Luctari has hit the nail on the head. 'Guidelines' is perhaps the most appropriate word to use. Wrestlers have always done what they wanted in the ring to a degree: if they wanted to do technical then they did; if they wanted to scrap they did; if they wanted to lift the opponent from the canvas during the referee's count then they did... whatever they wanted.

Recently there have been three bouts with Mick McManus in them shown on the Wrestling Channel - against Tony St Clair, Catweazle and Johnny Saint - and in all three, McManus's opponent was breaking as many rules as Mick himself, if not more so (Catweazle (2) and Saint got public warnings).

Has anyone seen Lee Darren, who usually wrestles for Premier, modern-day purveyors of wrestling under Mountevans rules - or guidelines, as it might now have to be! Darren could well be the McManus for the Millennium. If that is so, then he must be an example of a wrestler who simply strays too far from the guidelines sometimes but sticks to them enough at others - like McManus, Breaks and Rocco were.

Exactly it was a _style_ not a governing board of control. Sadly you won't find many pro wrestlers on this forum that carry much weight unfortunately they don't exactly like the internet especially the old timers i'm an exception to the rule because i actually like to hear what fans have to say about British Wrestling especially as i've seen so many come and go and have been around a long time, but i certainly don't agree with what a lot of them say but hey we'd be a sad lot if we all thought alike.

Biges-I think that the Mountevans rules covered a _style_ of wrestling that I believe generally was followed broadly. They certainly were guidelines though, of course, they were broken many times [think of Mcmanus, Breaks, Rocco to name but three!] and that often gave bouts an edge that was great to watch.

Well quite. And when rules were seen to be broken, referees were seen to have the power to issue public warnings and/or disqualifications. As per the rules.

But as far as the historical existence of the Mountevans Rules, you can see some of it reproduced on the Wrestling Furnace website!

For the record, the actual _style_ was never called Mountevans _style_ - it was called "Modern Free_style_". The Committee sat as a one-off in 1947 and it was very much a PR exercise to restore public respect and credibility in Wrestling after the messy violent anarchy into which All-In descended over the course of the 1930s.

The Mountevans Comittee did create the _frame_WORK for the organisation of wrestling in Britain and eventually (with only a few local minor variations) most of Western Europe.
It did so via:

[li]the drawing up - and publication! - of a rulebook to which wrestlers were seen to adhere, or face harsh public reprimand/penalty if they didn't!
[li]the standardisation of weights and championships - giving independent credibility to single Official versions of regional, British, Empire, European and World (European Version) _title_s.
In the case of the last two, this extended towards undisputed versions across Europe, and in at least three weight divisions, worldwide Undisputed World Champions (in the case of Lightweight, maintained for around 20 years!)
In the case of British _title_s, only Heavyweight suffered from any severe schizms and the worst of this did not come until 2001