THE only Briton wrestling in the US big league tells Mike Chapple how he is paid to be hated and suffer non-stop pummelling fake.
BACK in 1988, when ITV's then head of sport Greg Dyke decided to pull the plug on World of Sport's wrestling slot, Saturday afternoons were never the same again.
Generations of British children had grown up eagerly anticipating those immortal words "Greetings grapple fans" growled by its late great presenter, Kent Walton.
It always meant a guaranteed hour's violence and mayhem before the football results when ludicrously exaggerated denizens of good and evil battled it out in the ring at grand old venues such as Wolverhampton Civic Hall.
The likes of Big Daddy, Giant Haystacks, Kendo Nagasaki, Mick McManus and Jackie Pallo made a special impression on the then Darren Matthews.
Born in 1968 in the village of Codsall Green, Staffordshire, his formative experience was of getting to grips with the grapple, resolving that one day too he would be up there.
Thirty years later in 1998, he had reached the threshhold of his dream after signing a lucrative contract with the US based giants of WWF, the World Wrestling Federation (which later became World Wrestling Entertainment after losing its unlikely bout with the World Wildlife Fund).
Darren became William Regal, the toffee-nosed Englishman and so called "goodwill ambassador" who was told by wrestling boss Vince McMahon: "You're going to go out and wave smile at people. You're going to tell them how to live their lives.
"You're going to tell the American people how to become more civilized.
And they are going to hate you for it." And they did. In their baying thousands upon thousands in megadromes at fights against such homegrown superstars as The Rock and Stone Cold Steve Austin.
