French catch

[ohtani's jacket]

14 hours ago, El-P said:

One obvious blind spot to me is that the discourse is only focused on inner working of pro-wrestling, while ignoring the outside factors that may have played a consequential part. The old France of Pompidou was not the France of Giscard d'Estaing in the 70's. Mai 68 changed society a whole lot. Ditto 1981 which had huge effect on the structure of medias in the country. There's many reasons why the mythology of French pro-wrestling belongs to the 50's and 60's mostly, with the 70's already showing a decline. 

This is certainly true. I also think the medium plays a part as television was constantly changing. Wrestling was a popular TV product in the early days of television as it was relatively easy to broadcast, but it had a definite shelf life. 

[David Mantell]

On 11/12/2023 at 11:11 PM, ohtani's jacket said:

This is certainly true. I also think the medium plays a part as television was constantly changing. Wrestling was a popular TV product in the early days of television as it was relatively easy to broadcast, but it had a definite shelf life. 

In Britain it got picked up by ITV specifically because Lew Grade had witnessed firsthand the American TV wrestling boom of the late 40s/early 50s (ITV until the mid 80s was basically a public service broadcaster in drag as a 1950s US TV network.)  We were lucky because Kent Walton was prepared to fight for it to be treated with respect which kept the British versions of Maurice Herzog at bay.

Still it lasted on free-to-air terrestrial TV in both countries until 1988 with a brief comeback in both in 1990/1991. In Britain it might have carried on for years more if the contracts were a year later or the launch of Sky a year earlier (I say ITV moving WCW to Sat afternoon '92-'95 was their way of sheepishly uncancelling the wrestling).  In the case of France, we need to know more about this mysterious TV deal that Eurostars in Belgium had in the 90s/00s that was getting them screened in Switzerland, Macedonia and who knows where else, presumably France and Belgium - perhaps that was the French answer to Reslo.

[David Mantell]

 

https://www.vice.com/fr/article/z4jm59/le-catch-francais-tente-de-ressusciter

Marc Mercier demystifies the era in his own way: straightforward and direct. “The matchmakers worked illegally and lined their pockets. They made billions on the black market, we called them the wrestling mafia, says the former athlete. My father led 8 years of social struggle from 1968 to 1976 so that wrestlers finally had a status and were declared. He got us to be included in the intermittent worker regime in 1976. The matchmakers received huge fines, from 800 million to 5 billion francs depending on the case."

Still according to Marc Mercier, this social advance unfortunately contributed to the decline of French wrestling: "My father also launched a war against Georges de Caunes and the televisions which paid black money. They stopped broadcasting us, that's when we broke down. At that moment, French wrestling lowered its flag, the United States and WWE took over and Wrestling Stars (WS) picked up the rest,” he laments without regretting anything about the action carried out by Mercier . father. And this is where things get complicated, since between Marc Mercier and the WS, it is not really a love story since it seriously competes with the FFCP of Mercier jr.

Seriously, and illegally according to Marc Mercier: “They declare quedalle, they accept galas at a lower cost to earn a few hundred euros. It is this type of institution that is killing the profession. A wrestler must therefore have an employment contract, a pay slip, a pension, like everyone else. But they are playing on their associative status under the 1901 law to get around that." Concretely, Marc Mercier accuses certain promoters of violating the law pushed by his father, which defines wrestlers as artists subscribing to the intermittent regime. This law "stipulates that wrestling cannot be organized under the cover of an association dependent on the law of 1901" , he asserts, and this is what he intends to do to allow wrestling to take place. develop again. But nothing is won: “ I’m the only one yelling!” I was received by the government under Sarkozy, but under Hollande's five-year term, no one listened to me, they didn't give a damn. I am going to make things happen, start a second social movement in line with the one initiated by my father. We need to stop accepting pimping, because it's nothing more and nothing less than that. 

 

Questions:

1. What is the intermittent worker regime?
2.  I know George Du Caunes was a TV presenter and the father of the bloke who did Eurotrash on Channel 4 in the UK in the 90s but what was he doing that was corrupt or illegal viz wrestlers.
3. Mercier's chronology seems a bit out - he says that "they stopped broadcasting us" then the WWF took over.   From what we've put together, WWF arrived on Canal + in 1984, wrestling moved from A2 to FR3 between 11th and 18th August 1985 and stayed there until November 1987, then there was the first TF1 run of New Catch in 1988, then a gap for a few years (during which time Delaporte sells up Elysee Montmatre in '88 and then retires from promoting in '89 shutting down the FFCP until 2006 when Mercier came along.) then another run in 1991.  The first WWF live show at Bercy predates the final FR3 screening by a month or two.
4. What exactly is "quedalle" ?  The page translation refused to translate it.  Highlighted translation rendered it as "stay".  Obviously it's some concept you have to know all about French law to understand.
5. "they accept galas at a lower cost to earn a few hundred euros" How does this work out?  They make more money from demanding a lower fee???
6. What was the law of 1901, what does it say about "associations"
7. "the law pushed by his father, which defines wrestlers as artists subscribing to the intermittent regime"  Interesting - I have read elsewhere accounts of wrestlers being reclassified as performers rather than sportsmen and it creating a huge amount of cost in extra tax that sandbagged the French wrestling industry (preumably this is the "corrupt" promoters' narrative.)

[David Mantell]

(Anonymous Wrestling Stars employee)  “I was told not to talk to you since you went to see the FFCP. Mercier is a crook, a thug, whatever you want. He throws everyone around, that's all he has to do. He and his father cheated us on taxes for 40 years. I say things, I don't lie, he prevents us from making a living from our job with his bullshit." 

To these accusations, Marc Mercier readily responds: “Jacky Richard is a first-class fraudster who receives his retirement thanks to the fight started by my father and who is shitting me in the boots today. He dumps bowls of shit on my head every morning. These are empty accusations made by guys who lose their cases."

Assuming that Mercier and Richard are not literally doing unspeakable things involving faesces to each other, what exactly is Mercier saying there?

Also I guess the "cheated us on taxes ... prevents us doing our job" bit is the same as the promoters' narrative I mentioned in Q.7 in my above post.

[David Mantell]

Célian Varini (TV commentator for unspecified promotion)

“Wrestling is is a very small environment where everyone eats each other's noses. What's really sad about this is that they are fighting for very little glory and very little money. They strive to be number one at the village festival, it has an almost pathetic side. The Merciers, Flesh Gordon and others are former friends who have become best enemies. Mr. Jacky for example, he has been there since he was 12 and a half years old. He's never known anything else. If you take away his little wrestling aura, you take away everything, you understand?"

[Dav'oh]

Just back to Flesh Gordon for a second, if I may?

a) You guys are doing the Lord's work, as they say.

b) Like most people doing the Lord's work, you guys are bonkers.

c) this is why I love you.

(Aussie posters: we should replicate the Flesh Gordon debate, using Con "Mr. Damage" Iakovides.)

[David Mantell]

20 minutes ago, Dav'oh said:

Just back to Flesh Gordon for a second, if I may?

Which bit?  Whether he's a household name or not, or the ins and outs of his/Jacky Richard's/WS's business disputes with FFCP/Marc Mercier?

[David Mantell]

It's worth saying that in Britain we had the All Star vs Joint wars of the late 80s/early 90s and the All Star vs TWA falling out in 2002-2003 and neither of those were as vicious as FFCP vs WS.  (The former revitalised the scene and tooled it up to survive the post-ITV era, the latter gave All Star the kick up the backside to get its act together, move away from the tribute acts and focus on the young talent like Dean Allmark, Robbie "Dynamite" Berzins, Mikey "Whiplash" Gilbert etc etc. )

Even McMahon and Bischoff never descended to the level of accusing each other of turning up on their doorstep to pour bowel movements over their heads and in their footwear!  They didn't refuse to speak to press who interviewed the other one of them, either.

[El-P]

3 hours ago, David Mantell said:

What is the intermittent worker regime?

It's the special unemployment benefit regime for every worker in "entertainment", be it actors, musicians, technicians, circus artists, whatever. It allows them to receive money when they don't have any work, and it's the only thing that has allowed France to have a very vivid cultural life with workers actually being able to live from their jobs instead of having to do something else on the side to survive. You have to work a certain amount of hours over 12 months to be able to get the status. It's regularly been attacked by conservative governments for the last 30 years and it's not nearly as good now at it was 25 years ago. Very regularly during ceremonies like the Cesars (equivalent of the Academy Awards), someone is either gonna talk to defend the intermittent regime, or a bunch of intermittent are gonna jump on stage to bash the Ministry of Culture and their destructive politics. 

3 hours ago, David Mantell said:

 I know George Du Caunes was a TV presenter and the father of the bloke who did Eurotrash on Channel 4 in the UK in the 90s but what was he doing that was corrupt or illegal viz wrestlers.

Mercier is saying they (the TV's) were paying under the table.

I grew up watching his son Antoine doing funny bullshit on Canal +. I remember he was doing that show on the BBC, with an extremely French accent. 

3 hours ago, David Mantell said:

What exactly is "quedalle" ?  The page translation refused to translate it.  Highlighted translation rendered it as "stay".  Obviously it's some concept you have to know all about French law to understand.

 

It's just slang. Quedalle = zilch, jackshit.

3 hours ago, David Mantell said:

"they accept galas at a lower cost to earn a few hundred euros" How does this work out?  They make more money from demanding a lower fee??

No, they're just dumping their product. That's what he accuses them of doing. Hence why Flesh Gordon's product is the one who ended up getting around towns and on TV (for whatever very small time they did). Makes sense.

3 hours ago, David Mantell said:

What was the law of 1901, what does it say about "associations"

It's the law about freedom of creating non lucrative associations. Meaning your association can make benefits, but it is not created with the goal of making benefit, and no member can gain from it.

3 hours ago, David Mantell said:

"the law pushed by his father, which defines wrestlers as artists subscribing to the intermittent regime"  Interesting - I have read elsewhere accounts of wrestlers being reclassified as performers rather than sportsmen and it creating a huge amount of cost in extra tax that sandbagged the French wrestling industry (preumably this is the "corrupt" promoters' narrative.)

What I get from this, which I had read before, is that Guy Mercier tried to clean up the business and make it more legitimate to protect the workers and get the intermittent regime for them, which absolutely makes sense. The "huge amount of cost" is the same usual bullshit from business owners who spend their time whining about paying too much taxes and how it's hurting their business boo boo cry me a river. I mean, when Mercier talks about pimping, that's no different from the ridiculous "independent contractors" that WWE forces on his wrestlers. Yes, some of them win ridiculous amount of money, but in the grand scheme of thing, this is nothing but a scam.

3 hours ago, David Mantell said:

Assuming that Mercier and Richard are not literally doing unspeakable things involving faesces to each other, what exactly is Mercier saying there?

Mercier says Richard is talking shit about him all the time and tries to sabotage what he does. What I get from this too in that apparently stuff went to trials (my best guess is defamation of character and such) and Richard always lost.

The feel I get from this interview, which I had read before, and other stuff, is that Flesh Gordon is a huge old-school carny con-job, while Mercier positioned himself as legit and fought for a legit status for pro-wrestlers. Of course Mercier could be full of shit himself (pro-wrestling, ya know), although that's not what Varini says, and he probably knows what he's talking as he's been around for a while (he was the French announcer for TNA for like 10 years, he also announced for WWE I believe). I listened to an interview on France Inter from a few years back, and Mercier came off to me as rather level headed and legit, FWIW.

The one thing Varini is underscoring though, is that French pro-wrestling is just tiny, tiny business with barely any money anyway. This "big fight" would be akin to two small US indies with no hype fighting each others for their "territory".

[David Mantell]

Thanks for clearing up what the accusations were and also the intermittent work payment system.  I have incorporated some of this into the Modern Era section of the WP article.

I have to say the 2022 videos  of Wrestling Stars I posted a couple of pages back look a lot more respectable than Varini makes out - they look in terms of size a lot like a modern All Star or Rumble show in England held in a former TV venue (which in turn looks like a 70s/80s UK TV taping but with no audience on the stage due to modern health and safety regulations.)  Not exactly Bercy or Wembley but hardly a mudshow either.  In fact a nicer and just as full venue as the 1978 Mammouth Siki vs Daniel Schmid bout I posted.

I know people in Britian like to yack on about how provincial and unglamorous the small town halls and theatres were, then and now.  But there are THREE Old School Euro territories of the C20th (British wrestling, French wrestling, German wrestling) still in rude enough health to at least keep going at that kind of grassroots level. Anyone name me TWO mid-to-late C20th US/Canadian regional wrestling cultures still functioning even at that level, let alone higher?  (Obviously New York wrestling, which lives on to this day as WWE, is One example but  I struggle to think of a second one.)

[El-P]

1 hour ago, David Mantell said:

I have to say the 2022 videos  of Wrestling Stars I posted a couple of pages back look a lot more respectable than Varini makes out

He did not say anything about attendance and all though. He said it was a very small world with very little money and fame. Which it is. I made the comparison with small US indies, although that may be off the mark, but that's neither here nor there. There's very few people actually making a living as pro-wrestlers in France. Extremely few, and the ones who do have to work in the UK or Germany or elsewhere in Europe to make ends meet.

That being said, and to put things in perspective, French referee Artemis, who was signed with WWE under NXT UK until they fired most everybody, told after the fact that she never earned less money than during her WWE contract. Ponder that for a second. Not that she's saying she was making a good living beforehand, but the fact that there is, or was, enough work around Europe to make more money than working for NXT UK. But it says a lot more about WWE's ridiculous salary policy than anything really. 

[David Mantell]

5 hours ago, El-P said:

He did not say anything about attendance

I didn't quote that bit but he talks of about 40 people attending (He also talks of about 10 promotions, most of which do 2 shows per year - so who are the other eight? Possibly Association Beauvaisienne de Catch et d'Athlétisme and Association Biterroise de Catch may be two of them.)

The point I'm trying to make is that a show like this ...

.... puts me in mind a lot of a closer to home show like this:

... about the same size show as a World Of Sport TV taping (the English show - which I was at - was indeed at a former TV venue, the Royal Spa Centre in Leamington Spa.)

No US/Canadian old time territory - with the exception, I repeat, of New York/Capitol/W(W)WF - currently survives to anything  the point of being able to run shows on even that scale. As for indie shows, I realise that 'how big is a US indie show" is like how long is a piece of string, but it generally conjures up images of a show like this:

Which despite a physically larger room and the inclusion of a couple of Southern old timers (mostly from Memphis/Continental even though the show took place in Georgia) including Robert Fuller in character as his WCW persona Colonel Robert Parker is clearly a shabbier more threadbare affair with, on closer inspection, a thinner audience even if craftily spread out.

[David Mantell]

Varini also mentions seeing two fat old men on Telematin in 1992 and being disappointed. Well there will always be veterans in the ring  Le Petit Prince wrestled his last bout in 2002 aged 62. although I think Marcel Montreal and Jean Menard do a respectable  bout here from a  late 80s fancam.    with Menard in the role of "Vieux Pontoufle" Miserable Old Man heel:

 

[David Mantell]

15 hours ago, El-P said:

That being said, and to put things in perspective, French referee Artemis, who was signed with WWE under NXT UK until they fired most everybody, told after the fact that she never earned less money than during her WWE contract. Ponder that for a second. Not that she's saying she was making a good living beforehand, but the fact that there is, or was, enough work around Europe to make more money than working for NXT UK. But it says a lot more about WWE's ridiculous salary policy than anything really. 

Not sure if it's still true post-pandemic (and what with there now being AEW also) but it was said of wrestling in the UK a few years back that it was the one place in the world,  outside of a WWE contract, where a wrestler could make a full time income all the year round (although even in the Modern Era, many UK wrestlers still liked to supplement their incomes with Auf Wiedersein Pet-style ferry trips over to Germany and the EWP/CWP.)

[David Mantell]

9 hours ago, David Mantell said:

Varini also mentions seeing two fat old men on Telematin in 1992 and being disappointed.

“I remember the first time I saw French wrestling, it must have been in 1992, on Telematin. I was used to American decorum, very muscular guys, pretty girls, a sound and light show in front of thousands of people... There I saw two chubby guys the age of my grandfather trying to bickering in an empty gymnasium. It was the saddest thing in the world. In France, wrestling has the impression that it's the festival of underwear or sausage. 95% of the time, it's people with pitiful physical condition and athleticism who perform in front of 40 people. Since there is no control or regulation, there are dozens and dozens of structures. Among them, there aren't even ten who are serious, and even then, when I say serious, I mean that they manage to organize more than two galas per year. When they see that, I understand why veterans like Mercier are upset."

Bear in mind this was while New Catch was on Eurosport if not still on TF1 and only a few years later Eurostars was doing that succesful show in Romania before a decent sized audience of young kids. It may be that Antenne 2, for their own twisted reasons, went out and found the grottiest old promotion they could find in all France to show the French public over their breakfasts how far things had gone downhill since they packed Le Catch off their channel and onto FR3 in August '85. 

No idea what "the festival of underwear and sausage" is, but we have some odd traditions on our side of La Manche too.

[El-P]

1 hour ago, David Mantell said:

Bear in mind this was while New Catch was on Eurosport if not still on TF1 

I think you have a very distorted view of the whole thing. Both in 1991 and 1988, New Catch for on TF1 for *a few weeks*. It wasn't that much longer on Eurosport and it was also around 1991 I believe, before Eurosport picked up New Japan a few years later (around late 93 or something). It was a matter of a few weeks every time around. There was not this presence of pro-wrestling on French TV (not to mention Eurosport was a cable/satellite TV, and this stuff in the early 90's in France means very few people had it). Eurosport used to fill its programs with the cheapest shit back then, I remember stuff like "strenght sports" with lumberjack kinda stuff and all. Not to mention the few weeks (4 maybe) that it was shown on TF1, it was at Midnight. It was just cheap stuff the fill the program grid. It's not like "there was pro-wrestling on French TV regularly". Rather, "pro-wrestling randomly popped up for a few weeks here and there over the course of a few years in France on TV". 

1 hour ago, David Mantell said:

Eurostars was doing that succesful show in Romania before a decent sized audience of young kids. 

Actually the fact they had to do tours in Romania and Macedonia actually speaks loudly about the state of the business. And of course they would get decent sized crowd over there. You think they saw pro-wrestling everyday there ? Of course they would have a good crowd of kids. 

1 hour ago, David Mantell said:

It may be that Antenne 2, for their own twisted reasons, went out and found the grottiest old promotion they could find in all France to show the French public 

You're just projecting here, as you often do. It's not hard to understand why a 11 years old boy who was watching WWF would thing whatever French catch was shown was pretty pathetic considering the state of it at this point. 

As far as the overall French business, Varini has been around for what, 20 years or so. He knows what he's talking about.

1 hour ago, David Mantell said:

No idea what "the festival of underwear and sausage" is, but we have some odd traditions on our side of La Manche too.

This is why google translation is ok, but why it will only give a foreign speaker a limited understanding of what is been said (or unsaid). First, literal translations are never good. That's not how language works. Plus, it'll always have issues with slang and idiomatics. The best I can try to explain is that he means it's a debacle.

[David Mantell]

17 minutes ago, El-P said:

You're just projecting here, as you often do. It's not hard to understand why a 11 years old boy who was watching WWF would thing whatever French catch was shown was pretty pathetic considering the state of it at this point. 

For one thing, clearly not all French catch at that time was old men in an empty gymnasium.  For another thing, I was 18 in 1992 and lapping up All Star shows in Croydon with Kendo headlining so I wouldn't generalise on the tastes of teenage wrestling fans in the 1990s.

19 minutes ago, El-P said:

This is why google translation is ok, but why it will only give a foreign speaker a limited understanding of what is been said (or unsaid).

It does come up with some very amusing stuff though.

To be honest, both the S&U (mis)quote and the old men quote reminded me of Alex Shane - as a babyface! (in the context, the term seems more appropriate than blue-eye) telling a crowd of FWA fans in 2001 that traditional British wrestling was "a load of fat old men in swimming trunks" and getting a pop from the Fin Martin-believing crowd.  Something I've never forgiven Alex Shane for.  So naturally I'm sceptical when someone makes a similar negative comment about French catch, one of British wrestling's two closest living siblings.  I cannot help but suspect that he would have said the same about the early 90s All Star shows I loved.  Or anything that didn't involve lots of roids and no reversals of holds.

And yes, TV stations that either don't show wrestling or have stopped showing it do try to show wrestling in the worst possible light.

I'll take your word for it that few people in France had access to Eurosport.  It was carried on the Astra satellite which carried Sky TV which was the platforms for both the WWF boom and the UK popularity of the Simpsons, so quite a lot of Brits had access to it.  Satellite dishes might have been seen as vulgar and trashy but plenty of working and lower-middle class familes had no such hang-ups.

[David Mantell]

36 minutes ago, El-P said:

Actually the fact they had to do tours in Romania and Macedonia actually speaks loudly about the state of the business. And of course they would get decent sized crowd over there. You think they saw pro-wrestling everyday there ? Of course they would have a good crowd of kids. 

Bernard Van Damme simply wanted to run as big and expansionist a wrestling company as possible, like McMahon (and Ted Turner wanting to show he could do it as well).  And the Eurostars TV show, whatever plaform it wason, must have been accesible and doing well in Macedonia to attract a crowd like that.

[David Mantell]

My point re. New Catch on Eurosport was that those shows, like the Macedonia show, were a lot bigger and grander than whatever Varini says he saw (and they weren't all old guys either.)

[El-P]

1 hour ago, David Mantell said:

Bernard Van Damme simply wanted to run as big and expansionist a wrestling company as possible, like McMahon (and Ted Turner wanting to show he could do it as well).  

This may be the most ridiculous thing in this thread yet. There was barely a business to have. There was no "expansion" going on. It was just small time promotions trying to go to some cheap markets to be able to make a buck. 

1 hour ago, David Mantell said:

And the Eurostars TV show, whatever plaform it wason, must have been accesible and doing well in Macedonia to attract a crowd like that.

Projecting your own narrative, making extrapolations out off a bunch of out of context clips you saw on Youtube. And even if it was. Macedonian TV ? Holy shit. Huge stuff. That's also ignoring that this kind of pro-wrestling is like the circus. It comes to town and people go see the show, they don't need to know about it. That's has been the model of Flesh Gordon's promotion for ever. 

1 hour ago, David Mantell said:

My point re. New Catch on Eurosport was that those shows, like the Macedonia show, were a lot bigger and grander than whatever Varini says he saw (and they weren't all old guys either.)

Again. You're making grand extrapolations from a bunch of random videos on Youtube, for which you have zero context. 

As far as what Varini said, I don't think it's an extrapolation on my part, being a French wrestling fan of roughly the same age as him, to say that the feeling about French pro-wrestling was shared. It was kinda pathetic. It's no wonder the only thing that looked actually good to me on the New Catch shows were the foreigners (well, I liked Zefy too). As far as his overall knowledge of the French pro-wrestling business over the last 20 years, it's probably a little bit better than just picking up some randoms Youtube videos and google-translated interviews. No offense but... at one point, let's be real. Your insistance of making it way bigger and better than it was is just plain odd at this point. I don't care enough either to keep this going forever. I'll be glad to help understand some cultural points or translate some stuff, really, but as far as the business side of it, there's nothing much more than can be said unless some people want to debate more about whether Flesh Gordon was a household name or not.

(He wasn't, end of debate, thanks. Actually if you watch the Strip-Tease documentary that I posted earlier, in the locker room scene, you can see one actual household name. You will never guess who it is if you're not French).

[Matt D]

This feels like talking about the entire history of the NWA in 2060 and primarily focusing on Tyrus’ cultural influence since he was on Fox News. 

[El-P]

3 minutes ago, Matt D said:

This feels like talking about the entire history of the NWA in 2060 and primarily focusing on Tyrus’ cultural influence since he was on Fox News. 

This. 200% this.

[David Mantell]

2 hours ago, Matt D said:

This feels like talking about the entire history of the NWA in 2060 and primarily focusing on Tyrus’ cultural influence since he was on Fox News. 

Well I want to know about it and what happened and how it evolved from the old days to the 80s/90s stage and on to the present day.

I get tired of hearing the blatant lie that British wrestling disappeared overnight in 1988 (like WCW genuinely did once Jamie Kellner had his way) so I'm sceptical about similar sounding claims in this similar case and not inclined to follow instructions to Move Along Now Sir, Nothing To See Here.

If other people don't like it being discussed, that's their business not mine.  El-P, you've been very helpful and I'm grateful  but who I really need to talk to now is someone more my age who grew up with this stuff while us British kids were into Big Daddy and Kendo vs Rocco, and whose first ever territory was the final 10 years or so of French wrestling and got their founding ideas of what pro wrestling should be from this and carried on going to shows in the 90s years after TV and has happy adolsecent memories of those days.  A French version of me, basically.  We'll see who comes along ...

[El-P]

1 hour ago, David Mantell said:

 El-P, you've been very helpful and I'm grateful  but who I really need to talk to now is someone more my age who grew up with this stuff while us British kids were into Big Daddy and Kendo vs Rocco, and whose first ever territory was the final 10 years or so of French wrestling and got their founding ideas of what pro wrestling should be from this and carried on going to shows in the 90s years after TV and has happy adolsecent memories of those days.  A French version of me, basically.  We'll see who comes along ...

That's the issue. You aren't actually interested in French pro-wrestling history. You're interested in feeding a personal narrative based on your own apparent and assumed biased views on UK wrestling. You just want someone who will tell you what you want to hear. Which isn't me, because I'm only gonna give your the actual time. 

As far as the people who grew up watching that stuff, guess what : they don't exist. For reasons that have been clearly established by now.

[David Mantell]

*shrug* I suppose I "don't exist" either, but never mind ...

And yes as you can see from any number of earlier posts, I am actually interested in French wrestling history, not just the later and modern eras, but never mind.