Phil Lions

"The Japanese Suicide Wrestler" Kamikaze gimmick was first used in France in 1961. It was around as early as March 1961. It was brought over to Spain in the summer of 1963. It made its first appearance in England that summer too. This is the original French Kamikaze from 1961. Not sure who was under the hood then.

Actually, I might as well share these too since I have them in my files. February 18-22, 1998 Beirut, Lebanon Promoters: the Saade brothers The covers of Lebanese wrestling magazines from 1986-1988:

To be more precise: September 26-October 3, 1974 Beirut, Lebanon City Sports Hall I've previously come across a few newspaper photos of Danny Lynch, Prince Kumali and others in Lebanon around this time (could even be from the same tour): And speaking of Lebanon, the article is in Bulgarian but here you can check out some posters for wrestling shows in Lebanon and Syria in the 1930s and 1950s. This an article about a Bulgarian wrestler who wrestled there in those decades. Some of his personal belongings have been preserved at a museum in Bulgaria.

I think for me Cuba may be the most interesting of the bunch and the one I'd like to see the most, if it were possible. Local wrestling aired on Cuban TV on and off from 1951 through 1959 and there was quite a lot of it in the early to mid 1950s. Not at the same time, but wrestling aired on four different networks there - Channel 4 (Union Radio Television), Channel 6 (CMQ Television), Channel 2 and Channel 7 (CMBF Television). Looking at the cards that I have there are a bunch of interesting names on those cards and those names could have potentially been on the TV shows too. I say potentially, because while shows were generally broadcast live on TV more than likely not all of matches aired on TV. Big stars from the U.S. passed through for a visit (Frank Sexton, Gorgeous George, Buddy Rogers, Lou Thesz, Antonino Rocca), Mexican stars did as well (Medico Asesino, Dientes Hernandez, Fernando Oses, etc.), other well-established names from the U.S. worked on some cards (Tony Olivas, Wally Dusek, Danny Dusek, Kola Kwariani, Ray Stern, Billy Darnell, Nell Stewart, Cora Combs, etc.) and of course there were also all the stars of the local scene such as The Red Menace (Pedro Godoy), El Chiclayano, Ramon Rivera, King Badu and others. In terms of influence Cuba seems to have been influenced the most by the Tampa office, but there was definitely a Mexican influence too which makes me quite curious what the general in-ring style might have been given the mix of influences. As for Lebanon, wrestling used to air on TV there in the 1970s on Channel 7. The Saade brothers were probably the biggest stars, but there were also international stars like Danny Lynch, Prince Kumali and Tsuneharu Sugiyama to name a few, who worked in Lebanon during this time too. Although to be fair I don't know which ones of the international guys worked the TV. I know they worked the big shows, but I don't know about the TV. If Cortez had returned to Spain after his AWA run was over he was headed straight to prison for a period of six years. More about that here: http://wrestlingclassics.com/.ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=10;t=005490 Cortez was indeed quite popular in Spain and is probably the best remembered Spanish star today, but a lot of that was due to him having a segment on national TV in Spain in the mid 1960s where he would arm wrestle any and all comers, with the network offering to give 100,000 Spanish pesetas to whoever could beat him. And mind you this was at a time when, I believe, there was still only one television network in Spain. That television exposure gave Cortez a level of recognizability other Spanish stars simply couldn't obtain, because they weren't being featured on TV at all, let alone regularly. That said, while Cortez's star was rising the business in Spain in general was falling so ultimately even with Cortez in the mix I don't think demise of Spanish wrestling could have been slowed down much, if at all. And plus, in general information about attendance is limited so I don't know how well his TV fame translated to the box office during his prime in the mid to late 1960s. Definitely not the case. I'd have to check my Greek clippings to dig out the exact years, but I have seen several reports about Greek wrestlers working in Egypt in the 1940s. Maybe the 1950s too. And of course, speaking of the 1930s, it's worth mentioning Jim Londos worked a few matches in Egypt in 1937.

In terms of Continental Europe, I don't think there is one. I would love to see more Telecatch with Ted Boy Marino from 1960s Brazil, or a bunch of Cuban TV from the 1950s, or Lebanese TV with the Saade brothers and others from the 1970s. For me that would be some of the most interesting stuff, but sadly, I think the chances of any of those still existing are extremely slim.

No chance. Spanish wrestling wasn't televised. In terms of footage from the golden age of Spanish wrestling, the RTVE archive has only newsreel clips and that Cortez/Tarres one is actually the longest one. I shared them all a while back here: http://wrestlingclassics.com/.ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=10;t=005285 That said, I don't think much is available in their online archive at the moment, but RTVE may have "Los Héroes del Xóndo" tucked away somewhere. That was the Spanish attempt at a "Titanes en el Ring" type of show. The show aired in 1978-79 and it didn't last long. There's some footage from 16:25 onward here:

This was of course years after SMW had shut down, although I would imagine the channel bought the tapes earlier, but I used to watch SMW via German TV back in 2000. It was so random. I'd go from watching Lance Storm holding three belts in WCW to seeing him team up with Jericho in SMW. The channel was called Premiere Sport 1 and it used to show nine hours of wrestling every day (well, in reality it was three hours, but they were airing the same content three times a day). They had WCW (live PPVs, old PPVs, Nitro, Thunder, one of the recap shows, old Nitros), ECW Hardcore TV, AAA and SMW. It was quite the eclectic mix and I loved it. Sidenote: Around this same time there was another German channel where I vividly remember seeing Tim Flowers' ICW promotion out of Canada. How random is that!

That theory about the Exbrayat/Esbrayat name definitely makes sense. Also, thanks for that book link. Had a quick look and this I found interesting: "Dans l’imaginaire télévisuel, on les associe volontiers à des héros de séries ou de feuilletons que l’on peut retrouver régulièrement, le week-end sur le petit écran : l’Ange Blanc, l’Homme Masqué, le Bourreau de Béthune, Chéri-Bibi, René Ben Chemoul, André Bollet, Gilbert Leduc, Pancho Farina..." A lot of the same names that I mentioned. I also like how Blanc/Farina is mentioned twice. The villain L'Homme Masque is another one that slipped my mind. He was actually the first masked man attraction that Goldstein introduced and then L'Ange Blanc was introduced as the hero to battle him and other villains. Had L'Homme Masque been a flop, there likely wouldn't have been a L'Ange Blanc. And people sometimes confuse L'Homme Masque with Bourreau de Béthune. Masque was Blanc's big rival during Blanc's masked period. Bethune was working for the rival promotion at the time and was introduced as their own version of Masque, more or less. Bethune did work with Blanc later on, but Blanc had already unmasked by that point.

A few notes from me: "French TV likewise made household names of wrestling stars like L'Ange Blanc, the Bourreau de Bethune, Chéri Bibi, Robert Duranton, Le Petit Prince and Flesh Gordon" - that is an interesting selection of names. It's not who I would've went with though. Blanc, Bethune, Delaporte, Bollet, Duranton, Andre Drapp, Rene Ben Chemoul and Gilbert Leduc are the first names that come to mind first and foremost if you were to ask me who were the most prominent names of the TV era. Bibi and Prince have a case too, I think. The correct surname seems to be Esbrayat, not Exbrayat. He's a guy I've always thought about researching, but haven't yet. I've always thought the correct spelling of the name was Exbroyat (which is how prof. Edmond Desbonnet spelled it), but I did quick search last night after I read your post and realized I was wrong. In the 1830s French press and beyond the name is spelled mostly as Esbrayat. More importantly though, even though he was a wrestler too, he's definitely better known as a promoter. It seems he was active as early as 1830, and perhaps even earlier. The part about him having single-handedly developed the Greco-Roman style I have my doubts about, but I can't confirm it one way or another until I've actually done some proper research. The claim that Esbrayat called the style "flat hand wrestling" I definitely do not buy. As early as 1833 you start to see the term "lutte romaine" (Roman wrestling) being used in the French press. I've seen it used in a bunch of adverts for Esbrayat shows. Rossignol-Rollin, the top French promoter of the 1800s, used it a lot too and I believe this was the official name of the Greco-Roman style in France. It was known mostly as French wrestling elsewhere until the 1870s when the term "Graeco-Roman" was adopted in places like the UK and the USA. "Lutte à main plate" ("flat hand wrestling") was a term that was used too, but seemingly from the late 1840s onward. I'm not sure whether lutte romaine and lutte à main plate were the same style. There was also something called "lutte d'hommes" (men's wrestling) that you can see being used in conjunction with pro wrestling too. I think was a similar style, but not exactly Greco-Roman, although later it may have been also used as a term for Greco-Roman. The "lutte d'hommes" term was around as early as the late 1810s. Anyway, this is what I can say for now based on my research, but like with Esbrayat himself, I haven't spent a lot of time digging into it. This is just surface level stuff. Advert from 1839 for "lutte romaine" and "lutte d'hommes" featuring Esbrayat/Exbrayat: Charles Rigoulot and Julien Duvivier had nothing to do with pro wrestling being introduced at Velodrome d'Hiver. Here's the timeline of it all. Paoli, Deglane and Dan Koloff traveled to Paris in December 1932 and pretty much announced the plans for upcoming shows then. The other two went back to the States and Paoli stayed in Paris to lay the groundwork for the September 1933 debut of the promotion (at Velodrome d'Hiver). Rigoulot joined the promotion in December and was its number three star. Deglane was the top star while Koloff was the number two star and Koloff was also bringing in some of the talent. I've spent a good amount of time researching the Paoli promotion and I've never heard the name Duvivier in relation to it. Perhaps he may have had some role in highlights of the matches being aired in cinemas, but I can't see him being involved beyond that. Another important name in the start of the promotion was the boxing promoter Jeff Dickson, who owned Velodrome d'Hiver. He may have been a partner in the Paoli promotion. I've seen such claims, but haven't been able to verify them. The part about Delaporte having bought FFCP from Paoli in 1960 and becoming the dominant promoter then is definitely not true. Paoli was the main Paris promoter and then in 1952 he formed a partnership with Alex Goldstein, who was one of his chief rivals. Paoli had the biggest venue, but Goldstein had the most venues in Paris so this partnership was very beneficial for both. The two would co-promote for the next few weeks. By 1958 Paoli was out of the picture and Goldstein was running the show himself. At that point Delaporte was one of Goldstein's top stars. Delaporte left the Goldstein promotion in 1961, but returned in 1963. Eventually, and I'm not sure when, Delaporte took over the shows at Elysée Montmartre. Elysée Montmartre wasn't a Raoli/Goldstein venue. The promoter there, before Delaporte took over, was Henri Chausson. I can't say for sure what happened to the Paoli-turned-Goldstein promotion and how it ended. Anyway, that came to mind while reading the wiki entry. Additional details are available in articles that I've written elsewhere. Some of these articles are older and need to be updated, but here you can find additional details about French pro wrestling: Article: The pro wrestling career of the Olympic gold medalist Robert Roth (1921-1925) (talks about the beginning of regulated catch style pro wrestling in France) Results: Shows at Palais des Sports in Paris (1933-1939) Results: Shows at Palais des Sports in Paris (1944-1959) Article: The masked hero L'Ange Blanc (1959-1961) Cards: Paris (1959) (here you can really get a sense of how the Paris scene was set up back then) French title lineages: the World Heavyweight and European Heavyweight Titles (1936-1969)

I had asked Zefy some follow-up questions and he just got back to me now. After I had questioned it, he corrected himself on the year - he says the Macedonian tour was in October 1996. And he also says that they went to Macedonia on their way back from a tournament in Congo. I believe EWF used to also air on TF1. As for the TF1 / Eurosport connection, Eurosport was originally owned by Sky, but then the TF1 group took ownership of the channel in 1991.

I figured out the promotional aspect of the Macedonian tour. I don't know why I didn't make the connection earlier, but it all makes sense now. You know how I was saying the Macedonian announcer mentioned "European Federation of Catheurs" and the match being under the rules of "New Catch International"? "European Federation of Catheurs" would be Fédération Européenne de Catch (FEC), also known as European Wrestling Federation (EWF). Founded in France in the mid 1980s and, apparently, lasted until 1996. They were the same company that had a TV deal with Eurosport and they shared the timeslot with Otto Wanz's CWA in the early 1990s. The Eurosport show was called... "New Catch". By 1996 they had been off Eurosport TV for a few years but I guess they were still using the "New Catch" name to an extent.

I'm still quite intrigued by this Macedonian tour. For what it's worth, Prince Zefy finally got back to me as well and his version of events is a bit different than Bernard Vandamme's. According to Zefy the tour was in 1998 and they did two shows - Skopje (which aired lived on TV) and Pristina. Like Vandamme, he says the crowds were good, but they never returned for a second tour. I don't know if I buy that though. Kosovo (where Pristina is) was in the middle of a war in 1998-99 and I'm having a hard time buying the idea of a wrestling show there during that time. The war officially broke out at the end of February 1998 so, perhaps if the show was earlier in the year, I guess it's possible, but still I'm more inclined to believe Vandamme's version of events. I've asked Zefy some follow-up questions, but he hasn't replied back. I've also reached out to a few other people from the tour, but no response yet.

I can't answer that. All I can say is that when I asked him whether this was an IWSF or EuroStars tour, Bernard told me this tour was before either one of those promotional names. He may be misremembering, I don't know. And besides, neither one of the promotions is mentioned in the footage. In the footage the Macedonian announcer mentions only "New Catch International" and "European Catch Federation" (or European Federation of Catheurs, if I am to translate what he said more literally).

I reached out to a few people about the Macedonian show and luckily Bernard Vandamme, who also wrestled on that tour, provided some details. According to him Flesh Gordon organized a tour of Macedonia in 1996 (so this was before IWSF/WS). They did shows in Bitola, Strumica, Kumanovo and Skopje. Not sure if this was the case for all of the events, but at least one aired on local TV. There were also plans to do shows in Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey, but the plans got cancelled. I think the match above is from Kumanovo, because I think I heard the Macedonian announcer mention Kumanovo at one point.

Macedonia back then doesn't strike me as a financially viable destination for an international tour, nor was it a place where I would have imagined anyone taping wrestling show. Hence my amazement at this. Yes, in the Balkan region Greece was the top spot for pro wrestling. Not always, but most of the time, and pro wrestling there lasted the longest. Yugoslavia used to have a tour-based scene into the late 1960s, maybe early 1970s. Turkey had a scene too that died around the same time. Romania's scene died out in the early 1940s while Bulgaria's lasted until the mid-to-late 1940s. In the past couple of decades there have been local indie promotions that have popped up in most of these countries as well as a few shows by international companies. Overall though, it's a very small scene today. A while back I posted a topic with a bunch of Greek footage (including the footage that you've posted). It's all here:

Thank you for bringing this to my attention, David. I would have never expected there to have been a show in Macedonia during that time frame. Greece, Turkey or Serbia - perhaps, but Macedonia - no way! That is very surprising for me to find out. It's just so random. The fact that a French promotion had a show in Macedonia and especially the fact that it was taped is kind of blowing my mind. Looks like they had a pretty good crowd too. I'm familiar with the Macedonian language so I can understand about 80% of what the announcer said. He provided no clues as to exact location or year, unfortunately. He referred to Flesh Gordon as a world champion on multiple occasions throughout the match. At one point he was alluding to the fact that the match was under the rules of New Catch International so perhaps this was the promotional name they used in Macedonia? But then a little bit later on he also mentioned the European Catch Federation. Also, fun fact: the word for pro wrestler in Macedonian is "кечер" (catcher), which is obviously almost the same as the French catcheur. I tried searching for more info on this show on Google in Macedonian pages, but nothing turned up. I've also reached out to a Macedonian contact of mine, who is from the amateur wrestling world and not too familiar with the pro stuff, but he said he'll look into it. Hopefully he manages to find some extra info, because I'm very, very intrigued this.

I just realized that I never got around to posting this article here, and I think it's a pretty interesting one. Came across it earlier this year. It's from February 1960. ---------- Phantoms and Angels. Professional Wrestling Show Hits Europe With Same Old Villain vs. Good Guy Theme. By ROBERT DALEY New York Times News Service PARIS - The pieces moving about the chessboard of European wrestling are strange and sometimes horrible. Among them are the Strangler, The Masked Hangman, The Phantom. The Phantom is entirely garbed in black except for the outline of a skeleton in white on his tunic. When the lights go out the black tunic disappears and the skeleton, iridescent, glows in the dark. The audience gasps. The opponent, an ordinary man, recoils in dread as the Phantom leaps upon him. A ferocious struggle ensues, an ordinary man wrestling in the dark with writhing glowing bones. The audience cries out its horror. Soon the lights go back on. The audience wipes its brow and releases a profound sigh. The eerie spectacle witnessed had been after all only a wrestling match. It seems relieved to realize this. Proprietor of most of these "inhuman" wrestlers is a small gentle 52-year-old Frenchman named Alex Goldstein. Goldstein today has something like 200 wrestlers and controls about 50 arenas throughout Western Europe. But until Dec 8 1958 he had been promoting wrestling for 14 years with extraordinary success. On that day a "colossus" entered the ring of an arena here, his face hidden by a black mask. He shook his fist at the crowd, growled at the referee, then leaped upon his opponent and rabbit-punched him to the canvas. Since the opponent, still wearing his bathrobe and looking the other way, had not been prepared for so unsporting an assault, the audience got the idea. This "Homme Masque" was a villain. One masked man proved so popular that Goldstein soon launched a second, this one the goodest guy Europe has ever seen - The White Angel. The first match between the two provided the biggest wrestling gage in Goldstein's long career. Goldstein needed no further encouragement. There now are about a dozen masked grapplers in the rings of Europe and they have been followed by all manner of other freaks. One of the hits of last season was the Human Beast, the man with the skin of a goat. Barefooted, tattooed all over and wearing only a goatskin, he was a pretty repulsive sight. However he has been outdone this season by Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame. Quasimodo was a miner in the Pyrenees who had done some wrestling. He had all his teeth yanked except one. He dressed in sackcloth, and came to Paris to see Goldstein. Wild-haired, his one tooth protruding over his lower lip, he is a great success now. He is identified on posters as "powerful as he is horrible". However, he does not belong to Goldstein's stable. "I turned him down", Goldstein commented. "Too repulsive. Most of your fans are women. They want to see real men. A colossus like the Homme Masque, 6 feet 4, 260 pounds. An American. I can't tell you his name. He wrestles over there under his true name without a mask". Since Dec 8 1958 Goldstein's business has quadrupled. There are four times as many spectators, four times as many matches, four times as much receipts. The more popular members of his stable now work every other night and earn more than $50,000 a year. Goldstein feels he can keep coming up with new wrinkles forever. "All it takes is a little imagination", he says. "But the presentation is only part of it. The most important thing is that the man be a good wrestler. Someone like Gorgeous George for instance. All he had was presentation. He was nearly 40 years old and he was a bad wrestler." Goldstein is bringing out a new "client" later this month who resembles Gorgeous George to some extent. He has long curly hair; he will be perfumed. He is Bobby Duranton, who won a bathing beach contest a few years ago as the handsomest man in France, a sort of Mr. Muscle. Duranton weighs 230, stands 6 feet tall and will enter the ring wearing a baroque dressing gown with lace cuffs. Goldstein can hardly wait to count the money the first time Duranton meets the Homme Masque.

I think most likely catch no longer being on national TV wasn't that big of a deal in France, because by the time it went off television it was way past its heyday, which was in the 1950s and 1960s. I don't think it was like in 1961, for example, when Maurice Herzog (the French Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports at the time) put pressure on the TV network not to air wrestling any more and there was backlash from the fans about this. In the 1980s I don't think that many people would have cared whether catch was on TV or not, because catch was nowhere near as popular as it had been previously. Even during Jean Ferre's run in the mid to late 1960s/early 1970s the popularity of catch was already down compared to what it had been earlier in the decade, which also explains why when you talk to French people of the older generation someone like L'Ange Blanc is remembered way more than someone like Andre, even though Andre was more recent and was also pushed as a big deal. On another note, expanding on what ohtani's jacket said above, it's good to point out that even during its heyday catch never aired on TV every week. The most they ever reached was 30 something weeks out of the year, I think. Also, because during the heyday it was basically four Paris promotions who shared the TV, the timeslot for catch wasn't a constant one either. Each promoter would run their show on a different day of the week and since at that point most of the shows aired live that meant the TV was on different nights, depending on which promoter's show had the TV coverage that week.

Unfortunately, the post-1952 issues of the newspaper I was using for my research got taken down so now if anyone wants to do any post-1952 French research the only way to do it is to go to a library in France in person. And I'm not in France. In short: I also do not know the answers to David's questions and currently have no way of finding out.

Bob Plantin just posted an interesting comment over on Facebook that I thought is worth sharing here. He stated that based on Bruno Asquini's, Gilbert Cesca's and his opinion (i.e. three of the last living French wrestlers from the glory years of French catch) the best European wrestlers from the middleweights (70 to 80 kg) they had ever been in the ring with were Modesto Aledo, Rene Ben Chemoul and George Kidd, while Gilbert Leduc was the best of the heavyweights. This opinion should come as no surprise given the reputations of all four, but it's always cool to hear feedback about wrestlers from their peers.

Randomly, I was watching the latest episode of WWE's Most Wanted Treasures and look what I spotted. Looks like Hunter may be a SegundaCaida reader. In all seriousness, it's so incredibly random that WWE would have a French catch poster from 64 years ago at their warehouse. This is the show in question: Date: November 2, 1959 Place: Paris, France Arena: Palais de la Mutualite Card: L'Ange Blanc (Francisco Pino) vs. The Big Chief Jose Arroyo vs. Lino Di Santo Jesus de Heredia (Jesus Chausson) vs. Jean Bout Jacky Corn vs. Antonio Morlans

Agreed. That is an almost impossible category to adequately vote in. I know when I'm voting in it I always feel like I'm not able to judge it as properly as I want to be able to judge it. More than any other category, there are huge knowledge gaps when it comes to this category and they're the type of knowledge gaps that are very hard to fill even if one wanted to fill them in and this is due to a number of reasons (lack of research, the disjointed nature of the research that is already out there, language barriers, lack of attendance information to properly judge who was a great draw and who wasn't, wrestlers from too many and too different territories having to be judged against each other, etc.). That said, I don't know what the solution is or if there can even be one. On that topic, seeing L'Ange Blanc get less than 10% of the votes and therefore drop off the ballot is very disappointing to me. Not unexpected, but definitely disappointing. If perhaps the most well-known wrestling star in the history of one of the most historically significant European territories cannot get enough votes to stay on the ballot then something isn't right, in my opinion. On the flipside, I'm glad to see Jose Tarres with a significant increase this year and I chuckled at him getting one vote more than Big Daddy. I don't feel he's trending up for the right reasons (i.e. more people actually trying to learn about him), but rather just because Dave keeps mentioning him as a no-brainer and "the third biggest draw in European history", but either way I'm glad to see him moving on up. Rocca and Perez not getting in is the other big disappointment for me.

Yes and no. Yes, in a sense that it is odd to not feature one of the top stars on TV regularly, but on the flipside no, because even at the peak of his popularity Blanc was always used as a special attraction on TV. For his entire January 1959-March 1961 big run as a masked wrestler he only had three television matches, and the third one was 18 months after the second one. Once Blanc's popularity exploded the promoters took him off TV and focused on him as a live event headliner. I don't know as much about his later years, but it seems to me he continued to be used in that way on television while other top guys like Leduc (another guy who I rank very highly and has a HOF case in my opinion, but it's a harder case to make), Chemoul, Delaporte, Bollet, etc. were featured more regularly. Also, we are for sure missing some Blanc TV matches in the footage. I know of at least two that aired but we don't have, and there must be more than two, I would assume. One of those two matches in particular was quite important/interesting. Wrestling got taken off TV for a while in 1963 and there were arguments between the various promoters, but after pressure from the viewers the network had to bring back wrestling and the network put the pressure on the promoters to put their differences aside. This all lead to wrestling's big TV return in October 1963 in a match which was essentially a relevos increibles match: L'Ange Blanc & Jack de Lasartesse vs. Gilbert Leduc & Robert Gastel. To me the fact that they went with Blanc and Leduc as the babyface stars in wrestling's big TV return tells you who the top babyfaces were at the time. Another Blanc match that aired, but we're missing, is L'Ange Blanc & Gilbert Leduc vs. Hercules Cortez & Robert Gastel from October 1964.

I wouldn't say that. Was he a draw in Greece? Yes, definitely. Was he an uber-mega draw? No. Granted, I don't have all of the numbers and never will, but based on the numbers that I do have he's more like the number 5 draw in the history of Greece after Londos, Lambrakis, Papalazarou and Karpozilos. Actually, make that potentially number 6 because Atilio (the top foreign star in the history of Greece) was a bigger deal than Arion overall. Guys like Gordienko and Megaritis have a case about being on his level too, but that's more debatable. Although to be fair to Arion, there was what seems to have been a big run of shows in 1963 with Arion being one of the keys guys and I don't have any of the numbers for that run. I suspect he drew some strong crowds during that run. And were the Greek crowds some of the biggest in Europe in the 1960s and 1970s? Probably, but since we don't have numbers for the Sportpaleis shows in Antwerp and the Spanish bullring shows especially, it's hard to say where the Greek crowds truly ranked during that era. For reference: my History of Greek Pro Wrestling article (which I see that you've quoted in your Arion article so thank you for that!) Full disclosure: If I recall correctly, I have actually voted for Arion in the past, but this year he missed my cut.

I've thought about this before, but gave it even more thought the other day, and it struck me that Big Daddy and L'Ange Blanc make for a good comparison. A very good one, actually. Both were around for a while and doing okay until they stumbled upon a gimmick to elevate them into superstardom, both became the faces of pro wrestling in their respective countries, both were big television stars, both were/are the most recognizable wrestling names to the older generations in their countries, both were pushed hard, both were very protected in terms of losses, their runs as big headline acts were about the same length, and both were still around as headliners when the business in their countries took a nosedive. There are definite similarities between the two. However, when you start making further comparisons you realize that Blanc has Daddy beat on multiple fronts: Blanc was a headliner in several different countries and not just in one, he drew a number of 10,000+ crowds (and there's very likely even more such crowds that we don't know about), he was a better in-ring worker, and his influence was felt/gimmick was copied in several countries. Anyway, just some thoughts from me as I continue pondering my ballot. With all the tag team options it's a harder ballot than last year's so I'm taking my time with it.