Amelia Davies and Alex Wain Win the World Gravy Wrestling Titles After the Finals Leave a Lancashire Pub Garden for Bacup Cricket Club
The trophy finally has new names, and they are not the ones this desk had to leave blank the morning after the move. On August 31, 2026, the World Gravy Wrestling Championships left the garden of the Rose ‘n’ Bowl in Stacksteads and held the finals at Bacup Cricket Club on Lane Head Lane. A nail technician from Warrington, Amelia Davies, 31, won the women’s title in her first year, in a Viking costume, and took home the cup plus a £100 purse. Alex Wain, also from Warrington, won the men’s title, the Daily Star reported. The championships’ own September 3 post used ring names: The Bisto Bandit for the men’s champion, Milly the Mauler for the women’s champion, and Granny Granules as best sportsperson. The AEGIS Alliance is putting both records on the page rather than inventing a single official spreadsheet that does not exist.
Davies told the Daily Star the sauce is not a joke once it is on skin. “It gets everywhere. It’s pretty minging. It’s not like water, it looked quite thin but it sticks to your skin.” She had been warned that fluffy costumes get heavy. She used that warning. The Viking outfit had a fluffy arm piece. Once it was soaked, she pulled it off and hit her opponent with it. She also won best fancy dress. She said she was surprised, because the woman across from her had been entering for six years, and because she had come to entertain friends who showed up with banners. “When do you ever get the opportunity to roll around in gravy?” is the line she left for anyone still pretending this is a sport with a wellness claim.
What the pub garden could no longer hold
The first championship ran in 2007. Bouts last two minutes. Contestants are amateurs over 18. There is a men’s knockout and a women’s knockout, and no mixed-sex fighting. Four judges score wrestling, costume, and whether the crowd is actually laughing. Serious aggression, roughness, unsportsmanlike conduct, or wrestling while drunk is supposed to end in disqualification. The pool is Lancashire gravy mixed by The Real Lancashire Black Pudding Company. Andrew Holt, who oversees the batch, has explained for years that the crew makes three consistencies, thin and slippy, thick and gooey, extra thick, then blends them and tops the pool as bodies and sun change the viscosity. That recipe is the difference between a slip-and-fall stunt and a contest people train for.
The 2024 meet, the one in the clip at the top of this page, still happened in the pub garden. Hundreds packed the Rose ‘n’ Bowl on August 26, 2024. George Young, 18, won the men’s title on his first try and told the BBC he paced himself while friends chanted his name. Christine Rogers, 43, won the women’s title on her sixth attempt and called it amazing to win after years of trying. The 2025 championships stayed in that garden on August 25. By the spring of 2026 the organizers told the BBC the crowd had outgrown the fence, the parking, and the toilets. They wanted a site close to Stacksteads with a grounds crew used to large days. Bacup Cricket Club fit. Tickets moved to the hospice shop and to Skiddle. They sold.
Preview copy could not even agree what number to put on the poster. A June feature called the 2026 meeting the 19th year. Manchester Evening News, writing on the day, called it the 18th. Counting from 2007 without a missed August is a local argument, not a scandal. The move itself is the change. A pub garden puts spectators against a fence with the bar still in sight. A cricket ground puts them on a boundary.
Fifteen hundred litres and a fire hose
The 2026 pool was measured, this time, in litres rather than in folklore. About 1,500 litres of gravy went into the ring, a figure repeated by photographers on the day and by the East Lancashire Freemasons who volunteered. That is enough, one spectator noted, to cover thousands of Sunday roasts, and it is still less romantic once it is in your ear. Doors opened at 11 a.m. Wrestling started at 1 p.m. The bar was listed until 9 p.m. Adult tickets were £3.50 if bought ahead and £4 on the door. The fire brigade hosed wrestlers down between bouts, which is the only sane way to run a second match in the same costume.
Manchester Evening News described hundreds of spectators and a family fair bolted onto the wrestling: bouncy castles, face painting, craft beer, cake, tombola. The Freemasons’ write-up, posted later in September, said thousands came through the gate and that volunteers spent the day keeping that crowd moving. Both can be true of a cricket ground that fills and empties in waves. Granny Granules, whose real name is Kaye, drove from Milton Keynes for a sixth year. Betty Bisto, Elizabeth, was back for a second year after finishing second in 2025 and called the whole thing a bucket-list icebreaker. Past celebrity entrants, from earlier gardens, include actor Will Mellor and comedian Romesh Ranganathan. Joel Hicks, who wrestled as Stone Cold Steve Bisto, won the first men’s title in 2007 while he was training to be a barrister, later left the law, and landed in Guinness World Records for the most men’s wins.
The new ground did not sand the edges off the day. Rules on the wrestlers’ page still say the point is fun moves, costumes, and making people laugh, not a serious fight career. A person in a supermarket costume who cannot stay upright will lose to a person in a better joke who can. Davies’s gravy-soaked sleeve is the entire ethic in one prop.
Why a gravy pool belongs in a news file
Odd News is where a place shows what it will spend a Bank Holiday Monday on. Lancashire has black pudding, brass bands, and a hospice that cannot run on applause. East Lancashire Hospice has been the beneficiary since the start. Wrestlers can also raise money for a charity of their own. The Real Lancashire Black Pudding Company, the Rose ‘n’ Bowl, Bacup Cricket Club, and the hospice were all listed as organizers once the grounds changed. The Freemasons turned up as labor, not as a sponsor logo, and said the point was the families who use hospice care, not the novelty of adults falling over in sauce.
That is more honest than most branded fun runs. Nobody here claims the gravy has a health benefit. Compare it with other crowd files on this site. The Nantucket shark rescue was a community that refused to let a wild animal die on the sand. The gravy championships are a community that refused to let a hospice fundraiser become a silent auction. For a public spectacle that went sour instead of messy, see the Applebee’s all-you-can-eat arrest. The Notizie Odd desk will keep the file beside other United Kingdom items under Notizie internazionali e il Altri video stack.
The cup leaves Warrington for a year
The risk of the cricket club is that a village dare becomes a ticketed show and then a brand. Organizers have not talked that way. They thanked the Rose ‘n’ Bowl for the years of garden chaos, listed the new address as Bacup Cricket Club, Lane Head Lane, Bacup, OL13 9BT, and kept the same two-minute clock. Pubs can absorb a stain. Cricket clubs have members who care about the square. If the next August stays on Lane Head Lane, the championships will have finished the strange promotion from back garden to booked ground without losing the sauce.
George Young and Christine Rogers are no longer the last pair with a confirmed engraving. Davies and Wain are. Granny Granules still has the sportsperson prize, which may be the harder one to win if you have been driving down from Milton Keynes for six years and you still have not taken the cup. The hospice will count the gate. The fire brigade will coil the hose. And somewhere in Rossendale a tank of mixed gravy will wait for the first whistle, same as it did when the crowd could see the bar from the ropes.
Outside reading worth keeping next to this page: the BBC’s 2024 winners piece, the BBC’s report on the venue change, the Daily Star’s interview with Amelia Davies, Manchester Evening News on the Bacup crowd, the hospice event page, and the organizers’ home site. The YouTube cut above is the 2024 Stacksteads garden. It is still the best full view of the ring the cricket club replaced.
