• Look Back In History
• Pmessages
• Quiz
• Stump The Staff
• Top Fifty
• Close

Meet Adrian Street, the miner who forged a career in wrestling to become ‘the sadist in sequins’

Posted: May 5th 2018 By: Inews.co.uk

It’s no surprise that Adrian Street is a confident man. You need a certain self-belief to wear your peroxide blond hair in pigtails, slather your face in make-up and climb in to a wrestling ring in conservative 1970s Britain billed as Exotic Adrian Street, “the sadist in sequins”. It takes even
more courage to slap your opponent on the backside then plant a kiss on his astonished lips as he tries to punch you in the face. Street’s story – the tale of a boy from Wales who escaped life in a coal mine to become the campest, sparkliest glam rock wrestler in Britain – reads like a movie script.

Indeed a documentary and a feature film about his life are both in the works. “About bloody time,” he says when I ask him how he feels about being immortalised on the big screen. He’s less sure who should play him. “There’s very few people good looking enough,” he says. ‘Made to be seen’ In any case the 77-year-old, who recently moved back to Wales with his wife and erstwhile manager Miss Linda after 30 years in the US, thinks the film-makers will struggle to find anyone who can wrestle as well as he can. Some people achieve great things because of a parent’s love. For Street, the opposite
was true.

Born in the Welsh town of Brynmawr, he was six-months old when his father left to fight the Japanese. And when he was finally released from a prison of war camp, Street Snr made it clear he had no love for his son. “My father was going to be the hero of my life. But when he came home he didn’t like
me and I got to dislike him very much too,” he says sadly. Whenever Street misbehaved his father, who had returned to his job as a miner, threatened to pull him out of school and get him a job at the pit.

He made good on his promise when Street was 15. Father and son spent their days at the coal face at Beynon’s Colliery in Blaina. “I hated that,” says Street. “It’s dark down there and I was made to be seen”. Bold ambitions He dreamed of becoming a wrestler, but at 5 foot 7 he was unpromising material.

When, at the age of 16, he announced he was moving to London to make a career delivering chokeslams and piledrivers, his father told him he was wasting his time. This hostility lit a fire inside him. He began boxing under the name Kid Jonathan, but struggled because pugilism had strict rules.
Wrestling suited him better. All the Miners told Adrian he wasn’t big enough to be a Wrestler. 15 years after leaving the mine Adrian returns as The European wrestling Champion. He was good in the ring, but he knew he needed something to mark him out. Inspired by the flamboyant style of his hero,
wrestler Buddy Rogers, he dyed his hair blond, bought a powder blue jacket and matching trunks. “I had a 27-inch waist, a 48-inch chest and a great suntan.

I knew I looked fantastic and thought the audience would go ‘wow, what a great athlete’. Instead they shouted ‘Ooh, isn’t she cute.’” Glam god Street’s opponent joined in the abuse. Furious, he waited until the other man turned his back, ran across the ring and slapped his behind. When his outraged opponent span around, he kissed him full on the lips. The crowd howled in disbelief. Street realised he was onto something. “I’m a sucker for attention and I wanted more of that”. He started “pushing the envelope”. Lipstick joined the mascara and eyeshadow; the gowns became “more flashy, more pink”. Exotic Adrian Street was turning into a butterfly, albeit one who could toss an 18-stone man into the audience. Marc Bolan told an interviewer that Street was an inspiration for his glam rock style. “People have asked me if I invented glam rock,” says Street. “I tell them ‘no’, but we sure borrowed a lot from each other.” One way He has no time for those who suggest wrestling is a choreographed pantomime. “Every sport where there’s money involved is fixed,” he says. “Just because something is fixed doesn’t
mean it’s fake.” Injuries? He’s had a few. He was 36 when his Achilles tendon was ripped in half and a doctor told him he’d never wrestle again. In his 50s he dislocated his knee cap so badly it ended up in his thigh. Another doctor told him he was finished when he was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2001. He ignored them all. “I’ve only got one way of doing things and that’s my way.”