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Alan Sarjeant


Grimmas

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I think this guy has like 10 matches on tape, so if you like volume, he has no chance, but it would be a sin to not atleast look at this guy. Sarjeant may be the definite mindblowing brit technician for me, as his endless array of intricate techniques, freaky body contortion spots and great sense of timing and structure always made for highly entertaining TV matchups. He also could do in a fast paced heated match as the McManus bout proves. When it comes to delivering matwork, I don't think Sarjeant is much below your best shoot stylists or luchadores.

 

Recommended matches:

 

vs. Clay Thomson

vs. Robby Baron

vs. Eddie Capelli

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I watched a couple of Sarjeant bouts earlier and will give a proper write up later. The first was a tag bout with Steve Grey against Zoltan Bocsik & Sid Cooper which does nothing for him and then on the same disc there's the singles match with Clay Thompson which is fantastic.

 

Out of interest is there much more Thompson stuff on tape? I've seen his bout with Reg Trood which I also liked so he's 2 for 2 at the moment.

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There are five Thomson matches on tape and another two where he's doing a masked Exorcist gimmick. Jetlag uploaded one of his bouts against Majid Ackra. The others are after his comeback from a career threatening back injury and aren't so good.

 

Cheers, turns out that I've got a copy of this bout! I've got a whole bunch of unlabelled WOS discs that were recorded off TWC that I intend to go through properly in the next few days as watching and re-watching this and then Joshi is where I intend to start for this project (also found out that I've got a copy of Sarjeant vs Boscik too).

 

Anyway starting with Steve Grey & Alan Sarjeant vs Sid Cooper & Zoltan Boscik (think this is 8/13/77). It's a shame that of the seven matches on film that this is one of them. Sarjeant is a replacement for Johnny Saint here, and sadly this match does nothing for him. In fact he's the weakest of the four and it's more a showcase for Grey who at one point pulls out this fantastic double top wristlock reversal into a dropkick on both Cooper and Boscik. It was a decent match up until the first fall with some good double teaming behind the referee's back from the heel team, especially from Cooper who was someone that I've never really cared for in the past. The match went completely to pot after the first fall with Grey getting the equalizing pin in 27 seconds, then the heels were DQ'd in the third fall at just 37 seconds. It's actually pretty heated in the crowd at the end with an old lady trying to pull Boscik off Grey, someone sliding into the ring and grabbing referee Max Ward's leg and another member of the crowd throwing punches at the prone Cooper! One for the Sarjeant completists only, and I'm glad that I know it'll get much better for him from now on.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Alan Sarjeant vs Clay Thomson (06.06.73)

I'm not going to even attempt to call this as there was so much going on, but this was a fantastic, technical match between the two. Lots of chain wrestling, unique reversals and Sarjeant demonstrating his flexibility on a number of occasions. There is a wonderful escape and counter escape from a Japanese stranglehold, firstly by Sarjeant and then by Thomson who turns it into an armlock in his advantage, whilst there is an amazing sequence in the third round that sees Thomson have a Boston Crab on Sarjeant who escapes in a way that needs to be seen, going over on his face to turn it into a pin attempt. The finish comes as Sarjeant attempts to backflip his way out of a side headlock, something that he had done on two previous instances (it's to avoid any potential follow up) but he doesn't execute it properly with being so close to the ropes and takes a bad landing hurting his neck and the bout is stopped. The St John's Ambulance folk show up and Thomson helps carry Sarjeant to the back after refusing to accept the victory that could have been his by TKO (Jim Breaks wouldn't be happy!).

 

I found this a total joy to watch between two technical wizards, it's just a shame that we have so little footage of either of them.

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I enjoyed the Thompson match, but, as with a lot of WoS stuff, it's much too exhibition-y for me. The holds and counters are nice (very nice), but I rarely got the sense either was actually trying to win. The crab felt there just to exhibit Sarjeant's counter (not helped by Walton calling for it on commentary). I don't like playing "what if", but it would have been interesting to see what effect shoot-style groups getting big on TV here would've had on the style, as that seems to me the natural progression it never took.

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This guy is clearly a master technician, reversals, holds and escapes that are unlike anything I've seen from anyone else. Watching those three matches Jetlag recommended all in a row may have been a bad idea becuase they're so similar to eachother that I became less excited about Sarjeant after each one, not that they aren't great performances but they are sorta like the mat wrestling equivalent of spotfest.

I subsequently watched a match he had with Mick McManus which while not as techincally impressive was a different sort of thing and still really good, Sarjeant showed something a little different in it getting super aggressive looking for the submission after he lost the first fall.

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I do find it best to try and mix up the viewing with the WOS guys, as it can get a bit 'samey' if you watch too much of the same wrestler in one sitting or back to back. I've watched that McManus bout, and you do see the same Boston crab escape that I talked about in the Clay Thomson match, and that MJH wasn't keen on. Similarly, in the Keith Haward stuff that I've been watching, you have the exact same pinning sequence in his bouts with Cullen, Grey and Cortez despite there being about 18 months between them all.

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The problem is when a signature spot is sequence-based (and WoS, not dissimilarly to modern WWE, though in a different way, is often sequence-based) and most egregiously when it's a counter (Kidman got the flak for what many guys did, and what even more have done since). But if you watch any WWE match, be it week-to-week or eighteen-months-apart, you're going to see babyface x do the same shine, the same comeback... it's pretty terrible, really, but it's going to be there with so many guys.

 

As a postscript: suppleness is a great attribute to have as a babyface, but it's much better utilised during the heat as a way to make otherwise mundane holds look torturous. See Kikuchi, Toyota, even Jack Evans and Melina.

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Most guys were only on TV a couple of times a year so you tended to see a lot of their showcase signature stuff. In Sarjeant's case there's so few matches available that I'd gladly take more of the same.

 

In terms of being an exhibition or spotfest, it makes a big difference whether it's face vs face or heel vs face, and wrestled at the same weight or at catch weight. The weight class makes a difference too as the lighter weights tend to exhibit their skills more. Which as a Waltonism is otherwise known as "another pure wrestling contest for the grapple fans."

 

The heel vs face matches are easier to get into, but if you watch a whole bunch of those in a row you'd also get bored. The tapings for television would usually present the full range of match styles at any given venue, though there were some towns where the heel cheating was so over that it would happen in multiple matches.

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So, I watched the 6 Sarjeant matches that I could find, and, man, was this guy something? Surely the lack of more footage of him is one of the great if onlys in wrestling, as he would be a lock for my ballot if there were maybe 10 more matches of his showing the same sort of quality of what is available. The unbreakable bridge is such a great little tool he can pull out in his matches, and his general smoothness, movement and variety of holds made him quite captivating to watch. My favourite of the matches I watched was the Clive Myers one, as that had a lot of the high-end technical stuff best exhibited in the Thompson bout, but also seemed to be a bit more keenly contested. It's nice that we got a bit of a different look at him in the McManus match too, and I really liked the way he was firing up in that one.

 

I can't justify putting someone on my ballot based on so little footage unfortunately, but it's the great benefit of a project like this that we get to discover new and interesting workers.

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  • 1 year later...

No idea, but practically every WoS worker has routine stuff like that. Someone mentioned a while back about Veidor using the same finish in his bouts. It's not something that particularly bothers me, especially when you're jumping about watching a match from 1972 then '76 then '77 and a lot of guys were only on TV half a dozen times a year.

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I'm leaning against him. He's an absolute wizard but I just don't feel like I've seen enough for him to pass the confidence test. I'm going to keep watching more of him over the next week, so we'll see if I can wrap my head around him the rest of the way.

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The Sarjeant-Kidman comparison reminds me of this old "Is Johnny Saint the british RVD?" post from DVDVR. Every WoS guy has their reversals. And the point of the Kidman-problem is that wrestlers who would otherwise never try a powerbomb had this sudden urge to try one on him. A boston crab on the other hand is a pretty standard hold and was often used as a go-to finisher in WoS bouts by any worker. In some way the move is a way for Sarjeant to get his freak athlete gimmick over.

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A crab is something pretty common for people to go to in this era, that's true. The reason why I brought it up as I did was that it's a reversal and not a spot. It involves the other wrestler actively doing something instead of passively having something done to him, or something happening by chance or in passing. I've watched well over a hundred of these matches in the last six months and the crab takes me out of the match more than almost anything else I've seen in the midst of the really good stuff. It's not that I think it's actively bad or that much more egregious than anything else. It just happened to break the chain of engagement a couple of times in his matches in the same way the Kidman power bomb always does. I think the issue, like Childs mentioned, was that Walton points it out too much. Given the congeniality in the match, I actually half had the sense vs Clay Thomson that Clay was putting it on him almost as a kayfabe favor so he could let his pal show off to the crowd.

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I'm leaning against him. He's an absolute wizard but I just don't feel like I've seen enough for him to pass the confidence test. I'm going to keep watching more of him over the next week, so we'll see if I can wrap my head around him the rest of the way.

I love this post. As though there's a ton more Sargeant out there that you can watch :P

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Well "rest of the way" is another way of saying "rest of the matches."

 

I was trying to find the post where I wanted to find more context for some Satanico match in 84 by watching the matches that led up to it right when the lucha set came out. High comedy.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 7 years later...

I don't know if Sargeant quite made the impression on me that Rudge did in just a handful of matches but he was damn close. Britain really had some great wrestlers in the 70s of and 80s. When it comes to the escape artist types the main thing I'm looking for is that they work with their opponents to figure out how their styles can work best together. Instead of just plugging their opponents into their formula. In the matches I watched VS Myers, McManus, and Boscik, I felt like Sargeant had a different approach for all three and even when he repeated some sequences between the matches it didn't feel lazy or forced. Maybe I picked the cream of the crop of his seven (?) matches on tape, if so I'll be curious to watch the next four!

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