French catch

[Phil Lions]

2 hours ago, David Mantell said:

Thanks for this lot. Good to see there was an organised fandom in France.  Maybe we can find some from the mid 80s with VCRs.

I wouldn't call it an organised fandom. It was just one French superfan, who eventually got into the business as a promoter/announcer, briefly published his own catch magazine and was also a correspondent for a couple of U.S. wrestling magazines. Most importantly though, he was in contact with a few other wrestling historians from other countries and they would regularly send each other stuff (this was back in the 1960s-80s). Some of that correspondence has been preserved and it's a great source of info.

[David Mantell]

1 minute ago, Phil Lions said:

I wouldn't call it an organised fandom. It was just one French superfan, who eventually got into the business as a promoter/announcer, briefly published his own catch magazine and was also a correspondent for a couple of U.S. wrestling magazines. Most importantly though, he was in contact with a few other wrestling historians from other countries and they would regularly send each other stuff (this was back in the 1960s-80s). Some of that correspondence has been preserved and it's a great source of info.

We should have him on here.

[Phil Lions]

Just now, David Mantell said:

We should have him on here.

That'd be difficult to do, on the account of him no longer being alive.

[David Mantell]

4 hours ago, Phil Lions said:

That'd be difficult to do, on the account of him no longer being alive.

Oh dear., still there were others, from the fans from the Trente Glorieuses through to kids who grew up watching Flesh Gordon and Prince Zefy against everyone from Jessy Texas and Marquis/Travesti Man/Monsieur Jacky Richard to Scott Ryder and Cybernic Machine.

[HeadCheese]

Does anybody know if this match is on uploaded or any if the more color French Catch on water matches are available. I know that there is greyscale pool matches, theres more even going to this year. Its a really interesting tradition.

 

 

[David Mantell]

2 hours ago, HeadCheese said:

Does anybody know if this match is on uploaded or any if the more color French Catch on water matches are available. I know that there is greyscale pool matches, theres more even going to this year. Its a really interesting tradition.

 

 

We've reviewed quite a few of these from the 70s and 80s.  Unlike in Britain where in the Winter local councils would drain public swimming pools, board them over and put wrestling and other entertainments on in the "Baths Halls", in France they would just leave the water in the pool and put in a floating ring.  The French just saw this as a normal natural place to hold wrestling shows, but some other people on here disagree and see them as cheap gimmicks. This has led to some heated debates on here.

Occasionally in the summer when the weather was seriously good, some places took it further and set up floating rings in the duck pond of a public park or, as here, in a harbour.

Generally Catch A L'Eau was not a consistent dunking fest as this highlight reel implies. There would be long no-no sense sequences inside the ring like any other wrestling show.