David Mantell

Okay just to finish off, a couple of media articles about Farag and the scene. https://cairoscene.com/Buzz/The-Death-of-a-Wrestling-Legend https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/6/56/108556/Sports/Omni-Sports/Famous-Egyptian-wrestler-Mamdouh-Farag-dies.aspx

Not exactly a match but an angle, partly conducted in English., on Egyptian TV

The one other bit of Egyptian footage I've found is another mashup of various bouts. One opponent is Greg Valentine (John Wisniski Jr from America, not Steve Crabtree from England) and another is in a bizarrely small outdoor venue- possibly a lawn tennis court.

Mashup of various bouts to the tune of Eye of the Tiger. Mostly footage of a match where the challenging Bad Foreigner is a young Dave Taylor.

This is probably the best known piece of Egyptian footage, Farag as home country hero defends his Euro title against Klaus Wallas - back home in Austria a respected judoka and usual good guy but here the arrogant villain. Listen out and you will lean plenty of useful Arabic wrestling vocabulary like BODEHSLAM and SIDERING. Keep your eyes peeled for Tony StClair as Farag's second.

The other new clip is a handicap tag against German heel Indio Guajaro and Colonel Brody from Britain. Brody was a regular on 80s ITV and also Reslo from Wales and New Catch from France as a mean moody macho military man heel (albeit often quite technically adept). but this was tame compared to the very dark racist N-bomb dropping character he was for Germany's VDB (Ed Wiskoski also toured Germany at this time and may have plagiarised Colonel De Beers off him.). Which makes the obviously BAME Guajaro an odd choice of tag partner.

Okay, this is one of the two new ones I've found - Farag against someone billed as Hercules but looks more like Chris Benoit

Decided to give Egypt its own thread after coming across a couple more clips of Mamdouh Farag in action. To fill you in, Egypt had the odd foreign tour back in the Monarchy days but was "dark" from the Revolution under Nasser up until Camp David when the country opened up again to the west and tours resumed. At around that time. Farag was a popular babyface in Germany and decided in the early 80s to set up a scene of his own back home in Egypt. Farag had won a European championship and took it back home from where, as national hero, he took on foreign heel challengers from both Europe and America. Farag continued with this into the Nineties when he retired and became a TV presenter. Among other projects, he provided bootleg Arabic commentary on WWE broadcasts Cairo being a major media hub in the Arab world, his commentary. To say this urinated off the folks in Stamford CT is putting it mildly - in fact when WWE finally toured Egypt in October 2012 with three nights at Cairo's Stadium Complex, Farag was banned from the building. He died two years later aged just 64.

There's a viral clip going round of a floating ring on a lake capsizing in France. Cornette mentioned it on his show. I sent Jim and Brian a potted history of Swimming Pool Matches in France with some YouTube links.

Same story all over the world from Lou Thesz to Bret Hart to Gilbert Leduc

Nothing toxic about Corny, he's a voice of reason and the only means by which I can be bothered to keep up to date with developments in modern day American Wrestling. I did have to once check out a Young Bucks match to make sure that their brand of Floppy is nothing like Le Petit Prince Vs Michel Saulnier and lo and behold there is indeed no similarity whatsoever. He and Brian are also usually very diligent in stating that their requirements for pro wrestling re. size and an identifiable face Vs heel apply only to American Wrestling post WW2.

Yes THAT Lance Storm, on his way to US success, taking on Danny. A year before hec himself wrestled Danny, Mick McMichael has the kilt on as referee. Dirty Dan has a weapon, Mick confiscates it. Oh look there's Lance doing the whole German dancing babyface thing, so much for dignity for a man who in 2014 would rather write a long boring essay than do his ice bucket challenge. Oh dear, it sounds ominously like it's going to be a chain match. That explains the weapon Dan brought in. Bell goes, after some cheerleading they lock up. No chain. PHEW!! Still not much technical work. Storm gets Dan to catch a leg. Aflips over on it and gets an armdrag intonarmlock- NOW you're talking. Dan gets a rope break. More cheerleading. Collins bodychecks Storm who leapfrogs and cross buttocks and presses him for 2. Collins gets a semi Japanese Stranglehold and clothesline and a diving headbutt. Danny side chancery throws Storm, comes off he top turnbuckle but is dropkicked by Storm. Storm gets a side chancery throw to cross press for 2. Collins pitches Storm to ringside and keeps him there. Storm comes back in on a sunset flip for another 2. Danny argued with Mick and Storm folding presses him for another 2. Storm gets some Lucha esque huracanrana variant. Danny pitches him out but only gets him on the apron from where Storm fights back. He smacks Danny's head on the top turnbuckle and gets a flying bodypress for 2. Storm dropkicks Danny to ringside and sliding dropkicks him to keep him there. Collins takes over with the fouls. He posts Lance who tries to do a Flair Flip and Flops to the Floor (of the ring.) Collins gets a fireman's carry and dumps Storm throat first on the top rope. He somersaults over Storm who somersault bodypresses him for 2. He gets a spinning kick then goes a bit wild and Mick calms him down. Danny gets an ambush but Lance karate kicks him. Suddenly Finlay runs in and attacks Storm (helping Collins his old late 80s enemy who in 95:still has the British Heavy Middleweight title won from Finlay in 1989. Tony StClair and Franz Schumann come to the rescue. . Storm is DQXwinner but he gets in the miç and demands that chain match they made noises about earlier. The best of today's three German bouts despite all its faults. Not as good as Lance vs Danny Boy could have been.

A year earlier. . Steve Wright was a fantastic wrestler but I'm a bit lairy of feeding him to King Kong Kirk. Still it last 15 minutes, maybe it won't be a squash... The disco plays Don't Let Me Down by ELO - a portent? Kirk's navy blue tights look bright magenta dure to a combination of lighting and cheap videotape. Referee is Jeff Kaye, formerly of the Barons in the UK and France. Kirk apparently gets himself counted out at the start having an argument with a fan (although all we can see in the gloom is one safety light.) Steve leads the crowds in a mocking chant. Down to business, Steve cartwheels out of pressure points. He armdrags the big man and dropkicks him out. A knockout count is interrupted by the bell. By the next round Wright is down and himself thrown out the ring. Kirk follows him out and presumably they brawl, it's impossible to see in the light. Wright gets back first and the round ends with Kaye pointing Kirk out ominously to someone at ringside. Round 3 and Kirk is being counted again. He gets alright on the ropes bashes him,,misses and Wright knocks him down. He snapmares, stomps and Ivan Koloff style flying kneedrops his man. Cut to Kirk back in charge until Wright suddenly snaps up and dropkicks Kirk out of the ring. Kirk gets to advantage back. Then Wright gets a missile dropkick on the bell. DJ plays 99 Red Balloons - are Wright and Kirk's bald heads two of the 99? Wright gets a shot in at Kirk between rounds and Kaye tells him off. Wright charges a cornered Kirk despite Kaye's instructions not to and gets a yellow card. He carries on battering Kirk. Cut to them having a sit down slugfest. Wright flying tackles Kirk, gets slammed but dodges a guillotine elbowsmash. Kirk has Wright balancing precariously on the top rope but Wright soon has Kirk tied up. He attacks but Kirk gets free and clotheslines him down. A round ends with the MC threatening someone with a second and final public warming and Weight choking Kirk with a towel. Kaye gently rebukes him. Cut to Kirk back in charge in the next round. Kirk kicks Wright out and they have another brawl in the dark. Wright makes it back and Kaye has grave words then starts counting Kirk. Kirk gets back in but a posting, four armdrags and two dropkicks later he is back out. Cute to Wright doing a tope on Kirk. Kaye joins the boys outside to sort things out. Cut to Kirk in the ring, Kaye at ringside talking to someone and Wright on the mat. Kirk has got himself DQd. He puts his hands on his hips in a WTF gesture of exasperation and sits down in his corner. Wright recovers and is proclaimed winner, he jumps up and down with excitement and clears off. Not the squash I feared but still not an appropriate use of Steve Wright's skills..

I stand corrected but the Grand Prix belt tournament win WAS 1986. The things I listed were all more my cup of tea than Bull Power Vs Kauroff. I mentioned some All Star stuff as for 1986 we do have the Screensport show.

Okay we've talked about Le Samourai and mentioned Kendo Nagasaki on the French thread so here is a very important three match series both for Kendo's career and for British Wrestling history in general. First up from September 1975, great putdown from George to the entering Daddy - "Go away!" in the most condescending voice imaginable. Up until this point Daddy was totally villain, he returned to TV in July as Big Daddy (two years after Count Bartelli sent the Battling Guardsman packing from the small screen) flattened Big John Cox then returned two week later with a debuting Stax in tow. to get themselves DQd against Roy and Tony StClair. Here like many heels who faced Naggers he is cheered and this would turn out to be the beginning of something. Daddy spends around pretty much destroying Kendo, bodychecking him out of the ring, undoing the mask strings and rolling it up to nose high and finally appearing to get the one required submission with a hangman. Except Kendo hadn't submitted and with an almighty chop on an unepecting Crabtree,clumsily clambers out the winner. A protesting Daddy chases after him (worth checking this clip just to see Daddy RUN) and later issue a challenge after Kendo beats Mike Marino by TKO to a submission in the final. Notice the referee in this and the final bout is Ernie Baldwin, Kendo's old real ice enemy (and trainer of another real life enemy of his, Phillip "King Ben" Boothman) So here is the rematch, best of three falls. The first round goes the full five minutes. Alternates between Daddy and Kendo in charge like an American bout but Kendo puts up more of a fight than last time. Mostly dirty wrestling from both men- check out Daddy's stomps on his cornered/fallen man. Daddy spends most of the round looking psycho before morphing to blue eye facials near the end. After the break rounds 2-4 are all very quick with a planning conference grovit on the mat at the start of each one. Kendo gets an opening submission with a grapevine/crossface. Daddy gets that hangman submission this time for the equaliser.(During the round Kendo gets a public warning, it is wrongly announced as his second and the MC tries to cover up his error at the end). In the final round the magic happens - Kendo has the grapevine/crossface on again but Daddy pushes him into the ropes to get the break, clumsily hiptosses him and scores the Big Splash then goes for the mask - and gets it off!!! But so busy is he celebrating that Kendo comes back with chops and a flying tackle for the winner. George comes in, hands him another mask and he tries to celebrate his 2-1 win but it is a phyrric win and Daddy has a moral victory. So the feud is on ... Finally from just after Xmas. arguably the start of the Xmas Big Daddy match tradition. Advertised in TVTimes as a Daddy-Strong solo bout. There's only a short clip here but it didn't run much long longer. My general understanding is that it started with Kendo giving the big men quite a hiding until they double teamed him(after Stax pulled Kendo off a pin on Big Daddy, (which would earn the big men a third and disqualifying public warning against Steve Veidor 4 months later), playing bodycheck tennis and finally giving him the infamous sandwich, before turning their attentions to strong and getting the opening fall after which Kendo and George abandoned Rex to the tender mercies of the big men. So Big Daddy is The Man Who Unmasked Kendo and Kendo is The Man Who Beat Big Daddy On TV Three Times (including his January 1973 round 3 KO of the Battling Guardsman.) Daddy, Stax, Kendo and assorted fourth men including Strong, Mal Kirk and Count Bartelli would take this feud around the country all 1976 long. They were never great scientific bouts- that line about " quite an unusual sort of bout, not too much wrestling just yet" was Kent Walton 's way of slagging off a bout. But it paved the way for later feuds like Daddy Vs Haystacks and Daddy versus Quinn.

And here is his tag partner from a few weeks earlier: Yes it's the same Samourai. The commentator says he is in red with yellow patterns and if this was 2eme Chaine then viewers saw for themselves. Heel Vs heel, Marcel is of course a Blousson Noir and wears his Blousson to the ring. He looks like Big Bully Busick with a comb over. Samourai throws Manneuvaux around and takes bumps better, rolling up. easily, even after his wrist has been worked on. He easily reverses a standing full nelson and gives moustachioed Marcel to take loud bumps. Great escape from headscissors, unpicking one leg while in the ball and setting it to legspread. He even does the monkey climb - after all, the French call it la Planchette Japonaise. Neat crossface/bodyscissors combination too. Defensively hecdoes one of Johnny Saint's old counters, being pulled upwards by a limb - in this case the leg- and getting the other leg full locked upright so instead of being dropped, he ends up standing upright. He gets the winner with a sunset flip, no selling a kick to the head from Manneuvaux. This is very much a vehicle for Samourai. Despite all this, he gets booked by the crowd, both at the end (and bows to the MC and L'Arbitre)and whenever he gets a Prime from Un Sportif Anonym during the bout. Mostly from the bit where he goes wild with the chops on the floored Manneuvaux and gets a Deuxieme Et Derniere Avertisement. An over the shoulder backbreaker turns into an excuse to choke Manneuvaux on the ropes. Talking of Samurais, Kendo Nagasaki deserves and apology from all those who mock the disco ladder match nearly 15 years later. Compared to the cheap Son et lumiere here, that was quite a light show. Fairy lights come on on the ring as an old beardy geezer called Phillipe is interviewed Then some police surplus flashing lights and something loud and banging we can't see clearly on screen. This was a prelude for an Astronauts tag team match with about 5 mins of guys being shot into the ring while going about the early stages of a big standard Catch A Quatre which cuts out mid match.

Yes I thought OJ might like this. Personally I find it rather slug and punch like the Piper/T boxing match at WM2, even when it ended up outside the ring (and I don't get why White's count was stopped. He gets forever before the count is restarted.) Maybe one or two side chanceries throw from Leon, that was the only technical moves of the bout. Crowd take Kauroff's side despite his long heel history while Leon White was the pure and innocent Baby Bull in the AWA just months earlier. Here he gets the win with a Big Daddy Splash and the crowd gives him the bird. Despite everything KK and Bull Power are good sportmanly chums at the end - maybe this is how Kauroff went back to heel afterwards. Dodgy trippy title sequence - trying to make a test pattern tone signal and the dying moans of a geriatric relative plus video feedback effects generated by the on-screen lettering look and sound like the Saturday night horror show. (Re. the Britain comment - this is from the year that Danny Collins feuded with Marvellous Mike Bennett with Mike winning the Grand Prix Belt, Roy (Steve) Regal and Kid McCoy's ITV debuts, Steve Wright as Bull Blitzer winning the World Mid Heavyweight Championship off Marty Jones, the UK Greg Valentine winning the Golden Grappler trophy, Fuji Yamada's All Star debut, the World Heavyweight title tournament at Hanley won by Quinn, Rocky Moran and Kung Fu as British Heavyweight Middleweight champions ...)

The thing is, the French didn't really think of it as a gimmick match. It was just another place where wrestling shows were held. Obviously the entire evening's show had to take place in the pool including long serious technical bouts and phases of bouts when the audience would just forget about the water. In this case, any anticipation about seeing big Swiss Renecger wet was undermined when he managed to capsize his boat on the way y to the ring. Rene had something of Sid Eudy to him, big, tall blond and accident prone.(I bet Eudy wished a certain 2001 WCW PPV had been held in a pool.) The bout starts off as technical wrestling for giants with snapmares and side chancery throws. Van Buyten showing he can do all the French somersaulting stuff as well as RBC, LPP, Saulnier etc. Lightweight wrestler Bob Remy is L'Arbitre for contrast. Later on it becomes something like an 80s WWF match, full of big power stuff. Lasartesse uses a big reverse piledriver a lot. You're showing your (lack of) age if you think Tombstone but that does underline my point about 80s WWF style. About 13 minutes in, Rene does it the fourth time and the commentator says "La Belge TOMBE le quatrieme fois.". Don't you just love unconscious multilingual puns. At one point the commutator goes on about "Le Manchette Nautique" (Maritime Forearm Smash)"qui est different du Manchette Classique.". No I didn't spot any difference either. Referee Remy turns the crowd off off him by refusing to allow FVB to bung Lasartesse in the water. FVB end up pitching them both over and getting himself disqualified after claiming a KO victory (shades of Flesh Gordon getting DQd and claiming moral victory due to some unauthorized pin count - or else Jimmy Hart and his referee's stripes jacket at WM9.) So he pitches them both out again. Franzl does get one moral victory although this means the clip ends in a cliffhanger as both men are last seen stuck on different corners of the ring while the boat - already badly taking in water - comes to an awkward stop halfway between them. Presumably Franz finally had to dive for it during the next programme. Talking of peoples' wives on the wrestling show. we don't meet Franz's but apparently she was a lady wrestler says the commentator.

Follow up video. Artwork shows Jim being offered a Hulk Hogan gingerbread man by the Cat In The Hat

Okay, for this week. here's a nice short bout that neither OJ nor myself have touched before. Alex Fontaine, presumably no relation to Pierre Booster Fontaine of New School French promotion the ICWA. He's the one in the black top, looking like a freshly unmasked masked man, or maybe Jon Guil Do. Joined in progress with Cavilliers outside the ring. They lock up and Guy gets a side chancery and monkey climb. Alex dumps some relative of Guy out of the ring followed by the man himself. They take turns dumping each other outside and get a lot of dropkicks and huracanranas on each other. They kip up, kip out of headscissors - and kip up straight into a head collision and double KO. OJ won't like it, but a ringside lady here with kids, whose husband is a boxer, reckons it's a nice fair equitable conclusion.

And hopefully get them posted some place us ordinary mortals can see them.

Not necessarily but I would conflate it with a pool (not necessarily a large one) of challengers for each weight division being present. There were Middleweights in 50s Australia but apparently not 50s America.

What's happened to French Catch Tuesday on Segunda Caida? Has the stock of new bouts run out?

Interestingly your neck of the woods had lighter weight wrestling back in the pre Jim Barnett days - the Australian Middleweight title lasted until 1960! https://www.wrestling-titles.com/australia