All Star Wrestling's logo
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Acronym | ASW |
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Founded | October 1970 (as Wrestling Enterprises of Birkenhead) c. 1984 (All Star Wrestling) |
Style |
Professional wrestling Sports entertainment |
Headquarters | Birkenhead, United Kingdom |
Founder(s) | Brian Dixon |
Owner(s) | Brian Dixon |
Website | BigTimeWrestlingUK.com |
All Star Wrestling is a British Professional wrestling promotion also known as All Star Promotions, Superslam Wrestling and Big Time Wrestling and originally known as Wrestling Enterprises (of Birkenhead), run by Brian Dixon and based in Liverpool, England. Dixon's promotion tours theatres, leisure centres, town halls and similar venues, many of them old venues for televised wrestling in the UK in the 1950-1980s, as well as holiday camps. It is the oldest active wrestling promotion in the UK, and furthermore the longest-running UK wrestling promotion ever - a record it has held since September 2013, when it eclipsed the 42 years and 11 months lifespan of Joint Promotions/Ring Wrestling Stars (March 1952– February 1995).
All Star contributed to the final two years of ITV's regular televised wrestling programme in the UK in 1987-1988 and some of their matches were included on VHS and DVD compilations and repeated as part of the World of Sport programming on The Fight Network, formerly The Wrestling Channel, until it stopped transmission in 2008. These matches are currently being repeated on the Men & Movies channel.
Brian Dixon, a wrestling referee and former head of the Jim Breaks Fan Club, established Wrestling Enterprises in October 1970 initially as a vehicle for his girlfriend (and later wife) British Ladies' Champion Mitzi Mueller, who was having difficulty getting bookings from Joint Promotions. One of the company's earliest claims to fame was rebranding Martin Ruane (formerly Luke McMasters in the WFGB in the late 1960s) as new character "Giant Haystacks", originally "Haystacks Calhoun" patterned after the US superheavyweight wrestler of the same name and similar image about whom Dixon had read in imported American wrestling magazines. Haystacks would go on to achieve household fame in the UK after he moved to Joint Promotions in 1975 as the tag team partner and later the archenemy of Big Daddy.