German catch

[David Mantell]

Okay, here's one more Robbie as a heel in Germany/Austria bout from the Heumarkt '97. Neidhart takes time out from the Harts Vs USA feud to team with the Wildcat and get DQ'd against the locals. Afterwards Robbie cuts an angry promo (In German I think) and Franz calmly challenges the heels to a return bout.

[David Mantell]

Most of the first half of the clip is taken up by a lengthy Ringerparade.  We first seen Rasputin and Klaus Kauroff in the carpark looking quite amicable then cut to said parade with all manner of familiar faces including referee Jeff Kaye.  A bit of a fight breaks out between some of the wrestlers. Then two minutes or so before the end we get some match highlights, George Burgess under his old 70s identity Jamaica Kid Vs uncensored N bomb dropper Colonial Brody. Some bits of good action including a neat escape from headscissors into side headlock from Brody and a great bridge from George.  In the end he gets a flying tackle on Brody but is exhausted so the Colonel not only kicks out at 2 but easily upturns him to get his own pin and the bird from the crowd. Referee Mick McMichael was at the time busy competing in the Golden Grappler and Grand Prix belt tournaments back home across the North Sea.

[David Mantell]

On 2/15/2025 at 12:12 PM, David Mantell said:

Another bout that could just have easily been on a Brian Dixon or Orig Williams show of the same period.  Or even a WWF undecardTen minute start of the show match to get them in a good mood. Next to no technical wrestling (and Doc Dean who was British Welterweight Champion at the time was capable of better) but it made the crowd happy.

Kenny does a promo at the start very much in the style of ITV promo's of 1987-1988 which does go to show that this is not just bootleg fan cam but officially sanctioned footage probably meant to be resold at the merch stands.

I wanted to review this earlier as part of a set of John Kenny posts to all three of the British, French and German threads. But I seem to have already viewed it so never mind. I'll let Kenny* do The Bump* and we can still compare him in three different territories.

.

.

.

.

* Spot the early 70s kitsch pop reference!

[ohtani's jacket]

Some German film footage.

1965.8air Horst Hoffmann vs Ian Campbell + Leif Rasmussen vs Micha Nador + Mustafa Shikane vs Josef Molnar (Wiesbaden

Ian Campbell shows up in the most interesting places. It's a shame we don't have any of his matches from ITV. He was mostly playing a stooge heel in these clips. Shikane vs. Moinar was wild. Very stylized and strange lightweight wrestling. It almost felt like performance art.

1962 Geoff Portz vs Paul Berger + Rene Lasartesse vs Jose Arroyo (Berlin)

The German newsreel directors liked to focus on crowd reactions a lot. Must be that history of expressionism. Not a lot you could really gauge from this other than Lasartesse worked the same way in the 60s that he did in the 80s. The only difference was that he looked younger. 

1965.5.8 Josef Kovacs vs Ian Campbell + Horst Hoffmann vs Jose Marques + Ricki Starr vs Leif Rasmussen (Karlsruhe)

Speaking of expressionism, this stands off as a montage of the matches shot at various different camera angles, then shows extended clips of Ricki Starr vs. Rasmussen. As best I can tell, Rasmussen was a Buddy Rose style worker who seemed like a real character. The clips are fun, and I imagine the full match would have been similar to the great Les Kellett vs. Bobby Barnes matches. 

1971 Leif Rasmussen vs Hansi Roocks

This clip is already in circulation. There are some decent exchanges but the main focus is on interviewing women at ringside, and boy are there some interesting hairdos. 

 

[David Mantell]

23 minutes ago, ohtani's jacket said:

1971 Leif Rasmussen vs Hansi Roocks

This clip is already in circulation. There are some decent exchanges but the main focus is on interviewing women at ringside, and boy are there some interesting hairdos. 

Yes, I posted that one some time back.

Quote

Most of it's from the 40s/50s but there are a couple off 1970s clips. Here is 1971 - Leif Rasmussen, a sort of Scandinavian version of Rene Lasartesse, takes on a young dark haired Hansi Rooks (some eight years before a certain glam metal band from Finland formed! ) It's from TV but don't get excited, it's one of the usual "haha let's have a good sneery laugh at the high spots and the screaming marks too" type features you get on TV and cinema newsreels 

Talking of hairdos, Hansi had yet to buy his first bottle of peroxide.

Even in the b/w you can see it's the common 80s/90s ring design with the white ropes and dark blue mat. I think I even spy some sponsorship messages on the canvas.

[David Mantell]

34 minutes ago, ohtani's jacket said:

The German newsreel directors liked to focus on crowd reactions a lot.

It was a common failing of newsreel makers and producers of TV Magazine-show items, to poke fun at the wrestling show and its fans rather than treat it with dignity.  They were more concerned about what their peer group would think than true communication.

Still it could be worse - that Spanish one with the silly sound effects.

[ohtani's jacket]

1958.11.8air Joachim la Barba vs Jakob Thoma + Hans Schwarz III vs Jose Marques (Berlin)

la Barba is working a comedy catchweight bout here against an extremely limited heavyweight opponent. Schwarz vs Marques is the best footage so far. Instead of clips, we get extended sequences from the bout. Both men are skilled and work a style that is similar to French Catch. Marques was a Spanish wrestler, so I guess you could classify it as a continental style. It seemed that most of the skilled workers of this era could travel between France, Britain and Spain and work seamlessly with local opponents. 

1960.10.18air Hans Schwarz III vs someone + Oskar Muller vs Bill Martinez (Munich)

Here's Schwarz again. His opponent looks a bit like Inca and does a lot of fun, exaggerated selling. Schwarz is one of the most skilled workers I've seen thus far. Muller is the stereotypical German wrestler. It's like watching the love child of Axel Dieter and Roland Bock. Bill Martinez did this spot that modern wrestlers should ape. He scored the pin, do a backwards roll, rolled forward again so that he was standing over his opponent, then taunted him in his face. 

1957.11 Hermann Iffland vs Josef Kovacs + James Brown & Matthias Rösges vs Roman Waniek & Hans Dillinger (Wiesbaden)

There was a lot of excellent wrestling in this clip. Iffland and Kovacs wrestled like men, and Kovacs wore Dick Shikat style tights, which I always approve of. The tag match featured something I've never seen before. Instead of standing on the apron, the tag partners stood in each corner holding onto the tag rope. At first I thought it was because there was no space on the apron for them to stand, but then they did a spot where one guy was placed over the top rope onto the apron. A very weird but interesting visual dynamic. I'd be curious to know if all German tag wrestling was like this at the time or it was unique to Wiesbaden. The wrestling and comedy in this bout were first class. 

[Matt D]

Next Richard Land drop in a few days is more Sept 81 with maybe Bret vs Roach, two Wright/Kimura tags, and more Adrian Street. We shall see.

[David Mantell]

I'd like to see the full length Inoki - Lasartesse match and maybe some other ones from the tour like vs Wilfred Dietrich. I wonder if there is footage of the earlier Wanz Vs Don Leo match July '78 where big Otto wins his second CWA title - the debut of the acronym CWA in German/Austrian wrestling circles.

Also the studio tag match which precedes the Roland Bock Vs Bear match and some similar stuff with Rene Lasartesse in the studio (snippets appear in his documentaries posted earlier.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

[David Mantell]

Also I would like to see some more George "Schurli" Blemenschutz as lead babyface at the 60s/70s Heumarkt so we can judge how much of an influence Schurli was on Shirley ...

[David Mantell]

Years before Rambo becomes a babyface for his feud with Bull Power, here he is as heel challenger (not for the first time on this thread Viz Rambo making challenges and doing an angle during Otto's TV interview.  At this stage, Porier bears an odd resemblance to early 90s Soldier Boy Steve Prince minus the gags. Otto works rather like Big Daddy in the 1977!John Elijah and 1975 Kendo Nagasaki bouts - Daddy and Wanz had a common inspirational ancestor in Blemenschutz.

Not sure who Hercules Boyd is but he seems to be a legit American from the accent. He teams with the only European in the bout, Franz Schumann to face BUll Power and Might John Quinn, an unlikely pair as I recall reviewing them feuding at Heumarkt around this time.Boyd can match power with BB. Quinn is a bit craftier and has picked up some technical knowledge in his time in Britain. Power of,  works in the Blemenschutz style of rugged bodychecks and splashes as a finisher.

 

[David Mantell]

We've seen some of what OJ has called "Ivy League" French Catch matches from the mid to late 80s, usually not televised but rather shot on an early camcorder - where the legends of the 1960s and 1970s, grey haired and all, would have one last battle for old times' sake.  Now a decade or so later, here's the German/Austrian equivalent. We know it's GRAZ 1996 because there is a cheap camcorder caption that says so all the way through.

Otto Wanz is back!!!  Grey haired and tubbier that ever.  The greys make him look like Bill Eadie when he teamed with Randy Colley in those first couple of Demolition TV matches and they put all kinds of hair dye in their hair and Eadie wore silver.  However he is upstaged for geriatric chic by the legendary Rene Lataserre, three decades after challenging for a European title on ITV, now wearing a black T-shirt under his famous velvet embroidered cloak. It makes him look like a skinny George Steele. 

Kauroff is still Kauroff just a bit chubbier He's got a slightly stroppy outfit which at the back looks like the defective Demolition costume they gave Bryan Adams to wear when he debut as Crush in 1990 with no metal ring, just cross crossing straps. Which leaves us with the baby, Steve Wright, still in his 40s, at this time (and the only one still alive in 2025.). His son, student and former tag partner Alex is one of the rising stars of WCW.  I think he's already been TV champion.  In his future Alex has a good long run as Cruiserweight champion and a week as WCW World Tag Team Champion with Disco Inferno.  He will also headline a 1997 WCW tour of Germany, teaming every night with Lex Luger in the main event to beat Harlem Heat.  So while the Kid is doing big things in American Major League Wrestling, here is Dad still looking quite spry as his boy becomes Germany's answer to Davey Boy.  Steve and the crowd were clearly very self conscious of this, there's a definite "Dad's Still Got It" vibe to his every action.

The bout doesn't actually start until nearly seven minutes in - first you have to sit through a bunch of "This Momentous Occasion" type speeches in German.  When it does start they have an electronic beeper instead of the bell. Kauroff throws Wright who can still take the throw and cartwheel back to rectitude.  And do his little bow. He dicks a clothesline and gets a flying tackle for 2. For reasons not made clear the action stops and restarts.  Kauroff gets a powerful top wristlock Wright uses referee Didier Gapp's shoulder to spin out and no, Didi is no more amused than he was in earlier years.  Didi spends plenty of time handing out yellow cards, not least to Otto who rushes the ring to rescue Wright. Das Wunderdad still has the moves, he can do his bouncing kip up, cartwheel back and do a high whip that forces big Klaus to take quite a hefty Bump. Wright also has a sharp forearm smash which he puts to formidable use against Rene. Sixteen years earlier this was the arrogant ring aristocrat fighting this young kid. Now it looks like a skinhead attacking a pensioner.

Otto and Rene do their best impersonation of Big Daddy and various British heels. Although generally Otto still prefers to use forearms instead of bodychecks like Shirley or indeed Schurli Blemenschutz, and still has his spinning splash finisher.  Unlike those two, Otto does sell, in the same embattled Dusty style as he did in the 80s.  Kauroff can still lbe very brutal with his Les Kellett kick to the back. Rene mostly takes old man bumps that make you feel sorry for him.

Kauroff scores a fall on Wright with a powerslam triggering a brutal brawl between Otto and Rene with Wanz looking psychotic as he chokes Lasaterre on the ropes and earns a second yellow card. Later Otto gives both villains a side chancery throw and squishes them each with his somersault splash, pinning Rene. This gives Wanz and Wright the match.  I guess that suddenly pause near the start was Otto and Steve scoring a quick opener which got cropped out badly.

If you're not nostalgic for the wrestling  of the German speaking world of the 79s and 80s then Wright is pretty much the saving grace here. Otherwise it's one big Teutonic Big Daddy Tag. Or more likely drawing on tag matches by the aforementioned Herr Blemenschutz.

 

[David Mantell]

This bout from the November 1996 Catch Cup at the Bremen Stadhalle looked interesting on paper, a meeting of two generations. Michael Kovacs, one of the young nineties generation of wrestlers in Austria/Germany in the wake of Steve Wright including Steve's son Alex as well as Ecki Eckstein, Franz Schumann, Ulf Hermann etc had come of age. On the other hand there was the old school characters like Bobby Gaetano, Axel Dieter Sr, Roland Bock etc. in Britain we knew Gaetano, French born, Germany based, best for being Marty Jones's final opponent in the World Mid Heavyweight title.

What I didn't know was that, like Jones, Gaetano had  gone heel himself. Here we get to 1996 and he's quite the little villain. Just like Jones himself, Gaetano was now walking down the shady side of the street He gets a hefty boo at the start and struts around while Kovacs is cheered.

Round 1: Kovacs easily forces Gaetano onto the ropes.  He takes Bobby's arm in a wristlock and Gaetano easily switches arms to reverse the lever. Kovacs rolls out of the lever.  Back and forth he rolls - and then high whips Gaetano for a somersault into a hard bump.  Kovacs legdrops and scissors the arm, twisting hard. He gets up, passes the arm high over his head and has the hold on the kneeling Gaetano.  Gaetano eventually corners and brutally throttles Kovacs until referee Didier Gapp stops him.  Gaetano snapmares Kovacs and tries to smother him by leaning forward so his breathing is impeded.  He gets Michael in  the side chancery, front underhook top wristlock and straight arm over shoulder throw, leaving Kovacs in an armlock in the guard.  Kovacs gets kneeling up right ready to roll out of the armbar. Instead Kovacs goes for a fireman's carry takedown into backdrop.  Next  Kovacs gets a side headlock into wristlever into hammerlock.  He tries for a folding press but the bell goes. During the break, the same music the Leeds Boys used for their ring entry is played.  I should know the tune but don't.

Round 2. Gaetano gets a side chancery hold releases and beats down on Kovacs.  He comes off the top rope with a flying stomp, jams a finger in Kovacs' eyes and chokes him on the top rope.  He releases and snapmares Kovacs who in return clotheslines Gaetano.  Gaetano leapfrogs and brags to the crowd how clever he has been to dodge the charge only for Kovacs  to dropkick him out of the ring. Michael then suplexes Bobby in and crosspresses him but gets no count from Didi for reasons unclear.  He gets a grovit, shoves his man down and stomps him with help from the top rope.  Gaetano kicks his man outside and raises his arms in victory.  Kovacs comes back and Gaetano tries to knock him off but gets shoulder blocked down.   He gets double legs and slingshots Gaetano out of the ring.  The bell goes, the KLF plays.

Round 3. Kovacs gets a side headlock into wristlever into drop toehold into Gotch Toehold but Gaetano grabs the ropes so Gapp orders a break. Gaetano gets a wristlever but Kovacs gets another drop toehold.  He tries the Scorpion Deathlock and the back bridging STF.  He gets no submission so releases. On both their knees, Gaetano headbutts Kovacs, smacks his head in the mat and chokes him on the bottom rope. He snapmares and smothers Kovacs and side Chancery throws him.  He chops and chokes Kovacs on the mat.  Kovacs chops  back, gets a dropkick and powerslam, a low flying dropkick and a small package for 2.  Kovacs gets double legs, teases stomping Gaetano's crotch then gets a scorpion Deathlock.  The bell goes.  Sharp Dressed Man by ZZ Top plays but no sign of Gorgeous Jimmy Garvin or Precious.  Kovacs is slow to release angering Gaetano who pounds him in the corner.

Round 4. Once the bell is gone, Gaetano resumes beating up Kovacs, getting a wristlock, slipping it overhead and posting  him to the opposite corner where he repeats the process.  He charges Kovacs in the corner who boots him down.. Kovacs clotheslines Gaetano, missile dropkicks him off the top turnbuckle and fisherman's suplexes him for the onecrequired fall. 

A slightly disappointing battle of the generations with Gaetano having gone dirty in his old age. 

 

 

[David Mantell]

One of these things is not like the others ...

Let's see, we have the Brit who pretty much revolutionised the style of wrestling in Germany, the best worker on the French scene post-1980s, the legendary brutal villain who can beat a lesson into you, all three of them World Mid Heavyweight Champions, ... and then we have Larry Cameron. aging coke & roids swilling Stampede alumunus soon to die in the ring of a heart attack.  Even the referee, Mick McMichael, is a better scientific wrestler than Cameron with classics in his past vs Vic Faulkner.  The others just have to work round Lazza and they all do with Zefy winning the prize for best effort.  Wright scores the sunset flip on the big American stiff.  Still, the drunk German audience enjoyed themselves.

 

[David Mantell]

Christmas 1985 at the Bremen Stadhalle on the last day of the Catch Cup and we have another misfit. Fit Finlay, back home one of the most hated villains, having watered with Marty Jones over the World Mid Heavyweight Championship and about to go into a big feud with Big Daddy climaxing in an FA Cup Final showdown, the second time he and Daddy have done this, is astonishingly on the good guys side.  Now admittedly Steve Wright and Tony StClair are both long gone from Joint Promotions. Wright is over here rewriting the local style while Tony is mostly working for Orig Williams and Brian Dixon doing TV for both on S4C's Reslo and Screensport's Satellite Wrestling.  But it's still pretty odd.

Finlay is Irish and so is Rasputin on the other side (the proper one Johnny Howard, not the Raspoutine we saw on FR3 in 1982.) which may explain THE DJ playing old Irish drinking song No Nay Never at the start.  (Howard was actually a student of Finlay's dad. ).  Rasputin and Colonel Brody know Finlay only took well, all three are regulars on ITV wrestling. Guajaro is the unknown quantity, locally based his whole career.

Finlay is indeed cheered by the German audience and does a Hulk Hogan style dear cupping routine as he gears up to face Brody. The Colonel had the size advantage getting some big throws on Finlay and using hairpulls. Finlay gets a great sunset flip which Brody counters by dragging him right through by the ears! Good guy Finlay is like a poodle having a fight with a Doberman. He eventually hits back with some kneedrops and Tony and Indio tag in, then Rasputin and Steve.  From here it's just standard Brits in Germany. Wright dropkicks all three heels out of the ring.  Rasputin goes to work on his trainer's son ith an elbowsmash, posting, slam , fistdrop and piledriver. Brody posts and butts him,But Finlay absorbs a posting, backwards leapfrogs and gets a front folding press for the opening fall.

The villains work over Finlay in retribution. They triple cream him in their corner. Then they do the same to Tony and Steve.  They beat Toby at ringside so badly that Rasputin gets a yellow card, but he soon pins Howard (apparently this is a best of 5 falls.). Finlay end up being ganged up on and falls to a Brody firemans carry suplrx to make the score 2-1. The heels are catching up!  Finlay and Wright go to work on Indio, with Steve getting the flying tackle forces 3-1 win.  Finlay, StClair and Wright leave as amigos but soon Finlay would bring Paula to Germany and became heel like in the UK. Finlay and Wright would have their CWA wars and in 1990,  Finlay would win the (All Star) British Heavyweight Championship from StClair.

**************

Quality is a bit ropey especially the colour signal which is mostly missing apart from a few flashes.  At the end we get the introductions and opening moments of an Otto Wanz CWA title defence against Moondog Rex (which I've previously reviewed.)

[David Mantell]

S4C's Outside Broadcast unit takes the North Sea ferry once again. @JNListersorry but I think there's an audio syncing issue with this one too like the Patea one.  At the start you can hear bumps being taken in an empty ring.

Teutonic plus foreigner versus Teutonic plus foreigner.  Still not sure on Hercules Boyds credentials other than he's an American.  Sasake we all know about and  in theory the future Power Warrior a good fit for Euro wrestling despite having to do all the heel stuff.  He wears a long head dress at the start. Mostly brawling and chops. Kauroff a hardy perennial heel of Germany in his Randy Savage cape.  Boyd dominates him with 80s roidy power stuff. Great waistlock suplex.  Steinnlock doesn't get much chance to do much technical either, the odd snapmare into chinlock.  A pretty OJ-friendly brawl.  Lots of kicking and stomping from everyone.  Steinnlock slams Sasake for the first pin.  Floyd gets a nice sharp cross buttock throw and press on Kauroff for the second straight.

The audio runs on.  next bout on the audio was Danny Collins Vs Kid McCoy.  I think I've already reviewed it. Otherwise I would look it up (P.S apparently I haven't, so I will!)  Then Dave Taylor Vs Drew McDonald.  

 

 

 

[David Mantell]

Blond giant Brit Dave Morgan didn't have his Maschke on and was in a good mood on this early 1983 show until a much smaller German called Gunther (not that one, he wasn't even born for another 4 years) Wagner stung him badly in this match.  It's a spliced together highlights package unfortunately but let's make the most of it.

Morgan wears a rather nice kimono like black satin robe and shiny gold trunks. Gunther Wagner is the smaller Dudley Moore lookalike guy.  He gets a side headlock out of a referee's hold and takes Morgan down with him to the guard. The two rotate a full 360 degrees through Morgan's attempt to escape until Wagner switches to a chinlock.  Morgan tried reaching up for a jawbreaker then snapmaring the smaller man, neither with much luck.

Cut to Morgan in control, releasing a camel clutch like hold and going for a wristlever. Wagner rolls over and takes a mild bump rather than rotate upright.  He then unspectacularly rolls backwards and gets up tomthe same bowing position he was in at the start of the wrist lever. He then stands up, slips his free arm under Morgan's armpit and gets a (slightly messy) cross buttock throw and press for 2.  Morgan is still in a good mood and shakes Wagner's hand, getting a smattering of applause.  Morgan gets a front chancery and takes Wagner down with it, then swivels most of the long way round, gets a side chancery on the mat,turns Wagner's head in a side chancery position so that he can only roll forward onto his back  He tries for a pin but Wagner turns it over into a lengthways press then converts to an H&S.  He lifts Dave up by the head, flings him to the ropes and charges in with a butt to the stomach.  Morgan collapses with pain and when he gets up at 4 starts jabbing Wagner with jabs tomthe stomach and upper back but then the bell goes.

Round 2 (presumably)  Wagner gets a front chancery but Morgan manages to get free with an armbar. He gives a sharp upwards kick while applying the hold then, as in the previous round, drives in an arm to force Wagner down.  But Wagner manages to grapevine Wagner and take him down.  He tries for a pin then some sort of abdominal stretch on the mat - neither are very effective. So Wagner lifts up the bigger man in an underhook and slams him for a four count, then when he gets to his feet, shouldeblocks him.  It doesn't budge Dave much but it gets under his skin on top of everything else.  Thoroughly annoyed now, Morgan corners and pounds on Wagner in the corner until warned off by the referee.  He then grabs Wagner in a grovit and shoves him to the mat but Wagner deftly grabs Morgan's arm as they go down, so that Morgan overshoots and land on his back next to Wagner instead of on his front on top.  Still holding the arm (so continuous movement) Wagner crawl atop Morgan and gets a 1 before switching to a rear chinlock. Morgan comes out the rear exit with an armbar to show for his troubles (straighted from the chinlock bar) and starts to make a hammerlock of it.   Rather than wrestle his way out, Wagner cheekily back elbows Morgan who, infuriated ,slaps him round the chops in response.  Wagner bodychecks the bigger man into the ropes d side chancery throws him. Morgan gets up and legdives Wagner getting a toe and ankle hold with a legspread. The two turn round 90 degrees in this position until Wager can free his spread grounded leg and hammer Morgan in the head with it.  Wagner gets a legdive of his own but Morgan uses the same leg hammer escape. Wagner falls stop the bigger man.

Cut to Wagner holding Morgan in a sitting chinlock then hammering him and letting go for a count if 3. Morgan is up, he doubles Wagner over, wallops him across the back a couple of times then gets a front chancery.  It ends up with Wagner on the ropes getting pounded by Morgan as the referee blows his whistle. Among all this Wagner manages to legdive Morgan but let's go, so after a count of 5 the bigger man is back.Wagner gets in a forearm smash ...

Cut to Wagner with Morgan on the floorin an armbar. Hecswitches to Morgan's leg but the bell rings.

Round 3 (presumably). They finger Interlock and Wagner produces a fantastic lean back dropkick.  Morgan gets up and is angry, waving closed fists but Wagner legdives him, but doesn't follow up. Morgan tries for a side chancery but Wagner gets in there with a reverse waistlock suplex and press for the one required fall. (They do shake hands and make up afterwards.)

Wagner is part of the same old school as Roland Bock, Axel Dieter Senior and Achim Challenge and he works the same methodical stoic style that was characteristic of German wrestling until Steve Wright changes things.  The David Vs Goliath angle here spruces things up somewhat. (Even if this Goliath happens to be called David.

 

[David Mantell]

By American standards, Rick Martel was traditionally considered a scientific wrestler, even after his heel turn to the Model.  Here he gets to clash style with an actual Euro technician, an Austrian/German of the post Steve Wright generation of technicians, Franz Schumann.

Martel is managed by Klaus Kauroff hi  They play the Star Strangled Banner for his before the contest, ignoring that he is in fact French-Canadian.  (A blind woman and a Stevie Richards look alike sing the words - patriotic Americans beware, the audience WHITSLE all over it!). Kauroff wears stars and stripes jogging bottoms.  Martel has his sequin jacket (Want one for night out!)  and 1991 purple gear, no Arrogance nor the "Yes!   I Am A Model" giant pin bage.  I think Schumann is defending the CWA World Middleweight Championship.

Martel's work here magnifies the difference between US Technical wrestling and European. He tends to perform all his clever moves as spots rather than chain sequence s.  He can't roll out of armbars (unlike Franz who does a fair bit of rolling and kipping up out of armlocks. Martel on the other hand punches his way out.  He does do one good transition - a drop toehold into riding crossface Camel Clutch.). Mostly he reminds me of Danny Collins after the heel turn in 1994 from Danny Boy to Dirty Dan. He does attempt to curl up and roll out from under a Boston Crab. He does one or two kip ups himself and snares on a headscissors once, turning it sideways and cranking it forwards  only for the beeper (bell substitute) to signal the end of the round.   He cartwheels out of a Schumann leg flip one time (and smirks with heelish smugness about it) which actually DOES fit the local Euro style.  He also pulls his head out of a side headlock to form a back hammerlock on the mat then starts turning Schumann over into the guard for a further nelson pin attempt before the beeper again saves Franz.   Mostly Martel just does a lot of roughhouse/dirty stuff that in the WWF would have counted as normal brawling done by some babyfaces. It would have been interesting to see pre- WM5 babyface Martel coping with the CWA and old school Euro wrestling culture.

Schumann gets the win by rolling over on a flying bodypress á la Wendi Richter at WM10.  I don't think he's wearing his infamous Bret ripoff pink and black tights but he does do a sharpshooter (Scorpion Deathlock/Chono Powerlock )

If you like a cheap laugh, look out at the end for the World 's Worst Postmatch Pyrotechnics - a shot of a single sparkler being held aloft.

[David Mantell]

Article on Roland Bock :

https://www.patrickwreed.com/blog/ywi3yijbus8ga9w6tqlfh56isokwpp

Quote

Skip to Content

Open Menu

The Fights That Made Antonio Inoki: #2 Roland Bock, and the Secret History of European Shoot Style

11 Oct

Back in July, I posted the first in a limited series of short biographies of key opponents in the career of Antonio Inoki, with a look at The Great Antonio. 

Since then, the weekend before I began writing this entry, Antonio Inoki passed away, bringing to a close one of the most singular, unlikely and incomparable careers in professional wrestling. Inoki was unarguably one of the most influential figures in post-war professional wrestling, reshaping its DNA in myriad ways that have filtered through to every corner of the business, and into Mixed Martial Arts and popular culture. Inoki himself is covered extensively in my forthcoming book, so rather than attempt a biography of him here, it seemed a fitting time to return to this series, and to look at another of the fights that made Antonio Inoki.

It was November 25th, 1978, in Stuttgart, Germany that Antonio Inoki and Roland Bock crossed paths, in a match that would briefly make a cult hero of Bock in Japan, and would enter into infamy. Inoki, along with other key NJPW talent, were in Germany for the month-long Catch Europa Tournament, and “Killer Inoki”, as he was advertised, spent much of his German adventure coming out on the winning end of matches or fighting European stalwarts like Otto Wanz and "L'Aristocrat Du Catch" Rene Lasartesse to time limit draws and disqualification finishes. His eventual match with Roland Bock, though, was a different matter entirely.

Bock was the promoter for the entire tour, and was seemingly, one way or another, either aggrieved by Inoki, or intended to save face against a foreign champion in his home promotion and home country, and refused to sell any of Inoki's offence. As the match went on, Bock worked stiffer and stiffer with every strike, out-grappling his opponent at every turn, even forcing the father of NJPW to resort to the infamous crab-walk leg kicks he utilised against Muhammad Ali. While against many opponents, Antonio Inoki would have been able to hold his own, or to force a hold and secure a decision, he was no match for the skills, nor the bulk and terrifying presence of an embittered and bloodied Roland Bock. At the end of a lengthy match, Inoki had been beaten, dragged and thrown around the ring by a superior pure wrestler, and Bock was awarded the win on a judges' decision. Allegedly, Karl Gotch - one of Inoki's mentors - had warned Inoki that he couldn't take Bock if things turned to a shoot.

Inoki was rarely defeated - his only two other singles losses in 1978 coming at the hands of Andre The Giant and WWF Champion Bob Backlund, both by count-out - so a decisive beating at the hands of a relative unknown sent shockwaves through the Japanese wrestling press, particularly when, to the embarrassment of Inoki, the match was aired on Japanese television. Whatever the intended result had been, and whatever ultimately transpired between the two wrestlers, Inoki and NJPW were able to rely on their unmatched ability to make lemonade from life's lemons, and in 1981 they brought Roland Bock to Japan in the hope of building to a hotly anticipated rematch on Antonio Inoki's home soil. By the time he reached Japan, Bock had been slowed down and hampered considerably as the result of injuries suffered in a car accident, and he couldn't match the speed, power or intensity of his work in Europe. He was protected with a series of matches that rarely clocked in at more than five matches, or in tag team situations where his partner could do most of the work - in one instance, teaming with Stan Hansen in perhaps the manliest tag team in recorded history.

Bock wrestled his final recorded match, against Inoki, in 1982, the main event of that year's New Year Super Fight at Korakuen Hall - a card that also featured one of the critically lauded Tiger Mask vs. Dynamite Kid encounters, a WWF Title defence for Bob Backlund against Tatsumi Fujinami, and a brief but compelling catch wrestling exhibition between Yoshiaki Fujiwara and Karl Gotch.

But who was Roland Bock, to be able to boss around and bully Antonio Inoki, to limp his way into a featured NJPW main event, and to become a cult gamer favourite as a massively overpowered character in various iterations of the Fire Pro Wrestling series?

Roland Bock was born into crushing poverty, in 1944, to a backdrop of the bombing raids of Stuttgart. His first home was a badly bomb-damaged apartment with missing walls and windows, his first memory was of his mother throwing herself on top of him during an Allied raid. In the first two years of his life, his home neighbourhood of Feuerbach and nearby districts suffered more than 300 deaths and almost a thousand injuries, many of them foreign forced labourers, the remainder ordinary working class Germans like Roland Bock and his family. The end of war brought no succour; the young Bock was a victim of horrific abuse - his parents divorced after Roland's father attempted to drown him in the family bathtub, his mother routinely beat him with whips and wooden spoons, and his schoolteachers with bamboo canes. Worst of all was Bock's grandfather, a drunken gravedigger who brutally beat his grandson, and locked him in a cold, dark basement, leaving psychological scars that remained well into Bock's adult life.

Like so many children born into the reality of post-war Germany, Roland Bock's personal trauma intertwined with a broader reckoning, a period of emerging blinking into the light after a long national nightmare - looking at the faces of your teachers, doctors, even your parents and grandparents, and wondering what they did during the war, whether they had been members of the Nazi Party, and what horrors had been committed at their hand; and, as a result, what possible moral authority they could lay claim to. That generational tension created masterful works of art, music and cinema, but also countless broken homes, broken hearts, and acts of political extremism and terror. For Roland Bock, it pushed him further into Stuttgart's seedy underbelly, rubbing shoulders with petty criminals, prostitutes and pimps, and with members of the increasingly criminalised and ostracised West German Communist Party. But it also led him to sport, one of the few potential escapes, then as now, from a life of poverty.

The young Roland Bock turned out to be as good with a javelin or on the 100 metre track as he was at fighting on the streets of Stuttgart, but it was a wrestling lesson with his physically abusive Physical Education and Music teacher that revealed his future path. After grappling with fellow students, Bock challenged his teacher to meet him on the mat, and forced him to the floor, compressing his chest until he couldn't breathe. The teacher never laid a hand on Roland Bock again, and Bock had found his calling.

By 1968, Roland Bock was representing West Germany in the Mexico Olympics, but only finished eleventh, blaming his nerves, and being insufficiently prepared for the challenge of wrestling at a far higher altitude than he was used to. Two years later, he crossed the Wall to East Berlin, and won Gold in the 1970 European Wrestling Championships, competing in Greco-Roman in the 100kg+ weight division. 

Heralded as the future standard-bearer for German wrestling, Bock's amateur career was impressive, but short-lived. He was forced to miss the 1972 Munich Olympics thanks to a gastrointestinal illness, and when the German Wrestling Association tried to force him to compete regardless, his ensuing tirade on the team bus was enough to get him barred from competition for two years. By missing Munich, Bock missed out on a chance to compete against future AWA super-heavyweight wrestler Chris Taylor.

In truth, while Greco-Roman and freestyle wrestling were all Bock had ever truly excelled at, he was ready to walk away. He resented the treatment of wrestlers by the German Wrestling Association, who he accused of plying him with pills and steroids, and of mistreating their wrestlers, especially compared to the red carpet treatment he witnessed laid out for his counterparts behind the Iron Curtain. 

Although Roland Bock had, at the behest of his stepfather - perhaps the one positive influence on his young life - taken an apprenticeship with a local bank, he didn't see himself in a shirt and tie for the rest of his life, and while he had even worked as a P.E. and art teacher during his early amateur wrestling days, he didn't see many career prospects in the ordinary working world, and turned to professional wrestling. It wasn't his first encounter with the sport - in 1964, he had happened across a carnival wrestling booth, with the requisite challenge-all-comers act, but soon realised that the only people being picked to face the carnival wrestler were all audience plants in on the con. He made enough of a fuss when stepping up to be given a shot, and - being an Olympic wrestling prospect - threw the poor sap in a matter of seconds, pocketing his twenty Marks and being told in no uncertain terms to leave.

This time, however, would be a slightly more measured introduction to what in much of West Germany was still largely called "Catch", rather than Berufs Ringkampfe, or Professional Wrestling. That distinction remained important for Roland Bock for the remainder of his career, similar to how many present-day fans make the distinction between “professional wrestling” and the neologism “sports entertainment”. Bock's training was brief, and covered only the absolute basics - he was taught how to bump, and how to run the ropes, two things he would never be particularly keen on doing during his actual career. In his first match, Bock demolished his opponent in a matter of seconds, and was read the riot act by the promoter, who explained that audiences expected a show, and that he needed to drag things out and make them entertaining. In time, Bock would come to learn showmanship, selling, and audience interaction. While - as anyone who's seen the Inoki match can attest - he never grew comfortable cooperating with opponents, or allowing any wrestler to get one over on him that couldn't manage it for real, he grew fascinated by how wrestlers could control an audience and influence their reactions. In time, he became a more conventional professional wrestler.

That is until he was approached by Gustl Kaiser, whose own wrestling career began way back in the early 1930s, but ended abruptly thanks to the outbreak of World War 2 - he went on to far greater success as a promoter, and it was in that capacity that he encountered Roland Bock. Kaiser believed that wrestling should be more legitimate and believable than the farce or "affentheater" (literally, "ape theatre") that he believed professional wrestling had become, and in Bock he found a kindred spirit. Working for Kaiser, Bock downplayed his showmanship and amped up his Greco-Roman and legitimate freestyle skills, and quickly earned the respect of wrestlers and audiences. 

In a sign of what was to come against Antonio Inoki, one of Bock's final matches for Kaiser was against George Gordienko, a superb Canadian wrestler forced into a peripatetic, wandering existence of wrestling all over the world after being deported from the United States for disseminating Communist literature. Gordienko was in his late 40s, and in spite of his exile from the US, could boast of a long career with matches against the likes of Lou Thesz, Stu Hart, Billy Robinson, Peter Maivia, World of Sport standout Tibor Szakacs, "Judo" Al Hayes, Canadian strongman Jean Baillargeon, key Antonio Inoki ally Toyonobori, Dusty Rhodes, Andre The Giant, Dory Funk Jr., Jack Brisco and, in what must be a rare claim indeed, both Kendos Nagasaki - competing against Kazuo Sakurada in his version of the gimmick for Stampede Wrestling, and against Peter Thornley under his Japanese "Mr. Guillotine" persona. Little did Gordienko know, however, that his match with Roland Bock would be his last. Both men worked stiff, and gave little room for the other to get in any offense, and as the match wore on, Bock began to feel that the older man had it out for him. In his defence, Bock targeted Gordienko's leg, tying it up in a series of tight submission holds, and inadvertently breaking his ankle, bringing Gordienko's career to an abrupt end. 

Visiting his former opponent in hospital, Bock learned that Gustl Kaiser had put Gordienko up to the task of humbling and humiliating him, in the hope that it would bring him into line and make him easier to work with. If anything, it had the opposite effect, and Bock walked out on Kaiser to go it alone.

Roland Bock wanted to promote his own shows, feeling he could do better than the competition, and with himself as the featured star. While Kaiser wanted wrestling to be believable to a point, Bock wanted to take that idea even further, and what he saw from NJPW led him to believe they would be the perfect promotion to partner with. Coming off the back of Antonio Inoki's bout with Muhammad Ali, he would book Inoki in a series of bouts with fighters from other disciplines, before ultimately vanquishing him himself at the tour's climax.

Over the course of Bock's Catch Europa Tournament, Inoki faced a familiar foe in judoka Willem Ruska - who had already wrestled in New Japan - but also wrestled the Austrian second-generation Olympic wrestler Eugen Wiesberger Jr., Bock's fellow 1968 Olympian Wilfried Dietrich, and former European Heavyweight Boxing Champion Karl Mildenberger. The cards were bolstered by other NJPW standouts like Yoshiaki Fujiwara, and by great European touring wrestlers like Mile Zrno, Rene Lasartesse and Pete Roberts. On days that he wasn't facing Antonio Inoki, Willem Ruska faced Austrian Olympic judoka Klaus Wallas in "Judo Jacket" matches. 

The mixture of experienced hands and relative newcomers with laudable backgrounds in legitimate combat sports must have appealed to Antonio Inoki, and feels both historically and geographically out of sync with wrestling as a whole - here, in a few shows in Germany, were the suggestions, mere glimmers, of what would grow into the Japanese "shoot style" phenomenon of the 1990s. Could it be that what is widely considered a uniquely Japanese approach to professional wrestling had unrecognised roots laid down in Western Europe?

Roland Bock's vision certainly aligned well with what was to come, and he would not have looked out of place had he been able to wrestle a decade or so later, competing in the likes of the UWFi, Fighting Network RINGS, or PWFG, but there was a germ of shoot style growing in Europe all along. Karl Gotch, the spiritual forebear of NJPW and the entire shoot-fighting concept, was a Belgian who honed his craft in Germany, and was prone to be just as uncooperative as Bock ever was. Akira Maeda's Fighting Network RINGS featured a substantial European roster, mostly from the Netherlands. Chris Dolman, one of the standouts of RINGS' Dutch contingent, was so impressed by the promise of Inoki's Different Styles Fights with Willem Ruska in NJPW that, in 1981, he hosted a full-contact "modern Pankration" tournament in Amsterdam, more than a decade before Pancrase or the UFC, won by a bodyguard of infamous Dutch drug lord Klaas Bruinsma. RINGS would, in time, expand to include a Dutch offshoot. Clearly, there was something in the water. In 1987, Chris Dolman even had a worked shoot match with legendary British strongman and shot putter Geoff Capes! 

The notion of “European Shoot Style” may all be something of a fanciful exaggeration, but it's an interesting exercise in the imagined futures that wrestling presents, to think that there was a convergent evolution of shoot-style wrestling and hybrid fighting arts in the European underground just as that ball started rolling in Japan, if only the right promoter could get behind it. Unfortunately, Roland Bock turned out not to be that promoter. While thousands of people came to see the Catch Europa tournament, he had booked venues that would have held thousands more, and the fee for Antonio Inoki was swallowing most of his profits. And what of that match with Inoki? In Bock's retelling, he took just as much of a beating as Inoki, and the judge's decision came about because Inoki was the one refusing to do business, unwilling to lay down for the local promoter. 

And why, if Inoki wished to capitalise on the match, did it take almost two years for him to bring Bock to Japan? That one, at least, we can answer. Catch Europa had been a disaster, and Bock was left owing millions of Marks to countless business partners. As a result, he was sentenced to prison for three years, and got out early on good behaviour. And the money he made from the rematch in Japan? Hidden away in a Hong Kong bank account, Bock claimed to have forgotten where it was and, caught out by the taxman, found himself back in the slammer.

Out of prison, Roland Bock returned to promoting wrestling, and attempted to remain the main attraction even though he was physically broken down and barely capable of a conventional wrestling match. So it wouldn't be a conventional wrestling match. Bolstering his cards with bloody brawls and publicity stunts that couldn't be further removed from the shoot-style realism he once espoused - he once staged a car crash between two feuding wrestlers - Roland Bock's headline act would be straight out of the carnival sideshows he once derided; he was going to wrestle a bear (but only after having initially dismissed the idea of wrestling an orangutan). He toured his newfound wrestling bear, somehow leased from Stuttgart Zoo, around circuses and carnivals, and finally secured a booking on ZDF, one of the biggest TV channels in Germany. In the middle of the Sportstudio set, two of Roland Bock's wrestlers - encouraged by Bock to go all out - worked a violent, vicious match that saw one dripping blood all over the studio, to the disgust of the audience, the network, and the hosts; not least of all because of the worry that the scent of blood might drive the bear mad. Bock never got to wrestle the bear on TV, so instead he took to wrestling bulls in the hopes of getting the photos in the newspaper, but audiences were already tiring of his antics.

One of Bock's most loyal wrestlers throughout his promotional career was Wolfgang Saturski, who passed away in July of this year. His career spanned from the '50s to the '80s, a third-generation competitor even in those early days, his grandfather having competed in Germany and Switzerland in the '20s and '30s, before world events ultimately put a stop to that. Perhaps most notably, he competed against Fritz Kley, a former contortionist nicknamed the "Human Eel" who was brought to the United States by that great wrestling eccentric, freak-finder and securer of European talent for the American audience, Jack Pfefer. Saturski earned his keep for Bock when on a tour with Prince Wilhelm Von Homburg.

Well now, there's a name that probably warrants a whole biography of his own one day. Real name Norbert Grupe, "Von Homburg" was a former professional boxer, so fit the bill for Bock's old preference for legitimate athletes, but in all other respects, was an even more volatile personality than Bock himself. Before Grupe began boxing professionally, he had worked as a professional wrestler, teaming with his father Richard first as The Vikings, and then as the cape-clad, monocle-wearing Von Homburg Brothers. It was the 1950s and early '60s; wrestling was replete with evil cartoon Nazis, the Von Erichs, Baron Von Raschke, and Karl Von Hess were all on the scene. But while most were opportunistic gimmicks cashing in on world events - and Von Hess was actually a decorated American WW2 serviceman - the Von Homburgs had a dubious boast that few other wrestlers could match. Unlike most “Nazi” wrestlers who donned the garb for easy heat and a healthy payday, Richard Von Homburg held the dubious distinction of having been an actual concentration camp guard. Norbert Grupe would go on to fleeting fame as a Die Hard henchman and as Viggo The Carpathian in Ghostbusters 2, but for now, he was the alcoholic, criminal son of a former Nazi, and he was proving very difficult for Roland Bock to deal with.

That's where Wolfgang Saturski stepped in. Angered by Grupe - and, frankly, one can imagine any number of reasons why that might be - at the tail end of a difficult tour, Saturski threw the former boxer to the ground, cracking his head open on the shower floor. It was only reluctantly that Roland Bock intervened, preventing Saturski from choking out the man who had been a pain in both of their necks for much of the tour. Grupe disappeared into the St. Pauli night, vowing revenge, while the ring announcer was forced to tell the audience that this particular bout had been decided behind closed doors. Bock posted security around the venue, but Grupe never returned.
 

Even as wrestling passed him by, Roland Bock had an eye for the outlandish, and any opportunity for self-promotion. He organised topless women's boxing events, selling out 1000 seater arenas, but drawing the understandable ire of women's rights movements all over Germany. He opened restaurants and guesthouses, acted alongside Gerard Depardieu, and transformed a disused refrigerator factory in Ludwigsburg into the "Rockfabrik Ludwigsburg" heavy metal venue, where he promoted gigs by the likes of Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, Iron Maiden, and even Queen. Following his second stint in prison, he left Germany, buying an old bullring in Gran Canaria to convert into a disco, before settling in Thailand, where he ran a guesthouse, exported local art, and organised open-air film screenings. After contracting SARS, he returned to Germany. In 2021, he talked of promoting a Live Aid-style relief concert for the victims of Coronavirus, but he did so from the small, single bedroom apartment in Stuttgart where he now lives, aged 78, with little to show from his wild and varied career. He now makes a living selling shoe trees. Also in 2021, Bock collaborated with author Andreas Matlé on an authorised biography - in an interview with Die Zeit, Bock expressed hope that the book would be translated into Japanese, so that Antonio Inoki could read it.

In Matlé's book, Bock is an unsympathetic figure. He criticises American wrestling as "stuntmen and artists on speed", "with arms pumped up like Popeye" in comparison to the serious presentation of German wrestling, and mocks how much time American wrestlers spend grunting and shouting into microphones, before a few scant minutes of "Rocky Horror Picture Show wrestling". He is no kinder to modern German wrestling, deriding it as "men with full tattoos and quirky hipster beards" who can do spectacular things with ladders, tables, chairs, and rubbish bins, but would be lost when asked to perform a simple wrestling hold.

While Roland Bock blamed other promoters for the decline in German wrestling, relying too heavily on gimmick matches, fat and aging wrestlers, and a lack of young talent and believable wrestling holds, the majority of those same promoters pointed the finger solely at Roland Bock. It was he who had wrestling kicked off television. They even gave his business model a name - "Blut, Busen und Bär"; Blood, Boobs and Bears. Worse still, for his role in burying the German wrestling business, they nicknamed him, "das Totengräber des Catchens"; the gravedigger of wrestling. For the man who bore the psychological scars of abuse at the hands of his gravedigger grandfather, there could be no worse insult.

Patreon Note:
This post first appeared on my Patreon. Sign up now, to ensure access at least one week before anyone else, as well as future perks still to be announced! Every penny earned through Patreon will go towards supporting the upkeep of this website, as well as research materials to produce more and better detailed content. Your support is very much appreciated!

Comments (2)

Newest First           Oldest First           Newest First                      Most Liked           Least Liked                    

Preview Post Comment…

Michael Selenkowitsch 11 months ago · 0 Likes

  

Still I don’t understand why some people speak good about him..he managed to destroy the business in Germany in a short term.. it took us years to regain trust of the public, press and halls in so many cities in Germany for professional wrestling. He was a good amateur wrestler but far away from Wilfried Dietrich and never a good professional wrestler.

Cameren Lee 2 years ago · 0 Likes

  

There were plans to bring Bock to Japan for a rematch in the summer of 1979, but he got in that car accident, and NJPW had to book Singh on short notice. (Such short notice, in fact, that the posters briefly advertised a backup Inoki vs. Sakaguchi match.)

Previous

 

 

[David Mantell]

22 minutes ago, David Mantell said:

"the majority of those same promoters pointed the finger solely at Roland Bock. It was he who had wrestling kicked off television."

What television was that?

Prior to 1989 and Catch Up, there was

• Bock versus the bear (plus JIP tag warm-up) on ZDF Sportstudio,
• The Bock/Inoki and other 1978 Inoki bouts filmed by Japanese promoters for their own use on Japanese TV.
• Something on SWR which contained at least 4 different clips of Roland Bock's 70s matches as 16mm colour film inserts
• the 1986 one off RTL special headlined by the six man tag Austria Vs USA with "USA" consisting of Haystacks, Kirk and Quinn with Stax hilariously doing his "us Americans" promo in a Manchester accent.
• various news magazine features and earlier cinema newsreel items

Otherwise Germany/Austria had home video of varying quality instead of TV from 1979 onwards.

[David Mantell]

On 6/10/2025 at 10:08 AM, David Mantell said:

VdB on a rare trip across the Iron curtain to Hungary - date uncertain but I'd say it's the early 80s.  Mamdouh Farag (black trunks), future national hero babyface of Egypt and scourge of WWE's Arabic language content division, during his German days Vs British wrestler Ray Glendening (red one arm leotard), a journeyman who occasionally popped up on World Of Sport.  

There's a couple of seconds Ringerparade at the start. Farag is bigger and stronger and slow motion ragdolls Glendening about. He powers out of a full nelson and lifts him and puts him on the ring apron while held in a front chancery.  Farag is also the natural babyface, cheered all the way for his actions. He finishes Ray with a dangerous looking piledriver/powerbomb hybrid which scores him a KNOCKOUT!!!

The clip is just 6.5 mins long and has been edited by someone doing acid who wanted to make the viewer trip out too, hence lots of silly effects.

Promoter was Arpad Weber whom we saw in action two posts above.

From the same Hungarian show, Battle Royal featuring Egypt's hero Mamdouh Farag, France's answer to JYD Mammouth Siki, Crusher Verdu, Inca Viracocha, Germaz(?), Monsieur Marcel Montreal, Martinez from Colombia, Charley Verhulst, Paco Ramirez, Ray Glendening, and Bad Bull.among others. Some fairly syruppy gospel music is playing, not a million miles removed from Brother Love's theme.

A loud horn instead of a bell signifies the start of the bout.  People are gradually eliminated until we are down to Siki and Verdu. the latter of whom gets the win.,

[David Mantell]

Short snippet of Georg "Schurli" Blemenschutz in action - once again teaming with Caswell Martin to take on Indio Guajaro, but the other half this time is not Judd Harris but instead "Rasputin 1" who is neither Johnny Howard/Sean Doyle nor the Raspoutine we saw on the French Catch thread but instead appears to be none other than Wild Angus

I intend to investigate that "Schurli Oh Schurli" piece of music and find out if it is actually about Blemenschutz or not.

 

[David Mantell]

20 minutes ago, David Mantell said:

I intend to investigate that "Schurli Oh Schurli" piece of music and find out if it is actually about Blemenschutz or not.

https://www.discogs.com/release/9707964-Häppy-Pepi-und-Bruno-Schatzer-Schurli-oh-Schurli-Mitzidu-bist-spitze?srsltid=AfmBOorAuPTM6SK-YLqrPdGf-n60H0GAwlVAFKneJCQOnD4D_B4h_LaO

*************************

Also some information on the German Wikipedia page about his hometown, 

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simmering

"Georg Blemenschütz (* 25 December 1914, † 15 November 1990): Wrestler, sports organizer, picture and antiques collector; the four-time world and six-time European champion contested more than 600 professional fights, of which he won 348. [ 24 ] His grave was taken into the care of the City of Vienna in 2020. [ 25 ]"

†**************†******************

https://www.geschichtewiki.wien.gv.at/Georg_Blemenschütz

Quote

Georg Blemenschütz

Jump to: navigation , search

Personal data

Basic data

funeral

Picture

Addresses

persons

Organizations

Awards

namesake

Memory

See also

QR code

Personal name Blemenschütz, Georg

Alternative name form 

title 

Gender masculine

Vienna History Wiki ID ᵖ 69117

GND ID ᵖ 1247305007

Wikidata ID ᵖ 

birth date December 25, 1914

Place of birth 

Date of death November 15, 1990

Place of death 

Profession wrestler

Party affiliation 

Event 

Estate/Pre-inheritance 

See also ᵖ 

Resource ᵖ 

export RDF (Resource Description Framework) export RDF

Research 

Last modified on 28.07.2025 by WIEN1.lanm08tau

Georg Blemenschütz, December 25, 1914, November 15, 1990, wrestler, sports organizer.

 

biography

Georg Blemenschütz was already a successful amateur wrestler in the 1930s.

 

After the Second World War, he turned professional. His career initially took him to England, Italy, Belgium, France, and Germany before he returned to Vienna, where professional wrestling tournaments lasting several weeks were held every summer at the Vienna Ice Skating Club's square on the Heumarkt . A mixture of sport, acrobatics, and elements of comedy, the matches were primarily intended to entertain the audience and soon became an attraction that thrilled the masses. When the international wrestling elite visited Vienna from June to August, a festival atmosphere prevailed at the Heumarkt. Around 40 to 60 fight evenings were held each summer, attended by up to 15,000 people daily. From 1957 onwards, Georg Blemenschütz not only acted as an active athlete but also promoted the event. Georg Blemenschütz was THE audience favorite, with cheers like "Schurli, drink your eyes out. Let the other one cry" or "Rip open your chest and shit in your heart" also finding their way into the international media.

 

In 1963, Blemenschütz was involved in a pub brawl. The allegations made in subsequent court proceedings that the fights at the Heumarkt had been rigged were neither confirmed nor refuted.

 

None of this diminished Blemenschütz's popularity, but rather marked the beginning of a particularly successful era of freestyle wrestling in Vienna. Georg "Schurli" Blemenschütz continued to compete in the ring until 1981. The "Strangler" had become the "Mummy of the Heumarkt." Otto Wanz succeeded Blemenschütz as organizer of the Heumarkt tournaments. Blemenschütz retired to private life and devoted himself to his collection of paintings and antiques, with a particular interest in the Biedermeier period.

 

The four-time world and six-time European champion fought more than 600 professional fights, of which he won 348.

 

literature

The wrestler was a collector. In: Der Standard, November 19, 1990

Genickbruck.com: Georg Blemenschütz

"The legendary freestyle wrestlers from Heumarkt." In: Kronen Zeitung, July 25, 2025

"Rip open your chest and shit in your heart." In: Wiener Zeitung, May 29, 2020

House of History Austria: Wrestling