German catch

[David Mantell]

12 hours ago, PeteF3 said:

Professionally filmed. 

Interesting. I wonder when that first started in that case. How much foresight about the home video market could there have been in 1979?

[ohtani's jacket]

2 hours ago, David Mantell said:

Why would a submission not be similarly effective?

It could be, but that's not how they work the final round. They're clearing searching for a pinfall. I don't think there was a lot of counter wrestling either, for that matter. They did some armwork, but aside from a few things that Taylor may have done, there wasn't a lot of undressing of holds. Owen was doing his favored kip up spots. There was a lot of buggering around with the ref. It was typical houses show stuff. I like the match overall, though. 

[David Mantell]

Kip up spots are themselves undressing a wrist lever which as I've said could be developed into something more substantial. 

There were only one or two bits with McMichael, similar in character as I said to his banter with Faulkner in their matches. 

It didn't get overbearing like Didier Gapp in the tag match constantly trying to be the "humourless" jumped-up petty official and grab all the attention with his antics to the point where he was the de facto heel in the match.

[PeteF3]

8 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

It could be, but that's not how they work the final round. They're clearing searching for a pinfall. 

It should also be noted that Strongbow's bump to the floor against Wanz would 100% be cause for a countout/KO finish, as it was a bigger bump than most bumps to the floor on WoS outside of maybe some Clive Myers matches. Yet he got back into the ring and was pinned with a suplex soon after. Maybe one could argue that that was the American Strongbow's influence but I doubt he was the one dictating the finishes.

[David Mantell]

5 hours ago, PeteF3 said:

It should also be noted that Strongbow's bump to the floor against Wanz would 100% be cause for a countout/KO finish, as it was a bigger bump than most bumps to the floor on WoS outside of maybe some Clive Myers matches. Yet he got back into the ring and was pinned with a suplex soon after. Maybe one could argue that that was the American Strongbow's influence but I doubt he was the one dictating the finishes.

That was a common finish across Europe.  A babyface/blue-eye wrestler valiantly battles back from near knockout only to be picked off by the heel for the deciding or only required fall or submission the moment they are fully off the canvas/in the ring.  Rocco Vs Collins on British TV 1988 and Kendo Nagasaki's world title win over Wayne Bridges are both slight variants on this. 

[PeteF3]

Strongbow was not the babyface, though.

[David Mantell]

4 hours ago, PeteF3 said:

Strongbow was not the babyface, though.

It can work the other way. Not as often though.

(Strongbow as a heel sounds interesting. Do tell on -or post he video.)

[David Mantell]

On 10/7/2024 at 12:26 AM, dawho5 said:

This is actually the most technical I've ever seen a Moondog.  Certainly a fun match, but I wasn't a huge fan of the transition to Moondog control.  What was Wright thinking going for a victory roll with the ropes right there? 

Also, for a guy like Wright these are the kinds of matches that would make him a little easier to get behind in a "big guy" promotion.  He's a smallish technician, and if he only ever beats the guys his size who fight similarly he won't get near as much respect.  If he can translate his technical skill into a way to beat a big bruiser despite getting beat up, he is at least a threat to everyone he may face.

I think he knew that Colley was useless at counters so had to be allowed his section of the bout to do his thing. 

(There were some very crude attempts at counterwrestling in JCP/WCW in the late 80s/early 90s from some of the better workers, such as the go behind standing hammerlock reversed into another go behind standing hammerlock multiple times, and a cycle of reversion involving headscissors to side headlock to headscissors to side headlock. This, combined with some amateur freestyle sparring, appears to be was what passed for scientific wrestling in Southern US rasslin'.  Or so it seems from a load of old 1987 JCP WCW @ Techwood Drive  I've been watching the past 24h)

Also Steve does win and he was indeed a pretty successful main event blue eye/babyface in Germany/Austria and had been for many years by this point. So I think they were doing with him already what you are suggesting.

[David Mantell]

 

Reslo Goes To Graz!  And just to prove it, here's Orig Williams speaking Welsh standing next to a CWA ring!

Just before Xmas '91 while their own ring was on loan to WCW, the Reslo crew plus an S4C Outside Broadcast unit took the trip eastwards over the Severn bridge, across the Saesnag land and hopped on a North Sea Ferry to catch some CWA footage of their own. For advertisers' money's worth, they came back with TV footage of a bout between two North Americans, Rambo who we all know about and an aging flabby ex WWFer Ken Patera.  Despite looking like a shopworn version of his late 80s WWF and AWA babyface runs and presumably a familiar figure to German WWF fans, Patera is the heel here against champion Rambo, conqueror of the hated Bull Power.  He breaks Euro rules especially ignoring round ends a la Wild Angus Vs King Kong Kirk in their World of Sport match in the early to mid 80s. In the end Rambo prevails by reversing a suplex attempt for the pin.

I wonder if Patera had previous in the CWA/IBV? His strongman contest antics would have been right up Otto Wanz's street!

@JNLister The audio is badly out of sync so the last few minutes are played out to a soundtrack of the Reslo theme, a silence and Messrs Williams, Fon and Parry chatting in Welsh about Americans at the tournament and upcoming bouts between Johnny Saint/Kid McCoy and Danny Collins Vs Robbie Hagen. You might want to repair it.

[JNLister]

Thanks for letting me know. Unfortunately this was already present in the source (a longer YT video of multiple episodes) which was the only place I could find this match. I've updated the title and description appropriately.

[dawho5]

On 10/6/2024 at 10:38 AM, David Mantell said:

Now THIS is more like it! Two partners from the earlier match going at it in a scientific bout without a heel referee constantly trying to upstage.  Mick McMichael does do one or two bits of his old mock cantankerousness from his bouts with Vic Faulkner - witness him complaining of a hurt shoulder after Owen uses him for leverage to spin out of an armbar (actually the young Owen reminds me of a heavier version of Vic) but unlike Didier Gapp he basically falls into line to allow Hart and Taylor to have a good scientific bout, and all three men leave as good pals after a time limit draw. Classy stuff, the best I've seen in a German/Austrian ring.

Really fun match that has a lot of comedy early on.  I kind of get the idea of each man going for pinfalls in the final round, as they are both well aware that they don't have much time to put the match away.  That arm trap abdominal stretch variation says to me Owen spent some time in Mexico before this as that seemed like a very lucha flavored submission.

[David Mantell]

5 hours ago, dawho5 said:

Really fun match that has a lot of comedy early on.  I kind of get the idea of each man going for pinfalls in the final round, as they are both well aware that they don't have much time to put the match away.  That arm trap abdominal stretch variation says to me Owen spent some time in Mexico before this as that seemed like a very lucha flavored submission.

I didn't see any comedy apart from a couple of bits involving McMichael where Owen leans on him to do a Spinout and Taylor lands on him. (McMichaels was grumpy but accepting, Didier Gapp would have been handing out yellow and red cards left, right and centre.) The rest was good solid technical work.

Owen did spend time in Mexico but I believe that was later (him and Benoit under masks as the Blue Blazer and the Pegasus Kid.) The hold you mentioned was done a lot in Britain in the 50s/60s/70s/80s by Hungarian wrestler Zoltan Boscik.  I think I posted a bout of him Vs Jim Breaks to the British thread. Kent Walton used to call that move of Zolly's the Three In One hold.

On the WWF's WrestleFest 88 Milwaukee stadium show, during the Demolition Vs Bulldogs match, Dynamite Kid does the Zolly 3 in 1 to Smash (only for Ax to come to the rescue with Mr Fuji's cane.)

[dawho5]

Owen did one where he got the arm bar, turned it into a kind of hammerlock and used the leg to secure that one before going at the other arm like that.  Perhaps a variation on the original?

[David Mantell]

2 hours ago, dawho5 said:

Owen did one where he got the arm bar, turned it into a kind of hammerlock and used the leg to secure that one before going at the other arm like that.  Perhaps a variation on the original?

Do you mean at 16:45 where Owen scissors one arm to keep it out of the way (and prevent himself being cross buttock thrown) while he gets on the rest of the abdominal stretch?

[David Mantell]

On 10/8/2024 at 4:55 AM, David Mantell said:

That was a common finish across Europe.  A babyface/blue-eye wrestler valiantly battles back from near knockout only to be picked off by the heel for the deciding or only required fall or submission the moment they are fully off the canvas/in the ring.  Rocco Vs Collins on British TV 1988 and Kendo Nagasaki's world title win over Wayne Bridges are both slight variants on this. 

See Bobby Barnes Vs Mick McMichael from March 1972 on the Britain thread.

[David Mantell]

Owen, Tony and Mick reunited to deal with an enemy heel. Not sure why Scott Hall was on his own, he's not really enough of a monster to be the one versus two. He still has his moustache from the AWA/Florida, he's still a bit young for that look, the cowboy gimmick makes him look less (American) Blackjack Mulligan, more Barry Windham as Blackjack Mulligan Junior.  

No reason why Tony should be flying an Austrian flag, he's as British as boiled beef! Owen has fun running rings round Hall with his technical skills -  Hall was an AWA man so didn't get the bad reviews from PWI for being a typical 80s power wrestler that a WWF contemporary would have got. Whenever Hall takes over, it becomes more of an 80s American match.  Owen gets in a nice flying bodypress, shades of his Blue Blazer phase.  McMichael gets tough with his friends, giving Tony a yellow card for a double team. Hall follows in on an Owen knee injury - apart from being illegal he could just have let Owen be counted down. Maybe he didn't get these Euro rules.Hall gets a low kick on StClair behind McMichael's back and behind his own back in a rather camp casual way that was rather amusing rather than heat inducing.  Owen has to be carried away limping but StClair is tagged in so the last few minutes are a singles bout. Hall gets the win with a DDT, he had already shown American indie audiences his new heel attitude the previous year and by 1991 would be Diamond Studd in WCW.

Yes I'll say it, both the singles title challengers from Summerslam 94 are together in this ring. Razor and the Rocket RIP (and Mick too).

 

[ohtani's jacket]

Bull Power vs. Otto Wanz (8/21/87)

I love Bull Power vs. Otto Wanz matches. They're such amazing slugfests. In fact, it may be my favorite Vader match up of all time. Sometimes I wonder how he got away with slugging the boss so hard. This is a great fight. Wanz delivers a hell of a haymaker at the end, and they work a proper KO finish. This made me want to revisit the other Bull Power/Otto Wanz fights.  

[David Mantell]

On 8/11/2024 at 10:11 PM, David Mantell said:

Copying across @Jetlag's two 1970s clips:

 

Some more 1970s footage of Roland Bock in colour:

Also René Lasartesse Vs Antonio Inoki from November 1978

 

Plus a docu piece on Inoki Vs Wilfred Dietrich, apart from the amateur and training footage there is small venue footage of Inoki and photo stills of the big match:

These new clips are all on the same channel "2018 project" as the previous Bock clips.  The channel may want watching, I wonder what their source is?

[David Mantell]

And some more 70s Bock. I'd seen this clip listed before but assumed it was just Bock in Japan but have had a look at the ring and the decidedly Caucasian looking audience and now think it's Germany.

The ring in this - and come to that the Lasertasse Vs Inoki footage - looks a lot similar to the ring in the VDB single handheld CrappyCam footage of Hannover Sept 1980. Possibly this is what these show would look like if professionally shot like the IBV/CWA was.  (I'm guessing that the Inoki footage was a Japanese TV crew going over to Germany just like Reslo did 12 years later.

Warning:  HORRIBLE thrash metal soundtrack for the entire six minutes.

 

[David Mantell]

Oh yes and here is Laurent Bock (relation? alias?). wrestling in a TV Studio in Germany before doing an angle with a bear (don't worry he doesn't wrestle it, the critter was probably just a fan).

This show was NOT a wrestling show, just a general sports magazine show that did a wrestling feature in the studio one time. I think there is a similar snippet in the into to the  Lasertasse-Inoki clip. Having said that, their Studio Wrestling footage looks a lot more impressive than anything WTBS could manage at Techwood drive, never mind the other Southern US TV studio rasslin' shows. Not bad for beginners. @Jetlag you're German, do you recognise the show?

[Jetlag]

It was from Das Aktuelle Sportstudio, the top sports magazine in Germany at the time (or, well, the 'one' considering only like 3 TV channels existed at that point, I believe.)

Laurent is just a Japanese translation (pronounciation?) of Roland.

Bock was supposed to wrestle the bear on that show, but the two British wrestlers doing an exhibition, Danny Lynch and Pete Gurr, caused a minor scandal when Gurr started bleeding from Lynchs headbutts and the whole thing was cancelled. A rather infamous incident in the history of German wrestling because it cemented for wrestling to be kept off TV for years for being too violent.

 

[David Mantell]

3 hours ago, Jetlag said:

A rather infamous incident in the history of German wrestling because it cemented for wrestling to be kept off TV for years for being too violent.

Was there ever an actual German/Austrian wrestling TV Show pre-1990s or was it all just little features here and there and even they got banned?

[Jetlag]

No there wasn't. Though some German/Austrian footage was occasionally shown on Catch Up, a show that started around the late 80s and mainly showed NWA stuff from the US. One of the hosts of that show, Horst Brack, even had a mini-feud going on with Rene Lasartesse, culminating in the following:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTCBUfW9IZg

[David Mantell]

Fixed your tech probs there, Jetlag

Yeah, Catch Up was the show I had in mind when I said "pre 90s". Just turns out it started a little bit earlier than I thought. A contemporary of New Catch and mid period Reslo.

[ohtani's jacket]

Fit Finlay vs. Otto Wanz (8/10/90)

After watching Vader slug it out with Otto, I was interested to see what approach Finlay would take. It was more of a standard heel performance from Finlay. He bumped and sold for Otto in the beginning before chipping away at his legs and working him on the ground for a while. Nothing great. The finish was some BS with the heel ref whose name escapes me. Man, Finlay vs. Bull Power would have been interesting, especially if Vader threw a stray punch or two.