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Wrestling's grand slam: when Giant Haystacks and Big Daddy were kings

As a boy, Nick Ahad idolised the wrestlers he saw on Saturday TV. Now he has revisited the sport’s northern heartland in Glory, a state-of-the-nation play that captures the thrill of the ring

‘Easy! Easy! Easy!” My voice is lost in the cacophony as hundreds in Keighley’s Victoria Hall join the chant. It is the most exciting thing to happen in the West Yorkshire town in years: Big Daddy has come to meet Giant Haystacks in the wrestling ring. Six-year-old me knows it’s something special.

My family look a bit odd in this venue in Keighley in 1983, what with my dad being Bangladeshi and my mum being white. At school I’m browner than the white kids and whiter than the brown ones. But on this glorious day there is nothing different about us; we are part of the single chanting mass witnessing a battle more exciting than anything in Return of the Jedi (another highlight of 1983).

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from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2G83Io1
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