David Mantell

Different Euro territories seem to have declined at different rates. Italy, so I gather, died off entirely in 1965, subsequently getting some revival attempts by a couple of wrestlers from Piedmont. That same year according to the essay on Wrestling Titles, Spain's CIC got reduced down to just Madrid and Barcelona before even that petered out in 1975, leaving various French and German promoters to spend the next 15 years fighting like hyenas over the corpse of Spanish wrestling until the WWF marched into both Spain and Italy and properly revived interest. They did not bother to do this in Greece where the scene limped on in sickly fashion, by 1987 holding shows in converted concrete car parks with the most awful jerry-built rings you ever did see, before finally sputtering out in 1991. That leaves the UK and France with actual national TV plus West Germany/Austria with a highly developed early wrestling home video market. We've discussed the decline of quality and popularity in France - local wrestling seems to quietly vanish from terrestrial TV in 1988 unlike in the UK where it goes out with a Greg Dyke shaped bang that same year. The UK has been able to rebuild itself commercially with Big Daddy but at a cost in quality to the point where a red hot opposition promoter takes over the territory. In Germany, the long tournaments incorporated into beer swilling festivals continue despite the WWF success and the CWA happily co-exists with the German Cult Of Bret Hart just as in Blighty, All Star's post TV boom happily co exists with Bulldogmania. So it goes on and by the C21st all three territories are doing unspectacular but steady business at grassroots level up to the present. Meanwhile all over Europe, new American Wrestling promotions spring up. The Southern Europeans have no memories of their old time scenes but in Northwest Europe the traditional scenes trundle on and are much derided by the old school as antiquated and kitsch and something they intend to do away with. But they never quite manage this goal.

Yes, the malaise wasn't focussed on Gordon the way the UK's problems were focussed squarely on Big Daddy. Gordon is simply the natural case study as lead babyface of the scene - also even in the 90s and 00s he was still a better wrestler than Daddy in every respect. With Joint in the 80s, if you delete the Daddy tag main event, often what you are left with on the undercard is something resembling John Freemantle's Premier Promotions in the C21st. With FFCP, EWF and WS in the last 4 decades, it's more something spread in homogenised fashion across the whole of that Wrestling scene - Mambo Le Primitiv, Marquis Richard's butler Paul Butard being allowed to stand on the ring apron the better to interfere in the match, Les Maniaks, Scot Ryder, Kato Bruce Lee ...

My previous post in a nutshell- Flesh Gordon was the French Big Daddy, Pierre Booster Fontaine was the French Alex Shane.

At the end of the day iLe Depeche is an acceptable wikipedia source and the point is that it takes about him like it expects its readership to know and be wowed by the mention of Gordon's name. The WP article does mention the change in style that he exemplifies. Personally I think in terms of showiness, gimmicks etc that train was already leaving the station in around 1971 with the likes of La Bête Humane, Le Hippie Du Ring and poor old Dave Larsen as Le Batman - and the driver was very much Delaporte. but then I only said Gordon exemplified that direction, not that he originated it. Was Gordon a betrayal of French Wrestling tradition? If he was, then Big Daddy was a similar betrayal of British Wrestling as an attempt (and clearly a very successful one) to turn round a decline in UK audiences similar to the French decline Delaporte describes in the docu, by subverting the whole sport into a kiddy pantomime in which he mows down all heel opposition and everyone else has to take their turn in the pillory, heels being crushed by him, blue-eyes being rescued by him. It was utterly offensive to British wrestling's classical values (to the point where it opened up a gap in the marketplace for Brian Dixon and All Star) yet undeniably Big Daddy is a key landmark name in the history of old school British wrestling and clearly a big identifiable part of that culture. ICWA on the other hand were part of a wider trend across Europe (the FWA and all the other New School promotions in Britain were part of this too.) that simply did away with local wrestling history/culture, (often ferociously disparaging it and using the likes of Daddy and Gordon as sticks to beat it) and instead just did American Wrestling - loudly trumpeted as such - in a different accent or language.

I quite liked her, she reminded me of Klondyke Kate in the 1988 BBC2 docu Raging Belles talking about juggling life as a heel and as a mum while having to make it clear that there is nothing stopping one be both. I wonder if the kid went into the business like Kate's son from the docu Adam and her later daughter Connie both did. Unlike ITV, Antenne 2 never had any qualms about screening women's wrestling - although they too drew the line at Seins Nus .... I notice Rollerball Mark Rocco is on the poster at the start of the above video. Pity he wasn't included in the clip - I would have loved to see him in French Catch at that stage of his career. (He did of course appear on New Catch in 1991 against Danny Collins in Paris.)

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.