David Mantell

Interesting. Apart from Halperin's promotion in Israel and Saddam Hussein's state run promotion with Adnan as lead babyface in Iraq, how many Middle Eastern Territories were there?

I'd like the see the Granada TV 1950s/1960s archive fully opened up so we can see George Kidd in his prime and all the lighter Wigan Snakepit crew who are less well remembered than Billy Robinson and Karl Gotch because they didn't go to America (Ernie Riley, Tommy "Jack Dempsey" Moore, Melvyn Riss, Billy Joyce etc)

For a while in the 1960s he was the Spanish Otto Wanz. Got to do adverts on TV and stuff. If he hadn't had the crash and had eventually come back to Spain maybe the CIC would have survived past 1975.

A nice news article from French TV of Flesh Gordon training newbies at his wrestling school. Included some show footage and some b/w footage of the Good Old Days:

Just seen an example of this - to a British audience in 1988 it would seem ABSURD that Hacksaw Duggan did not become the brand new Intercontinental champion on the strength of a win like this:

Not sure if this is pro wrestling or not, could be some type of sport wrestling. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z5IpmXRIqA EDIT: It won't let me post the video for some reason so a link will have to do.I can't see what's wrong with the video but please feel free to delete if there's something wrong with it.

P.s. Yes I've found the DVD and it's an IPW:UK/FWA/ROH co promotion Frontiers Of Honour 2 and with al the respect in the world to Robbie Brookside, Bray. Danielson and one or two others on the bill, that Premier Promotions bonus feature match WIPES THE FLOOR with anything on the actual FOH2 show, (especially if you turn down the volume so you don't hear Alex Shane withering on like a two bit Ben Elton). Incidentally, not only was the crowd from the Premier Promotions easter egg match bigger than the main programme Frontiers Of Honour 2 crowd, but also so is a typical crowd at present day Rumble Promotions shows in similar sports hall rooms even if held in the daytime. In fact Rumble these days visibly gets about 3 or 4 times what FOH2 got. Clearly in Britain, then in 2006 and now in 2023, there is more demand for Traditional British wrestling - whether in distilled form or diluted a bit with family entertainment - than there ever was for bad US-style indie wrestling anywhere on the planet.

Some more Premier Promotions from 2006- don't worry it's not 91 minutes solid of Steve Grey Vs Ian Logan(no relation AFAIK to either Steve Logan), it's a four bout bill from Worthing although Grey Vs Logan does get repeated at the end for some reason. Also featuring Johnny Kidd, Doug Williams and Aviv Masyan. The MC (promoter John Freemantle) does mention a DVD on sale at the Merch stand so I think this may have been filmed as a follow up (YouTube having been in it's infancy back in 2006 and certainly not yet monetised so that promoters could earn income from "TV shows" on YT like they can today.) I've got a DVD of some New School promotion's supershow from this time that I bought from the Merch stand of an All Star show in IIRC Leamington Spa and there's a bonus feature on the disc, another Premier match from Worthing 2006 possibly filmed by the same crew as this, pitting Nigel McGuiness Vs Johnny Kidd and quite frankly the Premier bout wipes the floor with the main feature (despite some crap commentary from the dreaded Alex Shane.)

Anyway, talking of clean matches I saw this masterpiece one fall match from 1976 John Naylor Vs Bobby Ryan. Some good defensive use of the stepover toehold position to curl up and roll out of holds. Also a nice back and forth sequence of both escaping each others' folding press attempts by getting moving before being fully ensnared. Ryan was double-crown British/European Lightweight Champion here - he would soon lose the British title back to previous champion Jim Breaks. Dynamite Kid made his TV debut on this bill- he would soon beat both Breaks and Ryan to become double-crown champion himself then do the same at Welterweight beating Breaks again and Jean Corne.

In case I'm giving the impression that Premier are clean matches all the way, here are a couple of their takes on the heat fueled blue-eyes Vs villains 2KO tag match. Both from 2012, both featuring old fashioned South Coast veteran good guy Barry Cooper (no relation to Sid AFAIK). The first is in ITV-grade Redhill Assembly Hall, the second in the garden of a hotel in nearby Lancing: Also for good measure, here's a battle royal from 2017. Okay they call it a Rumble but (a) there's a promotion called that (b) at least they didn't call it a ROYAl Rumble after the WWF PPV or have that event's gradual entry:

This bout I posted earlier in the thread of Flesh Gordon in his later years has a similarly big house although the venue looks more like the sort of big town theare venue All Star in the UK would go for in the C21st.

I haven't yet watched this bout through all the way but it's from 2006 and features a similar building to Mercier-Cybernic and Prince Zéfy still in his athletic prime.

I thought I'd already posted this match but it seems I hadn't (EDIT: have since found out that I did post it, but never mind) so here goes: Marc Mercier three years before relaunching FFCP, in an IWSF (the future Wrestling Stars) ring against masked heel Cybernic Machine with Jacky Richard refereeing. It's from 2003 but there's still a good big house and quite a flashy venue too, like some modern art version of a catherdral. It's actually a considerable size larger than the sort of former TV venue you get in the UK or France, more like something that would be used in Germany/Austria for an Otto Wanz CWA title defence like the Stadhalle in Bremen. Ring is very New Catch looking, still with the long cornerpads, the individual-rope blue cornerpads were not a part of it yet. Anyone know - or can spot any clues that flew over my head - why this was filmed TV or video? It looks very good quality for straight to video by 2003. Perhaps it is for the TV contract I recall Eurostars having based out of Belgium.

Had a positive review for the Wikipedia article on the French Wikipedia wrestling project page: "Thank you very much for this article. It's really great. I don't necessarily have time to translate articles anymore, but I may do so in the future." (CoffeeEngineer) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion_Projet:Catch#en:Professional_wrestling_in_France

Pretty good piece here (except for making a pig's ear of their British commercial television history - ITV was the entire network, ABC merged with Redifusion to become Thames TV in 1968. ATV continued as Midlands TV region until being replaced by Central TV at the start of 1982.) It does acknowledge the rise of All Star and its survival to this day (a refreshing change from these usual "Oh it died in 1988 when it came off TV and that was the end of it" lies.)

Marc Mercier posted on the FFCP's Facebook page to say that his autobiog is out. Someone asked him if there would be an English language edition for all the many British/American/etc fans of Catch Francais - he replied "Yeah, maybe". The same Someone also posted a link to the "Professional Wrestling in France" wikipedia page Wot I Wrote. https://www.facebook.com/ffcatch/posts/pfbid02zeHzaahLKAF9oMb7yqNMzi6TDQW7TYmqs8hrzBdqTqyQ3iuvX2ugvSzbqAz4FhWnl

Just posted this October 2019 bout to the French Catch thread, at the start the MC says Match d'Equippe. Mind you recently on Rumble's YouTube the commentator said "Trios" instead of the traditional UK term Triple Tag Match:

Came across this October 2019 (just 6 months before the Pandemic) bout from WS. MC says match d'Equippe at the start rather than Catch A Quatre. See my discussion with Sir Edgar on the "Why is America always assumed to be the centre of the wrestling universe?" thread. Old school legend Prince Zefy in action- he's bulked up quite a bit since his prime but has been working out and turned it into muscle. Looks a lot like Rufus R Jones circa 1983 in Mid Atlantic. Incipient bald patch. Not so much of a high flyer as he was in the late Eighties/Nineties/Noughties Nice big venue, very echoey like a cheap indoor council swimming baths. Apparently those turnbuckle pads are serious heavy duty weapons that can knock a man unconscious. What are they loaded with? The adversarial relationship between Les Bons and Monsieur L'Arbitre was alive and well in 2019 with Zefy walloping out the ref, counting his own pinfall and then being shocked when the ref wakes up, reverses the decision and makes it a DQ win for Les Mechants (as happened in the 2022 clip I posted some time back.) Talking of refs, I think that might be Monsieur Jacky Richard himself that comes in at the end to support the official ref. Neither of them get the aux Chiottes chant.

Have discovered that my two young favourites Jordan Breaks and British Lightweight champion Nino Bryant have had a match a few months ago, albeit for a New School promotion (Purpose Wrestling) and therefore under American rules and containing some very un Trad Brit material such as closed fist punches treated as clean, a lot of atacking a grounded opponent and an extended brawl outside the ring at about the 18 minute mark. Ah well, would like to see them get it on for Rumble or Premier or All Star under full Mountevans Rules - in the meantime there's several good minutes of what these guys could do together in here.

Thought - could Satoru Sayama have gone over in America as a babyface as Sammy Lee rather than as Tiger Mask? c.f. a certain Mr S. Stain's* comments about Japanese and Mexican wrestlers not getting over in America because Americans like himself only want to see other Americans. * © Jim Cornette

Even the venue for that VDB venue looks like the same sort of place ITV would pick for a TV taping 10-15 years earlier. There was still plenty of technical wrestling in Britain on All Star shows even if the UK Undertaker and Big Red Machine were hogging the main event.* *(disclaimer - yes I know that kept people in work and kept things ticking over until the new generation of Dean Allmark, Robbie "Dynamite" Berzins, Mikey "Whiplash" Gilbert, Kid Cool, Playboy Johnny Midnight etc came through.)

What we really could have done with in the Noughties was a pan-European version of Kayfabe Memories to fully piece together the history of the different Old School scenes in Europe. I did suggest the idea on there at the time. Of course the multiple language barriers would have been a big issue and simply running a British Wrestling forum at the time meant being under siege from FWA New School fans who were programmed by Fin Martin of PowerSlam to hate all things Trad Brit - I have "happy" memories of all the trolls on 1stopwrestling.co.uk forum ...

I've found these matches on YouTube, credited to the VDB and allegedly from 1998 although given the VDB shut in 1997 and looking at the general state of Marty Jones and Danny Collins and the fact they are both getting cheered and neither are committing any real fouls I would guess 1993 as a more accurate date. It looks nothing like the CWA, if anything it looks and feels like a Joint Promotions/WOS taping from circa 1983. There's a bout I was watching between the older Achim Chall and Louise (sic!) Laurence from Hanover 1980 and young Louise reminds me of kids in England from that time like Steve Logan MK2 and John Savage. Refreshingly given the horror stories we hear of Axel Dieter demanding wins at gunpoint and Bret Hart complaining of having to job for old men, young Lou gets the win.EDITno, sadly he doesn't he has to put over bald old Chall. The picture quality is interesting, one fixed camera with a non interlaced image that looks like 16mm film rather than videotape. If it was film, I wonder if it ever got screened anywhere?

Two. Puerto Rico is limping along but still around. Done some reading up on Puerto Rican wrestling (WWC et al) - am increasingly convinced that it belongs in a separate genre - along with Mexican Lucha Libre, Brazilian Telecatch, Dominican wrestling, pre-revolutionary Cuban wrestling (did it continue under Castro?) from US/Canadian "American Wrestling"- maybe call it "Latin American Wrestling" ?

By the way, if anyone hasn't seen it there's already a very good thread about British wrestling on here which covers a lot of the specific points from the last two pages of this thread: There's also a similar thread about French wrestling: