ring.
“But they couldn’t wrestle, because they were too big, old and unfit. A lot of people blame their popularity for being the thing which eventually killed wrestling on television.
“The problem was neither could pin a move or hold on each other, aside from the forearm smash. They couldn’t even do a headlock. They weren’t athletes, they were showmen.”
The play, which was co-written with Joseph Nixon, is as much about the wrestling industry as the two fighters.
“Grannies and kids watched wrestling on a Saturday afternoon,” says Mitchell.
“They used to get viewing figures of 13 million, sometimes as high as 18 million. At 4pm the shops would empty.
“Margaret Thatcher would quote Big Daddy in cabinet meetings.”
But it was the tragedy at the heart of the story which attracted the writing pair, who have previously penned plays about Eurovision and the original plucky British pair to cross the Atlantic by plane.
“It’s one of those great stories where the seeds of its own destruction were sown at the outset,” says Mitchell.
“It’s a story of tragic grandeur, with blokes in leotards.”
The play sees Ross Gurney-Randall and David Mounfield playing the two heavyweights, as well as all the other characters in the story, from Princess Margaret to Paul McCartney.
The main players in the tragedy are Greg Dyke, the LWT controller determined to take wrestling off his channel despite its massive viewing figures, and wrestling promoter Max Crabtree, the brother of Big Daddy, who allegedly creamed much of the money off the top and paid fighters extra to lose to his brother to ensure he was still number one.
As Mitchell admits, much of the bouts were about the big entrances, the theme music, the costumes and build up, rather than the fight itself, something which American wrestling took to an extreme with its soap-like storylines and larger-than-life musclebound characters.
“It was popular, British, homegrown rubbish,” he admits.
“But at least it was our rubbish. It eventually got replaced by something rubbish and American.
“It’s very difficult to have any nostalgia about US wrestling but it’s interesting that so many people feel strongly about UK wrestling. We seem to have tapped into a massive well of nostalgia.”
* Starts 10pm, tickets £7.50/£6, call 01273 917272
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