David Mantell

P.S. I was going to post all this to the British Wrestling thread, but it turns out that the discussion about the traditional imbalance in favour of blue-eyes/babyfaces/clean wrestlers was on this thread so my latest thoughts went on here as well.

It wasn't what was considered suitable for kids and grannies, it was what was considered suitable for the TV audience PERIOD. The family audiences became disproportionately the target during the Daddy era - before that the kids weren't old enough to make sense of TV and the grannies weren't yet grannies, just middle aged female fans. The only granny the IBA would have worried about was the dreaded Mary Whitehouse. You are correct about opposition promoters hyping themselves as wilder than the TV (although they still had to put in some high-class clean matches to maintain sporting credibility in the climate).and this is even more true in the case of the tape-trading, satellite/cable owning underground of UK fans of American Wrestling, who despised the clean wrestling massive as effectively an army of Howdy Doody Bob Backlunds!

Again, it's a complete fantasy that British wrestling was full of gentlemanly bouts where they wrestled good, clean bouts. On any given card, there would be a number of matches like that, but there were also pure heel vs. babyface spectacles that were completely universal. I think on rereading, this got away somewhat from the point I was trying to make about stricter broadcasting regulations on ITV than on Antenne 2/FR3 (or even S4C or much less Screensport or straight to video/untelevised shows.). Two things that the Independent Broadcasting Authority in the UK INSISTED on were no fighting outside the ring and the referee ibeing seen to be in control of the bout at all times. Consequently, ITV Wrestling had to operate with those shackles on the violence showable - it had to be confined and controlled - and this impacted on the overall style and feel of mainstream TV wrestling in the UK and thus the overall style of British Wrestling.

Good illustration of this - here is an entire six bout TV taping from Crawley Sports Centre 31st July 1975. Six bouts total all of them singles, making 12 wrestlers total on the bill. Out of that lot, only Mick McManus is properly a heel. The nearest thing to a second heel is Mal Stuart - he did become a fairly vicious heel later on but here he mostly clean and gets a few rounds of applause for good moves even against Kellett and a mixed response to his consolation pinfall. That leaves at least ten out of twelve wrestlers on the show as good guys! Four of the six bouts are blue-eye Vs blue eye, three of them full blown clean sportsmanly matches (a little needle creeps into the War Eagle Vs Czeslaw bout towards the end.) This illustrates the slant against heels in old British wrestling. They were a minority of serpents in a technical paradise.

Getting up to date, a Rumble Promotions European (non Mountevans) title match from circa Xmas Week just past, It's heel versus blue eye but the blue eye is Jordan Breaks so to put his technical skill to the best possible use, the match is under full Mountevans Rules complete with Rounds:

Where does it say Clichy on there?. Bob Alpra doesn't mention Clichy. He does say that it's got the smell of parochial deep France . "A good smell of deep France where parochialism still had enormous importance in the villages at that time." YouTube doesn't do Smellovision so we'll have to take his word on that. EDIT: A comment 5 years after the video was posted asks if it's the Gymnase Racine de Clichy and gets no response from Bob if that's what you mean

I wonder if Batistou had been watching Hillbilly Jim and Uncle Elmer on Canal + ?

Just to show it wasn't all gymnast lightweights in 80s France. Here are two heavyweights slugging it out in a working class rural village in France.

Okay, it was in a harbour. Same basic concept, floating ring in water, wrestlers fall in and get wet and laughed at by spectators. I think I said I once saw photos of a floating ring in a lake in a park.

Another thing that came along in the early 70s which El_P cited as an example of the decay of French wrestling was Swimming Pool Matches. This was on TV in October 1973:

Since wrestling in the Middle East has become a side topic of this thread, does anyone know anything about any scene in Saudi Arabia before WWE in the C21st? There's a Wikipedia redirect just waiting to be turned in a proper article if anyone has any details: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Professional_wrestling_in_Saudi_Arabia&redirect=no https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:WWE_in_Saudi_Arabia#Previous pro wrestling in SA?

I don't think it's up online anymore but there was some cinema sportsreel footage of M'Boa in England for an opposition promoter, possibly Paul Lincoln. I don't think Joint would ever have put M'Boa on ITV with or without the snake act, although if they had, TVTimes would have come running to do a lifestyle feature on life at home with the snake with M'boa and probably Mrs M'Boa too being interviewed about their pet and how they look after it. which would have taken a lot of the heat out of the gimmick. (Which reminds me, I really should dig out and scan the At Home with the Roccos TVTimes feature with notorious violent heel Rollerball Mark Rocco and his wife Anne standing round the kitchen cooker and Anne saying what a wonderful helpful around the house chap her husband is. I would LOVE to see BILL WATTS' reaction to that .... )

Snake seems to be in this one. Poor thing gets put in his mouth several times, must have scared the bejeezus out of the poor serpent.

Marty Jones vs Danny Collins two years apart. The first time as a clean match on Grampian/STV: ... and the second with heel Jones vs Blue eye Collins (although he became a heel himself not long afterwards)

Yes but it started picking up intensity around '71 before going up yet another gear in the 80s. Delaporte was the root of both Marc Mercier's and Richard/Hervé's respective gimmick ridden products in the C21st. Quasimodo was Spanish btw. He was on ITV too in his time.

Alll 3 strongholds of old Euro wrestling had some big element of impurity enter the mix in the 70s. In Britain it was Big Daddy. in Germany the visiting Americans and Otto the strongman, in France it was Flesh Gordon and thé Cartoon Crew.

In France's case it wasn't breathing life into a dying territory as finding the territory's long-term direction. I've already compared France to Memphis with it's Jason's and Freddy's and Leather faces etc. Some time around the beginning of the. 70s, Delaporte introduced stuff like La Bête Humane, Le Batman, Le Hippie Du Ring etc. Then in 1979 Gerard Nerve comes home, and reinvents himself as Flesh Gordon and is followed in short order by Jessy Texas, Mambo Le Primitiv, Les Pihrannas, Les Maniaks Kato Bruce Lee, the original Marquis then Jacky Richard taking over his gimmick with butler Paul Butard on the ring apron. Then in New Catch era we get Richard and Butard reinventing themselves as Travesti Man and his Best Boy, rugby playing Patrick Lopez, "Scottish" Superheavyweight Scott Rider, and later in the C21st Cybernic Machine, Richard again morphing this time into Monsieur Jacky, and cigar chomping Cuban Hugo Perez. This is the way French Wrestling evolved over a half century plus- and it's become accustomed to that whole style of presentation.

Have bought a ticket to All Star's next Dudley Town Hall show Thursday February 15th.

Thanks for those. Nice to see Kidd doing the surfboard (he does that in the 1975 Triple Tag on ITV.) and the handshake into Manchette/Forearm Smash trick. Hopefully more footage of the young George Kidd will surface.

A slightly different take on the No contest/Refused TKO Win finish - in this case, the referee calls it a 1-1 draw (that much each having been scored) rather than a no contest

Any chance you could link to the rest of the George Kidd clips please, as I don't have an X login. Thanks.

Looks good although not much of the escaping skill that Kidd and Johnny Saint were famous for, or the baiting tricks we got a taster of in the 1975 match with Black Jack Mulligan.

I posted a couple of bouts from this on the "Why is America always assumed to be the centre of the wrestling universe?" thread (in answer to a query about home video) but here is the complete show; Jackie Pallo Promotions 1981. Ostensibly a home video release, in practice also a pilot for Pallo's failed bid to get a slice of ITV coverage (Joint got an exclusive renewal for the five years Jan '82- Dec '86) Featuring the last footage this side of the Atlantic of Adrian Street (the beard was later cropped into the muttonchops he wore in 1980s America), the second appearance on camera of Fit Finlay after his 1980 French TV match and before his 1982 ITV debut) and Princess Paula and Miss Linda (Blackfoot Sue) as a blue-eye ladies tag team. Filmed at Great Yarmouth Hippodrome, the site six years later of King Kong Kirk's death in the ring. Pallo was one of three opposition promoters vying for a piece of the ITV action. When Joint got the renewal, Brian Dixon went to war with Joint on the live circuit, Orig Williams went off and got his own little TV niche on the new Welsh language channel S4C. Pallo? He totally threw his toys out of the pram and wrote an exposé book on the business.

Also a TV clip of Adnan al Qaisi giviving an interview about his wrestling days (to an apparently more respectful interview than poor old Vader got.) Includes what appears to be the same Adnan vs Danny Lynch footage as posted a page back on this thread (Spelling note - juding from the onscreen caption in the thumbnail, Adnan in Arabic begins with an 'Ayn, a hard glottlestop generally regarded as a consonant in Arabic. So all us Westerners calling him Adnan with a soft short A for Apple have been getting it wrong all these years.)

Kidd in his prime. Now that would be something to watch. Granada probably has at least some of his 1960s ITV bouts in their vault.