ASTUTELY, the makers of the new WOS Wrestling have included the initials of World of Sport into the programme’s title.

Presumably, this is to appeal to the inbuilt nostalgia for yesteryear when millions would make sure they were in front of the telly at 4pm on Saturdays for “the wrestling”.

That was certainly the reasoning for the release of the film, Walk Like A Panther, earlier this year. The comedy revolved around a bunch of professional wrestlers from the 1980s who decided to make a comeback to help prevent their local pub from closing.

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In the new television incarnation of wrestling, gone are the beer-bellied, hairy blokes of the past, moonlighting from their day jobs as plumbers and electricians.

This time round its honed young athletes dishing out the punishment with plenty of aerobatics.

There was something endearingly rubbish about the original World of Sport wrestling, so it would be a pity if the slickness of the new shows does away with the traditional and typically English amateurishness completely.

The bouts of the past weren’t exactly fast paced and 20 minutes could be taken up by a wrestler applying, or trying to get out of, a Half Nelson.

The venues, too, were decidedly third rate, alternating between civic halls and leisure centres that had seen better days.

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Contrast this with the new look shows, held in arenas with high-tech light shows and dazzling camera work.

American wrestling stars go in for attention-grabbing ring names, which are a far cry from the mundane Bob Kirkwoods, Keith Haywards and Barry Douglas’s who used to squeeze into sensible trunks for British bouts.

Whereas American wrestlers were articulate and well-versed in trash talk, their English counterparts were embarrassingly stilted in their delivery, clumsily reading out their lines from an offscreen cue card and, sometimes, adding an unconvincing “Grrrr” at the end for good measure.

In America, there’s the opportunity for wrestlers to progress into the world of Hollywood movies. Just look at the careers of John Cena and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Even Oscar-winning legend Kirk Douglas started out in the wrestling ring.

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By comparison, we had Big Daddy doing a television advert for Batchelors mushy peas.

Bolton comedian Paddy McGuinness is a massive wrestling fan. When the new series began, he tweeted: “Watching @WOSWrestling on @itv with my kids. Love it!!! Takes me back to the days of Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks. Easy, easy, easy! Now where did I put my spandex? #WOSW #oldschool.”

Such is Paddy’s enthusiasm for wrestling that, for Sport Relief 2016, he actually got involved in some grappling action himself when he fought against Harry Judd of the band, McFly. He lost.

Another famous wrestling fan is President Trump.

It’s a bit worrying knowing that the most powerful man on the planet is capable of shenanigans in the ring, as anyone who watches https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMKFIHRpe7 I will agree.

Perhaps it’s only a matter of time before he invites Mr Putin into the ring for a showdown, in the style of Frankie Goes to Hollwood’s video for Two Tribes.

And, in the interests of gender equality, what about Angela “Merciless” Merkel squaring up to Theresa “The Squeezer” May – speciality move: The Brexit Breakdown.