Norman Morrell

Norman Morrell was a very skilful wrestler who took up the sport as a 16-year-old and went on to win the British featherweight freestyle title four years in succession, 1933-36. Morrell also won several national Cumberland and Westmorland titles, and was a fine exponent of the Greco-Roman style. He competed in the 1935 European Freestyle Championships at Bruxelles, and at the Berlin Olympics the following year, contesting both the freestyle and Greco-Roman events. Morrell turned professional after the 1936 Games, and in the 1940s became a promoter and was to be one of the most influential men in the sport.

In his brief time as a professional before the War, Morrell got to dislike a lot about the professional game as it had become more theatre than sport, and he decided he wanted to change the image of professional wrestling. One of the first things he did was to help re-write the rules of the British version of the sport. Some people expressed public dissent at the way Morrell was trying to change the sport but, after getting Lord Mountevans, and other influential people, on his side, he published a new set of wrestling rules, which became known as the Admiral-Lord Mountevans Rules, and professional wrestling in Britain was to change.