The Beginner's Guide To British Wrestling

[David Mantell]

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.

[David Mantell]

On 1/2/2014 at 11:25 PM, Big Rob said:

Some of the US midgets came over here in the 70s, I believe. I've definitely seen an old poster that had them billed as the main event.

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)

[David Mantell]

 

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The bout I wanted to post which sadly isn't on YouTube is the Camcorder recording of Johnny Saint Vs Soldier Boy Steve Prince from the early 90s. Prince played a slightly hapless comedy "Military Man" heel character and kept breaking off from wrestling with Saint to complain to the referee that his escapes somehow constituted foul tactics. It really is a bit of a misuse of Saint.

(No disrespect to Steve Prince, a nice bloke and fellow old schoolie.  He did go on to become British Welterweight Champion in 1993 as well as winning the British Tag Team Championship with Vic Powers - albeit possibly as a result of an audible called where champion the Liverpool Lads legitimately clashed heads - if you've seen Robbie Brookside's Video Diary which I think I posted earlier you'll know the incident)

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.

 

 

[David Mantell]

 

 

From Xmas 1993, while Big Daddy was busy finishing up his career in Margate, All Star were also unseasonably at the seaside at the other end of the country. Semifinal and final of a four team knockout trophy tournament.

Leeds Boys are two former nice kids gone sour, Richie Brooks and Tarzan Boy Darren Ward. Both teams get polite cheers from the Blackpool audience. The Leeds Boys finally kick the heeling in gear about 30 secs  in,  Brooks telling the audience to Shut Your Face, refusing some kid's autograph and begging for mercy from Duran then double teaming him. This sets up Dyno and Animal Legend as blue eyes. LOD does all the selling with Dynamite striking the hot tag at the end. The good guys beat up Ward at ringside in a very un blue-eye like manner before Dynamite gets the winner with his snap suplex.

In the final the Liverpool Lads are announced as British tag team champions although the Superflies are on record as having the title at this point. Dynamite gets a polite cheer, "Animal Legend Of Doom" some distrustful heat, odd considering Hawk Legend Of Doom (Johnny South) soon became the most popular UK blue eye of the mid to late decade. Perhaps fans remembered him in the UK Road Warriors with Jimmy Monroe only too well or perhaps they'd seen him team with Nagasaki recently.  Good clean match other than some kicks by Dynamite to his floored opponent for which he gets a private warning.  Polite handshakes all round afterwards.  Match ends after about 10 min and the rest of the clip is a menu for a Dynamite Kid DVD

[fxnj]

It's up.

https://vk.com/video498684816_456239061

https://archive.org/details/tony-st.-clair-vs.-clay-thompson-joint-promotions-8-19-1967

[ohtani's jacket]

Clay Thomson vs. Tony St. Clair (8/18/67)

This was a fine catchweight contest. I was glad for fxnj's sake that it went five rounds to a finish rather than finishing early. Fans of Clay Thomson are going to be excited by this one and he looks slick. Tony does well for a 20 year old, but this is all about Clay. Clay Thomson vs. Bert Royal must have been a heck of a bout from this era. 

[David Mantell]

That was great! Good clean match, plenty of excellent reversals, I'd have to watch it again to pick out the best bits.. Interesting that Clay got the first submission with an American figure four leglock and Kent actually called it a figure four leglock - he normally used that term for a Frank Gotch (stepover) toehold.

Production wise it looked just like a 1970s ITV match with a novelty Old Film video effect stuck over it. If cleaned up and VidFIREd, it would look like a 70s/early 80s bout on a TV set with the colour turned down to zero(which you can't actually do on these modern TVs.) Filmed nice and square on to the ring (unlike French TV where they just made do with whatever angle they could find to film in the venue.

Full taping results:

Quote

19/8/67 The Pavillion, Hemel Hempstead

Catchweight - Ron Oakley (Middlesbrough) v. Peter Szakacs (Budapest)

Middleweight - Clayton Thomson (Glasgow) v. Tony St. Clair (Redruth)

Heavyweight - Tony Charles (Treorchy) v. Steve Veidor (Wirral)

---

23/8/67 The Pavillion, Hemel Hempstead

Heavyweight - Roy St. Clair (Redruth) v. Crusher Verdu (Ohio, USA)

Catchweight - Alan Miquet (Brixton) v. Mick McMichael (Doncaster)

Interestingly 19th August 1967 was a Saturday so this is part of an episode of (late Eamonn Andrews era) World of Sport!  Which is curious as @JNLister said the Granada TV archive was all midweek broadcasts!  Kent Walton confirms it's a Saturday when he says "this afternoon". It's been taken from the actual broadcast by the looks of it - there is a cue dot in the top right hand corner during the final minute. I guess the big "WRESTLING" screen caption was how World Of Sport went into advert breaks in those days. (23rd August 1967 was a Wednesday night.)

Also something I'd not noticed from the previous stills -  Wrestling From Great Britain was sold overseas by ITC - generally better known for selling film series, often in colour, such as The Prisoner, late period The Avengers and Gerry Anderson puppet shows like Thunderbirds particularly to the American market. I imagine the WfGB title card was spliced onto the master negative before duplication.

[David Mantell]

3 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

I was glad for fxnj's sake that it went five rounds to a finish rather than finishing early

I think it came down to issues of timing on the night or on the transmission date. With two wrestlers at the same level of skill and/or prominence, they would go to some sort of draw.  If it was a big enough deal they would go to a 1-1 Broadway, if it was a low priority item they would cut it short as a no contest TKO refusal or in the case of Bainbridge Vs Clwyd 1987 a double KO.

In this case Thompson was by far the more experienced man and a Mountevans British Champion to boot, while Tony StClair was still a TBW (albeit a particularly tall well built one.) So there was no question Clay was going to run roughshod over young Tony for a two-straight win. Maybe the only criticism I could make of the match was that it would have been nice to see Tony get a consolation fall, but it was not to be.

[David Mantell]

3 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

Tony does well for a 20 year old

He was 19. As I said, a TBW.

[ohtani's jacket]

St. Clair's year of birth is listed everywhere as 3/28/47  except for his English wiki page, which I presume is a mistake. The same Wrestling from Great Britain title is on other films I have from this era. IIRC, it is in color on the color films. 

[Jetlag]

Wow, a new 60s WoS match? Awesome! That was a nice match. Clay Thomson is clearly an excellent wrestler. He hit about a dozen cool takedowns on young Tony. He also did some neat arm attacks that I've never seen before. There was one sunset flip that was phenomenally smooth. Otherwise it was good clean technical wrestling for the most part. Neat, I wonder where the seller got this from?

[David Mantell]

3 minutes ago, Jetlag said:

Wow, a new 60s WoS match? Awesome! That was a nice match. Clay Thomson is clearly an excellent wrestler. He hit about a dozen cool takedowns on young Tony. He also did some neat arm attacks that I've never seen before. There was one sunset flip that was phenomenally smooth. Otherwise it was good clean technical wrestling for the most part. Neat, I wonder where the seller got this from?

Well we know where it started out from. ITC made a kinescope of World of Sport one afternoon back in the Summer of Love and, like they did for many others from the mid 50s to the mid 70s, spliced on an opening caption and passed it on to an overseas sales agent who put it on their catalogue for overseas sales to TV stations  in foreign countries, most likely former British colonies in Africa (Egypt and all sorts of Central and sub-Saharan African nations)  and former post-WW1 British Mandate territory in the Middle East (which by that point had become the present day states of  Israel, Jordan and Iraq.) Most likely a queue of such stations was lined up, the print (one of about saying three made) sent out to the first station and then bicycled by (snail) mail to each subsequent station. Once the can of film reached the last station the procedure was for the station to either send it back to point of origin for destruction or destroy it themselves and send back a certificate of destruction. In practice, sometimes at the TV station abroad and sometimes back home in Britain, staff would take films home that were due to be destroyed. They survived that way and would end up in the collection of some film collector. In this case, said collector must have put a film up for sale online and it got bought.

Luckily a lot of the overseas sales film stock ended up preserved at Granada, although less luckily they are very tight fisted about letting anyone see it.

Essentially the same process would have happened in France with RTF/ORTF  except their target markets would have been former French colonies in North Africa (eg Algeria, Tunisia) and France's post WW1 mandates (modern Syria and Lebanon.) When the INA was set up in 1975, ORTF's overseas sales division presumably had a large stock of b/w kinescopes which was handed over to the INA- as was one lucky surviving colour transmission master (Jan 69 Delaporte & Bollet vs Montreal vs Zarzecki). From 1975-1987 the INA then recorded Catch transmissions off air with cheap VCRs, probably to fulfil a quota.

If people on here fancy taking the law into their own hands and tracking down old British/French wrestling overseas sales kinescopes, their best bet is to make contact with film collectors. There is quite a good documentary about them here:

 

 

[David Mantell]

P.S. have taken the liberty of saving the match to hard drive on this tablet (and feeling very proud too, I've never done that on anything less than a laptop before) and copying it to a memory stick which lives plugged into the back of my Smart TV so now I can just watch the bout in style on a proper TV screen at just a few clicks on the remote control.

If it can be done on a tablet then it probably can be done on a smartphone too.

[David Mantell]

Here is the entry in the Midlands magazine TV World (due to a dispute the Midlands opted out of TVTimes 1963-1968) for the bout.

One detail I got wrong, WOS wasn't hosted by Eamonn Andrews, it will was already taken over by Dickie Davies. Or rather Richard Davies as he was then known, before his wife persuaded him to change his professional name, grow an "Anchor Man" moustache and for a few years wear trendy flowery shirts before fashions changed and he reverted back to a suit and tie. (EDIT: it says in the small print he was relief presenter for a holidaying Andrews. Some time later, Dickie Davies took over permanently and became a national institution.)

[NintendoLogic]

Interesting to see the word soccer in a British publication.

[David Mantell]

1 hour ago, NintendoLogic said:

Interesting to see the word soccer in a British publication.

It used to be quite common although there has been a backlash against it in recent years.

We call your football "American Football" by the way. Bear that in mind when you hear British fans talk of "American Wrestling" especially in the late 80s circa the ITV WWF Specials, when American Wrestling felt like an exotic novelty.

[David Mantell]

Apart from a few little glimpses of an early 60s McManus/Pallo bout and about 2 seconds of Les Kellet Vs Jim Hussey on a shop TV screen in Granada TV's The Wrestlers, the below two are the only other pre-1970 ITV Wrestling footage in circulation. Taken from The Final Bell, December 1988

Jeff Kaye Vs Pancho Zapata 1969

Ricki Star Vs Pietro Capello, 1964 in the distinctive Belle Vue ring, Peter Cockburn (pronounced Co-burn) providing commentary:

It's hard to be certain but I think the first clip might be VT not kinescope.

[David Mantell]

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Pete F3:

Let me break down the perception of British accents from the perspective of an American.

There are 3 British accents, and they are:

"British" - Received Pronunciation. The Queen's English, all that. David Attenborough, Christopher Hitchens, Stephen Fry...y'know, sophisticated people.

"Liverpool" - Where everyone talks like the Beatles. 

"Cockney" - Any accent that is not one of the other two. PAC, Rowan Atkinson, Sarah Millican, and Ross Noble? Cockney. The Gallaghers? Cockney. Ozzy Osbourne, Victoria Beckham, William Regal's "out-of-character" voice? The guys in those Guy Ritchie movies who speak without using any consonants? See above. 

That's it. That's the final word on the subject, with exceptions for "Scrooge McDuck" and "Lucky Charms mascot" that apply to England-adjacent countries (note: the UK, Great Britain, and England are all the same thing). Wales, as best we can tell, is a myth, akin to Narnia or Brigadoon, and not subject to further discussion.

David Mantell:

London and the South East accents:

Received pronunciation was invented by the BBC in the 1920s so that everyone could understand radio broadcasts. Al Hayes as a Babyface in the WWF is the nearest wrestling example (not his AWA/Florida accent which was a caricature.)  Most speakers of it are native of some other accent and put on RP to get ahead in life. (Actual aristocratic accents evolved in the 1200s when the nobility switched from speaking French to speaking Anglo Saxon with a French accent. RP, contrary to popular opinion, is not the same as aristocratic English which was deemed by linguists devising RP to actually contain quite a few impurities.

Cockney is the accent of the traditional East London working class, whose economy was based around the docks on the Thames (which generated at least three side industries, warehousing, street markets and petty crime.) Following a 1930s boom in electrical good manufacturer, newly prosperous Cockneys spread across the Southeast generating at least 3 spinoff accents, Norf Lahndern, Sarf Lahndern (as spoken by Mick McManus) and moden Essex ( Jeannie Clarke especially in her WCW Lady Blossom promos where she laid it on with a trowel) which partly displaced an earlier Essex accent - see East Anglia below.)

Northern accents:

Liverpool - known as Scouse- a relatively modern development from a fusion of Lancashire and Irish accents. Like the East End Liverpool was a big sea port - it still is today. Typical speaker: Robbie Brookside. He actually speaks with a modern rougher version of the accent - the softer Beatles accent is mostly relegated to Birkenhead, south of the Mersey where All Star has its offices. (Example MC Laetitia Dixon on C21st All Star shows.)

Rest of traditional Lancashire - the Manchester accent plus relatives further North in Preston. Blackpool etc.  There are DOZENS of sub dialects of this in Manchester alone. Easier to understand: Davey Boy Smith, Rocco, Giant Haystacks, Johnny Saint, Billy Robinson.  If you want the harder stuff try Dynamite Kid especially in the Benoit docu or the Wigan Snakepit crowd in the 1989 First Tuesday The Wigan Hold docu especially Tommy "Jack Dempsey"Moore. Somewhere in between is Peter Thornley when out of character as Kendo Nagasaki.

Yorkshire - the rest of the central North (Lancashire is cut off by a mountain range called the Pennies).  Further divides into North Yorkshire - Big Daddy, Jim Breaks, Leon Arras "Owz about that then?" Alan Dennison - check out the speech he gives when refusing a TKO over Dynamite Kid in Dynamite's TV debut. Unfortunately the most famous wrestler from South Yorkshire was the deaf and non verbal Alan Kilby from Sheffield which is not a lot of help.

Northeast - the two most famous Tyneside accents are Geordie (Newcastle) and Sunderland (Mackem). Can't think of any wrestlers from that part of the world who ever spoke on camera.

Midlands accents:

West Midlands - where I live: Three main accents: Black Country (Dudley, Wolverhampton, Walsall) Brummie (Birmingham City Centre) Coventry/Warwickshire.  Chris Adams had a definite hint of the third accent although he was from Stratford on Avon. Sadly Banger Walsh never did much talking on camera. The first one, if you're familiar with the rock band Slade, it's that accent.

East Midlands - various accents, about the most memorable one in wrestling was Ken Joyce's Northampton accent. Check out after his 1981 2-0 loss to Johnny Saint - "Johnny Saint beat me FEAR and SQUEER, I thoroughly ENJUYED it and now I UNDERSTUND why you are the world champion" (My emphasis)

Other accents:

East Anglia- the bulgy bit on the right hand side of the country. Three main accents Norfolk, Suffolk and Old Essex. Norfolk is easy, the Knight family and practically everyone in WAW. Check out "Fighting With My Family" or some WAW YouTube clips. Can't think of any good wrestling examples of the latter two - Old Essex survives in the country villages but in the London commuter belt and the North side of the Thames Estuary (Southend) it's been mostly replaced by modern Essex. (As a child in 1980s Chigwell I remember some old people doing the old accent.)

West Country (South west) accents - seen as the traditional Country Yokel accent in the UK. the most famous variant is Somerset known outside the UK as the Pirate Accent (because an actor with that accent played Long John Silver in the movie of Treasure Island even though of course pirates come from all over the place.) Danny Collins had a related Bristol City accent, check out some non promo TV interviews he did such as for BBC Breakfast Time in the mid 80s.

Hampshire, a county halfway between the West Country (SW) and the Home Counties (London, SE). has its own particular accent. Check out the British version of Skull Murphy, Peter Northey, who came from Portsmouth. His dad Charles who wrestled as Roy Bull Davies, also has that accent in the 1967 Granada TV documentary The Wrestlers.

Wales (when they're speaking English). Orig Williams is the closest I can think of to the  cliched  "well there's lovely then, boyo" accent but for a different accent check out Adrian Street's south Wales accent on his pop records and his promos in America in the 80s.

From the German Catch thread.

[David Mantell]

On 1/27/2015 at 6:19 AM, ohtani's jacket said:

Count Bartelli vs. Johnny Czeslaw (3/27/74)

 

 

I figured if Barteli was ever going to have a fun match it would be against Czeslaw since the Pole had a good sense of humour; and sure enough it was decent while it lasted, but just as Czeslaw was warming to the task they went with an awful, awful finish where Czeslaw crotched himself on the ropes and continued continue.

 

Nice scientific bout for a pair of older heavyweights, plenty of good small details, like at the beginning where Czeslaw tries to reverse snapmare his way out of a hammerlock but senses Bartelli is up to something when the Count releases him and rolls quickly away while the going is good. If you've been watching this style long enough, you pick up on minor details like that (or like Clay Thompson using a scissorhold of his own to pry off Tony StClair's headscissors.)

I was expecting a TKO or No Contest finish from @ohtani's jacket's comment s but even though that's what Walton calls it, it's actually a 10 count knockout. Under American rules, Bartelli would have been able to drape himself across Czeslaw for the pin. (Would that have made the finish better, OJ?) Bartelli accepts the victory and no one blames him for it although if that had been a heel, it could have been milked more heavily, the baddy taking advantage of a fluky or ill-gotten injury, like Rocco putting Danny Collins in a power lock after his leg was tangled in the ropes or Finlay arm-barring Saint's arm for a deciding submission after the arm was injured when Finlay threw Saint out the ring between rounds and he landed badly at ringside and even though it got Finlay a Second And Final Public Warning the referee still had not choice but to award him the deciding submission and 2-1 win.

Technical point, the caption slides for the names on this video were doing using the same technology as the "WRESTLING" slide in big letters at the end of Thompson-StClair 1967 to lead from World of Sport into a commercial break and caught on the end of the WfGB overseas sales kinescopes. Bear in mind on the original monochrome  1967 broadcast it would have looked the same as on this purely electronic colour copy of the 1974 bout. Apart from the jump from b/W to colour and from 16mm kinescope print to preserved VT master, this is the same visual effect.

That's why I'm not so keen on 16mm B/W film. The format was ubiquitous for around 70 years and it makes everything from a Charlie Chaplin film in 1909 to a TV show originally broadcast in colour in 1974 look the same, one big long swathe of "the old days of black and white."  This unnecessarily ages relatively modern stuff from the 60s/70s to make it look like it came from the 1930s.

[David Mantell]

On 9/7/2014 at 12:16 PM, ohtani's jacket said:

Marty Jones vs. Black Jack Mulligan (6/28/84)

Man, Blackjack Mulligan was a jobber to the stars here. I was surprised by how much of a squash this was. Jones looked sensational as he was still one of the best in the world here, but it's rare that a guy will dominate like this even in a catch weight contest. Walton likened it to a cat playing with a mouse, but I've got to say Mulligan earned my respect for doing the job like that. I think they were trying to build Jones back up for a rematch with Finlay. Walton was amusingly biased towards Jones. Jones gave Blackjack a forearm after the bell and Walton was making up all sorts of excuses like the bell being difficult to hear. Ventura would have had a field day with those sort of comments.

Jones using a mix of skill and psychological tactics,slapping Blackjack around and generally acting like a smug git trying to get Mulligan wound up enough to foul as Walton says - or rather foul clumsily in front of the referee. It pays off as Mulligan get a public warning in round 3, by which time he is a fall down. Jones was popular and Mulligan had heat enough that they could get away with this without any wrongway sympathy from anyone except maybe Walton.

Jones makes it two straight in round 4 but he could have been even , he nearly gets a knockout from a piledriver but Mulligan gets up at 9, Jones piledrivers again but this time covers for a three. If you rewind to the first piledriver, you will see Jones leans in for the pin but realises he is too late and has to stand back while ref Dave Reece starts a 10 count. A bit swifter with the cover and it would be all one move and Jones could have shaved maybe 20 seconds off his match time.

 

[David Mantell]

Several months before Stax and Daly beat Pat Roach and Alan Kirby on the top of the bill of the Crabtrees' Battle of the British video (see earlier in thread) here they have a similar squash against Tarzan Johnny Wilson and Danny Boy Collins for All Star in Bath on the minus tenth anniversary of 9/11. Collins by this point has 3 titles (World Middleweight, Euro Welterweight, British Heavy Middleweight) so fortunately he isn't treated as a sacrificial lamb. He does concede the first fall to Daly but fights back valiantly stinging the Scrubber with dropkicks and tagging in Wilson to score the equaliser. Rather than have Stax get the winner with a guillotine elbowsmash on Collins and have him stretchered out of the ring. Wilson controversially drops the decider by pin to Daly due to Stax interfering, leaving Wilson and Collins clamouring for a rematch where they promise to fight fire with fire.

 

[David Mantell]

Cheers to @JNLister for passing the StClair/Thompson match link on to Tony.

[fxnj]

On 8/16/2024 at 3:27 AM, David Mantell said:

Well we know where it started out from. ITC made a kinescope of World of Sport one afternoon back in the Summer of Love and, like they did for many others from the mid 50s to the mid 70s, spliced on an opening caption and passed it on to an overseas sales agent who put it on their catalogue for overseas sales to TV stations  in foreign countries, most likely former British colonies in Africa (Egypt and all sorts of Central and sub-Saharan African nations)  and former post-WW1 British Mandate territory in the Middle East (which by that point had become the present day states of  Israel, Jordan and Iraq.) Most likely a queue of such stations was lined up, the print (one of about saying three made) sent out to the first station and then bicycled by (snail) mail to each subsequent station. Once the can of film reached the last station the procedure was for the station to either send it back to point of origin for destruction or destroy it themselves and send back a certificate of destruction. In practice, sometimes at the TV station abroad and sometimes back home in Britain, staff would take films home that were due to be destroyed. They survived that way and would end up in the collection of some film collector. In this case, said collector must have put a film up for sale online and it got bought.

Luckily a lot of the overseas sales film stock ended up preserved at Granada, although less luckily they are very tight fisted about letting anyone see it.

Essentially the same process would have happened in France with RTF/ORTF  except their target markets would have been former French colonies in North Africa (eg Algeria, Tunisia) and France's post WW1 mandates (modern Syria and Lebanon.) When the INA was set up in 1975, ORTF's overseas sales division presumably had a large stock of b/w kinescopes which was handed over to the INA- as was one lucky surviving colour transmission master (Jan 69 Delaporte & Bollet vs Montreal vs Zarzecki). From 1975-1987 the INA then recorded Catch transmissions off air with cheap VCRs, probably to fulfil a quota.

If people on here fancy taking the law into their own hands and tracking down old British/French wrestling overseas sales kinescopes, their best bet is to make contact with film collectors. There is quite a good documentary about them here:

 

 

The company that did the digital transfer for me believes it's a transfer to film from a tape master. The 5GB file on archive.org has interlacing artifacts like you normally see from old TV tapes, and I think I can also see scanlines running across the video if I look closely. A lot of old boxing matches exist from someone just pointing a film camera at their TV screen and saving that, though this is way higher quality and more professionally done than that stuff.

[David Mantell]

12 hours ago, fxnj said:

The company that did the digital transfer for me believes it's a transfer to film from a tape master.

Yes that's PRECISELY what a kinescope recording is (or a Telerecording as the BBC called them.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinescope

The reason most surviving old B/W TV shows look like old films is because they were kinescoped from either a live broadcast or a videotape that had to be wiped and re-used afterwards.

(The process cuts the image down from 50 interlaced frames down to 25 non-interlaced frames. Film on TV is sped up from 24 to 25 fps so each frame of film contains every other frame of live TV or video.  Because of the lower frame rate plus film judder and other film artefacts like scratches, dirty, tramlines etc, it makes the program me look like an old film from decades earlier. There is a process called VidFIRE which can reverse this and restore the video look. The BBC has used it mainly for 1960s Doctor Who episodes and early 1970s colour Doctor Who episodes with Jon Pertwee in conjunction with chroma dot restoration of the colour. These two processes could be used on a lot of wrestling footage 1940s-1970s including French Catch from RTF Channel 2 1967-1974 and the 1972 Vic Faulkner Vs Mick McMichael bout if the master tape didn't survive.)

It's possible it could have been a live transmission - @JNLister doesn't confirm on his site and there were still some live bouts as late as the early 70s.

[David Mantell]

Some rare footage of the young Mike Marino., Royal Albert Hall 1953.  Unfortunately he's getting his backside handed to him by Italian champion Mario Matassa.  Even more unfortunately it's Pathe newsreel so it's all "comedy" highlights and snooty sarcastic commentary.

https://www.facebook.com/IlDragoDelWrestling/videos/630597371416845