I know hes long gone along with many other big names of wrestlings heyday but whats peoples memories of this great man.

I use to watch him on TV on Saturday afternoons and my Mother hated him, she really thought it was all real.

In 1994 I saw him twice at Chelmsfords Chancellor Hall and he was worth the five pound entrance fee alone. Although he was very limited in moves, just the sheer size of him was a spectacle in itself.

Drew McDonald wrote a nice article on him on Drews old site and it was interesting to read so come on, whats your views and memories on one of the UKs best known grapplers ( or brawler if you like!) ever.

Saw him at Ryde Ice Arena on the Isle Of Wight in the early nineties, my first experience of live wrestling. He was on with London heavyweight Big John Prayter, but there was little pretence of his fate that night.

I was sat next to a thirty-something fella who showed me his autograph book, filled from following wrestling around the country. He had everyone; except Haystacks.
"Well, tonight's your chance", I said.
The autograph guy looked down at the Man Mountain Of European Wrestling as he lumbered to the ring like a detached glacier, dwarfing the ringside fans as he passed. The ring steps protested under his weight as he finally reached the ring, and he spent several minutes manouvering his gigantic body between the ropes before spending several more stalling in his corner as Big John cowered in the other.
"Yeah", said the autograph guy sarcastically. "Why don't I go and ask him now?"

When the bout finally began, it was brutal. But then Haystack's matches always were; how else would you attack a guy that size? In Big John's case, the answer was to throw everything. Use the bell, rip off the corner bags to get to the posts ("here comes the blood", said the autograph guy with relish), whack the big guy with chairs, do whatever it took; all to no avail, because when Haystacks finally hit the big elbow (which seen and heard in the flesh was like watching a house collapse on someone) he was out for the count. He was still out when the guys from the back came out to drag his bruised carcass back to the dressing room, well after Haystacks had manouvered himself back out of the ring and returned to the back. Prayter obviously recovered OK, though, as he was right as rain to return for the rumble at the end of the night.

As for Haystacks on television, I really can't remember too much because I was too young when he was on in the early eighties (I remember watching with my Dad, but none of the details) and I'd lost interest by 1986, when I was old enough to have remembered things. But I was greatly impressed by the footage of the Haystacks/Nagasaki _title_ bout at Fairfield Halls at the end of the Arena Peter Blake/Kendo documentary. Having heard that British wrestling in general wasn't as rough as the Americans (to me this meant WCW rather than WWF as we didn't have satellite), I saw instead a brutal, bloody scrap which, combined with Paul Yate's film direction and editing, with angelic music playing as the violence climaxed with Haystacks tearing Kendo's mask in half and Nagasaki legging it out of the ring, leaving a close-up of a bloodied Haystacks with an exhausted _expression_ perfectly summing up the battle he'd just survived, absolutely sensational.

To this day that match is one of my favourite filmed wrestling moments, and one which, like much of Nagasaki's career, still retains it's mythology.

I remember seeing him in Kettering at the Central Hall as a face!! He was Haystacks Calhoun at that time and turned up out of nowhere (well the dressing room I suppose but this is the 70s and kayfabe rules) to challenge Dangerous Danny Lynch. They eventually met and it was a bloodbath that made the front pages of the local paper!!

Giant Haystacks

The guy that to me is a wrestlijng god....My idol, the man i saw not once, not twice, and not 50 times but atleast 100 times.

We went to shows every week, saw my hero wrestle, watched him on TV, but to see him LIVE at the shows was awesome.

I am not going to go on about The Giant again and again but what i will do is let you read what i wrote about him on wrestlinguk.com

Here is the _link_
http://www.wrestlinguk.com/gianthaystacks.htm

Wasn't it him that was being interviewed by some smart alec on a regional TV station ( East Anglia Today or some such thing) who kept on about " But its all fixed isn't it?" To which Haysatcks got him in a bearhug and you could hear the ribs crack!

Keep the Faith, Dusty.

That was Scrubber Daly on BBC Look East, Dusty. After the bearhug he slammed the idiot onto the studio floor thus knocking the wind out of him.