Farmer's Boy


The Greg Valentine I remember from 70s NWA in Georgia and Florida was a moon-faced redneck with the personality of a king cobra and the body of a life-size Stretch Armstrong.  He was dubbed "The Hammer" for good reason--blunt, dangerous, blue-collar tough.

But there's another "Greg Valentine," a blond boyish cutie (the British do churn them out sometimes, don't they?), identified as "the farmer's boy from Millbank, West Yorkshire," and he weighed in at 206 pounds for these pictures.  He was 23 at the height of his popularity, in 1988.  That's all I know about the guy.  He had a naive aw-shucks air about him, but he knew how to carry a fight, too.  Good looking kid.  A meatier Ben McKenzie type.  The tellumyort channel on YouTube carries a nice assortment of his matches, of varying photographic quality.  I'd be happy to hear from any visitors to this blog with more information on this guy--height, other wrestling names, et cetera.


Last month when I was listing the wrestling angles I like, I left out this one:  the strapping country kid who goes to the big city, naively intending to beat up some bullying slickers and unmask some mean back-alley characters who deserve to get their asses kicked, at which he is unexpectedly successful, to the delight of everybody but the villains.  I figure the fantasy suggests a measure of metropolitan guilt, or self-loathing anxiety at least, and it probably harks back to Jean-Jacques Rousseau or somebody else who believed in the "noble savage" and in the principle that big, thick, rude boys who grow up in nature, away from too much smog and TV, pack more and better cum than the rest of us and, in a pinch, can whip any city boy with the nerve to step in the ring with them.  It may not be true--I know for a fact that the country has at least as many self-absorbed wusses as the big city, apologies to Sarah Palin's "real" Americans out there--but it is a nice enough fantasy--and the idea of a tall drink of water from the sticks coming to town to drag some nose-in-the-air metrosexuals out behind the woodshed is a real tickler, as far as I'm concerned.  The only thing that could make this story sweeter for me is if the kid finds a Horatio Alger type mentor, a big, strong hairy daddy figure who pushes the handsome hayseed up to the pinnacle of success.

Addendum:  Here is a nice place to start looking.

Comments

  1. In my fantasies, the corn-fed farm boy is always defeated by the vicious, more experienced "city" heel. It's his naive belief in sportsmanship and playing by the rules that causes his downfall. But even though he always takes a licking, his "can do" attitude makes him keep coming back to the ring.

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  2. Kid Leopard (aka Johnny DiCarlo)September 19, 2010 at 2:33 AM

    This Greg Valentine is actually Steve Crabtree, son of Max Crabtree the British promoter, nephew of Brian Crabtree the Ring Announcer and Shirley Crabtree aka Big Daddy. His younger bother Scott was even more attractive and had a very brief ring career before opening a gay bay on Ibiza. My former tag partner Bryan Walsh had a long series of matches with "Greg", usually tag team action with Bryan teaming with Rasputin and "Greg" teaming with his Uncle Shirley. Guess which team went over 99% of the time...

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  3. really cute kid, where are his matches on that youtube page you linked? over 600 videos to look through, haha, but thanks for sharing!

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