David Mantell

1995 was a bad year in that regard Max Crabtree retires, Reslo finished and WCW jilted ITV and ran off with Superchannel (it ended in tears with Superchannel kaput and WCW on Friday evenings on Channel 5 until its own end) Orig still did the odd Reslo/Trad British show among the WWF tribute shows until he quit due to illness in 2002 and had put up a new BWF websIte with interesting personality profiles before he died in 2009. His mate Alan runs Welsh Wrestling which claims to be post-Reslo in nature. Mention tribute shows to The Boys and Girls and they will uniformly tell you it was a good period when they made better money. It was the new generation of All Star talent - Robbie Dynamite, Dean Allmark, Kid Cool, Mikey Whiplash, Playboy Johnny Midnight - that really broke All Star out of that cycle and made it into its C21st incarnation.

Do bring him on as we were discussing the Peter Bainbridge match with him from 1987 just a couple of pages back. He could give Ohtani some more insight on serious clean matches between two teenage blue-eyes. I spoke to Geraint a brief while back on a FB about tagging with Flesh Gordon on Reslo, he just said Gordon was an OK guy.

That was from 2012 not 2014 (the then last year) and it was headlined by the original Superflies (Jimmy Ocean's retirement match) and Saraya Senior versus Robbie Brookside and Frankie Sloan the New Liverpool Lads. The Finlays beat Dirty Dan and Wildcat Rob (both heels) in Germany that Xmas in the father's retirement match which I've posted to this thread already.

Old training partners from Finlay's dad's promotion in Belfast. Finlay still showed flashes of his skill at this time but his basic persona was a dirty wrestler and bully egged on by his noisy hen pecking wife. Heat generating heaven if not purist ideal. Steve "Black" Prince and Danny Collins had already got brutal stiff beatdowns (Danny gamely fought his way through several of these until eventually taking the British Heavy Middleweight title from Finlay in 1989. His bullying ways on lighter opponents had already caught Big Daddy's attention with the big man turning up to various Finlay matches to call the "bully" out before eventually giving him the standard Daddy treatment in the 1986 FA Cup Final. This is the period when out of the ring, Finlay would regularly break the thumbs of drunk Macho Men in bars looking to impress their Miss Elizabeth by challenging the "fake" wrestler (I have no sympathy for them.) On Reslo they had more scope to get away with longer out of the ring brawls and interference from Paula. Nice mention of the retaliation rule by Dixon in English (Kent Walton's explanation for why angry blue-eyes would throw the rulebook out after a while.) Nice Johnny Saint style use of the foot by Hamill to break Finlay's wrist lever, and Finlay does a spinning bump to get out of a yanked up wrist lever of Hamill's. Lack of rounds and only one fall reduces Paula's opportunity to give Finlay a good telling off, she is reduced to telling him to get back in there when he is slung out. Nice final smug pose from the First Couple of Wrestling - the heel bully and his noisy missus do it again!

Mammoth was kind of a French version of Junkyard Dog. This was less a scientific wrestling match, more a struggle to get LHM's mask off. You may not like it but you'll have the chant MA-MOUTH! LA-KA-GOUL! in your head for weeks afterwards. MC leads the fans in said chant, like Laetitia getting the kiddies at an All Star show to shout Cheat Cheat Cheat when a heel does so. The mask does come off but LHM stays crouching down until his mask is put back on.

Before Albert Sanniez turned heel in 1977, Noced was Le Petit Prince's main heel nemesis. Francis Louis doesn't tag match. It's mostly LPP selling for heels and making his comeback. That was quite some crowd riot- I bet Les Gendarmes had a LOT of fun doing their best Big Boss Man impersonating back at the station. (For those who don't know, les Flics are a notoriously right wing violent mob, specifically chosen for their low IQs and protected by a police union heavily inflicted by the former FN. or RN as it now is.). It's hard to see what happened to Louis and Richard. Louis seems to be bundled away by the police and Richard, the future Monsieur Jacky/Travesti Man/Marquis MK2, suddenly turns up unconscious after the riot and is rolled out of the ring. Great tragic finish with Petit Prince on the rampage before suddenly collapsing on the mat like Steve Austin at WM13 or even Pillman in the WW91 War Games where Pillman is bashed unconscious by Sid. A Sadder And A wiser Fan You'll Wake The Follow Morn. That towel at the end robbed us of a knockout finish (and the chances of finding out what a knockout is called in French.

I'm wondering if this episode is why there was no Greg Dyke figure in the French wrestling story. French wrestling on unscrambled analogue terrestrial TV came to an end in France with the last New Catch episodes before the 1988-1989 jump from TF1 to Eurosport, possibly mere weeks before The Final Bell on ITV in December 1988. Two months after The Final Bell, New Catch relocates from TF1 to Eurosport making it - and all the visiting British wrestlers therein - accessible to any UK TV Set capable of receiving Sky's WWF overage. In effect, New Catch on Eurosport replaces Old Catch (ITV in the UK, channels 1, 2 and 3 in France) in BOTH Countries. But while Greg Dyke makes a big song and dance about it, holds a special Press Conference at a TV industry convention in Switzerland to announce it to the media - The End Of Wrestling On TV! Hooray More Yuppie Friendly Shows That Big American Car Companies Are Happier To Advertise On - in France, it all gets rather downplayed - just another move of channel, the third in just over three years, Antenne 2 > FR3 > TF1 > Eurosport. I suggest that the bad experience trying to get wrestling off French TV in 1961 was the real reason. When the permanent chop came (notwithstanding TF1's 1991 run of New Catch, the French equivalent of the October 1990 Grampian/STV shows) the French TV execs played their cards VERY carefully. None of Greg Dyke's waving it all about that he was finally ridding his network of Yuppie-unfriendly Pleb Sport. Just a quiet shuffling off like when the Premier League of English Football moved to Sky years later. Nothing to get excited about, just get an Astra box like Les Anglais are doing and life will go on.

Reading this guy's views makes me all the more glad we had Kent Walton on our side of the English Channel. With friends like Darget, the industry hardly needed e nemies. Have added some info about the cancellation to Wikipedia. Will add the magazine as a citation.

Steve Prince was doing pretty well for himself in the early/mid 90s. He was British Welterweight Champion at this time since beating Doc Dean in 1993 (and held it until the TWA set up a new version in 2000). He and Vic Powers beat the Liverpool Lads (Dean & Robbie Brookside) for the British Tag Team Championship - screened on Brookside's video diary on BBC2. I posted an early 2010s clip of him refereeing earlier in the thread.

That was the original Sweet Saraya, mother of the Saraya/Brittany. She was and still is the wife of Ocean's tag partner Ricky Knight. I wish she'd kept that whole Vamp/Brazen Hussy/Gangster's Moll look- Back in the early 1990s all women in Britain, especially outside London, dressed like that when out on the tiles and looking to pull a bloke. Good times! When I first saw here live in Croydon 1995 she was in a black lycra body suit and matching gym shoes and looked like a student working as a wrestling valet as her summer job who didn't quite understand why it was "wrong" to interfere in a match. I think I may have said all this before but I saw that quote while looking through old reviews of Finlay and Paula by OJ - to be fair OJ gets the point of them better than I feared.

Finlay Vs Blackie had been a promising feud at the start of the 1990s when Finlay won the British Heavyweight title from Tony StClair and Blackie was a highly tipped young blue-eye challenger. By this point the title had found its way back to StClair via Dave Taylor. Ladder match were brought back to Britain from Stampede by Kendo Nagasaki who did a bunch of them with Big Daddy in 1976 on house shows. (They were billed as being "American style"). They first became famous when Nagasaki and Clive Myers had the infamous Disco Ladder Match at All Star's first TV show and along with cages and chain matches became ubiquitous at the start of the 1990s due to the Kendo-Rocco feud and their shared predeliction for "hard core violence". Orig Williams, aware of the old mantra that you can get away with ANYTHING in Welsh because the folk in London won't notice, put a load of these matches on in the early 90s featuring pretty much any of his and Brian Dixon's shared talent pool (except for Kendo Nagasaki.). Finlay and Paula had long gone their separate ways and Finlay lacked something much like Randy Savage did when Elizabeth quit their marriage and wrestling and became a WWF unperson. (You can tell peoples' age over here if you ask them who was Fit Finlay's sidekick and they answer Princess Paula or Hornswoggle. Probably true in Germany also where they worked together in the CWA.) There's something missing in her not being there to tell him off and refuse him kisses when he screws up in the ring. That was his gimmick really, the paradox of this hard Irishman being henpecked and under Her orders. This is only a year or so before his WCW debut, so no surprises that he looked like the Belfast Bruiser from WCW @ohtani's jacket . (If not for Superchannel sticking its nose in, he and Stax would have been back on Saturday afternoon ITV just a year after this). Mostly it's an exercise to show off what they could get away with with the IBA (or rather the ITC by now) looking the other way. They obviously had problems with hanging up the bag of money prize, it ends up over a ring post with the ladder propped up under the post. Not much scope for scientific wrestling here although twisting a leg through the metalwork of the ladder would be creative by C21st standards. Also Finlay executing his fireman's carry backdrop on BBC onto the ladder, the crowd barrier (something ITV never bothered with and promotions like All Star and Rumble still don't. A couple of ear-openers in the Welsh commentary - Orig shouting MAMMA MIA and co commentator Nic Parry saying "well well well!". Poor old Bryn Fon doing his into at the top of the ladder, looking and probably feeling a bit of a dork.

Mantopolous as Jerry to Rouxel's Tom. Commentator somewhat risks undermining Rouxel's heat by mentioning he has 2 kids, the younger being a 9 month boy (57 now I guess.). First several minutes are fairly scientific until Rouxel finally gets fed up and starts stomping Mantopolous on the mat. VM uses the ball like George Kidd did against Jack Mulligan in 1975 on ITV, briefly sticking out a twitching limb to cat fish the opponent into making a grab before withdrawing until eventually the opponent makes a mistake and is thrown and cross pressed for a pin attempt. VM also employs a Rick Steamboat slingshot back into the ring. The winning submission comes with VM tying Rouxel up in knots (a cliche come true) although if Rouxel had just let go of his feet, he could have escaped. Interesting venue too, very light and spacey, possibly natural daylight coming in from somewhere if it's the summer. Would have loved to see this place in colour (channel 2 went colour 4 months later.)

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. Actually the finish is quite similar to something from post 1980s Catch with a controversial DQ defeat for Le Bon and a post match brawl which would have caused the ITA (later the IBA) in Britain to have KITTENS but seems to have been OK for De Gaulle era France. The Bollet family would still have an oar in the water by the time of Eurosport New Catch, as although Andre B's career ended when he was hit by a car in 1971, brother Charley was still a referee into the satellite TV early 90s.

Actually just discovered that there was a set up match for this tag pitting Van Buyten against (B)rick Crawford, cut short after a few minutes by a run in (you can tell it's the 90s from that alone) by the future Quebecer Pierre, leading to a street clothes clad Flesh Gordon coming to the ring to rescue Franz and make the challenge for the previous posted match.

Can't find any previous reviews of this. A definite stepping stone from Collins after completely having Jim Breaks ' number, coming back from the loss to Grey and then becoming European Welterweight Champion to now beating the more experienced and heavier Johnny Kidd 2-0. ( He may be 18 but he has transcended TBW status to become, in Kent Walton's words, "a young master of his craft." (Although Kent Walton seems to forget Dynamite Kid did the last step at 18 before Collins. Also although ITV never acknowledged it, Collins was temporarily separated from his British title, jobbing it to veteran crumb heel Cyanide Sid Cooper on an untelevised house show the night after the Euro title win was filmed before heading across La Manchester for his first FFCP tour. He got it back that autumn and held on until he had to vacate in 1989 after beating Finlay for the British Heavy Middleweight title.) No rounds, best of three falls We join the action about 4 mins in with Collins unfolding a crossface into arm armbar. JK goes for a horizontal twist out and tries to widen Danny's stance but he falls forward on one hand and bounces back to a standing start. Johnny gets a leg and tries to trip Danny down but he just hops out the way of the trips. Nice first pint by Collins, he goes for a mid ring sunset flip, Kidd rolls through and tries for a folding press but Danny preforms a toupee on him (he's obviously been swotting up on his Catch Francais ready for Euro title defences for Delaporte.) Kidd cartwheels back to a standing start and tries to legdive round into another Sunset Flip position but Danny does the Davey at SS92/Leo Burke fold down for a pin. A great pair of near pins, Collins comes off the top turnbuckle and leapfrogs Kidd but Johnny jumps on Danny's shoulders from behind to get Collins in an upright flying scissors. He goes to the victory roll but Collins folds down the legs to arrest the momentum for a pin attempt. Kidd flips Collins off him and locks over his legs when he rolls back for a bridging folding press but Danny gets his head free and crawls out. The second straight fall sees the tables turned as Kidd similarly arrests Collins's momentum and Collins goes for the flip off and locking down with his own bridging folding press but unlike Kidd he holds on for the three count. A world title was the best logical step for Danny, there was talk of a claimant from Panama City looking to defend against him. In the event Danny went to Brian Dixon, moved up the weights and avenged several earlier beatings by, as above mentioned, taking Fit Finlay's British Heavy Middleweight title in 1989, the year after TV, before beating Owen Hart in a corker to become World Middleweight champion (the version last claimed a decade earlier by Adrian Street although the CWA had its own version since 1985 and Mal Sanders and Keith Haward had feuded over a version in SunCity SA in 1982.)

https://youtu.be/siUCLQLdkC8 Danny Collins Vs Johnny Kidd 1985. I'll write more about this match later when the fault with the forum support files is rectified. Suffice to say it was a technical classic and a further step on Collins's push.

The support files for the entire forum seem to not be functioning. UPDATE: Seems to be fixed now. What was the problem?

Jacky Richard's hair is cropped short in that bout - had he lost a hair Vs hair match recently?

@Matt D's Video says September 8th 1980 but Bob Plantin just posted a poster on his FB group saying Jan 24th. I know it was not unknown for French or British TV to leave matches in the can for months before airing them but eight months is quite a gap. Or was 24th Jan an earlier TV match INA didn't record? (If so, it was the same venue, Cazal says it's the Cirque d'Hiver early on.)

Like I've said before. what we need is a French version of @JNLister. There probably is one- fans there like fans everywhere else doubtless kept records and lists. Possibly one made it online and just needs to make it across the language barrier.

Been reading some of @JNLister's essays on his site. I particularly liked this one on the Mountevans Rules. I'll only post a link for now but if it's OK, John I'd love to copy and paste it across. https://johnlisterwrestling.com/british-wrestling-rules-the-fight-network-2007/

Okay another Van Buyten match to bridge the gap between 1971 and 1991ish. It's got a childhood favourite heel of mine Lev Grand Vladimir whom I remember seeing on World of Sport aged 6 in 1990. The YouTube clip gets off to a bad start with a smirky looking female continuity announcer. When I was 14 in 1988 and would sneak out to the lounge at 4am Thursday night/Friday morning to watch WWF Challenge, nothing made me go more postal than the female nighttime continuity announcer who took the urine and assumed her audience were just watching for cheap laughs. The mark of a network licking its chops at kicking wrestling off air in a few months. Anyway I digress .. Strogoff and Vladimir together mind me of Vladimir's tag team with Mal Stuart in Blighty two years later, which went down in defeat to Big Daddy and Sammy Lee with the future Tiger Mask getting most of the limelight for once. Franz and Ivan had a rather brawly previous singles bouts about a year earlier. Daniel his no moustache and a fringe haircut, he reminds me a bit of Tarzan Johnny Wilson's less colourful brother and tag partner in the Flying Wilson Brothers, Peter Wilson. Oh yes and it's Les Bons' lucky day, referee is Roger Delaporte. Vladimir is a lot more agile than his partner - or Gastel or the DTs - and really bumps around the ring. Daniel handles the one and only flying scissors of the. match. He goes a bit wild stomping his opponent in retribution for earlier beating down on Franz, which Delaporte treats compassionately " allowing for retaliation" as Kent Walton would say.. It all ends, as OJ says, with a brawl outside the ring and a DDQ although Delaporte changes his mind in the end and gives the brothers the win. It seems that the Van Buytens had a definite type of opponent over the decades, big lurking Mechants for them to be the heroes against. A flip through Alessio's 1970-1987 playlist seems to confirm this, singles bouts with Vladimir and Strogoff, another bruier heel in Karl Schneider, then in the 1980s Bob "UFO" Dellaserra Frank Merckx (who reminds me of Randy Colley) and John Harris. (Canadians UFO and Harris were almost an earlier version of fellow Canadians Double Trouble.). Only aging arrogant heel Jacques Latasserre stands out from the pack. At the end it cuts straight to the main evening news bulletin showing again why I think the 10:30pm timeslot wasn't all that bad.

Worth examining the subject of continuity in France as a pro wrestling territory by winding back to this 1971 bout from INA's stock of overseas sales films. It's got another familiar face in here, Robert Gastel "Le Bourreau de Batignol" ( the. Batignol Beheader) the big badass heel we saw tagging with Fred Magnier before. It's a very American friendly matchup - handsome muscular babyface Vs big hulking brute heel, again in his skull/crossbones jacket that would make the World Riot Squad proud. With his tache and physique. Van Buyten reminds me of the young babyface Don Muraco in the AWA around this time. The commentators actually call Gastel the smaller and more "effete" man!!! FVB is already doing the same Scisseaux Volees takedown he did 20 years later with Double Trouble., leading into quite a long sequence of headscissors. Gastel does a brave job resisting the takedown, briefly out of it like a lighter man and briefly hints and levering out from underneath before eventually going for the rope escape (this does not get the mind of HEAT it would get in England if a heel used he cheap way and bottled out of escaping/reversing/countering a hold that way.) Buyten gets the scissor back on again (the commentator claims the headscissors is a Belgian speciality LOL.) Gastel tried for a pint and Van Buyten uses an amazingly high bridge to avoid it. A real strength bout. The crowd seem to like this chanting "Ahhhh OUI Ahhhh OUI "for Van Buyten to tighten up the hold and make Le Merchant scream. Gastel DOES get to rope-related hear when he uses them for leverage. Gastel the former army boxing champion eventually cuts loose with closed fist punches asnd the odd headbutt, earning himself his first Avertisement (public warning.) Van Buyten has had enough, Hulks up and delivers a long string of postings and four body slams (the first of which he visibly struggles with) and several near knockout counts before getting the cross press for the win. Initial verdict, this would have made a solid late 80s WWF match, say Dino Bravo and Ken Patera. Further reflection- there is an odd continuity between Gastel and Double Trouble as opponents - big bulking brawling Mechants all three of them.

Okay, I've been a good boy long enough, time for some Eurosport New Catch! Featuring a survivor of the days before INA opened its doors in 1975 and started taping matches in colour off air, plus a future WWF superstar with a glittering Gold future ahead of him. Audience seems pretty darn good for a supposedly dying territory, interesting to see the use of coloured light on the crowd, a thing WWE goes in for nowadays. Nice reminder from Franz Van Buyten at just past six minutes when he does that most Catch Francais of reversals, the Scisseaux Volees takedown in response to an armbar. Brits would just use a simple roll on the mat to untwist an armbar - or maybe a cartwheel for real showoffs like Dynamite Kid or Danny Boy Collins, (who was a BIG favourite with French crowds at this time as there is New Catch footage to prove, just a pity we don't have some Old Catch 1986/1987 FR3 footage of him defending his European Welterweight title on Delaporte shows.) Double trouble are no more scientific than most roided Americans of the period but looks impressive. Somewhere out there Max Crabtree was watching on a Sky Astra box or a naughty VHS copy, licking his chops at the idea of booking these two for Ring Wrestling Stars and letting Big Daddy loose on them. By contrast Flesh (bulkier than his high flying whippersnapper days with Walter "Pappa Doux" Bordes but not yet the tubby bald moustachioed Flesh of the Noughties/Tenties) is prepared to sell for Double Trouble and take some bumos unlike Daddy. There's a hint of Aux Chiottes L'Arbitre from the crowd when he gets a yellow card and also of his latterday DQ losses when he and Franz are counted out, although rather than beat up Double Trouble, the ref and anyone else in sight, F and F crouch down and wail about their loss like a pair of bluesmen.

There have been similar debates in Britain for decades about whether the BBC should have adverts. BBC News 24 does have them outside the UK - here in Britain while they are on we get a whirring countdown clock over corporate news footage of BBC jounos out in the field. Also many 1960s shows like Doctor Who and Steptoe And Son have two or three fades to black in them where overseas broadcaster showing bicycled 16mm kinescopes of the shows could pause playback to run an advert break or two. Two channels meant wrestling in colour from at least December 1967 with the hair match (possibly October, the show with Peter Maivia was on channel 1 but there might have been some unknown broadcast on 2 between times) which for us means just the one colour bout January 1969 but the possibility of chroma dot restoration some day for dozens of other bouts Dec 1967-1974 if INA will spend the money.