Jetlag

You've got these two badly confused. Wagner is the taller German, and Dave Morgan is the shorter Brit, who notably spent a lot of time as a globe trotter and eventually settled in Germany. Wagners reputation as a worker really wasn't very good.

So I actually emailed the Swiss and Monaco TV archive about this stuff... Swiss archivers said they don't have them archived because the reels were purchased from elsewhere. So that confirms the suspicion from earlier, that these were probably French bouts purchased for Swiss TV. Monaco archive said they had some reels but they degraded while in storage and ended up unusable. Apparently they have 1 20 minute match that can be viewed on their premises but that's it, and they didn't specify what it was. Otherwise just newsreel type clips. Bummer, but makes me appreciate the French archiving effort more.

From what I've seen Axel Dieter had no problem doing all those flying headscissors, ranas and difficult bridge ups and working a fast paced match, just look at his matches with Mile Zrno or Steve Wright himself. No small feat considering by 1980 he was nearing the end of his career, and he wasn't exactly a small man. Knowing he worked France and Spain quite a lot I wouldn't be shocked if he had been quite the athletic guy in his younger days aswell. We know wrestlers did the quicker handspringy stuff in Britain and France before Steve Wright came around. Also, I've never heard of Steve Wright training anyone besides his son, until his son Alex founded his school in the early 2000s, where Steve would help out sometimes. The guy most credited for training the younger lightweight types in Germany in the 90s is Bernard Benesch, a French wrestler who worked for Lasartesse as a referee in Hamburg. Franz Schuhmann, the most prominent lightweight in the scene, credited Lasartesse himself with training him in the 80s, and he has said most of his training was bumping and how to use the ropes, almost everything he knew he learned from other guys while wrestling, either by being in the ring with them or watching them. Here's Beneschs student Markus Buchholz in action against Bernie Wright: You can see this mirrors a World of Sport style match a bit more, but I don't see how we need Steve Wright in the equation, given his brother Bernie is right there and probably showed young Markus some things in the ring before the match.

Quite great as a pissed off asshole in shootstyle matches punching people in the liver. The 2002 Hoshikawa match is an excellent violent little stifffest and his U-Style work is great. Probably spent a bit too much time in HUSTLE and I haven't really seen anything amazing from him in RINGS, but there sure are a lot of workers worse than Wataru Sakata.

I would, if I knew where to find them!

If this list was about dedicated bumpers, Anton Tejero would be a #1 contender. This guy would fling himself wildly out of the ring dozens of times per match all the way until his last days in 1980s. Really a special case of a guy who had absolutely no problem bumping his ass off endlessly. Also super impressive on offense, when he gets to show of that as often his matches were built around showing off the offense of the babyfaces. His tag work with Inca Peruano in the 1960s is totally radical even in the context of the high level of French wrestling at the time. Definitely a big part of what made the French scene so great considering for how long he keeps showing up and doing his thing. His work doesn't quite lend itself to the conventional understanding of a 'great worker' as in someone who colours matches with his offense and control segments, but as a rudo he's definitely an all time great. I don't recall a single bad match that he was involved in.

You can actually find a bit of Catch related videos in the RTS archive website if you just search for Catch, but it's just short newsreel/documentary type stuff starring the usual suspects: https://www.rts.ch/archives/recherche/?q=catch Apparenlty the Luxembourg archive is going through some work this year to make it more accesible and won't be open to requests until next year, so there is a faint glimmer of hope that whatever they still have might become available. The Monaco archive actually also has an on-demand streaming page but they only have a few videos there, nothing wrestling related.

Amazing research. It would be sick to have these, some killer match ups. Masahiko Kimura? I did not expect him at all. Definitely holy grail material. I remember hearing about a match between Achim Chall and Rene Ben Chemoul taking place in Luxemburg, so I think that country had wrestling.

I made a topic about this in the hidden board, but since nobody ever looks there, I figured I might as well make one here, because it's quite the interesting subject. Apparently the NWA ran some wrestling shows in the early 1980s in the Philippines. The country was still under a dictator then, who apparently gave his explicit permission for the shows to be run because he was taking some heat for an assassination. There was a Jr title tournament, and apparently even a Harley Race title defense. Raven Mack talks about it here a bit, and reviewed a tape of the lightweight tournament: https://web.archive.org/web/20121004044522/http://deathvalleydriver.com/dvdvr/dvdvr151.html I'm mostly asking if anyone here knows more about that stuff and if perhaps the footage still exists somewhere. Hector Guerrero vs Les Thornton in Manila in 1983 sounds like the kind of stuff I'd enjoy.

If it's someone you enjoy watching, what does it matter?

And just the other do, I was thinking of doing a blogpost specifically dedicated to Regals 1994... dude was an animal that year. Looks like you got me beat! There was also a match against Jungle Jim Steele of all people that I really enjoyed. And that Armstrong match is a gem indeed. Great work!

Let him be a lesson to us all that we work on ourselves to be good people, so we don't have to leave this world as hated men.

Maybe I have mentioned it before, but the Modesto Aledo/Kamikaze looks reminds me a lot of something out of Fantomas

I'm not really buying this Bryan is a cosplay wrestler talk. Guy learned from Regal and Brookside and was in the Inoki dojo, he has as much claim to legitimate skill as any other guy. He also came up with a lot of stuff on his own, like who really used the Cattle Mutilation the way he did before him, he'd turn basic things like an elbow or face stomp into his signature stuff and plausible finishers. Even the stuff he lifted from other wrestlers (like the kneecap stomp from a surfboard setup or the surfboard dragon sleeper) he made into his own. Mind you this was in an era where a lot of guys wrestled like a puro move randomizer. Clearly that and his more ground based style elevated him a lot in the eyes of the fans back then compared to the more highspot centric stuff others were doing. Granted I've not watched as much of his RoH stuff so I don't know how indulgent it gets (probably a lot considering it was RoH).