David Mantell

The great Austrian outdoors - mulletted babyface versus Lawler esque heel who outweighs him. Babyface (looks like Tom McGee, ironic as Germany was gripped with BretMania at this time) gets a couple of Yellow cards, comes up with some clever escapes including a neat scoot through the legs and even a counter to being stomped dirty in the throat on the bottom rope- pushing the offending legup to send the heel over the top rope.) and ultimately gets the pin.

Pure unadulterated German Catch tag match all locals, VdB spot shown in a barn somewhere although the raised camera makes it look like WTBS Techwood Drive Studios. Shiny black ring canvas to give any professional camera crew kittens. Babyface winners get presented with a cup like it's France or something.

From just before Christmas 1985, Baron Von Rashcke, taking time out from fighting the good fight against Jimmy Valiant for Paul Jones's army.does his goose stepping Nazi gimmick in front of some real Germans. You can tell Raschke's an American , he goes for the ropes, (this was MAJOR heat in Britain.) and powers his way upwards out of holds. Billy Samson actually does one or two reversals. There's a long bit with Samson doing a single leg Boston Crab on the Baron driving a knee into the base of the spine and Charles iRaschke just sells it. A repeat application gets Samison the opening fall. After that it kind of descends into an American Wrestling match, lots of stomping on the mat that should have earned both men a couple of Yellow cards each I think Baron gets an equaliser with his Claw and Sampson gets a deciding pin after a series of dropkicks. .No colour signal or audio. I think this is down to low generation copy rather than the camera - @sergeiSem might know and if he does THEN THAT IS ALL THE PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW.

To give you some idea of what Saint had to deal with in that match, here is Prince in Task .Force action with regular tag partner Vic Powers. As both the MC in the clip and myself in the quote mentioned, Task Force were former British Tag Champions and accidental ones at that - vas shown in Robbie Brookside 's Video Diary (screened just a few months earlier) the referee was forced to call an audible after Brookside and Doc Dean legitimately clashed heads drawing hard way juice and knocking themselves silly. On top of being part of the only British Tag team champions to win the belts on TV, PArince was also reigning British Welterweight Champion at this time, having beaten Dean also for that title in 1993. This bout is from 1994, the next year after Kendo Nagasaki retired the second time, bringing All Star's post-TV boom period to a close (although they tried to milk it further with Dale Preston as King Kendo, managed by Lloyd Ryan.) Nonetheless they still knew how to entertain the punters and send them home happy (although I think the MC says British Bushwhacker Frank Casey is on afterwards. It's not one for the purists, it's not the .Royals Vs the StClair brothers from 1971 or even Brookside and Regal Vs Danny and Pete Collins from 1988. But if you thought Brookside and Regal Vs the UK Road Warriors from 1988 or Marty Jones and Steve Regal Vs Skull Murphy and Johnny South that same year were good fun, you')) probably like this. The Premier Promotions blue-eye Vs heel tags I posted some pages back from the C21st aren't dissimilar either. Frankie Sloan is Robbie Brookside 's cousin and looks it with the long hair . He retired a few years ago and these days is a referee. Darren Walsh, the son of Banger Tony Walsh would later ditch the Dustin Rhodes lookalike image, shave his head, pile on the pounds, buy a The Warlord style eye ask and some contact lenses and become monster heels Thunder all across Europe except in Leamington Spa where in 2003-2006 he was local good guy challenger to visiting British Heavyweight Champion Robbie Brookside who like the travelling NWA champs of old, went heel to take on the younger local contender. Similar confusion with how DQs work in a 2DQ tag to the Murphy/South Vs Jones/Taylor - With the good guys one fall up, Powers is DQd. This should be the second fall but instead Prince is offered to wrestle onunder handicap conditions - he refuses so the good guys get the win. A year or two earlier, Sloan and Walsh would next have faced Kendo Nagasaki and Blondie Barrett, like Brookside and Regal did, but with Naggers retired, that main event was out of the window. All the same, Prince, nice guy that he was and still is, was really not the right opponent for Johnny Saint.

Das Deutscher Catchen as people expect it. The IBV looking very CWA. Big Otto in the ring against the man who in a few months time, sans peroxide and goatee, would be Brutus Beefcake, star of WWF vignettes as wannabe Chippendale in front of real female punters. Here he's still basically Dizzy Hogan, the Dave Sullivan of early 80s AWA. (the same Dave Sullivan who also popped up as Barbarian in CWA eight years later and as American Hawkwind in Britain.) Leslie is billed on the opening graphic as being from New York , the territory he would next head to. Not exactly a scientific contest, this is what Germans/Austrians had instead of Big Daddy. From the French Catch thread: This happened sometimes in Britain, particularly at holiday camp shows where a redcoat or somebody would give the audience (casual holidaymakers rather than more serious wrestling fans from the Town Shows) a running commentary and basically get them to mark out properly. This has continued into the C21st and ended in tears a few years back when an Israeli Arab wrestler playing an Arab heel (as is traditional in Israeli pro wrestling) ended up getting called "the Muslim" by a redcoat, causing an offended holidaymaker to write to complain to the Guardian newspaper about Butlins promoting Islamophobia! The end result saw Butlins and All Star amicably part company after decades with All Star getting a replacement deal with rival holiday camp company Pontins while Butlins signed with some new school promotion - an arrangement that was meant to last until the smoke blew over but seems to have endured. There was also an amusing camcorder clip from 1986 of Robbie Brookside versus a heel Chic Cullen where Cullen was using a closed fist punch and the Redcoat encouraged the kids in the audience to alert the referee by shouting "FIST!" which, as one wag put it, resembled a disturbing juvenile version of the infamous Mineshaft nightclub. This is another example. The German MC shouts quite a lot of orders at Leslie, often in English. at one point calling him Sir like he is a customer in a department store. Are you being served Mr Beefcake? MC relays a lot of the referee's commands as well as the pinfall and knockout counts. When Otto and Bruti get brawling outside the ring, the MC gets really panicky - "Stop! Don't do that!" like he's from the IBA in England.He actually says "back in the ring, please" in English! "SCHTOP HERREN!!!" Otto rolls up Leslie for what seems like ages before getting a rather slow three count for the win after both men had tried pile drivers and backdrops and got near knockout counts on each other. If the VdB appealed to wrestling connoisseurs that Kent Walton might have seen eye to eye with, the IBV/CWA was appealing to festival revellers drunk and stuffed on beer and sausage meat who just wanted a slug and punch between their hero Big Otto and the visiting arrogant Americans. This was in the middle of July in Graz so I'm guessing it was on the same bill as one night of a multi night tournament. Kind of like a Flair title defence or a Dusty Rhodes Vs Bubba Rogers bunkhouse match or Midnight Rider Vs JJ Dillon bullrope match in the middle of one night of the Crockett Cup.

Just noticed you mention this was on TF1 also!. When exactly in 1977 did the channel go full colour? It may be once it did go colour promoters were happier to have matches on there.

At last! Evidence that the VdB DID know how how to use Johnny Saint rather than treating him as a sacrificial lamb for some heavyweight. First round is a bit slow with each man managing to keep the same hold for half a round (Rolo with a headscissors - I do like how he uses the forearm to tighten the scissorhold and prevent Saint getting his head out! Then Saint with a standing full nelson). After that it's a good couple of rounds of fast paced Johnny Saint complete with Lady of the Lake sequence and the German audience lap it up. It ends with a no contest - Rolo lands badly and Saint is offered but refuses a TKO. I guessed @ohtani's jacket won't approve but it's nice to see the German audience get the point and that it's not just us Brits that mark out for these sportsmanly finishes.

A thought re the Otto Wanz phenomenon. The big strong superhero lead blue-eye/babyface/Bon really started with the Hercules Cortez phenomenon. From there it seems to have inspired "Blond Adonis" Shirley Crabtree as the top star of UK Opposition promoter Paul Lincoln, Otto Wanz in the CWA/IBV and more recently George Tromaras in 1980s Greece.

Okay, a subject for discussion - the home videos programme run by IBV/CWA and the similar programme run more cheaply by VdB. What we know is that it started in 1980 and was still a going concern into the 1990s, perhaps up until the CWA's closure and replacement with EWP in 2000. Unlike television in the UK and France, it was never at the mercy of a TV exec who could cancel the videos like Greg Dyke. So when the WWF invaded, it was basically business as usual for the CWA and the German/Austrian tournaments. Does anyone have a more in depth history of the video range? How it came about? Stories from. It's evolution. The whole history in fact. Does anyone have more details?

@Indikator has this ever surfaced again since?

I posted a pic some pages back of Mark "Little Legs" Seely. He mostly works with full sized opposition. He tends to work tags and handicap tags, generally as an end of the night attraction to send 'em home happy. However he does have a rather neat "Human Glove" wristlock/arm scissors combination (and as similar legscissors based "Human Boot.") Neil "Tom Thumb" Evans was classed as a full grown lightweight (he briefly beat Jim Breaks for the European Lightweight Championship in IIRC 1986)

The above is @ohtani's jacket's reviews of German/Austrian footage from page 6-7 of the British Wrestling thread, moved here for greater convenience/relevance going forward. I get OJ isn't American but given my remarks about IBV/CWA being American- friendly, perhaps it is no surprise that he prefers it to Britain of the same period.

There's a German Catch thread on here. I've migrated some Germany/Austria stuff from here on to there. I shan't bother with German footage of Finlay, Saint etc posted on this British thread to illustrate points about them. Ideally we could do the same with Spanish, Greek, Egyptian, Lebanese and Iraqi wrestling. Let each territory have its own thread.

My reply to the rant: He doesn't exactly make it easy does he? To be honest it's very hard to take apart the Wikipedia page for the CWA since all the sources called it that.(Verifiability Not Truth and all that.) It seems to me (and correct me if I'm wrong). that IBV is what people are referring to when they talk of the CWA- the promotion with the big ring with white ropes, blue or dark grey mat, covered in logos of sponsoring companies, gong instead of a bell. featuring Otto and a load of visiting Americans, filmed very professionally by a multi camera crew for home video. While the VBD are the Other lot, smaller ring, a lot like Britain, lots of Joint Promotions mid careers on the bill, also quite a few older Germans like Axel Dieter, filmed badly with a single handheld camcorder.

The first bout of IBV's glorious ahead of the curve wrestling home video programme which made Germany/Austria the third territory alongside the Televised Two, Britain and France of which we have bulk quantities of footage. Otto Vs Don Leo Johnathan. With Otto looking a younger trimmer champion than the blubbery grand old man of the CWA he became. From July 1980:

Copying across @Jetlag's two 1970s clips: Me: @Indikator: Jetlag:

I wish I knew about this thread before. There's quite a few clips already posted to the British and French threads that really belongs here. One of the two last matches by Adrian Street in Europe (along with his Great Yarmouth match teaming with Steve Kelly against the Pallos for their home video release cum audition tape for ITV.). Street's beard at this point was later trimmed into the mutton chop sideburns/moustache he had in America in the 80s. Oddly good natured bout, Axel and Adam seem to have quite a few laughs together, you'd hardly know it was face versus heel (not sure what the appropriate terms are.) They even shake hands at the end of each round. Or was Adrian a good guy in Germany? Street the younger of the two doing his bridge and rolling with bumps up to a standing start. Didn't know Imagine What I'm could do to you was written and recorded that early. I suppose it explains the Sixties throwback musical style on some of his other songs such as the Freddie and the Dreamers esque I'm In Love With Me.

It was on a Best of Johnny Saint compilation tape that @Britwresdvds sold me back in 2002ish. (assuming @Britwresdvds is who I think he is, namely Adam Mumford.)

Thanks. Interesting. Why are they wearing Catch-style trunks instead of double arm leotards like a GR wrestler normally would?

1991, I believe. Not to be confused with their Reslo bout which Saint wins.

Have you seen the camcorder footage of Saint putting over Danny Collins 1-0 at a venue in South West England? (as can be told from audience members' "Pirate"/"Wurzals" West Country accents)

I've just remembered I have this on my wall, which I bought from Camden Market in London some years ago. Anyone know the back story?

The Saint-Prince match was like that except Saint dominated and Prince was the comedy heel getting stroppy at being made a fool of. Saint was better mixing his style with another master technician to create scientific classics with no distractions. Like combining two soup flavours. Being the moral counterpart to a heel was a distraction.

How NOT to use Johnny Saint! Courtesy of Germany's VdB, 1987 (You can tell it's Germany what with the gong instead of a bell and the DJ between rounds.) And I'm not just talking about Brody's attempt at the end to outdo fellow "South African" Col De Beers - (incidentally the former UK Magnificent Maurice and the former WWWF Polish Prince crossed paths in Germany quite a bit, indeed I think Ed W got the idea off Shaun B.) Saint gets in a few of his tricks but is mostly used as a kicking bag to get the bigger dirtier wrestler some heat. It's a pity because German audiences very much got the point of Johnny Saint as you can tell from the Johnny chant and some other German JS bouts I've seen. Brody could be a much better wrestler than this too - check out his 1991 Eurosport match with Owen Hart.

Some more Finlay - Interesting shoot interview with the then Carl Wallace of Double Trouble mainly focusing on Finlay and also on other British stars of the time. I thought about posting it to the French Catch thread as I'd just posted a New Catch DT match from France against two Old Catch stars (Flesh Gordon and Franz Van Buyten) but the content has more to do with this thread and besides which Karl/Carl/Pierre says Double Trouble worked for All Star (which I don't recall but in those post TV years it could be patchy what you did or didn't know about. and indeed namechecks Brian Dixon.