Orig Williams; Flamboyant Welsh wrestler who presented S4C's grapple show Reslo and was known as El Bandito on account of his bushy moustache
Hyfler/Rosner
November 23, 2009
Orig Williams was one of the most well-loved villains in
sport, a Welsh-speaking native of North Wales who rose to
television stardom as a wrestler under the unlikely
pseudonym of "El Bandito". His favourite saying was: "If you
don't like the heat, get out of the kitchen" and, in a
succession of sports, his objective was always to raise the
temperature to the maximum and to make his opponent wilt.
He was, fittingly, a larger-than-life, wholly uninhibited,
flamboyant extrovert with an innate sense of showmanship,
and he was an international wrestling promoter for nearly
half a century. Brought up the son of a quarryman in the
slate and hill farming village of Ysbyty Ifan, near Betws y
Coed, Williams took to fighting at a young age. His first
opponents were schoolboy evacuees from Liverpool. "They
could not speak any Welsh. We could not speak any English,"
the future El Bandito explained. "Fighting came naturally."
It was not always wrestling, though. When one of the village
men came home from the Royal Air Force with two pairs of
boxing gloves for his son, Wiliams remembered, "the
youngsters spent every Saturday afternoon outside the old
smithy, practising and participating in boxing matches. The
chapel elders had a thing or two to say on a Sunday when
lads arrived at chapel bruised and battered and nursing
black eyes." Despite his battling reputation, Williams was
able to go on from Ysbyty Ifan's village primary to the
local grammar school at Llanrwst.
When he left school his first ambition was not to be a boxer
or a wrestler but a footballer, and though he honed his
skills as a fighter while doing National Service in the RAF,
he went on to play football professionally for clubs
including Bangor City, Oldham Athletic, Shrewsbury Town and
Pwllheli. He had a reputation as the Vinnie Jones of his
day, and some believe he possibly still holds the record for
most red cards shown in a single season. A friend remembers:
"More often than not he was the first person in the bath -
sometimes during the first half. I've seen newspaper
cuttings from time to time with headlines like: 'Orig sent
off in fourth minute' and 'Williams fined and suspended for
28 days'."
When he became player/manager for Nantlle Vale in the Welsh
league the all-Welsh speaking team's notoriety reached
legendary proportions. In one match the Prestatyn
goalkeeper, Peter Roberts, walked off the pitch in the 26th
minute complaining about the dangerously rough play of the
Nantlle forwards. Williams told the local press: "We are a
hard team, and we play hard. They should not take part if
they don't like it."
He started as a wrestler travelling around fairgrounds,
where locals were offered �20 if they could go three rounds
with the booth's champion, and by the mid-1960s he was a
top-billing performer on the independent wrestling circuit.
His successes there quickly led to more extensive travels to
the Middle and Far East, the Indian sub-continent (where he
was proud to have wrestled with Pakistan's Bholu Brothers),
Africa, many countries in continental Europe, and to the
United States, where he picked up the soubriquet El Bandito
from what was taken as the Mexican look of his moustache.
The launch of the Welsh language Channel 4, S4C, in 1982
made Williams a television star and national hero. He became
presenter and kingpin of S4C's Reslo (wrestling) programme.
Wrestling had been shown regularly on ITV on Saturday
afternoons for many years, but Williams introduced cage
matches, chain matches, pole matches and, most
spectacularly, women wrestlers. None of this had been seen
on ITV.
The girls who graduated from the purple-painted basement
training facility or "garage" training facilities at his
house (big names included Tina Starr, Rusty Blair, Carla
Sanchez, Blackfoot Sioux and Bella Ogunlana) were reckoned
to fight every bit as tough and dirty as the men. Reslo also
covered some of the big matches in France and Germany in
which Williams was involved.
As a promoter Williams appropriated the title of "British
Wrestling Federation", as well as presenting shows under his
own name. As a fighter Williams cultivated the image of a
villain with a sadistic mean streak - the sort who would
deliver a sly kick to the ribs or other vulnerable areas of
the anatomy as his opponent was getting up from the canvas.
But in real life he was an ever-helpful mentor to his
juniors, training many of the younger men who made
successful careers through the shows he was promoting almost
until the day he died. Well-known names he mentored included
Barri Williams and Adrian Street A typical recent offering,
in Llanrwst in aid of local Welsh charity, was "Wales
against the World", in which three of his Welsh-speaking
stars grappled international opponents, with Williams
providing a crowdrousing commentary from the back of the
hall. Not too surprisingly, perhaps, the Welsh won.
Williams published his autobiography, Cario'r Ddraig: Stori
El Bandito (the title means Carrying the Dragon), at the
height of his fame in 1985. The cover showed him in fearsome
pose in the ring, brandishing an emblematic Welsh dragon.
Later S4C treated him to a This is Your Life-style programme
in which was reunited with former RAF colleagues and
sporting adversaries he had not seen for years. He was also
for many years in later life a regular and often outspoken
sports columnist for the North Wales Daily Post.
Williams is survived by his wife, Wendy, and by his
daughter, Tara Bethan, an actress and singer who was a
finalist in the BBC One musical talent show I'd Do Anything
last year.
Orig Williams, Welsh wrestler, was born on March 20, 1931.
He died after a suspected heart attack on November 12, 2009,
aged 78