When I was a boy the two big
famous wrestlers on television were Big Daddy (Shirley Crabtree) and Giant
Haystacks (Martin Ruane.) Here I am at Agecroft Cemetery in Pendlebury at the
latter’s headstone. It took over a year to find this legend. Months ago I’d
contacted the priest who’d conducted the funeral but he’d done so many burials
he couldn’t recall the cemetery. I knew Martin was a devout Roman Catholic who worshipped
at Our Lady Of Dolors Church, also where he’d lived so I concluded he’d be in
the Catholic Section of the nearest cemetery. He is - but it took nearly two
hours of walking up and down the graves to find him.
Martin was born in London to Irish parents. He
was big from the start: 14 lbs and 6 ounces (there was a seven foot ancestor.)
They family moved up to Salford in Manchester when he was three. By the time he
left school at 14 he was nearly 7 feet high. He laboured at timbre and tyre companies,
drove trucks and, due to his bulky size, tended doors as a nightclub bouncer. Someone
suggested wrestling and it all started when he was 20. By the mid-seventies he
was “Haystacks Calhoun” and he was on television by age 28. He formed a
tag-team with Big Daddy that propelled both to fame however they were soon
wrestling as individuals.
Being an un unsmiling scary-looking mountain of a
man (48 stone at his heaviest) he was a natural villain, facing waves of boos
and hisses but the punters knew it was part of the pantomime and he was
immensely popular. Being mammoth prevented him performing some basic wrestler’s
moves. Instead he’d often pick someone up, slam him on to the canvas and then flop
on top of him. He never moved quickly except to run at cornered opponent and
crush him. The viewers loved him; from the moment of his entree into the arena
he dominated the crowd.
The Queen, Frank Sinatra, Paul McCartney and
Margaret Thatcher were fans. Who wasn’t? Through the seventies and early eighties
16 million viewers would tune in to the wrestling on Saturday afternoons. If
Martin wasn’t on the bill the viewing figures were not as high. The unsmiling
nearly-silent showman liked the comic effect of being pitted against a tiny
man. He’d often get himself disqualified on purpose to create uproar across the
arena.
Though he tore the mask off fellow wrestlers he
never tore off his own in public and few people knew him. You never saw him
interviewed on Parkinson or Pebble Mill of local television
networks. He’d married his childhood sweetheart Rita at 17 and they had three
sons. He was mild, sensitive and philosophical. Despite being a pacifist and a devoutly
religious Roman Catholic (refusing to work on Sundays) he said wrestling was
the only way he could get out all his pent-up anger without being
arrested." He was content with his own company once saying, "I like
to drive wherever I can. The car is my thinking place - I work it all out
there, away from the wife and children. I'm a total loner. I travel alone, I
wrestle alone. I look after myself, I don't need friends.” He spent endless
hours alone traveling to cheap bed & breakfasts all over the country.
Over the years this quiet giant wrestled all over
the world but when wrestling was taken off primetime television in 1988 (too
downmarket for advertisers) the gaggle of wrestling stars was as out of fashion
as much as it was aggrieved. Back home in Manchester Martin tried debt
collecting and selling cars. After a knee operation he re-emerged as the “Loch
Ness Monster” in America. There was a deal with US wrestler Hulk Hogan in the
offing but Martin’s health was on the ropes - he contracted lymphoma cancer.
The deal with Hogan was never fulfilled as treatment was required. It didn’t
work and within two years the giant lost his mop of hair and his weight
plummeted to about 20 stones. He died at his home in Prestwich one Sunday aged
just 52.
As
Martin’s church and home were with a five minute drive of the cemetery I went
to have a look at them. I noticed lots of Jewish folk on the streets in
Prestwich – nearly every man wore a skull cap. As I walked down the dead end road
to Martin’s house I passed a couple of people mowing their lawns and even they
were wearing them. I couldn’t take a decent photograph of the house as the
owners were evident. The house sat in a nice quiet area in a nice quiet street.
This was where the life of a nice quiet man ended.
Watch Stacks body-splash this man (he
has to be carried back to the dressing room) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcpHhmQ2M-M
I love this crumbling clock tower…
Martin worshipped here at the Our
Lady Of Dolours Roman Catholic Church…
Martin died at his home down here…
Bye Martin...you the BRILL!
Here's an article
printed in Northern Life magazine 2021...
It’s 40 years since Lancashire’s Martin Ruane,
forever known as Giant Haystacks, clashed with Big Daddy at Wembley. Both men
have passed but while a lot is known about Big Daddy, much less has been
discovered about the Giant. Mark Slattery meets his son Stephen Ruane, and
finds out what the world’s biggest wrestler was like.
Even today, 40 years after their solo
head-to-head bout on ITV World of Sport in front of an audience of 16 million
people, everybody knows the names of Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks. You could
see why they – quite literally – stood out. Daddy weighed some 24 stones and
stood 6’3”. Haystacks, at one point, was almost 50 stones and stood 6’11”.
Daddy’s life was well-known and tabloid
tittle-tattle. He appeared on This is Your Life, almost had his own TV show,
was often on kids’ TV programme Tiswas, and was as much in demand outside the
ring as in it. His brother Max Crabtree was the dominant promoter so Shirley
–Daddy’s real name – always had an advantage. Far less is known about Giant
Haystacks, who lived in Salford from the age of three, who was often referred
to as Luke McMasters, a misnomer because his real name was Martin Ruane.
In the ring, he was clad in a colossal fur jacket
worn atop farm-or prison-issue scrubs and sporting a ragged beard. It was not
unusual for him to grab the microphone in a rage and bellow angrily, “bring me
men, not boys!” Haystacks was disqualified as often for his bad behaviour as he
won with his terrifying splash or back-elbow which would incapacitate any
opponent unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end.
The real Martin Ruane, however, could not have
been more different. “I remember all the screaming and booing when Dad was
wrestling. It never fazed him. He loved being the bad guy. My mum and my
brothers sat in the audience and cheered him, we were the only ones that did!
He’d always know where we were and look over to see us.”
That’s Ruane’s second son of three, Stephen
Ruane, now a senior manager for construction giant, BAM. Stephen specialises in
sorting out the teething problems large buildings have – some of the biggest and
most impressive in the UK. He’s worked on buildings like Manchester’s new
commercial icon Spinningfields. His older brother Martin and younger brother
Noel were often with him when his dad wrestled.
“Dad drove thousands of miles and often took us
with him. “He was nothing like his ring persona. He doted on us. He refused to
work on Sundays because he always went to Church. He was a big family man. He
didn’t go to pubs. He just wanted to be home with us all the time. He loved
nothing more than telling stories about his travels and watching old western
movies. His favourite was The Good, The
Bad and The Ugly. He loved all those Clint Eastwood movies. Sometimes he’d
whistle that theme walking into the ring. “He never once raised his voice or a
hand. That all came from mum[Rita]; she could be quite fiery! ”
Although his fierce persona was for show, and
wrestling involved as much theatre as it did genuine physical athleticism, (“We
had a gym in our basement and dad used this for lifting weights; the machine he
used was bolted to the wall but it did not take him long to pull it off!”)
there’s no doubt it was a tough business.
“Some fights got very heavy. A wrestler called
Andre the Giant was being too rough with dad in one fight and taking liberties.
Dad would never deliberately hurt people more than the fight required, but that
day he injured Andre so that he had to take timeout to recover afterwards. Dad
had real injuries too: headcuts, broken fingers, broken ribs. But he was
unbelievably strong. At the flick of a switch, he could lift a car.”
All three of Martin Ruane’s sons work in
construction, a job which was one of many occupations their father tried before
he discovered wrestling.
“Noel founded his own construction company and
now works in London a lot, building luxury apartments. Martin works with him. I
trained as a joiner and worked with him too for a while, but like dad, I prefer
being nearer to my family so I found a job that allows me to do that.
“My dad worked on construction sites with my granddad
who did groundworks. He drove lorries and was a doorman, but it was quite a
notorious time in Manchester then. ”
Stephen, aged 53 now lives in Rochdale with his
wife Ashleigh and their grown-up family. His own construction work has involved
creating some of Lancashire’s most impressive new buildings such as the new Ivy
restaurant, and Runcorn’s latest industrial premises for chemical giant Inovyn,
among others. He remembers one of their father’s few luxuries was a nice car.
“Dad turned up to school one day and picked us up
driving a brand-new Cherokee Jeep. It was massive. It was so big he couldn’t
park it in our road, let alone on the driveway! He had to park it around the
corner. There was a bit of jealousy. People where we lived didn’t have new cars
in those days.
“He had to drive thousands of miles to wrestle.
When I was 17, I’d drive him to bouts myself. I had my first experience driving
on a motorway finding the civic hall in Wolverhampton.”
Having a father so well-known could have been
difficult for young lads. Did they inherit their dad’s stature?
“Only to an extent. Mum was five-foot-tall, so
she evened it out, and while all of us are big men, we don’t have dad’s huge
size. I’m 19 stone and six-foot-two; my brothers are similar. Noel was into weight
lifting and all three of us boxed. Dad taught us a few movestoo – he used to
box but couldn’t find many opponents. It looks like his genes simply skipped a
generation because my daughter is six foot one, and Noel’s son is six-four.”
Ruane took his young family off on road trips
during the summers.
“We’d stop off and eat and go to places like
Blackpool Tower, it was a great atmosphere.”
Martin Ruane’s fame in the wrestling ring was
worldwide; he’d once wrestled in front of 100,000 people in India. Zimbabwe
made him an honourary citizen. It brought him some alternative career
opportunities. He ran his own debt collection business, based mainly on the
principle that nobody wanted the publicity of Giant Haystacks turning up on
their doorstep demanding money. There was a play, Big Daddy v Giant Haystacks,
by Brian Mitchell and Joseph Nixon which toured British theatres. Ruane even
sang three singles, including It’s OK for Santa, featuring a children’s chorus.
The best sideline, however, was acting.
“Paul McCartney cast my Dad as a villain in the
film Give My Regards to Broadway, and
they became lifelong friends. When he was filming, he’d spend a few weeks at a
time with Paul at Elstree. This was before Linda passed away. They were both
very down to earth and just hit it off. Paul had a guitar specially made for my
Dad. After Dad died, Paul sent flowers to mum for years.”
“He’d been asked to tour America which would have
been very popular with their audiences but he was diagnosed with lymphoma. It
was a massive shock. My dad died in November, 1998. My daughter was born in
February that year. She was so tiny, he used to put her in his pocket, and she
used to fall asleep on his chest.
“It was devastating when he died. We were all
very, very close. Dad was my hero – our hero. He was very caring, very loving,
honest and hard working. If there’s one thing we inherited from him, it’s his
patience.
“They came from all over the world for dad’s
funeral. It shows the respect they had for one another. The same priest who
married my parents was there too. ”
Subsequently, Stephen has met Big Daddy’s
daughter, Jane Wade, “Her dad had passed away the year before, and we met Jane
at one of the annual reunions. Dad went to a few informal gatherings before
they became official. She was very nice and we got on well. I met Big Daddy a
couple of times at the venues and he was such a nice man out of the ring. I had
no idea, when they fought at Wembley in 1981, that Dad was going to lose. He
didn’t tell us.” Stephen says that the man known to millions as the wrestling
‘heel’, Giant Haystacks, would have been as proud of his family now as he was
then."
“Noel has become a minister at a church in
Todmorden. Martin goes to St Sebastian’s. My family goes to St Joseph’s. Mum
was very religious too. All the kids, eventually, have realised who their
granddad was, and have really taken an interest. Noel’s youngest even wants to
be a wrestler, and my daughter, who is at University now, is really proud. She
says when people find out who her grandad was it sets them buzzing!”