French catch

[David Mantell]

Anyway, moving on, let's discuss the French style of escape moves. which seem to be a lot more gymnastic  than the British ones.  The main counters for a wrist-lever, say. seem to have been the flying headscissors, the reverse snapmare, the standing somersault - as opposed to the rolls on the mat to untwist the arm.  This was part of the style going back to the PP Vs Saulnier bouts in the late 60s. How did this come about and evolve?

 

 

[David Mantell]

I'm not saying PP and Saulnier invented all this, people were doing these for years before.  I wish I could think of a better synonym for "gymnastic" to distinguish the French from the C21st "trampoline style"

(Yonks ago. I hard-drived a match I found on YT from early 70s Montreal with Carpentier doing wha I now know to be a toupee on Maurice Vachon)

[Matt D]

You have access to the master list, right? I had some project drift at the end so I have to double back and put in those last matches and yeah, I never redid it fully chronologically like I said I could, but it could be useful to you if you don't have it. 

https://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2021/05/french-catch-tuesday-master-list.html

And I don't want to downplay your interest. I spent three years with this stuff, right during the worst of the pandemic. It was a big part of my life and I was working with meager language skills and youtube's translate function and not a lot of documentation out there that I can access. A lot of my conclusions (Ben Chemoul/Cesca > Ben Chemoul/Bordes > Bordes/Gordon.. or how Carpentier carried himself more like a star than anyone else.. or comparing/contrasting Mercier with LeDuc, or rating/ranking the Spaniards/Mexicans/Peruvians, etc.) are purely textual.

Obviously "The Death Of" is interesting to people. Look at the success of the Alvarez book relative to overall WCW discussion. A lot more people are going to talk about the Fingerpoke of Doom and Russo booking than Regal's 94 TV title run or the weekly Dangerous Alliance matches from 91-92 or whatever. 

And yes, we want to apply things to our own lives when possible. I'm an American who got into wrestling when he was 9-10 in 1990-91 and I had zero points of personal connection with the footage, save for maybe my journey in figuring out how lucha functioned. 

But if you're going to delve into anything, figuring out who the heck Quasimodo was and if he actually had a tour of Amarillo or digging into Spartacus being a contract killer or figuring out if there's a case for Saulnier in the WON HOF as a worker/trainer/featured referee who was treated as a centerpiece in so many matches all seem like more bountiful uses of one's time. 

[David Mantell]

I'll have a look when I can get on a non-work computer that doesn't block blogspot.

18 hours ago, Matt D said:

Obviously "The Death Of" is interesting to people.

or non death. I go to All Star shows and am subbed to Rumble's YT channel so keenly follow the present state of old school Trad Brit and enjoy modern clean technical classics, some of which I have shared to the British wrestling thread, so it's not just a matter of morbid interest in a territory's decline but active celebration of its survival in the modern era.

Quasimodo wrestled here as did quite a lot of the top Catch stars including Le Petit Prince (on the late night midweek show Dec '70) Jacky Richard (Jan '73) Kader Hassouni (Cup final day '77) Marc Mercier ('87 classic vs Marty Jones - I remember watching it aged 13) Jean Paul Auvert (also wrestled Marty in '87)  and yeah Flesh Gordon on Reslo so there's a fair bit of overlap between all 3 NW Euro territories.

18 hours ago, Matt D said:

I'm an American who got into wrestling when he was 9-10 in 1990-91

I'm a 49 year old Brit who was 16-17 in that time, started watching WOS when I was about 2 in 1976 after my grandparents got me into it while I was still in my high-chair and never stopped, started buying imported Aptermags aged 14 in 1988,went to Croydon's Fairfield Hall a fair bit and saw Kendo as well as Daddy and Stax in the flesh, saw WCW in December '91, saw Summerslam '92 aged 18 from the back of Wembley Stadium, carried on going to WWF and WCW tours 93/95 in Birmingham while at Coventry University, while popping in to the Fairfield Hall while back with my parents in South London during college holidays to see how things were progressing.  I gave up on American wrestling after the end of the Invasion angle but have kept track of the surviving old school scene ever since and have watched guys like James Mason and Dean Allmark grow up and grow old.  I did start buying tapes of British wrestling with CWA on and realised that the different national wrestling cultures of old school European wrestling were akin to the different territories of American Wrestling pre WWF expansion and resolved to learn about each countries' wrestling histories.  I did make attempts to buy video tapes in SECAM from an old FFCP website and read up about the current scene of FFCP and WS and Eurostars . but only finally got to get to see a decent amount of Le Catch about 4 or 5 years ago when it started appearing on Youtube on bobALPRA's channel.  Since then I found your channel and took the plunge into a wrestling territory related to but in someways different from my native territory.  

[David Mantell]

Les Catcheurs Francais au Royamme Unis.

 

[ohtani's jacket]

The Jacky Corn vs Billy Howes match from Cup Final day is the best Brit vs Frenchman match I’ve seen from either side of the channel. 

[David Mantell]

The flipside- an actual WoS matchup transplanted to Antenne 2 and the French ring:

 

[David Mantell]

Came across this October 2019 (just 6 months before the Pandemic) bout from WS.

MC says match d'Equippe at the start rather than Catch A Quatre.  See my discussion with Sir Edgar on the "Why is America always assumed to be the centre of the wrestling universe?" thread.

Old school legend Prince Zefy in action- he's bulked up quite a bit since his prime but has been working out and turned it into muscle. Looks a lot like Rufus R Jones circa 1983 in Mid Atlantic. Incipient bald patch. Not so much of a high flyer as he was in the late Eighties/Nineties/Noughties

Nice big venue, very echoey like a cheap indoor council swimming baths.

Apparently those turnbuckle pads are serious heavy duty weapons that can knock a man unconscious. What are they loaded with?

The adversarial relationship between Les Bons and Monsieur L'Arbitre was alive and well in 2019 with Zefy walloping out the ref, counting his own pinfall and then being shocked when the ref wakes up, reverses the decision  and makes it a DQ win for Les Mechants (as happened in the 2022 clip I posted some time back.)

Talking of refs, I think that might be Monsieur Jacky Richard himself that comes in at the end to support the official ref. Neither of them get the aux Chiottes chant.

[David Mantell]

Marc Mercier posted on the FFCP's Facebook page to say that his autobiog is out.  Someone asked him if there would be an English language edition for all the many British/American/etc fans of Catch Francais - he replied "Yeah, maybe".

The same Someone also posted a link to the "Professional Wrestling in France" wikipedia page Wot I Wrote.

https://www.facebook.com/ffcatch/posts/pfbid02zeHzaahLKAF9oMb7yqNMzi6TDQW7TYmqs8hrzBdqTqyQ3iuvX2ugvSzbqAz4FhWnl

[David Mantell]

Had a positive review for the Wikipedia article on the French Wikipedia wrestling project page:  "Thank you very much for this article. It's really great. I don't necessarily have time to translate articles anymore, but I may do so in the future." (CoffeeEngineer)
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion_Projet:Catch#en:Professional_wrestling_in_France

[David Mantell]

I thought I'd already posted this match but it seems I hadn't (EDIT: have since found out that I did post it, but never mind) so here goes:

 Marc Mercier three years before relaunching FFCP, in an IWSF (the future Wrestling Stars) ring against masked heel Cybernic Machine with Jacky Richard refereeing.

It's from 2003 but there's still a good big house and quite a flashy venue too, like some modern art version of a catherdral.  It's actually a considerable size larger than the sort of former TV venue you get in the UK or France, more like something that would be used in Germany/Austria for an Otto Wanz CWA title defence like the Stadhalle in Bremen. 

Ring is very New Catch looking, still with the long cornerpads, the individual-rope blue cornerpads were not a part of it yet.

Anyone know  - or can spot any clues that flew over my head - why this was filmed  TV or video?  It looks very good quality for straight to video by 2003.  Perhaps it is for the TV contract I recall Eurostars having based out of Belgium.

[David Mantell]

I haven't yet watched this bout through all the way but it's from 2006 and features a similar building to Mercier-Cybernic and Prince Zéfy still in his athletic prime.

 

[David Mantell]

On 8/27/2023 at 5:48 AM, David Mantell said:

 

This bout I posted earlier in the thread of Flesh Gordon in his later years has a similarly big house although the venue looks more like the sort of big town theare venue All Star in the UK would go for in the C21st.

[Matt D]

Not French but I'm putting it here.

@Phil Lions

You found some Spanish footage it seems?

Any chance that we have anything even close to the French collection hiding in a RTVE archive somewhere?

[NintendoLogic]

Holy cow, that Hercules Cortez fella was an absolute unit.

[Phil Lions]

9 hours ago, Matt D said:

Not French but I'm putting it here.

@Phil Lions

You found some Spanish footage it seems?

Any chance that we have anything even close to the French collection hiding in a RTVE archive somewhere?

No chance. Spanish wrestling wasn't televised. In terms of footage from the golden age of Spanish wrestling, the RTVE archive has only newsreel clips and that Cortez/Tarres one is actually the longest one. I shared them all a while back here: http://wrestlingclassics.com/.ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=10;t=005285

That said, I don't think much is available in their online archive at the moment, but RTVE may have "Los Héroes del Xóndo" tucked away somewhere. That was the Spanish attempt at a "Titanes en el Ring" type of show. The show aired in 1978-79 and it didn't last long. There's some footage from 16:25 onward here:

 

[Matt D]

1 hour ago, Phil Lions said:

No chance

A shame. What do you think the white whale is at this point then?

[Phil Lions]

7 hours ago, Matt D said:

A shame. What do you think the white whale is at this point then?

In terms of Continental Europe, I don't think there is one.

I would love to see more Telecatch with Ted Boy Marino from 1960s Brazil, or a bunch of Cuban TV from the 1950s, or Lebanese TV with the Saade brothers and others from the 1970s. For me that would be some of the most interesting stuff, but sadly, I think the chances of any of those still existing are extremely slim.

[David Mantell]

A nice news article from French TV of Flesh Gordon training newbies at his wrestling school.  Included some show footage and some b/w footage of the Good Old Days:

 

[David Mantell]

18 hours ago, NintendoLogic said:

Holy cow, that Hercules Cortez fella was an absolute unit.

For a while in the 1960s he was the Spanish Otto Wanz.  Got to do adverts on TV and stuff.  If he hadn't had the crash and had eventually come back to Spain maybe the CIC would have survived past 1975.

[David Mantell]

4 hours ago, Phil Lions said:

In terms of Continental Europe, I don't think there is one.

I would love to see more Telecatch with Ted Boy Marino from 1960s Brazil, or a bunch of Cuban TV from the 1950s, or Lebanese TV with the Saade brothers and others from the 1970s. For me that would be some of the most interesting stuff, but sadly, I think the chances of any of those still existing are extremely slim.

I'd like the see the Granada TV 1950s/1960s archive fully opened up so we can see George Kidd in his prime and all the lighter Wigan Snakepit crew who are less well remembered than Billy Robinson and Karl Gotch because they didn't go to America (Ernie Riley, Tommy "Jack Dempsey" Moore, Melvyn Riss, Billy Joyce etc)

[David Mantell]

4 hours ago, Phil Lions said:

or Lebanese TV with the Saade brothers and others from the 1970s.

Interesting.  Apart from Halperin's promotion in Israel and Saddam Hussein's state run promotion with Adnan as lead babyface in Iraq, how many Middle Eastern Territories were there?

[David Mantell]

1 hour ago, Cien Caras said:

Egypt had a major scene, one of its biggest stars was Mamdouh Farag who also worked a lot for Big Otto.

https://youtu.be/8rZzetuQIzA?si=jAJJL2Sor_R4C3bw

Willing to be convinced otherwise but I have seen no evidence that wrestling in Iraq was “state run” other than tenuously trying to link Saddam because it makes for a better urban legend that can’t be disproved and originates from Adnan al Kaissie who makes out like Saddam was doing booking duties as a side gig. Most likely nonsense.

It does seem like the sort of thing Saddam would do, running his own wrestling promotion and booking it with a firearm.  His son Uday was in charge of the national football team and notorious for torturing players who did not play hard enough with electrodes to their private parts.  Trump was very much into wrestling - there seems to be something that attracts these big power magnates.

And obviously we do have the pics of Saddam and Adnan which the WWF were only too delighted to reprint in the run up to WM7.

Halperin had various Arab heel kayfabe enemies such as  Achmad Fuad and the "Jordanian Tiger" Abu Antar but I expect these were actually Israeli Arabs.  There does seem to be a tradition of Arabs playing heel roles in Israeli wrestling - Jim Cornette read out a letter about one such wrestler who was killed in the October 7th attacks.  A few years ago, an Israeli Arab guy wrestling at Butlins in the UK managed to get All Star in quite a lot of trouble when a Butlins Redcoat (look it up if you don't know) , trying to gee up the audience to give the guy heat, started shouting "Who wants the Muslim to win?"  getting the crowd to hiss and boo.  Unfortunately one of the residents at the camp was a Guardian reader and penned an angry letter to the newspaper about this nasty Islamophobic show.  It ended up with Butlins changing from All Star to another promoter (although All Star got a contract with Pontins instead), the Israeli Arab guy  having to become a babyface/bleu eye Arab character in Britain and generally quite a lot of adverse publicity.

Just before the first Gulf War there was a piece in Around the World in PWI saying how despite the war wrestling was still going on in Baghdad and that someone whose name I've forgotten beat Bad News Brown in a main event.  The someone in question says their family pleaded with them not to go but they're glad they did.  Perhaps some kind soul could check as my PWIs are all piled up in a state of disorder.

When was the Egyptian footage from?  It looks very modern - like a mishmash of CWA and a Southern US territory, say World Class.  I'd guess mid 80s.  There is a World Of Sport bout from 1980 where Kent Walton says that a wrestler is going on a tour of Egypt and it will be the first wrestling there since the 1930s.

[David Mantell]

Anyhow, with regards to the history of Spain, this seems to be the best article:
https://www.wrestling-titles.com/europe/spain/spainhistory.html

although the author seems unaware that French wrestling not only carried on going but was still on terrestrial TV nearly as long as British wrestling.  Which I'll admite makes it an odd thing to post to a thread about French Catch.

[Phil Lions]

I think for me Cuba may be the most interesting of the bunch and the one I'd like to see the most, if it were possible. Local wrestling aired on Cuban TV on and off from 1951 through 1959 and there was quite a lot of it in the early to mid 1950s. Not at the same time, but wrestling aired on four different networks there - Channel 4 (Union Radio Television), Channel 6 (CMQ Television), Channel 2 and Channel 7 (CMBF Television). Looking at the cards that I have there are a bunch of interesting names on those cards and those names could have potentially been on the TV shows too. I say potentially, because while shows were generally broadcast live on TV more than likely not all of matches aired on TV. Big stars from the U.S. passed through for a visit (Frank Sexton, Gorgeous George, Buddy Rogers, Lou Thesz, Antonino Rocca), Mexican stars did as well (Medico Asesino, Dientes Hernandez, Fernando Oses, etc.), other well-established names from the U.S. worked on some cards (Tony Olivas, Wally Dusek, Danny Dusek, Kola Kwariani, Ray Stern, Billy Darnell, Nell Stewart, Cora Combs, etc.) and of course there were also all the stars of the local scene such as The Red Menace (Pedro Godoy), El Chiclayano, Ramon Rivera, King Badu and others. In terms of influence Cuba seems to have been influenced the most by the Tampa office, but there was definitely a Mexican influence too which makes me quite curious what the general in-ring style might have been given the mix of influences.

As for Lebanon, wrestling used to air on TV there in the 1970s on Channel 7. The Saade brothers were probably the biggest stars, but there were also international stars like Danny Lynch, Prince Kumali and Tsuneharu Sugiyama to name a few, who worked in Lebanon during this time too. Although to be fair I don't know which ones of the international guys worked the TV. I know they worked the big shows, but I don't know about the TV.

7 hours ago, David Mantell said:

For a while in the 1960s he was the Spanish Otto Wanz.  Got to do adverts on TV and stuff.  If he hadn't had the crash and had eventually come back to Spain maybe the CIC would have survived past 1975.

If Cortez had returned to Spain after his AWA run was over he was headed straight to prison for a period of six years. More about that here: http://wrestlingclassics.com/.ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=10;t=005490

Cortez was indeed quite popular in Spain and is probably the best remembered Spanish star today, but a lot of that was due to him having a segment on national TV in Spain in the mid 1960s where he would arm wrestle any and all comers, with the network offering to give 100,000 Spanish pesetas to whoever could beat him. And mind you this was at a time when, I believe, there was still only one television network in Spain. That television exposure gave Cortez a level of recognizability other Spanish stars simply couldn't obtain, because they weren't being featured on TV at all, let alone regularly. That said, while Cortez's star was rising the business in Spain in general was falling so ultimately even with Cortez in the mix I don't think demise of Spanish wrestling could have been slowed down much, if at all. And plus, in general information about attendance is limited so I don't know how well his TV fame translated to the box office during his prime in the mid to late 1960s.
 

5 hours ago, David Mantell said:

There is a World Of Sport bout from 1980 where Kent Walton says that a wrestler is going on a tour of Egypt and it will be the first wrestling there since the 1930s.

Definitely not the case. I'd have to check my Greek clippings to dig out the exact years, but I have seen several reports about Greek wrestlers working in Egypt in the 1940s. Maybe the 1950s too. And of course, speaking of the 1930s, it's worth mentioning Jim Londos worked a few matches in Egypt in 1937.