Phil Lions

^ Thanks. I was going through Bob Plantin's blog yesterday and came across a pretty good article on Gilbert Leduc that summarizes well who he was. I'll get it translated and tweet it at some point in the next few days. I'll make sure to tag Brian and Jim too. Meanwhile, a few additional nuggets of information that I've just come across: According to an article I saw, the original Der Henker was Johnny Stein, then Freddy Robert got the gimmick, and finally in the early 1970s it was Remy Bayle. Before that in the first half of the 1960s Bayle had done another masked gimmick - Le Justicier du Ring (a L'Ange Blanc rip-off which, it seems, a few guys worked as over the years). Luna Catch 2000 was created by... Ted Lamar (real name Albert Lafeuille). Lamar's other notable accomplishment was being Jean Ferre's opponent in Ferre's debut match. La Bête Humaine in the 1971 footage was Nick Sanders (real name Paul Papayre from Bordeaux). Sanders had a rugby background (which Bob Plantin had also mentioned to me in the past). He was brought to Paris and managed by Paul Marton. The Hungarian Paul Marton was one of the men behind the number two French promotion back in the 1930s (based out of Elysee-Montmartre). In the second half of the 1940s he took over as promoter at Salle Wagram. He was also the one who brought Gilbert Leduc into pro wrestling. Eventually in the 1950s Maurice Durand took over Salle Wagram and I had figured that meant Marton was out of the scene altogether, but apparently not - he was still active in Paris in the early 1970s. I'm not sure of the year (definitely before 1973) but apparently at one point there was a Guy Mercier vs. Kamikaze match on TV in France where Kamikaze ended up unmasking and was revealed as Modesto Aledo indeed. Well, sort of. His face was actually painted up so you couldn't really tell it was him but according to an article I saw it was him.

"Les Organisations Raoul Paoli" or "Raoul Paoli Promotions", if you prefer its English-language equivalent. Here it is on a poster from 1934: In the 1950s Paoli's promotion merged with Goldstein's promotion and eventually that became "Fédération Internationale de Lutte et de Combat" (FILC). Here it is on a poster from 1961 down at the bottom: Anyway, this will all be in my upcoming catch timeline. Up until the early 1960s I've got stuff mostly figured out, with a few notable gaps. After that it gets much trickier to figure out. The bad news is that French copyright laws are such that 70 years need to have passed since the original date of publication for them to be able to make newspapers digitally available, which means that right now almost nothing past 1953 is available (for a while there were some post-1953 newspapers available, but then they got taken down). So yeah, it would be quite a while until the 60s, 70s and beyond newspapers become available online and we're able to do more thorough research on those decades...

I finished reading the new Marc Mercier book that was just released. It's a mix of stories about Marc's father and family, Marc's career as a wrestler, Marc's movie career, Marc's personal life and Marc's days as a promoter. I found it enjoyable, mostly because it's not often that you get to read books set in the world of catch, and overall it's a solid account of Marc's life, but some parts of the book I don't buy. At times there's definitely exaggeration in there and also some stuff that is absolutely not true. The most amusing example of both being Marc claiming that his father was a huge star in Zurich and with him on the card they were regularly drawing 47,000 people (mind you, the venue he mentions cannot hold more than 15,000) until one time when he wasn't on the card and the attendance was 1,500... A few interesting nuggets of info from the book: José Gonzales' real name was... Daniel Lequec, a Frenchman. The Golden Falcons were Guy Renaud and Robert Torres. That was in 1977. Later they also wrestled as Les Panthers, a nazi-esque gimmick. Marc was trained by Michel Chaisne at Louis Michon's catch school in Paris. Guy Renaud and Robert Torres also had a big hand in training him. Marc's debut match in 1977 was against Bruno Lequec (José Gonzales' son). Marc's big break, and he got it less than a year into his career (according to him because Roger Couderc recommended him), was working for Delaporte at Elysee-Montmartre. He has a very high opinion of Delaporte. If Marc's narrative (i.e. his claims of regular TV appearances by his father and later by him) is to be believed, then INA is missing quite a few matches. At one point Delaporte teamed up Marc with Gérard Hervé (Flesh Gordon) under the tag team name Les Playboys. Marc says they worked as a team for about three years and he talks very fondly of this time. Marc says Delaporte didn't like Gordon very much, because he found him to be arrogant and eventually Delaporte fired Gordon, which led to Gordon starting his own company. Marc credits Gordon for talking him into returning to the ring in the early 2000s (Marc had retired in 1989 after a serious car accident). Eventually Marc decided to leave Gordon's promotion and start his own company so in April 2006 he bought the FFCP name from Delaporte. He says he didn't feel at home in Gordon's promotion and didn't like how the younger generation was treating him. He told Gordon about starting the new company and wanted them to work together and share the French market. At first they were working together and Gordon was sending Marc talent, but then their relationship turned sour. In the book he keeps taking shots at a certain "rich promoter", one of the French ones, and never mentions him by name. I can't quite figure out who he's referring to. It was someone who he says was in a few car crashes and one of them led to the death of an English wrestler (not mentioned by name). He paints Duranton specifically in a pretty negative light and makes him out to be very arrogant. At one point he mentions the term "bourre", which kind of surprised me. "Bourre" and "chiqué" were the old Greco-Roman pro wrestling terms for shoot and work, respectively, used in the times of Paul Pons before WWI. Didn't expect to see such a term used in a book about catch. However, it seems over time "bourre" became the term for wrestlers having a private gym match to see who the better man is. Mercier used it in that context and I checked with Bob Plantin, who confirmed he also knows the term in that context. In the times of Pons it was used for shoot matches in front the crowd too. According to Marc, before championship matches wrestlers used to have "bourre" bouts in front of their colleagues and the winner would then be booked to win the championship match. He doesn't explicitly say it, but he mentions the "bourre" stuff right after talking about the 1960s so this gives the impression this championship-deciding practice was happening in the 1960s, which I don't believe. Heck, I don't believe they were doing it in the 1930s either, let alone the 1960s. Either way though, it's interesting to see that the term "bourre" traveled through the decades. He also uses the term "mourir" (to die) as the term for "selling". No. My new research has confirmed that this is definitely not correct and it's something that people often get wrong (Mercier gets it wrong in his book too). FFCP was started by Etienne Siry and Robert Lageat in 1950 and at first it was just a governing body for catch (a rival governing body to the one Paoli, Goldstein and others were working with). At that point there were still no promotional names. FFCP later became the name of the Siry/Lageat promotion. I'm not clear on the timeline after this, but I guess later Delaporte ended up with the FFCP name and then in 2006 Mercier bought it from him.

Over the weekend I started researching the career of Gilbert Leduc more in-depth than I ever have in the past, because I want to help push his case for the WON HOF next year, and in doing so I ended up uncovering a bunch of new information on how catch worked in France on an organizational level in the post-WWII years through the mid 1950s. I became so intrigued by it that I've paused the Leduc research for now and have focused my efforts on the organizational stuff instead. Apparently, things were a lot more interesting and tumultuous back then than I realized (rival organizations, lawsuits, potential corruption...). So now I've decided to do a timeline/article chronicling all the important events in French catch history that I'm aware of. Haven't decided yet what year would be the cut-off point. I'll share the link here once it's ready, hopefully in the next few weeks.

Der Henker is one of the more amusing gimmicks to me. Durand saw the success of L'Homme Masque so with Le Bourreau de Béthune he created his own L'Homme Masque but instead of black made him red. Goldstein then returned the favour by introducing Der Henker a.k.a. Le Masque Rouge. In short, Der Henker was an imitation of an imitation, which I find amusing. And that guy in the video is definitely not Verdu. He had a different build. That said, based on photos and videos that I've seen, more than one person did the Der Henker gimmick over the years, which is par for the course for France. It's certainly possible for Verdu to have been one of the Der Henkers at some point.

Had a feeling you had something to do with it, but didn't want to call you out. Thanks! Kellet and Grey I don't know too much about as the TV era of the UK isn't really my area of expertise, but I'm looking forward to eventually digging in more on them. It's good to have some new faces in the mix for that section of the ballot.

Gilbert Leduc being on the ballot next year really caught me off guard. Talk about an unexpected, yet very pleasant, surprise. I don't know what or who made Dave finally decide to put him on, but make no mistake about it without the Segunda Caida guys uploading all the catch footage, Leduc wouldn't even be in the conversation so kudos for that. He's going to be a tough sell though. He's not a Tarres where you can point to him drawing big crowds and people can easily see why he's on the ballot. Leduc's case is harder to make. I feel like a lot of pushing would need to be done for him to even get enough votes to stay on the ballot. I hope I'm wrong, but it feels that way. And thinking about it, I may try to put something together in the future to help strengthen his case. Pleasantly surprised about Brazil's Ted Boy Marino too.

The George Hackenschmidt vs. Joe Rogers footage that I mentioned earlier has finally been released. It's available here: https://www.ngataonga.org.nz/search-use-collection/search/F18094/ The Hack/Rogers match took place on January 30th 1908 in London at the Oxford Music Hall. The video is almost 24 minutes in total. It features the whole Hackenschmidt/Rogers match (both falls) and between the falls there's footage from another match. I'm pretty sure the other match is Joe Carroll vs. Peter Gotz from February 3rd 1908, which was the middleweight final of the National Sporting Club's catch-as-catch-can tournament in London at the Alhambra Theatre. There's also some footage of Hack and Rogers posing for the camera.

Indeed they were. Here's a newspaper advert for the movie (its title in France was "Les Frères Dynamite"): And here they are as their characters in the movie:

How about that! Just found this out. The OSS 117 in question was portrayed by none other than Benny Galant from Spain. This was in the early 1960s right before Galant went to Mexico in 1962. I did not have Galant portraying a French James Bond of sorts on my bingo card, yet here we are. Cool!

Just got my hands on this special edition of "Sport Mondial" (A French sports magazine) from the summer of 1959, which is dedicated to catch. Articles, interviews, photos, illustrations and even a L'Ange Blanc/catch crossword. It's pretty neat. There's nothing particularly noteworthy in there, but there's a few interesting tidbits that I thought I'd share. One of the articles suggested that about half of the pro wrestlers in France at the time were full-time pro wrestlers while the other half had side jobs in addition to wrestling. A few examples: Lino Di Santo - used to be a precision fitter, King Kong Taverne - was a taxi driver, Jean Wanes - taxi driver as well, Michel Allary - used to be a a cook, Jack van Dooren - a salesman (he was a full-time wrestler, but then he fractured a vertebrae during a match and that's when he got the salesman job and was no longer a full-timer). There's an article on promoter Robert Lageat, who used to be a pro wrestler in the 1930s, and about how how he injured his foot and was then shot in the stomach by the nazis in 1940, but ultimately he managed to avoid capture and saved his life. That incident did leave him partially handicapped and ended his in-ring career. At some point after 1945 he became a promoter. The article mentioned that he was part of the Siry-Lageat-Caliez group. Caliez is a name I hadn't come across before. I looked him up. Turns out this Gaston Caliez was partners with Etienne Siry since at least 1951, if not earlier. In fact, it seems he even predated his partners as a promoter since I found him co-promoting shows at Palais de Glace in Paris in 1945. His partner at the time was someone called Dubois. The article also mentioned, and this is true (I looked it up), that at one point in 1950 FFL (or rather its president Roger CouIon) took away Lageat's promoter license so Lageat sued them for abuse of power, won, got his license back and was awarded 300,000 francs in damages. In relation to that lawsuit, and it's not outright stated, Lageat alludes to there being a "wrestling trust" and how they were against him. Another interesting fact about Lageat, and this was mentioned in Jean Corne's book too*, is that Lageat had a standing offer to give 1,000,000 francs to anyone who could prove the old rumor that the results of the wrestling matches in Paris were being reported to the police in advance. Speaking of Lageat, the boxer-turned-wrestler Robert Charron identified Lageat and Siry as the people who recruited him to pro wrestling. Charron was broke, 1.8 million francs in debt, a drunk and was also doing drugs. He was at rock bottom, but he got clean and entered pro wrestling, which he credited as the thing that saved his life. Another article that I found interesting was a commentary of sorts by journalist René Lehmann. It was more or less a critical take on the business and talked about how wrestling was fake and had always been fake. He talked about watching Poddubny and others wrestling as a kid in the early 1900s and even then thinking it's not real. Then in the 1930s he once wrote an article about the matches he had watched and expressed his opinion that they were fake. Raoul Paoli and Henri Deglane summoned him to watch a training session. He ended up wrestling with Deglane, who threw him around a bit, but it doesn't read like Deglane stretched him or anything like that. Still, Lehmann walked away unconvinced at the legitimacy of pro wrestling, even though Paoli and Deglane were swearing by it. He ended the article by telling a story about how recently he had been visiting with a very educated older couple and he was shocked to see them turn on the TV to watch wrestling. How could such educated people (a retired Sorbonne University professor and a former university director) like such a ridiculous thing as wrestling, he wondered. I'll quote the wife here directly as I think her response to Lehmann summed it up well: "I recognize that this wrestling is a circus attraction, but it lifts me up from my armchair both figuratively and literally. And you, you are jaded!" * I'm pretty sure Corne used this very magazine as one of the sources for his book. And finally, here's a few photos from the magazine. Roger Delaporte feeding pigeons. Lino Ventura shaking hands with Johnny Rougeau (the recognized World Heavyweight champion in France in 1959) as promoter Alex Goldstein looks on. Robert Charron next to promoter Robert Lageat. The brutality of wrestling.

George Hackenschmidt footage has always been one of my "holy grails" and we're on the verge of perhaps finally being able to see some footage of him. The Estonian Sports and Olympic Museum, who are also in possession of a Hackenschmidt autobiography which was unpublished until a couple of years ago, worked together with a New Zealand archive, where the film had been stored, and managed to restore and digitize the George Hackenschmidt vs. Joe Rogers match from 1908 in London. It's 17 minutes of footage in total, including the introductions, the match and some posing by Hackenschmidt. It's a silent film. The footage is not available online, but the museum held a screening of it recently. According to someone who saw it, there was about 15 minutes of footage of Hack wrestling. Based on the match reports from 1908, the Hack/Rogers match went 14:20 minutes in total so that means they must have the whole match on film. Despite wrestling there for several years, Hack didn't have many high-profile matches in the UK and while the Rogers one probably doesn't crack the top 5 in terms of significance, it definitely makes the top 10 so it's not just some random match. A frame from the film: So yeah, it's pretty incredible to see a complete Hackenschmidt match from 116 years ago randomly pop up. The footage is not available online and I have no idea if the museum has plans to make it available at some point, but just knowing the footage exists takes us one step closer to possibly being able to see it.

The clipping is for October 18 (a Saturday), not August 18. That said, as you mentioned, the year is handwritten so there's a chance it might be off. The only other plausible option would be 1980.

When I first went through Jean Corne's book I didn't pay much attention to the photos, but earlier today I was going through the book again and noticed something. He's included a photo of a newspaper clipping with the TF1 schedule for the night of October 18, 1975, and it looks like catch was supposed to air that night. We don't have footage from that night so I don't know if and what actually aired, but the advertised line-up was Les Celtes (Jean Corne & Michel Falempin) vs. Zarak, and Jon Guil Don vs. Paco Ramirez. P.S. And if anyone's wondering how it's possible for a book published in 1974 to have a clipping from 1975 - it's because my copy of the book is of the reprinted edition from 2012, which includes some extra content that wasn't in the original 1974 book.

Thank you for that. I must've missed the Pye/Sherman match last time I was checking Getty (or they uploaded it after that). I had reached out about the Pye/Stoeff match years ago and they told me they couldn't find the film. One of their theories was that the film might've been taken offsite to secure storage for nitrate film, but either way I was told it's not available. It's possible something may have changed since then, I suppose. I may check in with them again. I was left with the impression that anything mentioned on their list that hasn't been digitized yet is either in too bad of a condition to be digitized or lost altogether. There's always a possibility something might pop up though. You never know.

It's a poster for a Greco-Roman tournament in Paris in 1899. Illustrated by Jean de Paleologue.

There are always outliers and I'm sure there must have been other good crowds here and there before 2006, but post-2006 WS was definitely on an upswing. I was sort of following the promotion back then and it was obvious. Well, following as much as you could follow it online. But I do remember seeing a good number of photos and fan-cams. This was in the 2009-2011 period when Tom La Ruffa was positioned as the top star and the roster featured plenty of workers from other European countries too. EDIT - As luck would have it, La Ruffa just posted this on his Facebook. Which reminds me to mention that if anyone wants a good look at WS back in those years look up Tom La Ruffa's matches. He taped his own stuff so most of the available WS footage is with him. And now that you've mentioned FFCP you've brought up a memory. I vaguely remember reading about a FFCP show back in the post-2006 years that drew either 2,000 or 4,000 (can't remember the exact number) and being very impressed/confused why it did when the biggest names on that show were Bryan Danielson and Metal Master (Chad Collyer). At least I think it was an FFCP show, but I may be misremembering. My point being that reading about that sort of thing is how I first became interested in the French scene and somewhat followed it back then. And when I say followed the scene I mean mostly WS as they seemed to have the most active schedule and the most interesting/varied roster. AWR's run in France was also quite interesting to me back then. They did about 30 shows in a 2-year span (2008-2010), several drawing in the 3,000s and over a dozen doing in the 2,000s. And meanwhile, with the exact same roster (RVD, Sabu, Dupree, Raven, etc.) their German shows all did below 500 and that was with the added bonus of Bret Hart making a special appearance on the German shows... This just goes to show you the difference in wrestling's popularity in France and Germany at the time (late 2009). AWR also had a one-off TV broadcast in France in 2009 - I don't remember the network, but I do remember the reports being that the show did a 6% share in the ratings. The 2005-2010 period was interesting in Europe, because WWE got good TV deals in Italy, France and Spain, which resulted in wrestling's popularity going way up in those countries for a few years and a bunch of promotions reaped the benefits of this. Particularly those promotions who relied on ex-WWE stars and/or targeted family audiences.

There's no mystery when it comes to the crowds that you've linked to above. In 2006 WWE started airing on free TV in France (NT1) and as a result WWE experienced a big surge in their popularity in France, which gave a boost to the local scene, especially those promotions targeting family audiences (Flesh Gordon's Wrestling Stars being perhaps the best example). International promotions such as Nu-Wrestling Evolution out of Italy and especially American Wrestling Rampage out of Ireland also did tours in France and were also drawing well. When AWR are drawing multiple crowds of 1,500-3,000 with Rene Dupree vs. Test as the headline attraction, you can just tell wrestling is popular in general. WWE being on free TV made wrestling more popular in France and everyone else that was competent at promoting reaped the benefits of wrestling's new-found popularity and drew good crowds as a result. It's that simple. And this went on for a few years until WWE's, and by proxy wrestling's, popularity went down again.

I don't think Monsoon ever worked in France. At least I'm not aware of him doing so, but anything's possible, I guess. Interesting Goldstein call-out though. Hayes did work for Goldstein on and off for years.

Was looking for something else and randomly found a TV listing for Kader Hassouni/Petit Prince vs. Anton Tejero/Bob Remy 1/7/77. According to the TV schedule for that day, the match was to air live on TF1 on January 8, not January 7. Emir Mansour vs Janek/Jean Fryziuk/Frisuk 4/18/76 was the only advertised match for that broadcast (Juan Guil Don vs Anton Tejero also aired) and it wasn't a live broadcast.

I managed to find a copy of "Tele Magazine" from the end of April 1961, which is when catch first got taken off TV. There's some very interesting stuff in there. It was Maurice Herzog (the Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports) who put pressure on the network to do so but ultimately the final decision to take catch off TV was Raymond Janot's (the Assistant Director-General of RTF). Right on the heels of this decision the magazine has an interview with commentator Claude Darget and also with promoter Maurice Durand. The Durand interview continues in the next edition of the magazine and in the previous edition there had been an interview with Durand's chief rival Alex Goldstein, but sadly I don't have access to either of those (I am working on getting my hands on another interesting set of interviews though so stay tuned). Anyway, here are some highlights from the two interviews. Some I'll summarize, others I'll quote directly. Claude Darget: When asked if catch was a sport or spectacle Darget said he didn't consider catch a sport, because in sports there are rules to follow and in catch there were none. Also, catch clearly wasn't a real competition because the TV bouts would end before the end of the broadcast. He compared the job of the wrestlers to that of circus acrobats and trapeze artists - a very difficult job that requires high skill, but it's not a sport. He also gave props to the wrestlers because they had to wrestle five, six, seven, sometimes even up to eight matches per week and said this would be impossible for any footballer, rugby player or even a tennis player. Darget said the most important thing in catch was knowing how to not hurt yourself or your opponent, and the profession also required great stamina and endurance. Not everyone was cut out for it. He also pointed out that some wrestlers were quite intelligent, despite what people may think (Cheri Bibi, Roger Delaporte and Eddy Wiecz are some of the examples he mentioned). Apparently, Delaporte and Bollet used to work as garbage collectors at one point. "Roger Delaporte is a special case. He is a born comedian who can excite the audience even before the match has started. He is extraordinary. His way of walking to the ring, addressing his opponent, beating his chest while saying 'Rah, rah' is amazing." This was his response when asked if catch was fixed: "To say that matches are prearranged would be a bit much, but I will still say that things are prepared. However, it is certain that if someone is going to win, he wins." Darget was asked about the long-standing rumor that the results of the matches are reported to the police in advance and said he didn't think it's true - the police don't care about match results, they only care that there are no accidents or fights during the shows. According to Darget the top 10 wrestlers in France were earning as much as 200,000 to 300,000 francs per month, the next 40 between 100,000 and 200,000, and the rest around 80,000 francs. He said at the time there were around 400 pro wrestlers in France. Darget said that as long as the audience found the catch matches funny, entertaining and the audience could blow off some steam by supporting the good guys and yelling at the bad guys, he was in favor of catch and not against it at all. When asked if he would commentate catch again Darget said no unless he was given matches that he'd like - anything with Delaporte in particular. He also said the wrestlers used to like his commentary, but the promoters did not. The promoters thought he wasn't taking wrestling seriously. He said he was just passing on the impressions he got from watching the matches - impressions of laughter, amusement, spectacle. Darget said to him the biggest problem when it comes to catch on TV was that the promoters had started trying to dictate to the network how things should be - what days the broadcasts should be on, what matches should air, who should commentate, etc. And to him this was wrong - the network was paying for these shows so these decisions should be the network's and the promoters should have no say in them. Either do what the network wants and take their money or say no, but don't agree to the network's wants and then start making demands. That said though, he was in favor of catch being on TV. ------------ Maurice Durand: Durand proudly proclaimed that he had the best roster in all of Europe and these were the names he mentioned: Josef Kovacs, James Brown, OSS 117, Quasimodo, Gilbert Leduc, Jose Tarres, Prince Kumali, Bourreau de Bethune, Blousons Noirs, the German stranglers, les Miserables, Andre Bollet and Roger Delaporte. He didn't disagree with the decision to take catch off TV. "I think Mr. Janot's reasons are of an educated nature. It must be recognized that excessive brutality in a match or the presentation of a wrestler playing a homosexual can distort the mind and compromise the family education of children. From this point of view I can only agree with Mr. Janot's decision." That said, Durand was not in favor of completely removing catch from the TV. He said they should be more careful about the quality of the shows and thought that airing catch once per month was ideal. "Airing catch on TV every week was catastrophic for the provincial promoters. TV broadcasts demolish the attendance of other shows going on that night." Durand stated that in the past the network had been favoring other promoters over him. When possible, Raymond Marcillac (the head of sports at the network) would choose to air another promoter's show over Durand's. Durand would get one TV broadcast while his competitors would get a dozen. Durand claimed this was due to the other promoters influencing Marcillac to do so and they were trying to run Durand out of business. Also, it seems like Durand actually complained to a minister about this (I would assume Maurice Herzog). It reads like Durand wasn't a fan of Roger Couderc. He did like Claude Darget and Leon Zitrone, however. "Darget was another class. He didn't hold back from shooting arrows at us, but he had a quiver full of humor." RTF was paying the promoters 200,000 francs per broadcast, which Durand thought was ridiculous and nowhere near enough as 100,000 of that would go to paying various taxes. He also complained that sometimes they'd give them only half an hour of broadcast time, and because of this sometimes the show would go off the air before the match had finished as typically matches were longer than that. He said he preferred to get an hour and not be paid than to be paid this little and get only half an hour. He also had an interesting claim that for the Karl von Chenok & Robert Gastel vs. Claude Montourcy & Gilbert Leduc match (May 23, 1959) he had only been given 35 minutes of broadcast time, but "the match was so prodigious that no one wanted to take the responsibility of stopping the broadcast and the match lasted 1 hour and 5 minutes! A match that all of France talked about!" Another Durand claim was that sometimes the network would let him know that they want to broadcast his show only with three days' notice. He was very opposed to the idea of catch being broadcast from a studio. "No, that's heresy! Wrestlers need the atmosphere of the room, the commotion, the shouts of the audience. No atmosphere, no catch! The audience is the first actor in catch." He said that he wasn't in favor of comedic wrestling and pointed out that since joining his promotion Delaporte and Bollet had changed their style to be more serious in the ring. He was happy that L'Ange Blanc had unmasked the month before and talked about how all the masked gimmicks showed a lack of imagination by his competitors, called these gimmicks "grotesque attractions" and said he was glad the masked wrestler craze was fading away.

I don't think that's the case or if it was it was only briefly. Here's part of an article from April 1961 where the idea of advertising being allowed on TV is discussed. There are quotes by Raymond Janot (at the time the Assistant Director-General of RTF and, technically, the guy who made the final decision to take catch off TV in April 1961 until public pressure forced him to bring it back albeit with a very reduced schedule) and Pierre Lazareff (another one of the RTF head honchos). The discussion is about how the introduction of a second TV channel in France has overstretched RTF and its unions and has resulted in the lowering of the quality of the broadcasts. The RTF guys argue that allowing advertising on TV would bring in negligible revenue and it wouldn't be enough to cover the increased expenses that having two channels had brought on. There's also a note about how the press was actively opposed to advertising being allowed on TV because it would be, as they put it, "a fatal blow to newspapers" (and the author of the article disputes that notion).

I've never been able to pin down the first match that aired on French TV and this Delaporte quote piqued my interest so I took another crack at it. As we already knew, the earliest full match in INA's archive is the February 23, 1956, Wiecz/Koparanian vs. Bollet/Gueret match, but now here we have Roger Delaporte claiming it was a match of his in 1953. So, which one was it? What was the first full match to air on TV in France? Well, I still don't know. Currently I don't have access to post-1953 French newspapers and I couldn't find any mentions of full matches airing on TV up to the end of 1953. Bob Plantin has always said the first match to air on TV, in highlight form, was Rene Ben Chemoul vs. Johnny Peters - about four minutes of which were broadcast on March 26, 1950. I don't believe that to be the case though. In INA the earliest match that is listed as having aired on TV is Henri Deglane vs. Frank Valois from Palais des Sport. It took place on November 21, 1949, and about 7 minutes of highlights aired on TV the following day. Of course, it's possible INA is missing something, but as of right now that looks to be first one. The highlights were airing as part of the TV News broadcasts. Everything else in the archive before Deglane/Valois is listed as shown in the cinema or filmed but not used anywhere. And now here's an interesting quote that I found in a December 12, 1952, article: "I'm not saying that catch shows aren't telephotogenic. They are. But it would be advisable for the TV News not to abuse them. Don't you think? Three in eight days is a lot." A journalist complaining that the TV News were airing catch highlights too often... A quick look at the TV schedule for December 1952 tells me that back then the News was on TV three times per day - 1:20 PM, 6:30 PM and 8:30 PM. And indeed, if you look at INA there's quite a few match highlights which are listed as having aired on TV as part of the TV News. This is not directly related to catch, but I found it interesting. According to a report from November 4, 1953, the radio tax in France got raised to 1,550 francs and therefore the television tax, which was mandated to be three times the radio tax, was raised to 4,650 francs.

I ended up reading through another French book about catch - Christophe Lamoureux’s “La grande parade du catch” from 1993. It’s an interesting and well-researched book for sure, but I skipped around a lot and only focused on the parts that interested me the most. I may come back to it again in the future and read it more thoroughly. The book is a mixture of all sorts of topics - the general nature and appeal of pro wrestling, the inner workings of the business (lots of quotes from the Strangler Jew book), the history of pro wrestling in France, a look at a small local indie company in Nantes, WWF, and more. Here’s a few things that I thought are worth sharing. Quotes from a Roger Delaporte interview in January 1987: [Note - At this point Delaporte was still running Élysée Montmartre in Paris and had his own troupe of wrestlers, which he was booking out to local promoters.] “In 1953, I wrestled the first televised match against Jean Casi, a former boxing champion. It was live from Vincennes. Georges De Caunes commentated and Pierre Sabbagh directed. Three days later, the producers received whole bags of letters! So TV did two live broadcasts every two weeks for five or six years. Until 1957, Claude Darget commented and Roger Couderc took over.” “Between 1950 and 1970 France had 300 professional wrestlers. In 1960, the city of Paris alone offered up to 10 shows per week in the now famous Élysée Montmartre, Cirque d'Hiver, Wagram, Velodrome d'Hiver, Central, Stadium and other suburban venues. In the 1960s, only high-level professional wrestlers were able to make a living from their art, at the cost of tough training and numerous bone and muscle accidents. In 1960, a professional wrestler received 150 francs for a curtain-raising match and 500 francs for a featured match.” “Some journalists repeated so much that the matches were ‘bogus’, that they were a scam, that they ended up killing wrestling. Too bad because now, to live, wrestlers are transformed into acrobats. To please, the women wrestle topless. At one point, I had around twenty girls, women who wrestled like real julots. But now we make them wrestle topless. It’s turned into a joke.” “Today wrestlers are isolated. No sports federation recognizes them anymore. Even if you have to endure the three hours of daily training and endure injuries, bruises and fractures.” “Today, the promoters have aged and the good wrestlers have gone abroad. There is no more relief. I have the impression that these days the guys aren't sweating too much. You have to find 20-year-olds who impress. Heavyweights. You have to show sores and bumps! You know, you just have to look in the street: when two guys fight, there will always be 200 watching.” Roger Delaporte on Andre the Giant (from a different interview): “In 1961, a wholesaler in the Les Halles district presented me with 'the rare bird', which, fifteen years later, made Hulk Hogan tremble: You had to see the beautiful baby! Dédé was 16 years old, 2.15 metres tall and weighed 160 kg. He was a lumberjack, like his two brothers and his father, and he wanted to become a wrestler. He was called the ‘Grand Ferré’, because of the hero of the time of ‘Jean sans Peur’, who massacred the English. He worked for me until 1970. He quickly became a big star because he had titanic strength. But I had to bring wrestlers from Spain, England, America. When he wasn't wrestling, he worked on the farm with his parents. A good, kind guy. He drank a hundred beers a day and ate five steaks at each meal. I even saw him devour twenty chops in a small bistro. We had to have custom gloves sewn, his paws were so huge. In training, he burst sandbags. In 1968, I sent the giant to wrestle overseas. In South Africa he won his first big sum: four thousand francs. Afterwards things went very quickly: Spain the same year, Saudi Arabia where he met an Arab wrestler in a stadium in front of one hundred and twenty thousand people. Finally, in 1970, I sent him to Canada, and he never came back. In America, the ‘Grand Férré’ changed its name. We called him Dédé, ‘The Giant’. He became a billionaire and when he faced Hulk Hogan in Pontiac, there were ninety-three thousand spectators in the building.” The author of the book on the decline of pro wrestling: “The period of the 70s heralded the decline of French wrestling even if a handful of wrestlers tried, at all costs, to ensure succession. Unlike the United States, Great Britain or Germany, France no longer has wrestling masters capable of training a new generation. The best have left the circuits and gone abroad where the remuneration is more substantial. To explain this disaffection, the most ‘addicted’ trainers often cite the extreme physical discipline required to engage in this form of spectacle. You have to train for a long time and the results are slow to come. New generations of wrestlers prefer boxing or judo." Bernard Caclard on the decline of pro wrestling (January 1987 interview): [Note - In addition to being a veteran of the ring, the Briouze-based Caclard was also running his own troupe of wrestlers and booking out shows.] “If there is a clear reduction in numbers in wrestling, it is because it is a thankless sport. From the start, you have to train in wrestling, take blows and always train for results that take a long time to come. In any case, there is no more spectacle. The last show with my wrestlers in Chartres did not draw more than 300 people. Even with the participation of two attractive female wrestlers…” —-------- According to the book, Lino Ventura (the popular wrestler turned even more popular actor) was a matchmaker [booker] at Salle Wagram at one point. It reads like this was before Maurice Durand was running things, but the exact timeline is not mentioned. There’s a section in the book on women’s wrestling and there are quotes from Chris Sherdo and Nicole Corman - two full-time female French professional wrestlers. Chris’ husband was also a pro wrestler [his name is not mentioned] and according to her they were still able to make a good living just from wrestling, but things used to be better, and I quote directly here, “before the crisis”. Chris also mentions that a while ago she had done a three-month tour of Germany, which paid quite well, but such tours were rare. Supposedly, at the time there were only 10 female pro wrestlers on the French circuit. According to the book, up to 1951 in France it was possible for a wrestler to wrestle professionally while still being classified as an amateur and competing in amateur tournaments. Also, in January of 1954 the Ministry of National Education issued an order that recognized freestyle, Greco-Roman and Breton wrestling as the only forms of wrestling that could be considered a sport and strictly forbade any other forms of wrestling (i.e. pro wrestling) to be advertised as a sporting event. The first edition of WWF Magazine in France was published in March 1993. —-------- There’s a big section in the book where the author talks about and is interviewing various wrestlers from Catch Club du Pays de Retz (CCPR). He always refers to CCPR as “an amateur catch club”, but don’t let the word amateur fool you - this was (and still is?) a small indie pro wrestling promotion. Here's what Lamoureux wrote about CCPR: “The club was founded in 1970, but it did not have legal recognition before 1983. For thirteen years it therefore operated willy-nilly, illicitly, like a small informal structure composed of around ten wrestlers responding to the requests of fair promoters…This group of friends gave itself the name ‘Catch Club Nantais’. In 1983, the club was renamed ‘Catch Club du Pays de Retz’, named after the region between Basse-Loire and Vendée where small-time circus already has its traditions and where spectator sports are often invited to liven up the fairs. The acquisition of associative status turned a page in the history of the club, giving another dimension to its organization, and thereby to the quality of the services offered. The increase in resources in men and materials led the club to perform more often, which gave it more local fame. The workforce thus increased from 10 to 20 wrestlers, some of whom were trained by the club.” “According to the manager, the wrestling club's order book is relatively full. Over the course of a year, all activities cover around ten shows, more than half of which are organized during the summer, during special times for village or Sunday festivals. The president of the club has also made a habit of approaching potential customers. Shortly before this period, word of mouth sometimes opened new markets. Let us recall here that most of the signed contracts are with festival committees, sports associations, charities which find through this entertainment a means of financing their various actions. The earnings obtained from paying tickets (never more than 30 francs for 3 hours of show) are not only used to pay wrestlers and managers (they are mainly reimbursed for costs incurred by transport and repairs), the revenue is also used to feed the deficit funds of voluntary associations. Created and run free of charge by the most dedicated members, the stands, the refreshment bar (it is not uncommon for there to be two), the fries or sandwich stand and the various hampers provide opportunity for the most substantial profits.” And the most fascinating thing to me is that CCPR, which dates back to 1970, was still promoting shows as late as last year. It doesn’t seem like they’ve run any shows this year, however. Or at least my quick Google search didn’t turn up any.

Yes, Darget is the one who broke kayfabe during a Hayes vs. Casi match. The promoters and the wrestlers hated him, but Raymond Marcillac (the head of sports at the network) liked him so he kept pushing and pushing until the promoters agreed to let Darget come back. ------ I just checked the commentators section in the book again and noticed something interesting I must've skipped over before. While talking about the commentator for the match (Georges de Caunes) Corne mentions that his tag match with Ischa Israel against Les Blousons Noirs, which we have as April 21 1960, was broadcast on TV three times. "This is, I believe, proof that the show was good.", says Corne. I know in later years they were showing some retro matches on TV so perhaps this is where the other two broadcasts come into play? I have no idea, but I found this claim interesting.