French catch

[El-P]

Yes, I had seen it before, it comes up quickly when you search for his name.

9 minutes ago, David Mantell said:

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.

Half the video is actually about the imaginary sport (La barre à roue) and how he edited bits of stuff that you could not identify and spoke with the most serious tone so it was "credible". Says the sports director came to him after the show ended and actually asked him if he did exist. They talk about how he was a very memorable character of Stade 2 as the facetious guy who often had very little time to rush through results of different sports at the end of the show.

[David Mantell]

On 10/28/2023 at 12:52 AM, David Mantell said:

Couderc was apparently a different kettle of fish, his thing was to be wildly partial to Les Bons. When he got sacked for having sided with the students in May 68, he got a job with Swiss radio commenting on Rugby and similarly was  wildly partial towards the French team to the point where one national team manager called him the the "sixteenth man of the XV (fifteen-strong national Rugby side) of France".

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
 

Quote

Quote

Durant les années 1960, le vendredi soir, il commente les grandes soirées de catch télévisées, en direct de l'Élysée-Montmartre et de la salle Wagram. C'est l'époque de célèbres lutteurs comme L'Ange Blanc ou Le Bourreau de Béthune18. Les commentaires tonitruants et pleins de vie de Roger — flamboyants, indignés ou hilares — ravissent les téléspectateurs. « Techniquement, écrit le catcheur lorientais Jean Corne, il ne connaît rien au catch. Il fait oublier cette carence par une faconde toute méridionale. Son truc, c'est la partialité […] Et lorsque Couderc prend fait et cause pour les bons contre les méchants, on y croit19. » Le 20 janvier 1961, il met lui-même la main à la pâte en luttant contre un spectateur agressif20.

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.

[David Mantell]

49 minutes ago, El-P said:

Yes, I had seen it before, it comes up quickly when you search for his name.

Half the video is actually about the imaginary sport and how he edited bits of stuff that you could not identify and took the most serious tone so it was "credible". Says the sports director came to him after the show ended and actually asked him if he did exist. 

Quote

Quote

Journaliste sportif facétieux et figure emblématique de Stade 2, Daniel Cazal a rejoint l’émission en 1977 où il a apporté pendant près de 15 ans son humour et son ton décalé. Il aura notamment marqué l’histoire de Stade 2 en inventant un sport : le barre à roues. Une discipline, complètement barrée et non identifiée, à laquelle il consacrait régulièrement un sujet. Depuis la retraite de Daniel Cazal en 1991, le barre à roues est un peu tombé dans l’oubli mais son créateur, pétri d’humour, garde l’espoir secret de le voir revenir un jour ou l’autre au cœur de l’actualité.

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.

 

[David Mantell]

Wot I wrote:

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

 

Feedback appreciated.

[El-P]

Some notes : 

Flesh Gordon is not and has never been a household name. He was never even a blip on the radar of mainstream culture at all. The second run of New Catch on TF1 was in 1991, not 1990.

WWF also ran the Palais Omnisport de Bercy in April of 1993 (after Mania 9), the last time they did it before some time in the 00's. One memorable Nasty Boys vs HeadShrinker match where they broke tons of wooden chairs, and I believe Yoko vs Hacksaw as the main event.

The ICWA really did not have a goal to "supplant the old school European style in France". It was founded by people raised on WWF wrestling (Pierre Booster Fontaine, trained by Carpentier in Montreal, and Christophe Agius, who was already announcing US wrestling for French TV at the time), but it came from just the desire to have some nice wrestling shows with stuff they liked. There was no ideology of "supplanting" anything behind it, because there was nothing to supplant, really. 

Also, if you look at the latest FFCP videos from 2022, they're absolutely a modern, "american US indie" style promotion right now. Which is not surprising, since probably their biggest name is Tom LaRuffa, who was in Lance Storm's reality show, worked both in TNA and NXT (and is also an anti-vaxx conspiracy theory nutjob, to say the least). 

Otherwise, really good write-up as far as I can tell. Kudos for putting that out there.

[David Mantell]

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.

[El-P]

4 minutes ago, David Mantell said:

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 really only seen the 2022 video from FFCP, so maybe it's more a case of them evolving toward more of that style, but started off as more "old-school French wrestling", but I really couldn't say.

4 minutes ago, David Mantell said:

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.

The 1993 show is "significant" in that it was the last from the Canal + era. After that point WWE only came back during the Cena era, when they really got big in France, thanks to the Catch Attack show, carried by Agius & Chereau's announcing.

[David Mantell]

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.)

[El-P]

Damn, I had no idea they did a show post Paris in 93 (which even had a VHS edition btw. Which I bought. *sight*)! With Hogan no less ! In Toulon ? So random. And Brutus Beefcake vs Terry Taylor. Duggan vs Bastion Booger. Whoever the hell the Predator was. Vintage quality 93 WWF here. 

[David Mantell]

37 minutes ago, El-P said:

I really only seen the 2022 video from FFCP, so maybe it's more a case of them evolving toward more of that style, but started off as more "old-school French wrestling", but I really couldn't say.

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.

[David Mantell]

1 hour ago, El-P said:

The ICWA really did not have a goal to "supplant the old school European style in France". It was founded by people raised on WWF wrestling (Pierre Booster Fontaine, trained by Carpentier in Montreal, and Christophe Agius, who was already announcing US wrestling for French TV at the time), but it came from just the desire to have some nice wrestling shows with stuff they liked. There was no ideology of "supplanting" anything behind it, because there was nothing to supplant, really. 

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.

[David Mantell]

On 9/29/2023 at 12:05 PM, David Mantell said:

Good clean match in a rather tiny venue circa 2006, possibly the revived FFCP:

 

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.)

[Blehschmidt]

3 hours ago, El-P said:

Damn, I had no idea they did a show post Paris in 93 (which even had a VHS edition btw. Which I bought. *sight*)! With Hogan no less ! In Toulon ? So random. And Brutus Beefcake vs Terry Taylor. Duggan vs Bastion Booger. Whoever the hell the Predator was. Vintage quality 93 WWF here. 

Predator would have been Horace Boulder

[David Mantell]

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.

[David Mantell]

 

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

[David Mantell]

I've added a bit of content about Eurostars as well.

[David Mantell]

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.

[Phil Lions]

19 hours ago, David Mantell said:

Wot I wrote:

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

Feedback appreciated.

A few notes from me:

"French TV likewise made household names of wrestling stars like L'Ange Blanc, the Bourreau de Bethune, Chéri Bibi, Robert Duranton, Le Petit Prince and Flesh Gordon" - that is an interesting selection of names. It's not who I would've went with though. Blanc, Bethune, Delaporte, Bollet, Duranton, Andre Drapp, Rene Ben Chemoul and Gilbert Leduc are the first names that come to mind first and foremost if you were to ask me who were the most prominent names of the TV era. Bibi and Prince have a case too, I think.

The correct surname seems to be Esbrayat, not Exbrayat. He's a guy I've always thought about researching, but haven't yet. I've always thought the correct spelling of the name was Exbroyat (which is how prof. Edmond Desbonnet spelled it), but I did quick search last night after I read your post and realized I was wrong. In the 1830s French press and beyond the name is spelled mostly as Esbrayat. More importantly though, even though he was a wrestler too, he's definitely better known as a promoter. It seems he was active as early as 1830, and perhaps even earlier. The part about him having single-handedly developed the Greco-Roman style I have my doubts about, but I can't confirm it one way or another until I've actually done some proper research.

The claim that Esbrayat called the style "flat hand wrestling" I definitely do not buy. As early as 1833 you start to see the term "lutte romaine" (Roman wrestling) being used in the French press. I've seen it used in a bunch of adverts for Esbrayat shows. Rossignol-Rollin, the top French promoter of the 1800s, used it a lot too and I believe this was the official name of the Greco-Roman style in France. It was known mostly as French wrestling elsewhere until the 1870s when the term "Graeco-Roman" was adopted in places like the UK and the USA. "Lutte à main plate" ("flat hand wrestling") was a term that was used too, but seemingly from the late 1840s onward. I'm not sure whether lutte romaine and lutte à main plate were the same style. There was also something called "lutte d'hommes" (men's wrestling) that you can see being used in conjunction with pro wrestling too. I think was a similar style, but not exactly Greco-Roman, although later it may have been also used as a term for Greco-Roman. The "lutte d'hommes" term was around as early as the late 1810s. Anyway, this is what I can say for now based on my research, but like with Esbrayat himself, I haven't spent a lot of time digging into it. This is just surface level stuff.

Advert from 1839 for "lutte romaine" and "lutte d'hommes" featuring Esbrayat/Exbrayat:

Charles Rigoulot and Julien Duvivier had nothing to do with pro wrestling being introduced at Velodrome d'Hiver. Here's the timeline of it all. Paoli, Deglane and Dan Koloff traveled to Paris in December 1932 and pretty much announced the plans for upcoming shows then. The other two went back to the States and Paoli stayed in Paris to lay the groundwork for the September 1933 debut of the promotion (at Velodrome d'Hiver). Rigoulot joined the promotion in December and was its number three star. Deglane was the top star while Koloff was the number two star and Koloff was also bringing in some of the talent. I've spent a good amount of time researching the Paoli promotion and I've never heard the name Duvivier in relation to it. Perhaps he may have had some role in highlights of the matches being aired in cinemas, but I can't see him being involved beyond that. Another important name in the start of the promotion was the boxing promoter Jeff Dickson, who owned Velodrome d'Hiver. He may have been a partner in the Paoli promotion. I've seen such claims, but haven't been able to verify them.

The part about Delaporte having bought FFCP from Paoli in 1960 and becoming the dominant promoter then is definitely not true. Paoli was the main Paris promoter and then in 1952 he formed a partnership with Alex Goldstein, who was one of his chief rivals. Paoli had the biggest venue, but Goldstein had the most venues in Paris so this partnership was very beneficial for both. The two would co-promote for the next few weeks. By 1958 Paoli was out of the picture and Goldstein was running the show himself. At that point Delaporte was one of Goldstein's top stars. Delaporte left the Goldstein promotion in 1961, but returned in 1963. Eventually, and I'm not sure when, Delaporte took over the shows at Elysée Montmartre. Elysée Montmartre wasn't a Raoli/Goldstein venue. The promoter there, before Delaporte took over, was Henri Chausson. I can't say for sure what happened to the Paoli-turned-Goldstein promotion and how it ended.

Anyway, that came to mind while reading the wiki entry. Additional details are available in articles that I've written elsewhere. Some of these articles are older and need to be updated, but here you can find additional details about French pro wrestling:

Article: The pro wrestling career of the Olympic gold medalist Robert Roth (1921-1925) (talks about the beginning of regulated catch style pro wrestling in France)

Results: Shows at Palais des Sports in Paris (1933-1939)

Results: Shows at Palais des Sports in Paris (1944-1959)

Article: The masked hero L'Ange Blanc (1959-1961)

Cards: Paris (1959) (here you can really get a sense of how the Paris scene was set up back then)

French title lineages: the World Heavyweight and European Heavyweight Titles (1936-1969)
 

[El-P]

14 hours ago, Blehschmidt said:

Predator would have been Horace Boulder

Damn !

3 hours ago, David Mantell said:

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.

I don't know, but most probably Clermont-Ferrand.

And Flesh Gordon was never a household name. This needs to be scrapped. The only time he was part of a "mainstream" TV show was when he showed up on a Strip-Tease episode, the documentary series. That's not even a blip. 

1 hour ago, Phil Lions said:

Blanc, Bethune, Delaporte, Bollet, Duranton, Andre Drapp, Rene Ben Chemoul and Gilbert Leduc are the first names that come to mind first and foremost if you were to ask me who were the most prominent names of the TV era. Bibi and Prince have a case too, I think.

FWIW, Carpentier often referred to Ben Chemoul and Chéri Bibi as big stars when he talked about that period during WWF shows.

1 hour ago, Phil Lions said:

The correct surname seems to be Esbrayat, not Exbrayat.

This very serious sociological book about French pro-wrestling calls him Exbrayat. 

https://books.openedition.org/pumi/13531?lang=fr

Most probably was written in a way at a time, then evolved (the name exist today mostly as Exbrayat). Also, establishing what's correct and not correct in French writing is a bitch. Don't even get me started.   

[Phil Lions]

44 minutes ago, El-P said:

FWIW, Carpentier often referred to Ben Chemoul and Chéri Bibi as big stars when he talked about that period during WWF shows.

This very serious sociological book about French pro-wrestling calls him Exbrayat. 

https://books.openedition.org/pumi/13531?lang=fr

Most probably was written in a way at a time, then evolved (the name exist today mostly as Exbrayat). Also, establishing what's correct and not correct in French writing is a bitch. Don't even get me started.   

That theory about the Exbrayat/Esbrayat name definitely makes sense.

Also, thanks for that book link. Had a quick look and this I found interesting:

"Dans l’imaginaire télévisuel, on les associe volontiers à des héros de séries ou de feuilletons que l’on peut retrouver régulièrement, le week-end sur le petit écran : l’Ange Blanc, l’Homme Masqué, le Bourreau de Béthune, Chéri-Bibi, René Ben Chemoul, André Bollet, Gilbert Leduc, Pancho Farina..."

A lot of the same names that I mentioned. I also like how Blanc/Farina is mentioned twice. The villain L'Homme Masque is another one that slipped my mind. He was actually the first masked man attraction that Goldstein introduced and then L'Ange Blanc was introduced as the hero to battle him and other villains. Had L'Homme Masque been a flop, there likely wouldn't have been a L'Ange Blanc. And people sometimes confuse L'Homme Masque with Bourreau de Béthune. Masque was Blanc's big rival during Blanc's masked period. Bethune was working for the rival promotion at the time and was introduced as their own version of Masque, more or less. Bethune did work with Blanc later on, but Blanc had already unmasked by that point.

[El-P]

1 hour ago, Phil Lions said:

Also, thanks for that book link. Had a quick look and this I found interesting:

"Dans l’imaginaire télévisuel, on les associe volontiers à des héros de séries ou de feuilletons que l’on peut retrouver régulièrement, le week-end sur le petit écran : l’Ange Blanc, l’Homme Masqué, le Bourreau de Béthune, Chéri-Bibi, René Ben Chemoul, André Bollet, Gilbert Leduc, Pancho Farina..."

I haven't read the book, although I might at some point (I credit this thread), but I've heard the guy on a radio show to promote it, alongside Marc Mercier of all people.

No idea if this was posted earlier in the thread and if anyone speaks French well enough to understand, but there's this cool little documentary from 1982.

The names from the "golden era" that are dropped here during the intruction are le Bourreau, Chéri-Bibi, l'Ange Blanc, Delaporte & Bollet. What amazes me is how mostly devoid of bullshit the interviews are and how respectful of pro-wrestling the whole thing is, presenting it as a craft in pretty much a post-kayfabe way.

Then again, obviously I have no idea if that's true, but Roger Couderc talks about he basically created L'Ange Blanc's character (including the costume), after a request from Goldstein (who he says was managing Le Cirque d'Hiver at the time). I have no idea if Couderc was familiar with El Santo, but that was basically it. The funny part is how he explained he chose Caracas as its origin city because it was much farther and more exotic than any place in Spain.

Also, Delaporte clearly says that venues have emptied because of lack of new stars, which is why he had to resort to foreign wrestlers (you can see bits of a Yaso Fuji match).

The last part evokes topless wrestling but there's no picture shown that would be NSFW. Interesting how the woman pretty much talks about the etiquette as a heel dealing with hostile crowds : "We have to right to insult them back, but not hit them. It's a game."

On a personal level, it's always funny when I think of what l'Elysée Montmartre was, as I went there many times for concerts when I lived in Paris in the 00's and 10's. It also pretty much burned down a few years back, although it has since been reopened.

[David Mantell]

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)

[David Mantell]

"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.

 

[El-P]

8 minutes ago, David Mantell said:

The bit about household names was styled after a similar bit in the British wrestling article "lede" -

It just gives a totally false idea that this guy was anything like the big stars of the golden days and it's just very misleading. He belongs in the 80's and post-80's part of the article. He was what he was. He doesn't even belong in the same discussion as those guys.

[David Mantell]

5 hours ago, El-P said:

. He belongs in the 80's and post-80's part of the article.

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.