David Mantell

Also I have to say, a lot of the French press articles I've read seem to treat him as a big deal: https://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2011/04/17/1061443-catch-flesh-gordon-bientot-a-boe.html https://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2018/09/13/2868085-la-star-du-catch-flesh-gordon-a-montauban-samedi.html

Which is where he is (inasmuch as the Television Era section is divided up (into paragraphs rather than formal sections.) The "lede" of the article is a quick summary like ledes of Wiki articles are supposed to be.

"Mister" Yasu Fuji headlined Wembley Arena in 1980 with Mighty John Quinn against Big Daddy and Wayne Bridges so he was no small fry. Serj1e has footage of him in Germany also. He was actually a Japanese American from LA and he co-held the LA version of the NWA World Tag Team title for Gene LeBell's promotion.

Thanks for the tip off re. Clermont. The Pro GR and Birth of Catch sections were cribbed mercilessly from the Wiki articles on Greco Roman sport wrestling and the. FFCP, the latter of which is mostly a translation of the French Wikipedia article, so any mistakes, spelling errors etc need to be changed in those originals. Unfortunately they may well be in turn reproduced from sources in which case we're stuck with them The bit about household names was styled after a similar bit in the British wrestling article "lede" - It was at its peak of popularity when the television show World of Sport was launched in the mid-1960s, making household names out of Adrian Street, Mick McManus, Count Bartelli, Giant Haystacks, Jackie Pallo, Big Daddy, Steve Veidor, Dynamite Kid, and Kendo Nagasaki. I don't think Bartelli or Veidor got much media coverage beyond ITV Wrestling itself and TVTimes but that would have been enough for a fair whack of UK households to be familiar with them - and they weren't even top blue-eye/babyface either of them. Whatever one might say about 2230h on variable nights of every other or so week on A2, it's a darn sight better a TV spot than ANY (AFAIK) US territory ever had 1955-1985 (from the closure of DuMont to the debut of SNME)

I think I've also solved the mystery of why there is only one colour recording prior to April 1975 - the INA was launched January 1975 so started making its own colour recordings at that point - all the b/w kinescopes were overseas sales prints right up until 1974. Delaporte & Bolllet Vs Montreal & Zarzecki from Jan 69 must have just been a lucky unwiped tape which got found and packed off to the INA in '75 or later.

I've added a bit of content about Eurostars as well.

Auto-translated: Wrestling style Far from “French-style” wrestling, the ICWA offers fights closer to the American style, a style brought to France by Booster himself [ non-neutral] [ref. necessary] after being trained by Édouard Carpentier in Montreal 12 . https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Catch_Wrestling_Alliance

Anyone know which Clermont the WWF visited in 1989? I got a note about linking to a disambig page but there are six of them in France alone on English Wikipedia.

These were the 2006 videos. Not sure what promotion but they could be the more direct equivalent of John Freemantlr's Premier Promotions in the UK, while Marc Mercier's revived FFCP is more Rumble Promotions (and the old FFCP under Delaporte was Max Crabtree era Joint Promotions.)

ICWA did go on in their press articles about being "Americanisé" and not old fashioned French wrestling like their competitors. They sounded a lot like the French equivalent of the FWA or all the other New School promotions in Britain who llike to bang on about how the "World of Sport Style" (sic) is "antiquated" and generally old hat and generally Britishoillard (to adapt your word franchouillard from a couple of pages back) and they are going to replace it with modern wild American Wrestling Bigger Bettter Badder etc etc etc. These seem to be a Europe-wide phenomenon eg GWF in Germany.

Everything got very gimmicky and cartoony under Delaporte in the late 70s/80s- in wrestling terms you could call France the Memphis of Europe (as in the Gulas/Jarrett style of cartoony gimmicks) and that seems to have affected the post terrestrial TV era of French wrestling. The likes of Cybernic Machine are an evolution of the likes of Les Pihrannas and Les Maniaks and Mambo Le Primativ. There are probably smaller promotions which are more faithful throwbacks to 1960s Catch, in fact I probably posted some in the 2006 videos on page 21 of the thread, and those are the equivalent of John Freemantle's Premier Promotions in the UK. Wrestling Stars are clear the All Star (post mid 1990s) of France.

Just been through History of WWE and came across the following which I think was what put me off adding any more shows to that section: WWF @ Toulon, France – Zenith Omega – August 5, 1993 Tito Santana vs. the Predator Brutus Beefcake vs. Terry Taylor Bam Bam Bigelow vs. Tatanka Owen Hart vs. Papa Shango Jim Duggan vs. Bastion Booger WWF Tag Team Champions Rick & Scott Steiner vs. the Headshrinkers Hulk Hogan vs. WWF World Champion Yokozuna That would have been the penultimate Hogan appearance of his entire WWF 1983-1993 babyface run (before Sheffield England the next day.)

Thanks for the tipoff on the second New Catch run. I would still class FFCP and Wrestling Stars as being Old School as much as I would say the same for present day All Star and Rumble promotions in the UK, although they have clearly absorbed some American influences in the name of "family entertainment" like said UK promotions have done. Perhaps I shall rephrase that bit slightly. I thought about mentioning the 1993 WWF show but then thought there might be LOTS more shows over the years to add. If that was the only one then I shall add it.

Probably the nearest thing there's ever been to an art-house Wrestling promotional video: Images of Nagasaki by Paul Yates https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeidAfPyQsg EDIT: Sorry, It's just highlights, the proper thing is a good 10-15min long and well worth the watch if it ever gets posted anywhere.

Wot I wrote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_wrestling_in_France Feedback appreciated.

Good title match from 1993 - World Heavy Middleweight Championship Chic Cullen (defending World champion, the same title Rocco won back from Yamada in my above post) Vs Danny Collins (challenger, reigning British champion and World champion in the weight division below, Middleweight, since beating Owen Hart for the vacant title two years earlier at the same venue.) Cullen would go on to hold his title until retiring in 2002; the following year he and Rollerball Rocco held a tournament for a new champion, won by Bryan Danielson. Collins would hold onto both his titles until 1996 when- by then Dirty Dan Collins- he vacated the World Middleweight title (Rumble Promotions held a tournament won by a young James Mason) and then gave up the British H-Mid title after beating Alan Kilby for the British Light Heavyweight title - Kilby got it back in 1997.

Another good bout recently, my favourite Jordan Breaks versus Lewis Mayhew who was Nino Bryant's opponent in the match to create a new British Lightweight champion in 2021

A facetious sports journalist and emblematic figure of Stade 2, Daniel Cazal joined the show in 1977 where he brought his humor and offbeat tone for nearly 15 years. He notably marked the history of Stage 2 by inventing a sport: the wheel bar. A discipline, completely barred and unidentified, to which he regularly devoted a subject. Since the retirement of Daniel Cazal in 1991, the wheel bar has fallen somewhat into oblivion but its creator, steeped in humor, keeps the secret hope of seeing it return one day or another to the heart of the news.

Interestingly, French Wikipedia specifies Friday night as being the timeslot of choice for Le Catch on Couderc's article: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Couderc#Catch During the 1960s , on Friday evenings, he commentated on major televised wrestling evenings, live from the Élysée-Montmartre and the Wagram hall . It was the time of famous wrestlers like L'Ange Blanc or Le Executioner de Béthune 18 . Roger's thunderous and lively comments – flamboyant, indignant or hilarious – delight viewers. “Technically,” writes Lorient wrestler Jean Corne , “he knows nothing about wrestling. He makes us forget this deficiency with a very southern ease. His thing is partiality […] And when Couderc takes up the cause of the good guys against the bad guys, we believe it 19 . " THEJanuary 20, 1961, he himself gets involved in fighting against an aggressive spectator 20 . How long did this last for as a timeslot? (I suppose I could do my own research on this and go through all the dates on MattD's 1960s videos and check what day of the week they were.) Obviously by the late 70s this had been ditched in favour of any random evening of the week and the occasional Sunday afternoon.

Here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc37UPvelZQ This was the Cazal piece in question I posted earlier - unforunately the link could not be embedded because www.youtube.com does not allow embedding of that video. Bah. There's a fellow presenter singing Cazal's praises (I can't quite catch what he says) and I think your imaginary sport gets a mention.

Here is a couple of nights earlier in Aldershot, with veteran TV-era MC Lee Bamber (see various points earlier in the thread for more discussion about him. )

This was All Star's previous show from Dudley in February. I'm probably somewhere in the crowd but haven't spotted myself yet. Last time I met Brian Dixon before his death, as you can see he was in a wheelchair but still pretty cheerful.

Main event last night was an 8 man Elimination "Royal Rumble Rules" (four a side, elimination by over the top rope, first team wiped out loses) match pitting the World Riot Squad (Niwa, Henchmen, Cannonball Grizzly who looked like a cross between Scrubber Daly and old time US wrestler Black Bart) Vs the All Star's (Joel "Oliver Grey" Redma , Dylan Roberts, Micky Long and Kris Dekker) - needless to say the blue-eyes won and sent the kiddy-dominated crowd home happy. These seem to be catching on in old school promotions as Rumble did the same match type as a grand finale two weeks ago at their last YouTube recording at Ditton and posted the match last night while I was out at the show:

Went to Dudley Town Hall this evening for my first All Star show since the death of Brian Dixon earlier this year. No clean matches tonight but some good technical wrestling between Dylan Roberts and Ringo Ryan, the latter returned to the UK after several years in Australia and whom I recall as a promising bratty young heel in the early/mid 2010s. Also former NXT man Jack Starz pulled off a neat Johnny Saint "lady of the lake" sequence in his losing effort to Welsh strongman heel Caden Lay. The big news as printed in the full colour All Star programme is that Tony Spitfire whom I posted a video of having a classic British clean match with Dean Allmark in 2013 is now a heel, rebranded as the Loudmouth and taking verbal shots at audience members. Not that there was much evidence of this tonight as he was working as MC, doing the introductions in a blokily polite Johnny Vaughan sort of way Superheavyweight tag team The Henchmen were on the bill (accompanied by a partner who was called Cannonball Grisly but clearly was not Paul Neu.) Forty years ago the Henchies would have been obvious cannon fodder for Big Daddy, nowadays they remind me of 1970s opposition heel team The Klonkykes (Jake made it onto ITV against Count Bartelli in 1976 and Bill made it onto French TV Vs Dave "Batman " Larsen in 1973. Together, they were the subject of a docu on BBC2 on the brothers, footage from which appeared in legendary sitcom Til Death Us Do Part on Alf Garnett's TV screen, saving the Beeb from having to pay ITV for footage.)

I found a YouTube bio piece onn Cazal which I posted a couple of pages back where another TV pundit calls him urbanely witty or somesuch. I guess an example of this being him calling a ringside chair Mammouth Siki uses to get back in the ring against Daniel Schmid "L'escalier de service" like as if the ring was a posh hotel or something. Couderc was apparently a different kettle of fish, his thing was to be wildly partial to Les Bons. When he got sacked for having sided with the students in May 68, he got a job with Swiss radio commenting on Rugby and similarly was wildly partial towards the French team to the point where one national team manager called him the the "sixteenth man of the XV (fifteen-strong national Rugby side) of France".