Bearing down on the stern gaze of his once counterpart turned counteractor, Giant Haystacks’ unmistakable tatters of sheepskin threads are monstrous in contrast with the rather revealing Union Jack emblazoned leotard hanging from Big Daddy, a foot beneath.
The aptly branded ‘Gentle giant’ could scarcely have envisioned the bright lights and raving rafters of Wembley arena in the summer of 1981, back when his remarkable size was nothing more to the public than a club doorman a decade prior.
“There wouldn’t have been a more unlikely celebrity,” as author Steven Bell illustrated. “Despite his position as a villain he became really universally beloved and even a bit of a sex symbol. He was such a shy man, a bit of a gentle giant.”
Born Martin Austin Ruane on October 10, 1949 in Camberwell – a London village sitting just South West of Charing cross. Haystacks was born to Irish immigrant parents, Martin Sr., a miner and labourer known around the town as ‘The Black Prince’ due to his reverence under the rocks, and Julia Ruane. The two were hailed from the picturesque shores and bucolic charms of County Mayo, in the west of Ireland. It was those charms of his heritage that twinkled in Ruane’s eye throughout his life, from driving motorway scrapers to flipping from the top rope.
It was at the tender age of three when Haystacks and his family of two brothers put down their roots on Earl Street, Lower Broughton, and began their transition into the young and prosperous new Northern city of Salford. But even his early gargantuan stature wouldn’t shelter young Martin from an early onslaught of life’s troublesome hindrances – it would, in fact accentuate his hardship.
His boulder-like frame was in fact not the antidote to social struggle, but an imposition, as Bell adds how he was “bullied during his early youth” along with intense poverty struggles.
Sharing a classroom with Salford luminary John Cooper-Clarke sounds a compelling extract of lore for any of the remnants of the city’s early generations, and a star-studded St. Thomas’ Primary School class will undoubtedly spare stories of the days sat at their desks, along with Salford royalty, as Haystacks was a classmate of the legendary poet in the late 1950s.
It was Cooper-Clarke himself who spoke of his brief acquaintances as a schoolchild. Speaking to Salford Now, he recounted his memories of Haystack’s fascinating size.
“Giant Haystacks was in my class at school, his real name was Martin Ruane. “He was a gigantic person, absolutely humongous for our young age. It was back in the days of corporal punishment, and I remember the teacher used to have to stand up on the table to give him the cane.”
Bred of a family of little fortune, Ruane himself took to guarding the doors of the city of Manchester – a seemingly fitting post for a man of such calibre. Bell explained how the story was certain to end in tragedy, amid a tale of a “miserable existence”, Haystacks’ extraordinary formed looked the last thing that would offer a new lease of life.
As his flounder between cash in hand doorman work and his toil to provide for his beloved wife and three children, an open door to a new world was most welcomed when a semi-professional wrestling friend candidly suggested he swap the nights of raw conflicts for a canvas of performance, despite his nerve being considerably smaller than his size.
Ruane’s rise through the wrestling ranks began in 1967, initially registering under the alias “Luke McMasters” in the WFGB and drew much acclaim for what his rapidly-expanding viewers took as a monstrous and meticulous character. The truth was worlds away from the wrestling’s narrative.
A brief stint, as the muscle of a villainous duet with fellow wrestling icon ‘Big Daddy’, upon moving promoters sewed the seeds for a dream symbiosis of fighting fever for Joint Promotions in 1975. His counterpart possessing a magnetism and an irresistible gravitas to the millions who tuned into ITV on a gently, dark and autumn night. Big daddy was the first of two pillars of what would become the dynamism that shapes the next decade of British wrestling.
Dual feuds with 70s stars such as Kendo Nagasaki and the St. Clair brothers trailblazed a 2 year partnership before the real fortune was found. This wasn’t until Big Daddy’s dramatic transition to ‘the good side’ – leaving Haystacks to fill the role of the adversary. A rogue varlet whose lilted stride struck a thrilling terror into audiences both present and behind a TV set.
A villainous bruiser with arms of tree trunks, Giant Haystacks, hastily became the name that either trembled or angered children, mums, dads, grandmothers and grandfathers across the country. But as quickly as Ruane would move to twist an opponent from the rope to the canvas before varnishing the move with a seismic belly-flop, it was also as easily forgettable of his personal warmth, and his care for making a life for childhood sweetheart wife, Rita and his three children.
Despite this, Simon Garfield, author of 1998’s ‘The Wrestling’, still made the claim that Ruane was the only of the wrestling contingent who truly intimidated him in an interview setting.
Queen Elizabeth II was unbelievably a Haystacks devotee, according to Richard Crossman’s Diaries of his time as cabinet minister. Crossman revelled in the recollection of her majesty “writhing herself, twisting and turning, completely relaxed,” while watching one of his big smackdowns on ITV. “It was quite an eye-opener to see how she enjoyed it”, Crossman added.
1978 was the year that Haystacks captured his maiden British Heavyweight title, beating Tony St. Clair with an effortless ease to set up two blockbuster reuniting’s with Big Daddy at Wembley Arena. But he lost both in epic affairs in 1980 and 1981.
As his distinct image and legend continued across the UK, Haystacks took to the roads and ways of the US in 1996 for a short stint as a member of Hulk Hogan’s arch nemeses, ‘The Dungeon of Doom’.
Ruane made a rippling end to a memorable wrestling career. He passed away two years later on November 29, aged 52, after a long battle with Lymphoma. He left behind a legacy crafted from the ashes of despair.
A true family man and a quiet soul at heart, Haystacks grew in confidence throughout an illustrious journey in the ring, but perpetuated a warmth beyond the ropes he carried with him from Broughton humility. Eminently a kind-hearted fellow with a zeal for honour and a deep religious faith; it wasn’t the boulderous brute of McMasters or Haystacks that he would’ve preferred to be remembered as, but instead, the boy who was built in Broughton and made of the mountain air of Mayo, Martin Austin Ruane.
