David Mantell

Late Nineties/ early Noughties. IWSF on tour internationally in FYR Macedonia - I guess that's Macedonian the MC is speaking. Flesh hasn't yet got his bald head, tache and paunch although he's got a W hairline like he's Road Warrior Animal. Jacky Richard in his final phase as Monsieur Jacky the evil heel Commissioner in shirt, tie and braces, looking like the head of George Steele on the body of IRS after too many fry-ups for breakfast on the road. Zefy still in his prime. Scott Rider, Flesh's nemesis, the French Giant Haystacks in a kilt. Ring looks like a relic from the TV days. I believe there's some more on that YouTube channel, will check it out.

Another great modern classic from Jordon Breaks from just over a week ago (Fri 6th Oct). Stewart Shephard is very much the heel, but don't let that put you off - apart from one brief flurry of forearms around the 9 minute mark, it's technical wrestling all the way with Shephard also showing off a few good tricks of his own. It's Rumble, so pray excuse the dreadful commentary by Aaron Nix.

They seem to have allowed a lot of stuff that would never swing in the UK. As discussed above, the British referees had to be in charge and in authority at all times. The wimpy ineffective American referees would have been unacceptable on ITV let alone the quasi-heel French referees. They allowed womens' matches on French TV which ITV never did (although it was shown on Reslo on S4C and on various news bulletins and BBC2 Arena docu Raging Belles.) Lengthy ringside fight sequences were ten a penny on Antenne 2 but even short ones were banned from ITV. As discussed, the main ethos of the ITV shows and Kent Walton was to produce upmarket classy wrestling (leaving askde Daddy tags and the odd other comedy bout) that would stop problems like the 1961 attempt by Maurice Herzog to cancel the wrestling on French TV. Britain was lucky to have a commentator like Kent Walton who took the art of the clean scientific match seriously and tried to preach this to his viewers. France's wrestling business was lumbered with the likes of Daniel Cazal who (presumably because of the 1958 dispute) seemed to think it was a test of their journalistic freedom that they be allowed to poke fun at Le Catch.

I guess French TV had looser standards than the IBA. Hence the strap matches and fighting outside the ring.

It's a pity because Michel Saunier was such a good classy lightweight wrestler whereas Delaporte who was one of the most notorious heels became a tough guy trooubleshooter no nonsense ref like MaxWard in England or Gorilla Monsoon in the late 70s WWWF. This whole quasi-heel referee thing seems to have started in about 1977 - Guy Mercier was making it okay for Les Bons to beat up on the ref.

Unfortunately on this one from October 1967 - just about 3 weeks after 2eme Chaine went colour, Couderc says to camera at 0:12 that this is broadcast on "le Premier Chaine" - Channel 1, still in b/w This would seem to indicate that matches continued to be broadcast for some time on both channels including after 2eme went colour. This means (1) a long slog of listening out on over a hundred matches 1964-1974 for what channel they were broadcast on to determine the general pattern - unless anyone has all the transmission details written down - (2) at least some bouts post October 1967 would have been on Channel 1 therefore in black and white originally therefore no chroma dots on those specific film prints. Still at least we know some of those matches were in colour and we do have one actual colour VT from Jan '69 (see further back in thread).

Harry Sefton and Jordan Breaks had another bout in 2022 for New School promotion South London Wrestling

Good to see Old School German wrestling lives on and the kids in Britain today will continue to take the North Sea Ferry across to Gernany for a working holiday and a good payday. Also means all six surviving Old School European promotions are still active - All Star, Rumble, Premier, FFCP, Wrestling Stars and EWP/CWP. Thought I had the other night about 1980s TV series Auf Wiedersein Pet starring actor and top wrestling star in all three Northweist Euro territories Pat Roach. The series was about a group of bricklayers from Northern England travelling to Germany to seek work due to lack or opportunities back home due to the 1980s recession. In retrospect a glorious metaphor for English wrestlers travelling to Germany for a payday at the Wrestling tent at the big annual beer drinking festivals.

Couple of good videos from 2011 from The Guardian newspaper in the UK. Firstly one featuring the now sadly late Karl Kramer (Carl Davies): This next one features Robbie Brookside and can be seen as a sort of sequel to the video diary 18 years later: Quite a lot of famous faces in there includin 1970s up and comer Bobby Ryan celebrating a milestone birthday. Also one of the two little girls grew up to be Xia Brookside who is doing well in Japan these days. It says there was a series on the scene but sadly I can only find those two. Good snapshots of Old School British Wrestling in the 2010s.

Two more matches from the same small venue circa 2006

Some rare fan-cam footage of Roger Delaporte just a few years before he switched from hated heel to beloved troubleshooter referee:

Good clean match in a rather tiny venue circa 2006, possibly the revived FFCP:

There's also a noticeably younger Max Ward in there.

Been looking for these for some time. Contains footage of a younger Zoltan Boscik and of "Judo" Al Hayes and Rebel Ray Hunter in singles bouts roughly from the same time as their tag team on French TV.

A few more I could name - Kendo Nagasaki vs Giant Haystacks 1977 The Iron Greek Spiros Arion vs Colin Joynson 1979 Blondie Barrett doing an ongoing cut angle in 1992 Quite a bit of juice in this one.

Hair vs Hair match December 1967 - Couderc confrms that it's broadcast on Channel 2 at 0:20 so it seems it had already made the move in time for the switch to colour in October that year. Probably got moved across when Channel 2 started in 1964.

I see the subject of the two Marquises has been addressed before. Same butler Paul double-barrel though.

I stand corrected - apprently this was a different wrestler doing the Marquis gimmick, the original bearded version Marquis Eduardo. Jacky Richard replaced him in the gimmick the following year 1985. This is Jacky Richard doing the gimmick: Which then begs the question - who was "Eduardo" ? One of those things we really need a native French fan to explain. Afterthought - it LOOKS a lot like British wrestler Barry "Rex Strong" Sherman, but I think he'd put on a lot more weight by this point - his stint as the masked Samurai for Joint Promotion (no relation to Le Samurai of late 70s French Catch) was 2-3 years after Marquis Eduardo and he was quite flabby by that point.

New video on Matt D's channel: 25th February 1984 Black Shadow vs Angelito (joined in progress) Marquis Jacky Richard vs Georges Cohen Flesh Gordon & Walter Bordes vs Les Maniaks (Different match from the one on August 18th 1985)

Unsurprisingly, "Ho Cette Arbitre" (originally "Oh Cette Arbitre De Merde") originally comes from Football (as in soccer, not as in what we call "American Football") - see also "Allez les rouges/ verts/ bleus /jaunes" and also the Big Daddy fans chant of "Easy, easy" in the UK. https://www.jeuxvideo.com/forums/1-20-15439950-804-0-1-0-topic-olympique-lyonnais.htm I suspect a lot of standard American fan chants such as " Go (babyface) go" and "(Heel) SUCKS!!!" similarly had their origins in other sports like (American) Football and Baseball.

Talking of "HO CETTE ARBITRE!!!" French WWF fans got a hearty chant of it going against Andre's pal Tim White at this WWF show in Paris October 7th 1988 at the 5:15 mark. Needless to say, Gorilla and Bobby were left nonplussed ...

https://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2011/04/17/1061443-catch-flesh-gordon-bientot-a-boe.html An earlier article from 2011. "Gentleman Grizzly" in the photo is of couse Paul Neu, known in other parts of Europe as Cannonball Grizzly (CWA) Raging Bull (Reslo) and American Avalanche (All Star going back to 1992 two years before John Tenta became Avalance in WCW)

2018 interview here with Flesh Gordon: https://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2018/09/13/2868085-la-star-du-catch-flesh-gordon-a-montauban-samedi.html Auto translation:

There's a bit of a career retrospective of him here - no mention of Le Catch though: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc37UPvelZQ When Roger Couderc dropped dead in the middle of a rugby tournament in 1984, it was Cazal who broke the news to the public:

Here's the full match - there are actually three versions on Youtube, a Matt D one, a Bob Alpra one and an ABCCatch one. I opted for the last on as it seems to be the best picture quality and have the most footage at the start Actually the audience seem less aggrieved with Jacky Richard and more with referee Michel Saulnier who gets a hell of a bad time from the crowd, not just the regular "HO CETTE ARBITRE" but at 18:31 a much nastier sounding chant that gets Saulnier seriously upset and standing on the middle rope shouting abuse back at them. It goes something like "L'Arbitre, ouiseaux, c'est --------aux" blanked sections are totally unintelligble, if anyone could decipher the exact full chant that would be great, even if it's something seriously rude. Commetator Daniel Cazal (later on apparently a respectable tennis commentator on Antenne 2's successor France 2's sports package show Stade 2) doesn't seem to want to spell it out, he just says "L'arbitre etcetera" Odd that kids should be showing up in such numbers given that we know from the speaking clocks on Matt D's videos that Le Catch mostly got transmitted at around 2200h/2300h in the late evening. They would have made good Big Daddy fans if Shirley had taken the cross channel ferry now and then, and probably many of them did go on to become Des Petits Hulkamaniacs over the next 4-6 years as private subscription channel Canal Plus arrived witht the WWF on board and soon took off. Angry Grandmas, of course, have been a worldwide cliché of wrestling audiences on both sides of the Atlantic since the 1940s and the days of Hatpin Mary. Cazal seems to take quite a lot of relish in poking fun at this particular one at 14:04 - "Bravo Madame - Vouz avez un sense de la justice et de la regularité dans le catch qui vous honore"