Even in 2026, Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks remain one of the biggest rivalries in the history of British professional wrestling.
Although the UK has had a number of landmark pro wrestling events grace the island, such as SummerSlam 1992, Clash at the Castle in Wales and the first AEW All In, nothing has captured the public in a way that Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks did. Their highs, lows and lasting legacy on the industry have been told in Steven Bell’s new book: Big Daddy vs. Giant Haystacks: A Superheavyweight Journey. Featuring an exclusive interview and caricature from the legendary Bret Hart, Bell documents the golden era of British wrestling, with the likes of Kendo Nagasaki and Mick McManus also playing a key part in the World of Sport era of the industry.
While Shirley Crabtree Jr. and Martin Ruane both had humble beginnings, they would go on to headline Wembley Arena in 1981 in a match that was witnessed by millions. Although the rivalry was a huge part of the 70s and 80s, Bell explained why now was the right time to release his next book:
“Just the fact that nothing had been done of its type previously, and I think there’s always a little bit of a ticking clock going on with these things, where eventually the people that you need to contribute aren’t going to be around forever, so these things do need to be done in a timely manner. I’d done my biography of Douglas Clark, which led up to the World War Two period. During my research for that, and sort of getting a real rounded picture, I had researched into beyond that period, and so that had given me a first look into, particularly Shirley Crabtree, and how interesting his initial run was in the 50s and 60s.
Then when I pivoted and did a second wrestling book, Dynamite and Davey, on the British Bulldogs. Obviously, that meant the research in the opposite end of Shirley’s career and Giant Haystacks, because both of them guys sort of tagged with and against the Bulldogs. So, by that point, after finishing that second book, I felt like I naturally got a good image of the two individuals, who they were behind the scenes, who they were as wrestlers, and I’d also become really fascinated with the sort of golden era of British wrestling, the World of Sport era, and I sort of got a few ideas going around my mind as to what project I could use those threads that I was so interested in, thought were really interesting stories individually, so I thought collectively I can bring them together and tell this sort of really unique story.”
As time has gone on, the legacy of Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks rivalry has sadly faded. Not referenced by any major companies in the modern era, newer fans of the spectacle rarely hear the impact the two heavyweights had on the industry. However, when it comes to those who lived through the golden age of British wrestling, these were two of the biggest stars in pop culture. Bell fondly remembered the overall impact wrestling had on culture during that time:
“Big Daddy, in particular, was a bona fide A-list celebrity for a period of time. There were very few people more famous than him in the UK in the late 70s and early 80s. They were two of the most recognisable people in pop culture, in celebrity culture, and on TV at that time, a truly of its time phenomenon. I think that’s why it deserved the effort to go into the book.”
Bell pointed to a recent EastEnders reference as evidence that the rivalry still resonates with the British public nearly 45 years after Wembley Arena.
Recalling his own experiences of meeting Big Daddy at 7 years old, Rampage author Lee Herbert has fond memories of seeing the legendary wrestler in action:
“I met Big Daddy a month before my eighth birthday. It was the summer of ’92, and while 80,000 other wrestling fans were gearing up for Bulldog vs. Hitman at Wembley Stadium, I was gearing up to get amongst the 200 fans stood in a marquee to watch Shirley Crabtree team up with his nephew Scott (who was working a Greg Valentine rip-off gimmick) against Count Von Zuppi and The Masked Marauder.I don’t remember much about it, and it happened by chance as it was on the same site where we holidayed every year in Wales. Chance, or perhaps fate. What I do remember is that despite Daddy having been off TV for four years by this point and despite me and half the audience being too young to remember him on TV, he managed to captivate the crowd. The charisma was off the charts, and I was pounding the floor and chanting “Easy! Easy!” like a crazed granny from 1981.There isn’t much I’ve kept from childhood; I’ve lost countless magazines and videos to house moves. But I’ve still got the photos I took that day and Crabtree’s autograph. Which tells you what a magical afternoon it was in Sunnysands Holiday Park.”
How Shirley Crabtree Jr. Became Big Daddy
To understand why the rivalry resonated so strongly with British audiences, Bell believes it’s important to understand the two men behind the characters. Born Shirley Crabtree Jr. in 1930, Big Daddy’s real name led to him being picked on from the outset. Growing up in the mining town of Halifax, Bell spoke about Crabtree’s father, who had the same name, believing that the name would toughen him up:
“Going back to the 1800s, Shirley was predominantly a boy’s name, and that changed going into the 1900s it’s sort of became more prominent as a girl’s name. Shirley Senior sort of stumbled across this position where his mum and dad probably didn’t think they were giving him a girl’s name when they called him Shirley, but by the time he was going through his formative years, he got heavily bullied for having a girl’s name. He believed that going through that had toughened him up. He’d been a part-time wrestler himself and a very successful rugby league player, very much of the Northern mining town tough guy mould. He believed that going through that had forged him into that, and he saw nothing wrong with his son going through the same tough upbringing, and hopefully coming out of it as tough and big and strong as he was.”
The Big Daddy persona saw Shirley Crabtree portray the hero who was beloved by his countrymen. With his signature singlet and top hat, Big Daddy was a light-hearted character that the whole family could enjoy and relate to. However, as Daddy reached the peak of his popularity past his prime, his act and moveset leaned more towards comedy than technical ability with moves such as the belly-butt [a stomach-based version of a headbutt] being among his signature moves. However, when training to be a pro wrestler, Bell remembered Daddy being prepared for a more technical style:
“He ended up being the true antithesis of what he was originally designed to be. He stumbled into Norman Morell’s gym. Norman Morell was based at Bradford. In the 1930s, he’d been a pro wrestler and an amateur wrestler. He went to the Olympics with amateur wrestling, and he devised the new technical rules to bring professional wrestling, British professional wrestling, into a new era in the 1950s. Those rules were parliamentary-approved, given the rubber stamp, and the whole idea was to make it a real technical sport. It was supposed to be for amateur wrestlers, but enable them to perform on a nightly basis without getting injuries, but effectively they would be performing almost the same match that they were performing if they were having a having a shoot, but they would obviously just be able to have the bells and whistles, make it entertaining, predominantly the guy who would win the shoot would win the worked match.
Norman Morell trained Shirley. He trained him in the amateur techniques first, gave him some amateur experience, and he was moulding him into a sort of technical heavyweight. Shirley was very proficient at that; he went on to be British and European champion. But a fascinating story happened. There’s differing views on the Bert Assirati incident, as it’s now, where Bert Assirati seemed to have seems to have chased him out of the business a little bit by threatening and constantly challenging him to a match in which everybody knew because of the reputation that Bert Assaratti had, he was effectively going to shoot on Shirley when they finally got to that match and almost take his title off him.
There’s different views on how much of that is myth, how much of that is legend, how much of it is just built into wrestling lore. He definitely did at least once confront Shirley at an event, how much of that played into the fact that Shirley sort of disappeared off the scene for the best part of a decade. Nobody’s really that sure, it seems.
So when he comes back in the early 70s, a far less in shape than he had been, far older, different character altogether, he seems to believe that he was just back into wrestling, really, because his brother was now one of the main promoters, could give him real access to bookings, and I think he was just looking to make a bit of a healthy living, really, not looking to make it back to the top of the business.
What happened almost organically, again, different takes, a lot of people say it happened organically. I think that the crowd reaction was very organic, but a lot of people I interviewed, Tony St. Clair, Mal Sanders, and asked them, and they firmly believe that Shirley becoming the Big Daddy character and making it as the top babyface in the business was probably what Max had in mind, because Max are always thinking so far ahead, so yeah, the big Daddy character, as it became particularly in the 80s, as he got older and bigger, that was the real opposite of what he was ever supposed to be when he first walked into that Norman Morell’s wrestling gym in 1950.”
Although Big Daddy was the star of the show, the biggest reason for his success was behind the scenes. Joint Promotions owner and Big Daddy’s brother Max Crabtree, was the one who thrust Shirley into the limelight. According to Bell, without his brother Max by his side, Big Daddy would have been nowhere near the star he became:
“A huge amount [of credit]. I always knew that Max had an interesting story. I’d stumbled across quite a lot of stories about Max. When you talk about Max Crabtree with people who were around at the time, their eyes light up a little bit. He has this sort of bit of a crafty, maybe like a Del Boy kind of reputation about him, like a lovable rogue kind of character, but it was only when I was truly researching for this book and talking to people at length about him, up to and including Bret [Hart], who waxed lyrical about Max Crabtree and his influence on him during his time here, particularly the storytelling aspects of professional wrestling, that he realized just what an influence he had that the business, as it was, in the late 70s and early 80s, when it was at its real pinnacle, was Max’s vision.
It was all Max’s vision. Kendo Nagasaki refers to the Big Daddy Giant Haystacks story, he calls it the Big Daddy masterpiece, it’s Max Crabtree’s Big Daddy masterpiece, it’s because it’s this huge crescendo, and the way that he held his nerve for so long, he was under a lot of pressure to to have that match earlier than he did, but he held off and held off, he knew what he had in this, and he knew that once he’d had that big blow off match, it would never be the same again, and it wasn’t. So keeping the nation in anticipation for that match was what made those years of huge business what it was.”
As is the case with every great hero story, there needs to be a great villain for the good guy to overcome. Big Daddy’s long-time enemy would of course be Giant Haystacks. Born Martin Ruane in 1946, the future Giant Haystacks tipped the scales at well over 400 pounds in his prime. While Big Daddy’s journey into wrestling was more natural given his brother’s involvement, Bell recalled Haystacks using wrestling to keep him away from a life of crime:
“He was very much low on confidence at school, and even after he’d left school. He got bullied badly at school because of his size, he travelled around a lot, so he didn’t really have an accent. So, all these things, obviously, led to him being bullied, and that led to him leaving school with a real lack of confidence, no grades to speak of, no real future. Battered around between cash-in-hand jobs. Fell in love and got married, and had three young boys by the time he was still in his early 20s with no real way of feeding these mouths, and looked like he was in for a life of poverty and probably criminality.
He did get arrested a couple of times for things that were born out of being desperate to feed those boys, and that’s when he went into being a doorman. Obviously, 6 foot 10, perfect to have as a nightclub doorman, and he was slowly slipping into the underbelly of Manchester, and that’s when one night he became friendly with a fellow doorman who was a professional wrestler. That guy said to him, ‘Boy, have I got a business for you big lad!’ So he took him to some events, took him to start his training, and that’s when Martin Ruane realised that it was more of a performance than a sport, and that, if anything, put him off even more, because he was still so shy.
The last thing he felt he was capable of doing was performing to potentially 1,000s of people in an arena or millions of people on TV. He walked away from it a couple of times, but came back every time because he knew that that was his only path to a good standard of living for his family, and eventually worked at it hard enough, managed to perfect his persona as Giant Haystacks, this big sort of feral caveman, brutal character, and became this huge attraction, had that real wow factor about his appearance and his act, and managed to get himself over, and yeah, the rest is history from there. It’s a real underdog story for how Martin Ruane made it to the top.”
The Showdown Inside Wembley Arena – One Of The UK’s Biggest Matches To This Day
Years of careful promotion and escalating tensions eventually led to the rivalry’s defining moment. The rivalry reached its apex at the aforementioned clash inside Wembley Arena, which saw Big Daddy reign supreme over his greatest rival. Although the match was under two minutes, that was all both men needed to whip the fans into a frenzy! Looking back on the historic bout, Bell noted that despite the short match, the fans got what they wanted:
“I think people knew what they were getting themselves into; they knew not to expect some kind of technical masterclass. It gave people exactly what they wanted. Again, that’s why the whole event is booked so well by Max. There’s a technical masterclass throughout the show apart from that. So he wasn’t worried about people feeling dissatisfied by the amount of in-ring action throughout the whole event. But in that big blow-off match, they absolutely needed to see Big Daddy win; they needed to see him win emphatically, and that is what they got.
So the other thing that I think they did well, because it had now been about two years since Big Daddy had looked vulnerable at all, he was almost exclusively a tag team wrestler, and the formula was that the younger, fitter guy would do 95% of the in-ring work. Big Daddy would come in for that other 5% clean house with a few belly butts and get the pin. The other opponents, Giant Haystacks in particular, who needed to stay looking strong, would sort of storm off in a huff, and that was the formula. But it had been a couple of years since he’d taken any offense whatsoever, and what I think they did do there, even though it’s less than two minutes long, for about half of that Giant Haystacks is on top, and I think they do well with that to make Big Daddy come back from behind that.”
Continuing, Bell spoke about how the finish was way ahead of its time, bringing the match to a climax in a short space of time:
“The best thing about the match, I think, is Giant Haystacks. He goes over the top rope like a cruiserweight; he flies over the top rope with a big backwards somersault. There’s limbs flying everywhere. You sometimes feel like you’ve accidentally pressed fast forward when you’re at the point where he flies over. How he manages to get that much momentum for a 6 foot 10, 45 stone man at that point, and it crashes to the outside, crashes through a table before crashing through a table was really a thing in professional wrestling, and the crowd erupts. Everybody focuses on the short length of time, and how sort of technically poor a lot of it looks, and of course it does, but it gave the crowd exactly what they wanted.”
Life After Wembley & WCW
Two almost certainties in professional wrestling are that no one stays on top forever, and the top stars don’t know when to call it a day. Wrestling has a history of being cyclical. When a star is on the rise, they will face an established star in what was almost a passing of the torch moment. UK TVs were set to be hit with the exciting American style in just a few years with the arrival of the WWF. Fans were about to experience wrestling unlike anything they had seen before.
Not short on talent in the UK, the likes of Dynamite Kid, British Bulldog and William Regal could have been placed in the main event scene. However, with Max refusing to relent from “The Big Daddy Formula”, Shirley remained on top when it was time to step away:
“I think that is where Max can be criticised for the Big Daddy formula, and probably the fact that it was his brother swayed him to keep that going far too long. He had a raft of talent there. You’ve got the Dynamite Kid, Davey Boy Smith, Fit Finlay, eventually William Regal. You’ve got all these unbelievably talented guys who were held back a little bit from the main event slot, certainly the main event money, because that slot was almost just taken up solidly by Big Daddy.
A lot of those guys had to leave. A lot of them went to Germany and Austria to wrestle in the tournaments. Obviously, Dynamite and Davey went over to Canada, and so you just ended up with this dearth of talent. The Big Daddy matches just became an old, tired act. It became almost like a tribute to itself, really, as he got bigger and older, and the attraction died away in the mid-80s. They started putting on less and less shows, the TV viewing figures dropped dramatically, and it just stopped being what it was.”
With Big Daddy being a pop culture star, there were plans to give him a new career in show business. Big Daddy’s Saturday Show was set to be the replacement for the popular kids’ show Tiswas, but this was dropped after the pilot was filmed. Although Big Daddy was a hero to millions of kids, Bell noted that it was not the same when the cameras were not rolling:
“The main one seems to be, and this sort of links to the other criticism of Shirley Crabtree, Big Daddy, and that’s that the whole kid-friendly gimmick was just a gimmick. It wasn’t who he was, and he had to carry that gimmick outside of wrestling to do these TV appearances. So when he got offered the job full-time, they thought they were giving it to Big Daddy, and that is who he was, but if it wasn’t what he felt comfortable with. He was okay going on and doing a 20-minute appearance, 20-minute performance, but I don’t think he felt confident to go and do that as a full-time job. You’re given this full hour where it’s his show, so I think that’s what it was. He was comfortable within the Big Daddy character in a wrestling scenario, but I don’t think he felt comfortable carrying that Big Daddy character outside of the world of wrestling full-time.”
Still portraying the villain away from the ring, Haystacks was not exactly one to make time for the fans when out in public. As noted in the book, and recounted by my father, when recognised by fans, Haystacks would regularly tell people to “f*ck off” instead of stopping to sign an autograph. According to Bell, Martin Ruane was cold to those that didn’t know him, but was much more friendly to his peers:
“Now that is interesting. I think it’s a bit of a mix. I think he was genuinely a bit of a grumpy guy, but so many people say this to me, once you got to know him, once you peeled back that grumpy layer, he was funny, do anything for you. But his initial reaction to almost anybody, any stranger, was a grumpy theme. Now that played in nicely to his character, so I don’t think it was desperate to tone that down. In fact, if anything, he probably thought I’ll just play into it, because it was probably good for his character, for people to be telling these stories. ‘Oh God, I bumped into giant haystacks. He’s just like he is on TV in real life. That kind of thing to protect his gimmick. Some of the best first-hand testimony I got from about Martin Ruane was Bret, actually.
He uses terms like grumpy and morose, but he always says that once he got to know him, he was loyal, friendly, helpful, and hilarious. Bret’s testimony is that when he first went there, it was probably a bit of homesickness kicking in as well, but it was instantly this grumpy personality with the other talent there, the other wrestlers, and they reacted badly to that, and there was this sort of poor opinion of him to start with. People didn’t want to work with him, they didn’t want to give him the time of day, and he probably hadn’t helped himself in that scenario. It led to a couple of close calls to physical confrontations, but slowly, as the tour went on, the ice thawed, they realised that it was a really good attraction, a really good worker, and he ended up becoming really good friends with everybody, and they were all really sorry to see him leave. I think that’s a nice sort of example of Martin Ruane, the person, and Giant Haystacks, the character of where one starts and the other one ends.”
After conquering the British Isles, Haystacks went on to briefly compete in WCW under the moniker of Loch Ness. Unfortunately, due to his deteriorating health, the former Haystacks was extremely limited in what he could do in the ring. According to Bell, the main reason for the debut was so that Hogan could have another monster to work with.
“So it was very much that they wanted to replicate the 1980s success that Vince had had with Hulk Hogan with the WWF. They thought it were their turn to do the Hulk Hogan versus random giant monster heel-type opponent, and they were running out of them. William Regal had signed there, he’d become friends with Giant Haystacks, and had worked with Giant Haystacks quite a lot, and I don’t think Kevin Sullivan was in the office there at the time. He was a fan, or he knew he knew of the success of Giant Haystacks from the 70s and 80s, and he knew that he was still active. So there was enough people there who definitely knew that there was this six-foot-10, 500-pound monster heel that they hadn’t yet put in front of Hulk Hogan, so that was the attraction.
It turns out that he actually wasn’t well. That was the start of his serious health troubles. He would die just three years later. He was huge, out of shape, unfit by that point. As I say, a lot of that, I think, could be put down to illness, as well as his sort of age and size. It was a bit of a disaster, really. Couldn’t turn down the offer, it was still his highest payday that he got, and couldn’t turn down the opportunity, but he wasn’t in the right physical shape to be taking that opportunity, really.”
Big Daddy And Giant Haystacks – The Lasting Legacy
With World of Sport no longer on UK TV and with no major promotion having access to the tape library, the legendary period of British wrestling is not talked about as much as it should be. While Hulk Hogan slamming Andre The Giant is seen in the opening montage of every WWE show, there is no platform to showcase just how big Big Daddy was in this time period.
SummerSlam 1992, which featured Bret Hart in a starring role, would later surpass the Daddy-Haystacks showdown in international profile, and the likes of Drew McIntyre and Will Ospreay have already left their mark on British wrestling with many years left in their own respective careers.
While Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks are gone, Bell is hoping that they won’t be forgotten:
“I don’t know about forgotten, but yes, getting towards that. I think it’s such, such a pop culture phenomenon in general, in terms of the 20 million viewers, World of Sport, I think there is enough lasting goodwill towards that, that I’ll keep the memories alive somewhat, but we are at the precipice of losing a lot of that. It’s going to be different for our generation onwards, with the advent of YouTube and virtually everything in the world ever being filmed and recorded somewhere, documented somewhere. I think the goodwill, as I say, is still getting referenced on EastEnders after all these years. There’s not much that can claim that credit where it’s still remembered and used in mainstream 50 years down the line. So everything dies eventually, I suppose, and it will, but it’s had a good run. It continues to have a good run in terms of certainly the British people’s fondness of it as a pop culture period of time.”
Whether remembered as wrestling icons or relics of a bygone television era, Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks remain two of the most significant figures British wrestling has ever produced. Bell’s book seeks to preserve that story for future generations of wrestling fans.
Big Daddy vs. Giant Haystacks: A Superheavyweight Journey is out now and can be purchased here.
