The WWE is quite used to utilizing former wrestling superstars as General Managers for their brands, as names like Mick Foley, Paige, Kurt Angle, William Regal, Drake Maverick and Teddy Long have all stepped up to take authority figure roles on the various shows for the company. Earlier this year, they went to the well once again for the newly launched NXT UK brand, but outside of the British Isles, the name Johnny Saint may not resonate with the same recognition as Mrs. Foley’s baby boy. But in the United Kingdom, the original “Man of a Thousands Holds” is a legend in the truest sense of the word.
An amateur boxer in his teens, Johnny Miller was looking to avoid the same doldrum life of working in a factory that had been his father’s lot in life in their hometown of Manchester, England. But thanks to his mother’s choice of hair salons, working on the industrial lines was not to be his final destiny. As chance would have it, his mother’s hairdresser had a husband who owned a gym in the blue collar city and their son was one of the country’s top pro wrestlers, Billy Robinson. Robinson had started wrestling in 1955 and took the young Miller under his wing in 1958.
Taking the name Johnny Saint, he became a fast learner to the technical training style of Robinson (who would go on to become one of the most influential technical wrestlers in history, including help refine the Japanese Strong Style with Karl Gotch and Antonio Inoki in New Japan Pro Wrestling). Saint would emerge as one of Great Britain’s greatest star attractions, becoming synonymous with World of Sport wrestling all the way through the 1970s and 1980s. In 1976, he won the British World Lightweight Championship and held it for an astounding 20 years, vacating it after his retirement match in 1996.
During his time with World of Sport, he would face many of Britain’s best, such as Ireland’s David “Fit” Finlay and England’s Mick McManus and Johnny Kidd. A staunch traditionalist, Saint would have fit right in with the old school days of Lou Thesz, but he found that the US wasn’t ready for someone so technical without the pomp and circumstance that was taking over American pro wrestling. But in the UK, he was still the man to beat and a master in the squared circle.
In 1996, after a near 40-year career, Johnny Saint held his retirement match in Japan with Michinoku Pro Wrestling, defeating Naohiro Hoshikawa in a match held under World of Sport rules. Two years earlier, Saint would be the last man to have a singles match against The Dynamite Kid before he was forced to retire from injuries,
Saint came out of retirement in 2007 to face old rival Johnny Kidd at a Legends Showcase in a Best 2-Out-Of-3 Falls Match (Saint won 2-1), and it seemed to put the bug back into his blood. He would wrestle several more times between 2008 and 2011, at other Legends Showdown events, as well as with Westside Xtreme Wrestling (wXw) in Germany, Association Biterroise de Catch (ABC) in France, and CHIKARA in the United States. He had his final match in 2015 with Italian Championship Wrestling (ICW).
In late 2017, it was announced that Saint was temporarily relocating to Orlando, Florida, where he worked a 6-month contract as a guest trainer at the WWE Performance Center, and in July of this year, it was formally announced that Saint would become the General Manager for the NXT UK brand as it headed into its first set of tapings. NXT UK made its WWE Network premier last week, in it’s new time slot of 3pm EST (8pm BST) on Wednesday nights.
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