David Mantell

Father and son team up, like the Boothmans and the Kilbys back home in Blighty. Alex and Steve both share the same attack skills (technical plus acrobatic) and they even get in the ring the same cartwheeling way. Generally it's Alex that does the FIP stuff and Steve that makes the save - until dad goes down to a Yamamoto leg drop for the opening fall. When Steve makes a tag, Alex takes a while to get going before going on the attack, hecsoin enough tags Dad back who gets the equaliser on Yamamoto. Alex does come back but ends up getting caught in a folding press by Finlay - his first good move of the match - for the decider. There's not a lot to be said about the heels. Yamamoto is your standard German Wrestling Surly Tokyo Street Thug heel and Finlay is just his regular early 90s bully boy self, here against Alex mostly. Great shot at the start where fans are singing songs about Finlay and he just stares DAGGERS at them. Some good moves from the Wrights but basically your standard face Vs heel match, there to make the fans happy - until it makes them unhappy, natch.

(@ohtani's jacket there is 8mm colour fancam of Hell's Angels Vs Dennisons and I've posted it to the British thread long ago. I can bump it up if you like) We arrived at the Elysee Montmartre and get a potted history of its roots as a dancehall. Roger Delaporte who owned the place is in the front row. First off we get a few minutes of the end of Monsieur Montreal Vs Inca Viracocha. In the 1960s Montreal was a French version of Tarzan Johnny Wilson, same sort of handsome muscleman. Apparently Montreal 's real name is Marcel Cherot and Monsieur Montreal is an old bodybuilding title he won. It's the last few mins of a strength match. Sanniez gets cheered while Caclard (or Calgar according to the INA official YT) gets booed, like the split reaction for Savage and Elizabeth in the mid 80s. Caclard has a similar crewcut/goatee look to heel Bernie Wright in 1985 Germany. He and Sanniez can do all the characteristics French "Vaultigeur" stuff as well as Les Bons. Things really speed up when Khader is tagged in against Sanniez. Sanniez makes no attempt to tone things down so as not to upstage Les Bons - in many respects he is still a Bon at this point and he and Caclard are a Pareja Incredible. The first time Caclard tries to reverse snapmares himself out of a Hassouni hammerlock, Khader just releases the hold and lets him crash but he pulls off the counter a few minutes later. Roca can do the Scisseaux Volees counter to armbars. So far no sin of the back somersault response to a top wristlock. Les Mechants double get nastier, both of them including Sanniez stomping Rocas and Hassouni dropkicking the pair of them out the ring, one foot each. Caclard seems to be the nastier of the two. Roca's gets a surfboard on Sanniez, the announcer calls it "un Pippon.". Les Bons double team Sanniez in their corner and even try tying the tag rope to his foot but he pulls out of it. The heels eventually strike a hot tag inasmuch as heels can. Hassouni still dominates Caclard but Caclard fight back better. Rocas gets the opener on Sanniez with a sunset flip despite Caclard's attempt at interference. Les Mechants get an extended period of dominance over Rocas with Sanniez stinging away with repeated dropkicks. While not tagged in he leaps the ropes to dropkick Roca's who is recovering from a posting, then holds the top rope to spring back outside to the ring apron. Caclard quickly drapes himself across Roca's for the equaliser and the crowd are FURIOUS. Caclard has a vicious heel Dynamite Kid look to him. The heels have some great double teams, Caclard holding Roca's in a full nelson for a Sanniez dropkick. Later when Hassouni has made the hot tag. Caclard gets dropkicked to ringside and gets into a fight with Delaporte and some other ringsiders who throw him in, lumberjack match style. Hassouni gets posted by Caclard but he backwards leapfrogs him and rolls him up in a folding press for the decider. It is, as OJ Says a very fast paced engaging bout, although it loses some shine as the heels take over and gain their heat. A good exhibition of the French style.

Bit of a quickie. Probably the first case of All Star putting on ex W(W)WF talent. Irish Pat Barratt was a star on ITV in the Sixties before going to America in the Seventies for some years, a sojourn that involved replacing Victor Rivera mid reign in 1975 as Dominic DeNucci's WWWF World Tag Team Championship partner. Here he makes a splash on ASW's Sattelite Wrestling show, putting out John Kowalski (by now minus the blond hair) in a few minutes with a sleeper.

Sixteen years earlier in Bremen... As with the Terry Funk match that year, Finlay is the Quasi babyface sympathetic heel, although not as emphatically the good guy as in 2012. The Rapmaster is anything but. Looking like a cross between an unmasked Kendo Nagasaki and Nasty Boy Jerry Sags with a shaved head, ponytail and black leather tailcoat and hard rock ring entry music. Only the pink and black ring gear really makes him recognisably PN News from WCW. He also does the odd basic scientific move like a fireman's carry, or trying for a single leg Boston Crab before Finley kicks him off. Referee is Didier Gapp, the referee so miserable that Germans think of him as a comedy hero. He doesn't do much of note, just gets on with the job. He manages to lure Finlay back from an out of the ring brawl, even if he then kicks Neu off the ring apron. Eventually they go at it outside the ring, with Neu backdropping Finlay on the floor and Finlay dashing back at the last second to turn a double knockout into a knockout win. Sorry OJ. P.S. the 2012 bout has just come on my smart TV. Didier refereed that too. By then he was totally bald and quite tubby.

Speaking of Dave Morgan, here is another match where he comes out from behind his Maschke and is the good guy. That time, which I must have seen but didn't review apparently, but I mention it in the bowels of the British thread on page 19 in July 23: That time was a clean match, this is blue eye versus villain, the villain in question that loveable old rogue with the Afro hairdo Indio Guajaro. According to a personality profile at the end, Indio is from Colombia and Morgan is heavyweight champion of something called the NWF (no idea if there is any connection to the early 70s promotion that Pedro Martinez ran out of Buffalo NY - more likely it's a mishmash of NWA and WWF dreamed up by a promoter who has been reading American wrestling magazines.) It's March 1983 so in a yellow roped ring just like that Roland Bock clip against Don joni El Coral. We get a long voiceover during the intro but this doesn't become a commentary, just an explanatory voice that PPS up now and then. Good guy Dave is a mild mannered heavyweight. He and Indio exchange basic technical stuff in the early rounds, more like a British heavyweight bout that a German bout of the time, with Dave getting the best of it. Dave does a good French style headscissors takedown counter to armbars. Indio puts up his hands in victory and the crowd give him the bird (the whistling noise, not finger gestures.) He can also cartwheel like Danny Collins (making his pro debut around this time.) Bad guy Indio sells a lot of Dave's offence, takes bumps, gets hit with double ankles and dropkicks, sells holds and is utterly humiliated so the audience are laughing mockingly at him. Eventually he gets some heat bashing Dave around with forearm smashes. It looks like Indio either can't roll out of an armbar or doesn't want to upstage good guy Dave who gets bored waiting for the roll and boots Indio in the stomach. Indio gets darker heat when he starts choking Dave out on the ropes. He puts his hands up and gets actual boos because this time he is winning. He pitches Dave to ringside just as the round ends. The MC has to shout SCHTOP!! SCHTOP!! as he chokes Morgan. Morgan makes his comeback headscissoring Indio around and dropkicking his out the ring. Then he goes too far and ties up Indio and charges him and gets a Yellow Card. The German fans have no equivalent of Aux Chiottes L'Arbitre, they just give the ref The Bird (see above). Indio soon gets his heat back but Morgan suddenly gets a side folding press roll up for the win.

This clip is 9.5 mins long but we only get about 5 minutes of match. Chenok may have been a Baron when he jobbed the European Welterweight Championship to Danny Collins as part of the 1985 FA Cup Final coverage earlier that year (or is it next year? As you can see from the thumbnail it says 1984! @sergeiSem can you explain ) but here he is the German working class babyface, a mixture of Roland Bock, Mick McMichael with a moustache and C21st Flesh Gordon with a combover. Denis Goulet we've seen on here in the past, upcoming French TBW of the period. Indio is kind of like N'Boa with a dead snake. We saw him and Bernie team years later with Indio (with Steve on the other side!) and it didn't make much sense, but here it does - Bernie is kind of it Bearcat mode here with a crewcut and short beard looking like Syd Cooper's kid brother, not Steve Wright's. Anyway, five mins action and it ends awkwardly. Indio and Bernie clean the ring of everyone - it took me two attempts to pick up that they were DISQUALIFIED and they decide they've won the fight and are making their exit when Chenok gives Indio a smack in the mouth on the way out. We are then treated to an audio profile piece with Chenok and an audio promo with the man, both in German. In between we get a shot of Chenok flying bodypressing Bernie and highlights of what looks like the Birmingham Steve Logan versus Dave Morgan plus a mini tribute piece to Rene Lataserre.. Who is this Wener Bendig? Is he on here?

Triple tag matches, they were called over here.

Talking of both McMichael and a bald Mulligan, here they both are with Daddy and Mel Stuart who also went bald after previously sporting a Daddy-esque blond crop top in the early 70s. It's Daddy and Mick's warmup for The Rockers (Pete Lapaque and Tommy Lorne) on Cup Final Day a couple of months later. THhhe Rockers manager Charlie McGee is in the villains corner and frankly looks like a bigger scarier heel than either principal heels. Typical Daddy fodder with Mick as the FIP getting rescued by Daddy. Daddy briefly comes in and has both heels grovelling and prostrating themselves. Mick gets an advantage over Mulligan and scores the first fall with a bodyslam. Mick eventually gets into hideous trouble finishing in a Boston Crab but slowly, pulling the canvas up excruciatingly McMichael claws his way back to Daddy who tags Daddy to splash and pin Stuart.

I'd been interested to see the Liverpool Skinheads as they had been involved in some prototype Big Daddy tag matches in 1976 in the Best/Wryton area (at a time when some Joint members were still trying to put on Haystacks and Daddy as a heel tag team (They would resolve this on the night by having the two big men fall out as Daddy was no longer able to accept Stax's heel tactics. No they are not bald but skins in the 60s 70s generally weren't - they had short hair (Terry's is pushing it a bit. Paul looks the part, like Slade drummer Don Powell circa 1970's album Play .It Loud) and the braces and Doc Marten boots were more indicators of the skin style. Mulligan was no skinhead, he was just balding and would soon ditch the rest of it. It's not a great environment to show off the blue eyes but at least they score two good falls, Faulkner getting the rear rolling double shouldepress on Mulligan.Kung Fu then gets a Straight Second with a rear kick on the top turnbuckle and snapmare into folding press with bridge. Two nice bits afterwards - Paul quietly walks up and unheelishly shakes Faulkner's hand and Faulkner gets absolutely MOBBED by three young girls in 70s street fasion- yay. Ring Rats on World of Sport!

I'm currently watching this match and not reached the Manchette stage, so thanks for warning me in advance OJ otherwise I might have been tempted to try a blow by blow account. So far it's great technical bout with plenty ofl the characteristic French moves. At ringside is Rene Ben Chemoul's old dad and a 70 year old lady megafan of le catch who was presumably born 1897 and perhaps saw Hackenschmidt in his prime as a little girl. UPDATE, the Manchettes have started and the crowd get grumpy. Fortunately it's gone technical again. about a rolling figure four armlock, and la Publique are clapping again. Thee are further bursts of it in the final five minutes interspersed with better stuff- Scisseaux Volees and suchlike.. Bordes gets the winner with a sunset flip.

We were discussing a page or two back the mysterious Eurostars TV show of the Nineties/Noughties and possibility Tenties which gave the world such treats as the FYR Macedonia TV taping. Here is a match from that show 's peak period circa 2007 taped in a large and very modern arena before a packed house (allegedly due to a WWE/John Cena boom in France at the time). There is a Eurostars watermark on the footage Flesh is now in his bald tubby moustachioed phase, looking like Terry Rudge dressed as Sean Waltman for Halloween. He has two young TBWish tag partners, White Thunder and Jimmy Gavroche. Scott Ryder by this point has graduated to be Flesh's nemesis, a Giant Haystacks to Flesh's Big Daddy. The irony being that Scott is not actually very tall. He has two monster Highlanders with him Collosus and Mark McGibbon (sic) who totally dwarf him in term of size. Together they are The Scottish connection. Flesh early in gets an Avertisement for choking Ryder on the ropes. then a second one for not going back to his corner. Apparently by this point the rules have changed so you need FIVE Avertisements, not three, to get DQd (which clears up a mystery from Flesh's match with Horatio Le Pirate from around this time.) Flesh gets TOTALLY overpowered by Collosus and tags White Storm while Ryder tags in for the Connection and soon clocks up two Avertisements of his own for squishing one of the youngsters continuously in the corner. Both the lighter Bons are good high flyers but only Jimmy really hints at the classic French "Vaultigeur" style (RBC, Prince, Saulnier, Angelito, young Flesh, Zefy) we discussed previously. He gets some good moves on Ryder (who plays the Uncle Ivan of the Scottish Connection) but loses the equaliser when Scotty counters a sunset flip attempt with an Earthquake splash. The big Scotsmen triple team Gavroche until they blow a trick and he makes the hot tag. I missed who to and anyway Flesh and Thunder (no relation to Darren Walsh's heel alter ego) double dropkick and double clothesline various Mechants before Jimmy ends up legal man in the ring and turns a backflip/Kid McCoy Yorkshire Rope Trick in a hold into a shoulder press. RBC would be impressed. He gets a pin to make it 2-1. I check the time on my video, there are still another seven minutes left. Turns out it's best if five falls, I must have missed this being explained at the start. Thunder tags in and drops a flying axehandle on funky McGibbon's arm held up by Gavroche. The two youngsters swap places to do the same spot then all three bons in succession Stinger Splash Mark McG. He ends up at ringside as Colossus manhandles both youngsters until they roll away and then joined by Flesh, double and triple dropkick another Scottish Superheavyweight to ringside. That just leaves Scott Ryder. Flesh holds him down before getting out of the way at the last second from a White Thunder top rope splash for the winner. It's fun, there was a good house and hopefully the two young guys have gone onto more good stuff in the 18 years since. Healthy looking scene.

Mitzi Muller, then British Ladies champion, wife (now widow) of All Star promoter Brian Dixon, mother of All Star ring announcer Laetitia Dixon, ex mother in law of wrestler Dean Allmark, grandmother of current All Star boy king Joseph Dixon and daughter of 1930s wrestler Pat Connolly. goes on a chat show to protest about Women's wrestling not being allowed on TV - and ironically gets to wrestle on TV, first by giving the presenter a darn good stretching and sending him off to bed a happy boy no doubt, second with a clip of an 80s ladies tag match on an ASW show, sadly cut off as the action starts. Mitzi would eventually get on to ITV in 1988 as a ring announcer beating a path for her daughter (and following Princess Paula Valdez's path of getting onto ITV in a non wrestling capacity, in her case managing her husband). Interestingly, by this time Reslo on S4C - as much under the IBA's remit as World of Sport on ITV (but as the Welsh say, London never notices anything west of the Severn Bridge) - was regularly featuring top ladies' talent on its show (I'd have to check if Mitzi herself appeared but wouldn't swear it off).

(I've also gone and posted some examples on the German thread.)

A couple of more modern examples of this. This is from an All Star show at former TV Venue the Royal Spa Centre in Leamington Spa 11.5 years ago. I was (probably) in attendance. And here is a more recent example from, er. Rumble Promotions: Okay. Just to compliment those videos from Britain, here is the Royal Rumble concept in Germany/Austria

A couple of more modern examples of this. This is from an All Star show at former TV Venue the Royal Spa Centre in Leamington Spa 11.5 years ago. I was (probably) in attendance. And here is a more recent example from, er. Rumble Promotions:

I just went and compared a 1973 Petit Prince Vs Daniel Noced bout to Steamboat Vs Savage. There are further comparisons to be made with this one which puts the recently unmasked Hamill against the Northeast's finest dirty wrestler Black Jack Mulligan. Mulligan still has his long hair in 1978 which would be gone by 1981 (possibly due to a hair match?) and it makes him look like Bray Wyatt. The bout is most Kung Fu (in a fetching peach gin with a pitb. throwing chops and flyer and Mulligan getting in the odd sneaky trick and getting punished for it by Max Ward. British referees were a tough old bunch, much like Martial or Roger Delaporte in France and Max Ward was the harderst of the lot. An entire generation of viewers grew up impersonating his Knockout counts "WUN-er, TOO-er, THREE-er, FAW-er!! ..."

I can't help but compare this to Savage Vs Steamboat. Not just because it puts a face/Bon in long white tights and a high flying style against a bearded baddy with a quick vicious brawling style but because of the sheer ENERGY of the bout. Prince unleashes all his speed moves and Nicer sells them bumping around, occasionally getting in one of his own. When Nicer takes over in the middle of the bout, he is a whirlwind of blows. However he can cartwheel and backflip as well as Prince, sometimes keeping it under wraps to not upstage Le bon. All that is needed is an Elizabeth and a George Steele. The former is catered for by the unseen but much talked of Madame Noced who is reportedly looking on with the Noceds' two children. The latter arrives at the end of the match in the sale of one of the Klondyke Brothers (Bill rather than Jake) who comes to the ring to fend off a postmatch attack by Noced and congratulate Prince. I gather they had another ten minutes TV match the following year 1974. I shall have to look that one up.

Incidentally @Jetlag how influential would you say was Steve Wright on the 90s generation of young talent like Ulf, Eckstein, Kovacs, Schumann, Alex etc? Would you be inclined to agree with my suggestion - as discussed earlier in this thread - that the shift in German style away from the slower methodical style of Bock, Chall, Dieter Senior etc towards a more agile British-influenced style was attributable to Steve? If not, who or what else prompted the shift in style?

To cheer me up from that lost review, here is a nice biography of McMichael from Wrestling Heritage. https://wrestlingheritage.co.uk/mick-mcmichael/

Ah, I see. Shoot was a Pun in that case?

I wrote a nice long blow by blow of that last bout which has disappeared up the spout and I am not a happy bunny! My general conclusions: 1) What comedy? Mick had his usual faux-grumpy Les Dawson personality but there was none of the banter of a Vic Faulkner bout with him. Jordan was totally serious and Mick just got on and wrestled. The only other wrestler Mick had that relationship with was the young Owen Hart in Germany and that was as referee and wrestler, not as opponents. 2) This was 1986, Jordan's run as heel World Lightweight Champion was not until 1988 and the previous year he had lost a British Welterweight title shot to Danny Collins and also came up short against Steve Grey for the British Lightweight Championship that young Nino Bryant now proudly holds, so I don't think there was any push on for Flash. 3) If anything the finish was another permutation of the mores of sportsmanship among blue eyes that dictated that normally McMichael would refuse a TKO but as there was a tournament on, he did not want the next guy up to get a free ride so reluctantly accepted going forward. Although it's not as if there was a heel who needed to be stopped - the other semifinalist was Richie Brooks, then a clean classy TBW whom McMichael beat 2-1, while the finalist and trophy winner was Clean Wrestler 4Life Steve "Greg Valentine" Crabtree.

Some more Teddy Boys, still not clad in Edwardian Drapes, still not a DA quiff in sight. . I know he is meant to be a Ted but he looks more like your average 1970s street thug, like the late great Lee Brilleux, lead singer with 70s pub rock band Dr Feelgood or maybe some criminal thus trash on 70s UK cop show The Sweeney. Just to clear things up, REAL Teddy Boys looked like this:

Most of the media smoked back then. They had ashtrays on chat show studio sets. It isn't really a promo, of course. They just play it straight as a sports interview, as they did in TVTimes articles. Even America did that once in a while, like Sting in summer 92 picking over the bones of his world title loss to Vader. I think I posted this compilation video before, but there's a good reason why for the most part Britishness and trash talking do NOT go hand-in-hand ...

Promo interviews on ITV before 1987 were rare but here is European Welterweight Champion and novice referee Alan Colbeck talking to Kent Walton on the midweek late night slot about heels concealing stuff from the referee and his title loss/regain with Tommy "Jack(y) Dempsey" Moore (the old guy in the beret from the 1989 First Tuesday Wigan Snakepit docu.)