Steve Rickard
Sydney Mervin "Merv" Batt , best known by his ring name Steve Rickard, was a New Zealand professional wrestler, trainer and promoter. As a wrestler, he traveled throughout the world during the 1960s and 1970s, often visiting countries where professional wrestling was unknown such as southeast Asia, and was one of the top competitors to come from New Zealand during that era. Rickard was a frequent opponent for many foreign wrestlers travelling overseas including NWA World Heavyweight Champions such as Jack Brisco, Dory Funk Jr., Harley Race and "The Nature Boy" Ric Flair. He also had high-profile matches with Karl Gotch, Killer Kowalski, The Destroyer, André the Giant, Abe Jacobs and King Kong as well.
He was a former NWA Australasian Heavyweight Champion, a 3-time NWA New Zealand Heavyweight Champion, and a record 8-time NWA British Empire/Commonwealth Champion. He and Mark Lewin were also the first NWA Australasian Tag Team Champions in the early 1980s.
Rickard is considered one of the most influential figures in New Zealand professional wrestling in the latter half of the 20th century. He took over the Dominion Wrestling Union after the death of founder Walter Miller in 1959 and ran it for two years. In 1962, he established All Star Pro Wrestling, also known as NWA New Zealand internationally, which eventually succeeded the DWU and remained the country's single major promotion for the next 30 years. He and Australian promoter Jim Barnett were responsible for bringing foreign wrestlers, especially from Canada and the United States, back to the Pacific region by the late 1960s. He was also the creator of On the Mat, one of the country's longest running sports programmes from 1975 to 1984, and its short-lived spin-off The Main Event in 1990.
Rickard was also a successful hotelier and businessman before and after his wrestling career, most notably, establishing one of the first gyms in Wellington and running the Hutt Park Hotel for 15 years. After his in-ring retirement in 1989, he remained involved in the wrestling industry. He served as President of the NWA during the early to mid-1990s first shared between himself, Howard Brody, Dennis Coralluzzo and Jim Crockett Jr. from 1993 to 1995, and alone from 1995 to 1996. He was also a one-time a director of the Cauliflower Alley Club and honoured by the organization in 1997.
Early life and amateur career
Steve Rickard, born Sydney Mervin "Merv" Batt, grew up in Napier, New Zealand. He joined an amateur wrestling club at age 14, and left school that same year to work three jobs to help support his mother, younger brother Eddy and sister Val. As a young man, he joined the New Zealand Police force in Napier and later transferred to Wellington where he worked as a police detective with the Criminal Investigation Branch. He eventually left the police force and bought the Hutt Park Hotel which he owned for the next 15 years.Rickard started competing as an amateur wrestler in Napier during the 1940s, wrestling in the national championships New Zealand wide, and later began training wrestlers himself. According to Rickard, he "used to train the wrestlers and get some place or another where you could put a mat down" before building his own facility though "the conditions generally were not very good at all". Rickard continued his training in Wellington and eventually opened one of the city's first gyms on Cuba Street.
Professional career
Early career as a world journeyman
Rickard was wrestling on the amateur circuit with Ricky Walsh during this time and it was he who convinced Rickard to begin wrestling professionally. He began wrestling for local promoters in Wellington including shows for wrestler Al Hobman. In 1963, Rickard won his first major title when he defeated Hobman for the NWA New Zealand Heavyweight Championship. He briefly lost it to Peter Maivia in Auckland on 3 August 1964, but regained it in Wellington three days later. Rickard re-lost the title to Hobman later that year. On the advice of Ricky Wallace, he later began travelling overseas. His first international tour was to Australia and then shortly afterwards went on to New Caledonia, Tonga, Samoa, Fiji, and Hawaii. He also wrestled throughout Canada and the United States early in his career.During the next two decades, Rickard's professional wrestling career would take him to countries throughout the world and many were where in places where professional wrestling had never been promoted before; he would make numerous trips to Australia and Singapore, and wrestle in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, India and most of the major Pacific Islands including New Hebrides, Western Samoa, American Samoa, Tahiti and Hawaii. He eventually became one of the top wrestlers to compete internationally during the 1960s and 70s and often faced many prominent stars of the era. He was the opponent of many NWA World Heavyweight Champions in bouts outside North America, such as Jack Brisco and Dory Funk Jr., and was also involved in high-profile matches with The Destroyer, André the Giant, Abe Jacobs and King Kong, the latter billed as "the uncrowned Heavyweight Champion of the World". His bouts in Australia against Killer Kowalski were called "real blood baths". He also wrestled Karl Gotch while touring Canada in 1965 and publicly praised his scientific abilities afterwards as "a true wrestler with all the science that we are led to believe the greats of earlier generations possessed – men like Jim Londos, Dick Shikat, Stan Zbyszko and others".
Singapore and the Jakarta airport riot
In July 1969, he accompanied the Japanese Wrestling Association on its tour of Southeast Asia. He teamed with Kurt von Stroheim, a tag team champion in the United States and Australia with his brother Karl, and lost to Giant Baba & Antonio Inoki in both their encounters in Singapore and Hong Kong. On the second day of the tour, on 15 July, he and von Stroheim wrestled Giant Baba & Michiaki Yoshimura at Victoria City's South China Stadium in front of 5,000 fans. Four months later in Tokyo, approximately 8,500 were in attendance when Rickard fought to a double-countout with Kantaro Hoshino at the Sumo Hall.That same year, while wrestling out of Singapore, Rickard was visiting the Indonesian capital of Jakarta with several other wrestlers. While arriving at an airport, he and two other wrestlers, King Kong and Mr. X, started a brawl with Shintaro Fuji, Jack Claybourne, and Charlie Londos. The local populace was unfamiliar with professional wrestling at the time and when Jack Claybourne, a French-speaking African from Martinique, was seen being attacked by masked wrestler Mr. X it was presumed to be a racially motivated assault. As the country was then under control of the military, truckloads of soldiers were called in and soon arrived the airport. All six wrestlers fled to the runway where Rickard flagged down a small plane getting ready to take off. Boarding the plane, the pilot refused to take off until the soldiers began firing and one of the bullets went through the plane's fuselage. Flying back to Singapore, a friend gave Mr. X a newspaper cutting with a picture of the airport brawl. The headline read "Steve Rickard and Ku Klux Klan gangsters from Australia in racial attack at airport". Rickard and the other wrestlers were allowed to reenter the country to appear for their match after local promoter Ranjid Singh offered a "sweetener" during a meeting with military leaders.
Rickard was involved in other incidents during his international travels. He was riding a train in India when it was bombed in a terrorist attack. He was also once stranded in Greece when the government closed down the country's airports during trouble with Turkey.
Touring India as Young Kong
Rickard later became a close friend of King Kong and who later asked him to take his place in a tour of India in early 1970. Kong also asked Rickard to use his name, wrestling as his kayfabe "son" Young Kong, which was considered a great honour at the time given Kong's legendary reputation throughout Asia at the time and Rickard's bouts in India drew thousands of people. At one point, at a show in Zijayawada, he was the only non-Indian wrestler booked for the event and many of the local Indian wrestlers were favored by the crowd. Rickard was scheduled to face Tiger Sucha Singh, a top star in the area at the time, and defeated him after 50 minutes. Fans charged the ring almost immediately after the bout, but instead of reacting violently, they "hoisted on their shoulders and carried from the ring". Returning to Singapore after the tour, Rickard visited King Kong in hospital two days before his death on 16 May 1970. The next day at his funeral, he served as King Kong's pallbearer along with five other wrestlers.That same year, Rickard was profiled by Fight Times Magazine and which claimed that he was "rapidly becoming known as the greatest globetrotter in wrestling". At the time of the article, he was on a tour in Australia and was to travel to Japan and then return to New Zealand via the United States and Hawaii. Rickard had wrestled in the US earlier in his career and had a brief stint in the Carolinas where he teamed with fellow New Zealander Abe Jacobs before returning to Singapore choosing to honour a prior commitment with local promoters there by opening for them in their new season. While wrestling for Frank Tunney and Maple Leaf Wrestling, he faced Giant Jean Ferre in front of 14,000 people at the Maple Leaf Gardens on 14 November 1971.
All Star Pro Wrestling
When not competing internationally, he also wrestled in his native New Zealand, where he became a mainstay for the country's main promotion, the Dominion Wrestling Union, for longtime promoter Walter Miller. After Miller's death in 1959, Rickard ran the DWU before forming his own promotion, All Star Pro Wrestling, three years later. Although he would only run cards on and off during the next few years, Rickard's organisation would eventually succeed the DWU as the country's single major wrestling promotion for the next 30 years.Walter's death caused a decline in wrestling, not only in New Zealand, but for the entire Australasian region as appearances from foreign wrestlers declined to only a few each year. Rickard and John da Silva, who ran the rival Central Wrestling Alliance, sought to develop their own stars during early to mid-1960s such as Al Hobman, Tony Garea, Peter Maivia, and The Sheepherders. He and fellow wrestler Joe Komone also discovered future Australian heavyweight champion Earl Black and who spent his rookie year for Rickard in Wellington before going to work for Australian promoters Hal Morgan and Jim Barnett in Sydney.
Eventually, he and Jim Barnett of World Championship Wrestling in Australia were able to work together to bring back foreign wrestlers to the Pacific within a few years. By the late 1960s, New Zealand was being regularly visited by Australian wrestlers Ron Miller and Larry O'Day of Barnett's World Championship Wrestling, Robert Bruce from Scotland, Canadians Gordon Nelson and George Gordienko, and French wrestler André the Giant. In 1972, he helped book one of the biggest tours to date when US wrestlers Big Bad John, Bulldog Brower, Les Wolff, King Curtis Iaukea, Spiros Arion, Mark Lewin, Thunderbolt Patterson, Sweet Daddy Siki, Tarzan Tyler, Dewey Robertson and Haystacks Calhoun wrestled throughout the country. The American wrestlers proved very popular with the public and a few, such as Calhoun and his wife, were featured in the national media.
In 1972, Rickard's partnership with Jim Barnett ended when Barnett sold his share of Big Time Wrestling and went back to the United States. By this time, Rickard had decided to promote All Star Pro-Wrestling full-time in New Zealand as live events were proving extremely popular. His shows sold out the Wellington Winter Show Buildings ten weeks in a row and often had to turn away hundreds of spectators. On one occasion, Rickard had to rescue his wife from angry fans who, when told the show had sold out, began rocking the small ticket booth.
Many wrestlers from throughout the world, especially from Canada and the United States, would come to wrestle for Rickard's All Star Pro-Wrestling for the next decade. Not only were these some of the top wrestlers of the NWA at the time but younger wrestlers as well. Rick Martel made one of his first international tours for Rickard in 1974 and later became a major star for his promotion.