David Mantell

Where can we see this one? It isn't on YouTube as far as I can tell. The earliest IBV (proto CWA) footage I have seen is Otto Vs Don Leo a year later.

Now THIS is more like it! Two partners from the earlier match going at it in a scientific bout without a heel referee constantly trying to upstage. Mick McMichael does do one or two bits of his old mock cantankerousness from his bouts with Vic Faulkner - witness him complaining of a hurt shoulder after Owen uses him for leverage to spin out of an armbar (actually the young Owen reminds me of a heavier version of Vic) but unlike Didier Gapp he basically falls into line to allow Hart and Taylor to have a good scientific bout, and all three men leave as good pals after a time limit draw. Classy stuff, the best I've seen in a German/Austrian ring.

James Mason and Johnny Kidd splitting a pair of old school matches on new school promotions in 2022 and 2023. They've recently had another one for the Jim Breaks memorial cup (surely a heel like Breaks should win that!) which I was looking for when I found these two.

Well they're not Mr Moto/Kenji Shibuya/Prof Tanaka/Mr Fuji caricatures which is a good start. Nice gowns on the Japanese team. Nice appreciative crowd too, cheering good play on both sides rather than just going for patriotism. Mercier comes up with the clever escapes, the Japanese are good mat wrestlers moving from hold to hold. The Japanese start to go a bit heel with clawholds that involve fish-hooking the nose and hiding chokes from the referee. The Japanese team go back to more scientific moves but are no longer trusted. Commentator calls karate chops "Manchettes Japonaises" - Japanese forearm smashes! Half an hour in, it's very much a forearms Vs chops slugfest which is a pity but I guess these boys were in Europe to learn such aspects of the game. The Japanese are on their second and final Avertisement. Montourcy tags in and Les Bons double team Yocouchi before Claude finishes him with not much of a chop of his own for the opening fall. Commentator uses the interim to chat up some young female fans. Second falls starts with a bit more chop Vs Manchette before Montourcy goes into a flurry of dropkicks and a victory roll for a second straight, clearly they were running out of TV time. Japanese team don't really know what has hit them and are last seen raising their hands. Mercier and Montourcy shake the referees hand - 11 years later Mercier would be routinely beating up refs and getting applauded for it. Straight up babyface locals Vs heel foreigners match you could see anywhere in the world. A pity there was not more effort to make stars of the Japanese but this was before the Gotch/Robinson revolution and the Satoru Sayamas of this world were over a decade off.

The exact same way Anaconda and Rasputin were destroyed in that Big Daddy tag match - they were left laying in a dazed humiliated pile at ringside. There is nothing strong-keeping about that finish. Both sets of heels thoroughly got their comeuppance. In the case of Anaconda and Rasputin, even Kent Walton joined in the jeering as the heels lay on top of each other like they were making out together "These two are either great pals or they're not doing it right." Sort of. The famous Daddy Vs Haystacks match at Wembley Arena 1981 which, (like similar bouts with Mighty John Quinn at Wembley 1979 and pre-Kamala Big Jim Harris in 1982) could ONLY be won by a knockout - a Texas Death Match by any other name - ended when Haystacks was knocked over the ropes and took a table bump. The table in question was piled high with bouquets of flowers fans had bought for Daddy. Consequently Haystacks claimed that he had slipped on the flowers and, as we Brits say, gone arse over teakettle. He claimed he was thus robbed and wanted a rematch. (It never came although tag matches between the two continued sporadically until Daddy's retirement in 1993. Bold highlighted bit - this sounds like French Catch mainly. As we discussed on that thread, from the late 70s referees with the exception of Delaporte were treated as quasi heel Dangerous Danny Davis types who were biased in favour of Les Mechants and whom it was OK for Les Bons like Guy Mercier, Mammouth Siki and Flesh Gordon to physically assault and batter. Generally Les Bons would get a raw deal for retaliatory tactics. In Britain on ITV the referees were forced by the Independent Broadcasting Authority to be positive authority figures who were consistently shown to be in control of the match. Referees were more likely to be biased in favour of the good guys and quite right too. They would as Kent Walton put it, allow as certain amounts "for retaliation" to balance out any advantage the heel gained from fouling. Picking up the ref and using him as a battering ram was not acceptable blue-eye behaviour in Britain. Generally the tying up a heel and battering ramming him was not done on ITV. It WAS done quite a bit on Reslo, particularly in matches involving Orig Williams as an active in ring blue-eye competitor. A similar amount of allowance of time for retaliation was permitted at the end of which the blue eye would be privately warned to drop ithe tactics. Obviously there was a lot of it in France and Andre in America was able to adapt this for himself -he last got himself tied up in the ropes in 1990 against Demolition at WM6.

Pancho Zapata is already a familiar figure to me from his 1969 match on World of Sport against Jeff Kaye (also a frequent traveller to France as was his Barons tag partner Ian Gilmour) which was featured in The Final Bell in December 1988. This is him four years earlier teamed with Anton Tejero (a name which would take on unfortunate connotations on 23rd February 1981 when a Lieutenant Colonel Antonio Tejero staged an attempted military coup in the Spanish parliament.) French wrestling seems to be littered with heels wearing loud colourful Gypsy, Latin American or Spanish culture (hats, colourful coats, big moustaches, swarthiness etc. Roger Couderc tells us Tejero plays guitar.) The French would have HATED Hector, Mando and Chavo Guerrero. So a bald Mexican and burly Spaniard, both with Kong thick taches, are quite the heat generating dream team. Rene is a technical legend and he and Cesca make straight up Bons against these dodgy foreigners. Rene's constant barrage of throws to both heels has a similar effect to a Big Daddy tag where Daddy starts the match, both heels getting utterly blitzed early on. (In American Wrestling this usually serves to soften the blow for a BIG heel win such as both Sgt Slaughter and the Undertaker's respective 1991 interim heel title wins.). Couderc drops references to French pop culture such as Poupee De Cire Poupee De Son (that year's Serge Gainsborg penned, France Gall sung Eurovision Song Contest winner albeit for Luxembourg) and Le Manege Enchante, the a French original of classic stop animation children's TV show The Magic Roundabout. Perhaps Couderc was inspired to make the remark about Tejero being a guitarist based on Flappy, the lazy Spanish rabbit from the show which for the English version morphed into Dylan, a stoned beatnik American rabbit! Actually Couderc , the supposed dean of French wrestling commentary, seems to be mostly playing it for laughs in this bout. Referee Martial seems to be the tough Delaporte/Max Ward/Gorilla Monsoon type, physically the biggest of the five men in the ring and willing to use that power to enforce law and order in the ring, at one point lifting Pancho up by the waist and carrying him out of mischief and clamping his hands over Tejero 's eyes to drag him back to his corner (Terry Funk would have potatoed anyone who tried that, something Tejero clearly briefly contemplates then think better of). That said the heels still manage to run a couple of rings around him, getting the dirty in while the ref manhandles their partner. And they even get to administer unto the legendary RBC some of the slapstick usually reserved for faces to administer to heels later on in the bout, trapping him in the ropes and leapfrogging each other to land on him. And when the heels beat down on Cesca leading to Tejero pinning him for the opener, it is really an emotional low point after Les Bons earlier hi jinks. The heels seem to say "You're not laughing now!" as they taunt the crowd. RBC equalises and then gets Zapata neatly in a surfboard which overbalanced leaving both men's shoulders down. Rather than count them both, Martial just pushes the whole surfboard sidewards. Rene gets some great flyers in like headscissors and Huracanrana, as well as doing a kind of Fargo Strut, playfully aiming backwards kicks at both opponents. Les bons get a measure of revenge on Les Mechants for earlier antics which were more a Boy's prerogative anyway. After slamming the heels into each other and hitting them with synchronised missile dropkick which earns them a second and final Avertisement. Zapata ends up garroted in the ropes like Collins against Rocco. Tejero comes off the ropes but trips for reasons we don't see why and is splashed and pinned for the win. Technical point, the film has several jumps indicating sections of frames removed due to film damage, possibly from a faulty projector.

Afterthought: we can reasonably extrapolate that Jones and .Finlay were rolling around at ringside in defeat and humiliation (a la Rasputin and Anaconda) from the fact that they are never seen in shot again after they collide and go over the ropes. If they had got up, narrowly failed to beat the count and run into the ring to protest, then you would have had a point there.

They were NOT protected at all, they were utterly destroyed and humiliated, rolling around on the floor at ringside. European fans had a different way of thinking on these things. This (admittedly lousy) Big Daddy tag match has a very similar finish but I can't see for the life of me how Anaconda and Rasputin were protected by this finish! Admittedly the one single camcorder was not able to film the finish as well as an ITV outside broadcast unit could but the intended effect was the same - the heels rolling around in a heap of defeat at ringside. (As an aside Rasputin worked a lot in Germany and I expect we'll be seeing more of him as this thread progresses.)

One time archenemies Marty Jones and Fit Finlay team up as heels defending the CWA World Tag Team Championship they won from Mike and Tony DtClair two months earlier. "Franzi" and Mile are the scientific good guys doing lots plenty of British style reversals/counters. Finlay is his late 80s bully self. Jones mixes his usual skill in with a lot of dirty wrestling eg stomping. It's actually the sort of action packed bout Jones and Finlay would have or the Finlay/Murphy Riot Squad tag team would have. Schumann scores the opening fall with a victory roll on Jones. During the break Jones offers Zrno his hand but is refused. Jones then takes a swig of water and sloshes the rest over Zrno and the crowd are enraged - one ladies SCREAMING abuse at Jones in German. Schumann eventually handles both bad Brits and he and Zrno have some Southern US style fast four way action with Finlay and Jones. Schumann gets a cover on Finlay but Jones stomps it and Finlay slams Schumann and pins him for the equaliser. Schumann regains the upper hand and gets Finlay with a sliding dropkick. He tries for another but Finlay pulls him out to ringside (the other side from the camera sadly) and they brawl at ringside. Finlay tosses a bloody Schumann into Jones who punishes him further before tagging Finlay who continues the punishment until Schumann reverses a tombstone piledriver attempt and goes for a pin. Jones puls him off, hits the ropes, goes for a flying tackle but misses and hits Finlay and they both go over the top rope. The referee starts a triple knockout count., Schumann is up at 8 but the bad guys stay down at ringside for the 10 count and are knocked out making Mile Zrno and Franz Schumann the winners and new champion in a Knockout. The crowd are DELIGHTED at this Knockout finish to give their heroes the titles. It is quite the celebration and may I say @ohtani's jacket there is no sense of Jones or Finlay being protected. We see no more of them in the video after the knockout, presumably the cleaners picked them up off the floor after the show. Meanwhile back in Britain Marty would still be a blue-eye and kayfabe enemies with Finlay until 1992 when they were forced to team in Croydon. To their "surprise" they really worked as a heel team and Jones went bad, changing from dignified blue eye to bragging heel, and would remain such until May 2000 when Jones got into a feud with Kendo Nagasaki over the Wrestler of the Millennium trophy.

Three Brits and an honorary British Wrestler makes four. Heaps of technical skill in this one. I was really hopeful. What could go wrong? Answer: a comedy referee. Didier "Didi" Gapp, who may be a familiar face to you from New Catch and I think one or two of the last Old Catch matches on FR3, was something of a cult figure to French and to some extent CWA fans who would chant Didi, Didi for him. (This was unusual for France where from the late 70s onwards except for Sheriff Roger Delaporte, referees were generally assumed to be dubious quasi Dangerous Danny Davis types.). Here, Gapp plays the role of a miserable "humourless" official, always tooting on his whistle and looking for ways to reprimand the boys until in the end they just get fed up and start winding him up. This is a pity because when they do get down to business there is some really fantastic technical action particularly from Hart and Wright (now that would have been one heck of a World Mid Heavyweight Championship match!) Tony and Dave stick together and oOwen and Steve likewise, like a mixed gender tag match. StClair and Taylor do the heavyweight version of fast technical action and try not to allow their size to get in to way of some fine folding press attempts. Unfortunately Didi runs around being the pesky jumped up petty official, even when there is good action going on. I guess he was more used to being the centre of attention back home in France. Eventually the four wrestlers get bored and start manhandling Gapp, doing the old The Ref Gets Pinned/Scores Pin gag (a fave of husband and wife ref and wrestler Brian Dixon and Mitzi Mueller) who finally flips out and disqualifies everybody. To be fair the four boys seem to have had fun conducting the audience in the extended singalong (Owen especially seems to get a certain dumb core amusement from this.) If only the referee in this was someone like Jeff Kaye, this could have been The Royals versus the Saints 19 years on (spot the common denominator, Tony.). As it is, one can look at the good bits and ponder what might have been.

Another New Catch match, another pair of Brits in France, another knockout finish. This was one of Rocco's last World Heavy Middleweight title defences before his sudden 1991 retirement. The two faced each other multiple times on ITV and Reslo and Rocco and Collins had been coming over to France since at least 1978 and 1985 respectively, but I don't think this particular one has been reviewed on the forum. Collins gets his trademark things in early - the cartwheel escapes from a wristlock, the scoot through the legs, the odd missile dropkick. Otherwise this is mostly Rocco's bout with lots of moves done as individual high spots. There's an outside of the ring brawl which Collins actually wins albeit at the cost of an Avertisement. The finish sees Collins get his head trapped managed to free himself from a garotting but drops to ringside for a ten count. This is a variation on the finish of their late 80s ITV match where Collins was caught by the knee, gets himself free but Rocco slaps on a Scorpion Deathlock/Sharpshooter for the winning submission. I don't really think Collins gets protected although Rocco using the choking power of the ropes to achieve the KO would have got him a lot more heat back home. Otherwise it's not too different from the sort of knockout where someone would pick an opponent up, fling them over the ropes from the centre of the ring then let the 10 count take effect. Two notable things outside the match itself. One is the Rocco promo, not that you can make out too much of it with Peter Wilhelm rabbiting away in German over the top of it, but you can clearly here his Manchester accent which makes the "from USA" caption a little ludicrous - and something Orig Williams picked up on for his English commentary. The other is that Rocco has been lumbered with a scantily clad Sensational Second (I'm sure he really enjoyed having to explain her to Ann Rocco) who is clearly a leftover from auditions for Flesh Gordon's similarly underdressed lady companions. Rocco shows his disdain for the whole thing by hoisting her upside down over one shoulder like heel Randy Savage in 1986 used to do to Miss Elizabeth to get heat. Orig on English commentary was in lecherous mood - "She is BLONDE and she is BEAUTIFUL!!!"

This bit I agree with and I think there are much better ways to use the lightweight and indeed Kent Walton used to complain on air and report that he got letters saying the same. Knocking out Kid McCoy was not "prestigious", it just made Daly look a bully and a sadist. Since he was a heel, there was a purpose to this, it got Daly heat - similar to the heat King Kong Bundy got for bodyslamming and elbowsmashing Little Beaver. Had the match taken place back home in Britain, female McCoy fans of various ages would probably have rioted and physically attacked Daly. Indeed it happened multiple times. This WAS a knockout from a finishing move (a splash). To extend the Bundy comparison, Daly getting up and standing back to let McCoy get a 10 count was like Bundy demanding a five count for pins (except that Daly worked with the system to get the desired result rather than demand the system be altered for his benefit.) It layed it on with a trowel. KOs from finishing moves - eg Kendo Nagasaki's "Kamikaze Crash" diving fireman's carry, Big Daddy's "double elbow" backdrop, Pat Roach's Brumagen Bump - were actually rather too common to be labelled an exception. Injury finishes where the winner refused to accept the win and it was declared a no contest were and still are and alternative to an end of final round draw without the match going all that time. Injury finishes where the heel accepted - and even bragged about- the result were a way of getting said heel heat.

Like the Scrubber Daly Vs Kid McCoy bout from New Catch I just posted to the French thread, this is a British bout transplanted to the Continent. Even referee MalmMason was British. And before anyone points out that the Mongolian Mauler was an American posing as a Mongolian, I would point out he was based in Britain and mostly working for All Star at the time. (Plus I think I recognise the venue from the German section of Robbie Brookside's Video Diary) Like Daly Vs McCoy it's a bit of a squash match. Cullen at this point held Rocco's old World Heavy Middleweight title and would continue to do so until his 2002 retirement. He was also a bit of a heel back home in Blighty by this point but that counted for naught against the hated Mauler. Cullen gets in some missile dropkicks and tries to take down Mauler with a headscissors and gets thrown off but otherwise it's the bigger man all the way until at the end when someone in an identical Scottish Thistle leotard - I think it's Ian McGregor, himself a heel back home by this point (the following year he and Drew McDonald would form The Wild Jocks and feud with Big Daddy) - jumps off the top rope onto Mauler getting Cullen DQ'd. Mal has no time for their protests and neither do I but the two Scots get a moral victory out of it and the crowd seem happy with that.

I'm tempted to post this to the British thread as these are two Brits and two ITV veterans to boot but this took place in France for a French promoter so according to my rules this counts as French wrestling, the same as the French TV bouts of Bert Royal Vs Tony Oliver in the early 60s and Pete Roberts Vs Dave Bond in 1978 also both count as French. Also because it follows on a theme I recently brought up of TBWs being sacrificed to bigger nastier heels - Raymond O'Reilly Vs Hakan in Rumble recently (how's that for alliteration?) or Ian McGregor Vs Skull Murphy on mid 80s ITV. Here is another example. McCoy was still considered the next Johnny Saint at this point although he had resigned his British Lightweight Championship and left All Star under a cloud after his dad King Ben was sacked after a tag match against Kendo Nagasaki and Blondie Barrett in July 1990 (long story going back to the sixties and animosity between Kendo and Benn's trainer Ernie Baldwin.). He got some World title matches with Johnny Saint on Reslo (with his ex boss Brian Dixon refereeing) and had he not quit in 1993 to go into the roofing trade (just as Kendo was retiring the second time) might well have become the new World champion in the late 90s some time. He does get to do a lot of his counters and reversals on Scrubber but Daly just sandbags it all before going for a Knockout win after a splash. If Kid could have tripped Daly and got him down on the mat, things could have got really interesting. Add Knockouts - To anyone who STILL doesn't believe they were considered more prestigious than pins or submissions in Britain/Europe, please note that Daly could have stayed put after the splash and got a three count but instead stood up and got a ten count because a Knockout win made a more emphatic statement of DESTROYING an opponent than a pinfall win.

This takes a couple of minutes to get going but when it does, you know about it! Nogami is the heel here, viciously attacking Tony a lot on the mat, which seems unnecessary as the technical bits of the bout are really fantastic with Nogami having really mastered a lot of good escapes/ reversals/ counters. Doesn't even make sense culturally (Austria and Japan were both fellow Axis powers in WW2). Crowd chant "Tony, Tony" heartily in strong Teutonic accents. Nogami was a blue-eye in Britain a couple of years later as the Orient Express but here he's a thug heel similar to Michiyoshi Ohara as Fuji Yamaha (as opposed to Fuji Yamada) or Satoshi Kojima as Japanese Mean Machine for All Star in 1995. Worth watching but I reckon these two are capable of better. I want a clean match. &£!?*#$@ to all that "Oh there HAS to be a heel" business. There is so much good technical work these two could do rather than work the crowd.

And yea verily ... Marty Jones makes an unusual tag partner for Daddy - he usually chose a particularly vulnerable TBW (such as Jones had himself been back in 1972 in the Hornets) to be the sacrificial lamb. He does get the opening fall with a fantastic missile dropkick before being double teamed and equalised on with Kirk's guillotine elbowdrop. Jones fights free from a backbreaker, rolls to tag Daddy and the rest is just the usual office hold. Kirk is quite the scary sinister heel. Like a giant version of George Steele before the babyface turn. Tony Francis has now settled in as replacement for Charlie McGee as arch mastermind heel manager behind the forces of anti-Daddy, like Mesmeron in the PAC Man cartoons or Blofield in early Bond films. The evil criminal mastermind with his pet cat. This bout was shortly before Mal Kirk's death and clips from it were used in news coverage of the tragedy. It has other bad karma to it in that the original transmission had to be postponed due to emergency news coverage of car ferry Herald Of Free Enterprise capsising and sinking in the North Sea after setting sail from Zeebrugge with much loss of life. (A rescheduled screening was replaced in the London area with a Giant Haystacks match so I never got to see this one at the time. Kirk and Strong, as I think I've mentioned, have an interesting connection in that both were formerly the fourth man partnering Kendo Nagasaki in 1976 bouts versus Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks - indeed the Strong version of this matchup appeared on ITV in 1975 so it is ironic to see Strong playing a Samurai here.

One thing really noticeable is there is clearly continuity between that and the VDB circa 1983. Even the ring looks similar 12 years apart.

Me too, would love to have him on here.

The Italian and Spanish clips are all on this thread so I'll add the playlists on Alessio's channel here: Spain: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ811z1HQb3mrl5Vd2lrTQRRL2wENtxuN Italy: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ811z1HQb3mX-n7R_u2ArSZNZOEwu2TV The Spain list is pretty extensive, it runs in to the 60s, it covers most of the big names mentioned in Valentin Morales's essay on Hisa's wrestling titles site- Hercules Cortez, Catechera, Victorio Ochoa, Jose Tarres, Kamikaze 2 (Benny), Felix Lamban etc. Also Jack Dale of the Dale Brothers who ran Dale Martin in England. Unfortunately some of the 60s newsreel clips done in an exceptionally nasty snide style, they are speeded up with silly sound effects that would make any true appreciator of wrestling feel like going Postal. Italy is a bit patchier, it's most stuff of Primo Carnera in the 50s. There's a clip of a very young Andre Bollet (with hair!) from Milan 1957. Some other interesting playlists on there include the WWF in Kuwait with Roddy Piper and Bob Orton battling Haku and Siva Afi all over a football stadium 35 years before AEW did Stadium Stampede (or as Jim Cornette called it, Football Field F___ery.) @Matt D - just wondering, are you and Alessio the same person?

Found a Germany playlist on Alessio's channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJ811z1HQb3mQ_kphzXIUPt2Q-B_IDhsj Most of it's from the 40s/50s but there are a couple off 1970s clips. Here is 1971 - Leif Rasmussen, a sort of Scandinavian version of Rene Lasartesse, takes on a young dark haired Hansi Rooks (some eight years before a certain glam metal band from Finland formed! ) It's from TV but don't get excited, it's one of the usual "haha let's have a good sneery laugh at the high spots and the screaming marks too" type features you get on TV and cinema newsreels Plus some 1975 footage featuring wrestler/judoka Anton Geesink.

Now this is one of the great things about French TV Catch for a British fan -.absolute LEGENDS like Eric Taylor in action in their prime while their ITV bouts are under Granada's lock and key. This is like watching Tommy "Jack Dempsey" Moore. Bert Assirati or George Kidd in their primes. Eric Taylor, patriarch of the Taylor family. father of Dave and Steve and he looks it. Lots of throwing and taking throws well. Eric works a rather French still with backwards rolls and cisseaux Volees. He does a nice horizontal spinning escape out of a back hammerlock, I've seen lighter guys like Johnny Saint do this on ITV footage. Robin gets frustrated and starts heeling up, concealing a kidney punch from the ref and other Irreguliere stuff. Eric wallops him with a couple of stiff Manchettes that would have made son Dave proud. Guy offers a handshake and suckers in Eric for a wristlock, forcing a bad landing, then slips on an arm scissor. Eric does the same angry fist waving mannerism that son Dave would do 30 years later when his temper was up. We get some good moves from Robin too, a couple of crossed headscissor toupees that send Taylor flying. Taylor gets on the reverse fireman's carry backbreaker - or as you young Yanks will better know it, the Lex Luger Human Torture Rock. Guy Robin does not have the .Horsemen coming to the rescue so he resists until Taylor dumps him over the top rope. Referee does a latterday Delaporte and gives Robin an almighty SLAP! Taylor tries for a backslide pin and Robin flexes his triceps to lift his shoulders. Robin goes into a lengthy heat phase picking up two Avertisements along the way. Taylor makes a comeback with Manchettes and a dropkick sending Robin out and almost getting a KO. Taylor knocks him back off the ring apron so the ref doesn't count. Robin makes it back in and somehow gets a kneeling press for the pin and Taylor is furious, battering Robin, but the referee's decision is final. *********************************************** Incidentally that's EIGHT different calendar decades we have covered off on this page 38. Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, Nineties, Noughties, Tenties, Twenties. That's a pretty big swathe of history of the French wrestling territory to have gathered together on one page!

Kent Walton liked to claim the masked men "wouldn't talk to me in the dressing room earlier." The French take it one step further- the commentator gets in the ring, gets the full life story from Boucard and then from Demon- silence. A second tries to fill in with stuff like height and weight but the commentator sniffing refuses to listen to him and wanders off. This was 19 months before channel 2 went colour so we shall just have to take their word for it that the Demon was red. Demon is no Modesto "Kamikaze" Aledo but two left feet is a bit harsh OJ., he does some great feet first landings from throws and even from a monkey climb. Red D has an unnerving habit of standing stock still like one of those street performers pretending to be a statue. He also wheels out the dirty fairly early on, puiing Boucard's ankle up on the rope. He leaps up to the top turnbuckle for a flyer and perches with a knee down which iodd but doesn't stop him hitting the subsequent flying bodypress on target. Boucard gloriously knows not just the French escapes but also British ones like the forward roll and forward cartwheel rather than the backwards ones most French wrestlers do. Demon does the pull up into cisseaux Volees. Boucard gets a folding press on Demon but Demon converts it inoa bridge folding press of it his own. Boucard is out at 2. Demon bows, does a Danny Collins "Yippee I won a fall" backflip then steps out the ring. At first I read this as a tantrum but on repeat viewing it looks like he thought he's got the winner. After a bit he comes back to carry on. Boucard gets first flipped then just plain thrown out of the ring but recovers first time. Vision mixer goes a bit wild switching shots on Demon getting an arm scissor on Boucard. Demon gets a perfect surfboard on Boucard who resists long enough to capsize it. Boucard drapes the Demon across the top turnbuckle but is warned of further harm by L'Arbitre. Demon capitalise with a backflip, landing on one knee. He gets the cisseaux Volees on Boucard, flings his opponent and himself out of the ring then nips back in but Boucard is soon in behind him. Boucard goes for a dive but Demon dodges him and Boucard falls out the ring for a 10 count KNOCKOUT. Seconds help him up but to no avail. Winner the Demon walks back, Boucard has to be carried by the seconds. @ohtani's jacket I thought that was pretty good quite honestly. It got to the point where I was really rooting for the Demon to win. No idea if any more was seen of him, there was Demonio Rojo in the mid 70s but he was an import from Spain just as the CIC was expiring. Sadly we no more of Bertin. Decent middleweight-ish bout.

Poor old Rex Strong. At one time a fine heavyweight, by the mid 80s he was ill, overweight and able to do little more than stand around and wobble menacingly in a mask. Sort of like Terry Gordy's stint as the Executioner. He's in with one of OJ's faves Tom Tyrone, who to his credit makes the most of it putting on a great display of rolling escapes. Samurai puts on the big power holds and Tyrone neatly reverses/counters them.. Round 2 seems to be missing. In Round 3 Samurai adopts a game plan of strangles. crossfaces and an illegal smother. After round 4 is cut short by Tyrone getting the opener with a flying tackle, the attacks on the breathing continue into the fifth round with a sleeper. Tyrone is unconscious and referee Peter Szackacs (bother of Tibor) stops the contest and disqualifies the masked man (who affects not to understand.) Good use of the DQ finish, it doesn't so much "protect" Samurai as establish him as an utterly disreputable stain on the sport who needs to be taught a lesson - and we all know just the man for the job ..

8th March 1987, 3 weeks before WM3, 13 days before ITV televised Kendo & Rocco Vs Yamada from Croydon in place of Hogan Vs Kamala and a month before Magnum hobbled to ringside to inspire Dusty and Nikita to victory. I really like the intro and how it segues from the lone live trumpet player to the distinctly Fight Night vibe music as the wrestlers get in to the ring for a German/Austrian style Ringerparade and do their best disco dancing moves to show they are ready to go. Loads of soon to be familiar New Catch faces -Flesh, Marquis Jacky, Angelito, Zefy, Eliot Frederico (who I think became the Grim Rocker) Flesh is dtill.... I'm really taking to Gabby Laillee's work. Once again she's in with an Old Bag heel in Ascension del Oro who works much the same as Valerie Wonder in 1991 on TF1 New Catch. Out of the ring brawl sees Oro in a front row seat as ringsiders move swiftly out of the way, it earns Gabby an Avertisement. Gabby easily gets the win. Gabby has a manager/hunky boyfriend in her corner, alleged Yugoslav champion Draganan. Flesh and Eliot come out for their match, Le Rocky De Ring has a tubby besuited manager who looks like a heel Arnold Skaaland. Flesh is still in his athletic prime, trim but not as skinny as his days with Walter Bordes. Plenty of high flying stuff reflecting Herve's Lucha background and plenty of standard French somersaulting counters. Eliot is just a straight up brawler. Flesh looks like he's got it sewn up when Jacky Richard comes to the ring and helps Eliot win. Draganan comes back to protest and a challenge is made. Verdict: More fun than @ohtani's jacket reckoned it was

From about the same time. Film company visits Marc at a show, meets the wrestlers. Marc is fighting Cybernic Machine (I posted this bout on here yonks ago) a guy in a gimp mask whose gimmick is that he's a computer virus. CM talks in English and sounds like Ole Anderson as the Black Scorpion or the Shockmaster - TV company have overdubbed this with French in a whispering voice like a pervert nuisance caller on the phone (well he IS wearing a gimp mask I suppose.). Plenty of other old 90s faves like Scott Rider and I think I even spotted Flesh Gordon in there.