David Mantell

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.

Been pottering around on the FFCP YouTube channel and found all sorts of stuff. This is an older grey haired Marc having a comeback fight in 2004 against a masked man called "Der Hunker" - no relation to Oscar "Der Hunker" Versus. Marc is older, he had a career ending injury in 1989. He can still take bumps including one hefty backdrop but can't somersault on flip much. Hunker lives up to his name by wearing sexy rockstar leather trousers (with a dodgy looking belt buckle) but lacks the countering skills, he does absolutely nothing about a wrist lever applied. Public including little kiddies are happy to see Marc win. Not sure what promotion this is. FFCP did not come back until 2006. Could be IWSF- at some point Mercier fell out with Flesh and Jacky and went to the Americanised ICWA for a couple of years, so it could be them too. Bout is timed in rounds with a round card girl who spends her time between rounds sat at the timekeeper's table looking bored.

To balance things out here is WS's rival FFCP with their boss Marc Mercier at last year's Unit des Champions. Posted in the last couple of months, so presumably things are still going there since Marc announced his retirement from being president of the FFCP in January.

Same promotion, same venue, same YouTube channel three years later. Spring 2022 - you can tell it's the period just after the pandemic from the face masks ringsiders are wearing. Not sure about Micha's trunks, they look like bikini briefs. Thanatos dresses as the Undertaker minus the hat. He leaves his shirt on to wrestle. Thanatos beats up, ragdolls and overpowers Micha. Micha fights back with hope spots that get longer and longer before Thanatos gets a pin with a tombstone piledriver - see it's not just the clothes! Verdict: another American TV Wrestling squash match. Thanatos gotten over as a dominant heel. Long bit of blank clip 3-4 min) at the end,

Mick McManus: "NO!!! NOT THE EARS!!!! AGGHHH!!!!"

Another one from the same show. Jacky Richard is not refereeing although I did spot him wandering about at ringside at the end. Also Flesh Gordon (the tubby bald middle aged moustachioed version of him) is on a poster near the ring entrance. Good Bons Vs Mechants match with les Mechants getting a clean win. Les Bons have high flying moves including that French stalwart the cisseaux Volees, but two shaven headed bearded spitting images of Le Grande Vladimir coming down to Nursery Metal music tell you this isn't your father's Bons. Nice dealing of the old cliché of heels "posing for a photo" to get hit with a fling move - the two heels actually catch the babyface only to get dropkicked down by his partner.

From the Pallos '1981 video at Great Yarmouth Hippodrome. Joined in the third, a fall apiece in rounds 4 and 5, time runs out in round 6. Pallo Senior oddly says that heavyweights might look slow on TV but not live! Two guys with pasts on the heel side behaving themselves. Kincaid doing a lot of brawly leg weakeners before switching to legholds Kowalski spins out and Kincaid takes quite a bump but carries on with the leg. Kowalski limps back to his corner for the round break. Fights back with elbows and throws. Kincaid does a great French style flying headscissors takedown from a wrist lever. Unexpectedly Kowalski scores the opener with a cross buttock/cross press. Pallo comes up with old fashioned remark about "coloured boys" having hard heads. Kincaid finally capitalises on all that legwork by diving in forca trip and folding press equaliser. Cut to some way into the sixth. Kincaid has Kowalski in a crossface when the final bell goes. Solid but not spectacular clean match.

48 years on from being slapped around by lady referee Babette Carol and 28 years after putting some slap in himself as Le Travesti Man, here is what Jacky Richard does with himself nowadays. Well okay this is March 2019 but as far as I know Monsieur Jacky is still at this today five years later as is his old nemesis and business partner Flesh Gordon as special enforcer bad cop/good cop Arbiters. Although Jacky seems to be happy to get tough with les Mechants in this six person (two male four females) mixed tag match. I dimly recognise the name of the male Bon Benselam or something - maybe he was in the 2023 clip I posted? And IIRC one of the two female bons Pauline was one of Hugo Perez's students in the earlier training school footage.. MC says something about lots of testosterone coming up which is funny for a 66%female bout. Mechant females are very Dump Girls types. Bon females are both great young athletes although Calypso comes across as a bit sickly-sweet. Basha the Mechant bloke looks like a Glam Rock Giant Haystacks in those Green satin trousers.Bout ends when Calypso pins Basha and one of the two females after which the audience,, particularly children, storm the ring in force.

Had a full watch of this this evening planning to write this review, only to find I've already posted the video yonks earlier, still never mind. The YouTube channel seems to be about adverts and weather broadcasts and suchlike. Show is taped in Blois on the Loire. Good packed hall but the venue is painted bight green which looks odd for a wrestling venue and clashes with the light blue New Catch ring. White MC Undertaker was Psycho Shane Stevens. At this point the "real" Undertaker was still a heel in the WWF (he had headlined Wembley Arena with the Ultimate Warrior and back in America was about to challenge Hogan for the World title at Survivor Series 91.). Flesh makes short work of him in an action packed bout, not so much science but plenty of acrobatic stuff like hiptosses. Rather sweet promo from Stevens threatening all manner of revenge, doing Undie in a Northern accent.(with French subtitles as done later for StClair and Hart Le B.) Ladies match between old bag heel Valerie Wonder and the still popular Old Catch survivor (and sometimes Toto to heel "cowboy" Jesse Texas) Gabby Lailee. Referee is Chico Roberts from Wales. Lailee is the more interesting wrestler doing similar agile stuff to the boys. Wonder spends a lot of time choking her out but when Gabby retaliates by garotting the older woman with the tag rope, Chico gives her a summary DQ. and gets an Aux Chiottes L'Arbitre chant for his pains. Clearly that was taking retaliation too far. Tony StClair takes on Hart La Barbare (The Equaliser in PNW. Dave/Evad Sullivan in WCW, Barbarian in the CWA and American Hawkwind in England for All Star.) Referee is Andre Bollet's less imposing brother Charley. A Brit versus an American with a French referee. StClair bamboozles Hart with his skills like Steve Wright did to Moondog Rex in the CWA 1989. He rope a ropes away from a charging HLB to get in behind for a folding press for a 2 before getting the 3 with a flying bodypress. Yann Caradec, after Prince Zefy the next great TBW hope of France circa the 80s/90s turn, come to the ring to Breton pipe music (such as was played by the pipers at the 1978 TV taping in a gym featuring Daniel Schmidt Vs Mammouth Siki.). Set to face bratty young heel Eric Lacrouix for his French Welterweight title and medal (not a belt. A medal like the Mid South TV title that Ted DiBiase pocketed one time and Eddie Gilbert eventually threw in a river.). Nice history package of how Yann made the challenge after being screwed in a Tag Team match. First half is great French style lighterweight action, shades of Saulnier Vs LPP. Gets a bit brawly later. Yann gets trapped in the ropes but fights on. Eric's manager Theo with the big comedy moustache pulls a rope down, Yann falls out and is KOd. He protests like Kwango after the loss to Alan Dennison in 1972, but Chico Roberts holds up 10 fingers. Main event is an all English Catch A Quatre. Danny Collins was MASSIVELY over in France at this time. After beating Jorg "Baron Von" Chenok on ITV on FA Cup Final Day 1985 to win the European Welterweight title he trekked over every summer of the late 80s to tour for Roger Delaporte's FFCP defending the title across France and Northern Spain. This French audience are quite doolally for him. Partner was John Harvey a part time wrestler, part time conjurer and part time circus fire eater - think Rick Steamboat in the WWF 1991 crossed with Phantasio a few years later. Probably the least exciting of the four. Heels are an odd couple. Jimmy Ocean and Doc Dean. Not only is nice kid next door Doc a heel in a pair of Bret Hart shades, he is teaming with one half of the Liverpool Lads' archenemies back home, the Superflies. Jimmy Ocean had beaten Steve Grey for the British Lightweight title but lost it to Tony Stewart, Doc had beaten Mal Sanders for the British Welterweight Championship (formerly held by Danny) before losing it to Blondie Barrett. Both would regain the titles before losing them to Grey and Soldier Boy Steve Prince. Danny starts off in top form, all kips ups, cartwheels, scoots through the legs. Honestly @ohtani's jacket I don't get your problem with the guy, he was an incredible mover, taking all Dynamite Kid's stuff to the next level. Harvey tags in and is FIP before Collins makes it back in to score the win. Heels try to attack Danny with a chair, Danny challenges them to a rematch which gets massive pops from the crowd despite being in English, they bang on the ring apron like the South London Hellcrew. They love their Danny Boy. On another bout, Orig Williams on the English language commentary says of Danny "When I see this man's name on the card I go see him." And promote him on a lot of your shows too, Orig. Clip ends with a trailer for some boxing - one of the venues looks suspiciously like the outdoor Heumarket in Vienna.

You're welcome. There seems to be a myth that the move from teatime to lunchtime coincided with the end of World of Sport. In fact they were already experimenting with the earlier timeslots during those final five months or so of WOS.