03/03/2026
1973. A photographer named Dennis Hutchinson descends into a Welsh coal mine in Blaina, carrying his camera into a world of dust and darkness. What he captures that day becomes one of Britain's most unforgettable cultural photographs.
A man stands among the miners in full glam rock regalia. Bleached hair in pigtails. Face painted with glitter. Sequins and satin against the coal dust. Next to him, his father, a man who has spent fifty-one years underground, covered in the grime of decades.
The man in makeup is Adrian Street, and seventeen years earlier, at sixteen, he ran from this exact world. The mines terrified him. "Too dark down there," he'd say. "I was born for the spotlight."
By 1971, Street had become "Exotic" Adrian Street, professional wrestling's most outrageous performer. He wore pastel colors and glitter. He entered the ring to his own glam rock anthem. He kissed opponents mid-match and applied makeup to dazed rivals. In an era when masculinity was rigid and unforgiving, Street was decades ahead.
That same year, promoters booked him against Jimmy Savile. Yes, that Jimmy Savile. Britain's biggest television star. BBC presenter. Celebrated philanthropist. The man who would later be exposed as possibly Britain's most prolific predator, with 589 alleged victims.
But in 1971, wrestling insiders already knew enough. Savile bragged openly about young girls lining up outside his dressing room. Street heard the stories and was disgusted. When promoters told him to let the match end in a draw, to make the celebrity look good, Street decided otherwise.
The moment the bell rang, Street ignored every instruction. He swept Savile's legs and dropped him skull-first onto the canvas. For multiple rounds, he battered him. A dropkick sent Savile landing directly on his head. Street applied submission holds and felt hair coming away in his fists, torn from Savile's scalp.
"I absolutely crucified the bloke," Street later recalled. "I'd looked like a hungry fox going after a chicken."
Jimmy Savile effectively disappeared from professional wrestling after that beating. Of his claimed one hundred and seven matches, Street's brutal performance ended Savile's wrestling career for good.
Decades later, after Savile's death, the truth emerged. 450 victims. Crimes spanning fifty years. The youngest was eight years old. When Street learned the full scope, he said: "Had I known then what I know now, I'd have given him an even bigger hiding, were that physically possible."
That 1973 photograph wasn't nostalgia. It was Street returning to confront his past, standing in full Exotic regalia among the men who knew him as a boy. A declaration of radical self-invention.
Adrian Street wrestled for seven decades, performing over twelve thousand matches. He died in July 2023 at eighty-two, back in Brynmawr where it all began. And somewhere in that extraordinary life, on one day in 1971, he made sure a predator got exactly what he deserved.
