Why is America always assumed to be the centre of the wrestling universe?

[ohtani's jacket]

3 hours ago, David Mantell said:

Specifically?

I recall you're not a fan of no contest on a refused TKO (a less time consuming alternative to a 1-1 draw.)

DQ's were not seen as cheap finishes, they were seen as the heel disgracing him/herself by proving he/she couldn't cleanly compete.  Titles were changed on DQs.  MCs would shout " (X)  ... is DISQUALIFIED!" like an angry schoolteacher sentencing a pupil to punishment, and the heel would rant and rave at the injustice and humiliation.

There were all manner of awful finishes from injury stops to non-contests and DQs. I understand the reasoning behind the finishes, and I realize you can't have clean finishes to end every match. However, the bookers overdid it in WoS, and it became an easy out for not wanting one wrestler to go over another. I got my hands on an Alan Sargeant vs. Jon Cortez bout from the ITV archives that I was convinced was going to be an amazing bout since they're both outstanding workers, and after a handful of rounds they ended it with an injury finish. Call me bitter, but it was completely and utterly unnecessary and ruined what ought to have been a great match. This happened ad nauseum with British wrestling, to the point where paying huge amounts of money to obtain a match from the archives is a crapshoot. An absolute gamble. Some of the bouts I have are fantastic and some are utter disappointments, and a lot of that has to do with the booking.

This is unrelated to the topic at hand perhaps, but Japanese wrestling became very match orientated, particularly in the 80s and 90s, and I'm not convinced that British wrestling was always match focused. TV often showcased four-rounders of the most popular personalities. Title matches were edited. Many bouts were clipped to shreds in their original broadcasts. There were great matches, but that very much depended on the workers and not the booking, as far as I can tell.  

[ohtani's jacket]

1 hour ago, David Mantell said:

Pat Roach certainly was in the right period for having matches kinescoped - for example this one:  (at 16:20)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grOxF-sHVF0&t=980s

(it's not letting it embed for some reason, never mind)

He also made his UK TV debut in 1966 (against Billy Joyce) and had late 60s matches with Billy Robinson, Judo Al Hayes and Steve Veidor among others.

Max Crabtree got appointed "matchmaker" (booker) for Best/Wryton around 1975, just about the end of b/w kinescopes but at a time when ITV was still doing this with colour film copies (T.Rex famously appeared on the Bay City Rollers' "Shang A Lang" show in '75 performing "New York City - years later a rather weatherbeaten colour kinescope of this fell into the hands of Bolan's fanclub and got included as the "official promo" of the song on The Ultimate Video Collection in 1992.  The master tape copy eventually turned up as an extra on the DVD release of the 1977 Granada TV "Marc" show)

I'm still skeptical. Garfield's book was published in 1995, if I'm not mistaken. Roach talks about a friend in the TV industry. He got more involved in television once he started appearing in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet in '83 at a time when Crabtree was in charge. It's possible that Roach is referring to a period prior to the 80s, but from a collector's point of view it wouldn't really matter much unless it was 60s stuff or early 70s. I wouldn't be terribly thrilled to learn that easily available WoS was being sold to overseas stations, though that doesn't discredit any argument about British wrestling's reach. It(s just not terribly exciting. 

[David Mantell]

1 hour ago, ohtani's jacket said:

There were all manner of awful finishes from injury stops to non-contests and DQs. I understand the reasoning behind the finishes, and I realize you can't have clean finishes to end every match. However, the bookers overdid it in WoS, and it became an easy out for not wanting one wrestler to go over another. I got my hands on an Alan Sargeant vs. Jon Cortez bout from the ITV archives that I was convinced was going to be an amazing bout since they're both outstanding workers, and after a handful of rounds they ended it with an injury finish. Call me bitter, but it was completely and utterly unnecessary and ruined what ought to have been a great match. This happened ad nauseum with British wrestling, to the point where paying huge amounts of money to obtain a match from the archives is a crapshoot. An absolute gamble. Some of the bouts I have are fantastic and some are utter disappointments, and a lot of that has to do with the booking.

I honestly don't find the No Contest finish a problem if it's a good bout and it gets cut short that way

 

This still goes on in 2023 - earlier this year a Mountevans British title change was aborted on this finish:

 

Of course, this sportsmanly finish has a long history going back over a century - see John Olin refusing the World Heavyweight title after a TKO win over Joe Stecher in 1916 (only to then lose to Ed Lewis who laid claim to the title).

[David Mantell]

As for DQs, done the right way it can be very satisfying to see the heel sent packing in disgrace on a third public warning:

 

Current MC Laetitia Dixon-Allmark is particularly good at this - I have seen her lead All Star audiences in chants of "OUT! OUT! OUT!" at DQ'd and protesting heels.

[JRH]

I'm wondering, did British wrestling ever have a presence on home video back in the day? US wrestling had lots of home video releases for multiple promotions, but were there ever any "best of Big Daddy" or "Best of Giant Haystacks" type videos out there?

[David Mantell]

40 minutes ago, JRH said:

I'm wondering, did British wrestling ever have a presence on home video back in the day? US wrestling had lots of home video releases for multiple promotions, but were there ever any "best of Big Daddy" or "Best of Giant Haystacks" type videos out there?

It kicked in just as it was coming off TV.  There was a straight to video TV taping from Croydon in 1988 which came out in '89 as The Mick McManus World Of Wrestling with McManus and Lee Bamber in place of Kent Walson (and a whole different set of camera angles from TV tapings there in the past).  Then came clips of All Star ITV bouts from 1987-1988, compilations of Reslo (again with English commentary by Lee Bamber), at least one CWA tape of Otto Wanz's retirement match with Bull Power (Vader) with English commentary and quite a few Brits on the bill including Tony StClair vs Giant Haystacks. 

The Crabtrees did their own straight to video effort in 1992 Battle of the Brits which years later got reissued as a two volume DVD series:

 

Also to top it off, Rumble Promotions in their original lifetime did a video in 1996 which has also been reissued on DVD.  Mainly notable for James Mason's coming of age moment winning a one night tournament for the World Middleweight title left vacant by Danny Collins:

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

 

This is of course quite distinct from the situation with the CWA in Germany/Austria where an intensive - and incredibly early - straight to video release programme was what they had INSTEAD of television.

[David Mantell]

Add finishes - bear in mind that a countout was called a Knockout and was actually considered a more prestigious and thorough way to win than two falls or submissions.  Titles would be changed and masked men made to unmask on a knockout.  In a 2/3 singles match it was two falls instantly, ditto in a one knockout tag match. 

In a two knockout tag match, it was one fall, the knocked out person had to retire from the match (and if under an unmask-if-lose vow would have to unmask) but their partner could contend for the remaining falls under handicap tag conditions.  The same rules applied to DQs in a two knockouts match (excpet that masked men could keep their mask on a DQ- titles changed on DQs certainly) leadling to a situation like this where a tag match got cut down to a singles match after the two guys in the ring got out of hand:

 

[ohtani's jacket]

A knockout is more prestigious than than two pinfalls or submissions? What are you on about? The number of matches that end because a wrestling took a spill over the ropes is astronomical. It would be one thing if one of the wrestlers forearm smashed the other guy to death, but 9 times out of 10 it's a hapless accident. It's a cheap way to declare a winner without a deciding pinfall or submission. They used to do it a lot with the younger guys or the lighter weights in catchweight bouts. They'd lose the bout but come out with a bit of shine from having taken a fall from the bigger or more established guy before the spill. 

[KinchStalker]

On 11/21/2023 at 7:07 PM, David Mantell said:

It didn't eradicate it but it started the shift away from it towards what Puroresu is more famous for. It began to Europify puro.

On 11/21/2023 at 7:29 PM, ohtani's jacket said:

I'm sorry, but Dory Funk Jr was already working title matches against Inoki and Baba before Gotch and Robinson came along, not to mention matches like Inoki vs Brisco and The Destroyer vs. Baba where if there was any heeling from the gaijin it was the same level of heeling you'd expect from any outsider entering a foreign territory. 

Gotch had some influence on strong style and the shoot style guys, but the Funks had just as much impact on the business in AJPW. In fact, the Funks getting over as babyfaces was a huge change in the wrestling culture at the time even if US brawling was still the primary style of match outside of title bouts. 

There's a grain of truth to OP's point, though I definitely wouldn't say that it Eurofied puro. Etsuji Koizumi wrote a couple years back that Gotch's 1961 matches with Michiaki Yoshimura were the first time that Japan had really seen a top-class technical match, not to mention that those matches are basically the reason Gotch even has a legacy. Rikidozan didn't invite him back after Gotch had toyed with him in their match, but they brought him back in 1966 (because they didn't want Tokyo Pro to get him first, since they had been worried Hiro Matsuda would join) and gave him full comp for his mid-tour injury, the gratitude for which led Gotch to take that one-year coaching job in 1968. And I won't dispute the importance of the IWE getting the Europeans to come in in the late 60s. Not just Robinson, but the light heavyweights as well; Isamu Teranishi took the now-standard back body drop "land on feet and counter" spot from Tony Charles. 

But again, as OJ says, the shift towards more technical matches wasn't exclusively due to linear European crosspollination. It was also influenced by the more straght-laced side of the American style. Matty Suzuki did an interview with Koji Miyamoto (G Spirits Vol. 58) where he recalled that, when Hiro Matsuda was going to be the ace of the IWE in 1967, he was planning to present a more technical product, which would have been more in his wheelhouse than the old JWA brawling style. Here's what he said.

"You know, it's just like the old TV show "Chambara", isn't it? They were like that, where the fighters were swinging their swords and cutting each other again and again, and that's the kind of wrestling that Matsuda wanted to do. Not the bloodshed and out-of-bounds brawls that Nippon Pro-Wrestling was good at, but rather matches that satisfied the audience only with wrestling offense and defense. The fundamental ideals of professional wrestling in this area were the same for both Mr. Yoshiwara and Mr. Matsuda, I thought."

What Matsuda had wanted to do was what Inoki ended up doing in his last couple years in the JWA, namely with the matches against Dory and Brisco. That first Dory match in particular was a watershed moment; puro aces had worked broadways with champions before, but none of them had worked a state-of-the-art technical match. Inoki openly acknowledged (excerpt from a 1995 book, posted on the blog of its author) that Matsuda was a big influence on him when they worked together during his excursion. To which you can absolutely point out that Matsuda picked up some stuff from Gotch. But I'd argue that is a bit different from the assertions being made. 

[David Mantell]

3 hours ago, ohtani's jacket said:

A knockout is more prestigious than than two pinfalls or submissions? What are you on about?

Check out the deciding fall of the Nagasaki/Quinn Vs StClair/Sands tag match I just posted.. Kendo gets Neil in the Kamikaze Crash (diving fireman's carry takedown) leaving Sands ironed out on the mat.  Referee counts him out to 10 on the mat.

That was called a Knock Out (as in "Two Falls, Two Submissions Or A Knockout Will Decide The Winner") and yes, it was considered a slightly more emphatic way to win than two falls/subs.  Quite a lot of KOs were out of the ring but they were considered definite because the knocked out opponent was pretty much destroyed by that point.

Aged 14 in 1988 I was FLABBERGASTED to learn that in America you could keep a title after falling victim to that. There was one KO artist in the WWF as I recall, the Beserker John Nord who specialized in knocking opponents to ringside for a countout after clotheslining them over the top rope.

Bear in mind that because of the no follow down rule in Britain (and France back then) you couldn't simply drape yourself across your opponent for a pin. You stood back while the ref started to count your opponent down and out. Like in boxing.

 

[David Mantell]

By the way there was another home video I forgot to mention. Ex wrestler turned independent promoter Jackie Pallo filmed his own show at the Great Yarmouth Hippodrome (scene of Mal Kirk's death six years later) in 1981 as an audition tape in a failed attempt to get a share of ITV coverage (ITV controversially renewed Joint's exclusive contract for another 5 years.) This got put out on video to recoup costs.

The main event saw Pallo and son JJ (also commentators/hosts) take on Steve Kelly and a bearded Adrian Street just before he went off to America where he trimmed it down to the muttonchops you all remember.

Another bout saw Fit Finlay's wife & future manager Paula Valdez team with Blackfoot Sue, the future Miss Linda. (Finlay was also on the tape, the second earliest footage of him after he and Ian Gilmour teamed as faux-Scotsmen on French TV Aug 1980 and before his 1982 ITV debut, but this isn't on YouTube AFAIK.)

 

[David Mantell]

8 hours ago, Cien Caras said:

David which was the video release that had a Saint vs Kid McCoy match and I believe a Finaly vs Collins chain match, Haystacks may have been there too. Looked like it could be Reslo but was an official release with English commentary and had an interview with an up and comer called Rocky. 

Wrestling Madness.  An episode of S4C's Welsh language wrestling show Reslo with English commentary by Lee Bamber. Includes Bull Power (Vader)'s win of the vacant CWA title over Luc "Rambo" Poirier from Quebec. Also has Princess Paula doing a quasi shoot interview with British Lightweight champion Tony Stewart about his workout routine and an intro and outro by ITV boxing commentator (and cousin of Jackie Pallo) Reg Gutteridge.

 

[SirEdger]

Interesting. Not very familiar with Luc Poirier's work pre-Sniper from the Truth Commission. Don't think he wrestled a whole lot in his native Quebec around that time (considering the independent scene here was almost non-existent after the death of Lutte Internationale in the late 80s) and it didn't get a big boost until around 2000 when a couple of promotions started popping up (IWS, NCW which pretty much took the torch from Lutte after its demise a few years later).

[David Mantell]

1 hour ago, SirEdger said:

Interesting. Not very familiar with Luc Poirier's work pre-Sniper from the Truth Commission. Don't think he wrestled a whole lot in his native Quebec around that time (considering the independent scene here was almost non-existent after the death of Lutte Internationale in the late 80s) and it didn't get a big boost until around 2000 when a couple of promotions started popping up (IWS, NCW which pretty much took the torch from Lutte after its demise a few years later).

One thing I can't help noticiing about wrestling in Quebec and France is they seem to have a different french name for just about EVERYTHING eg tag matches are Lutte D'Equippe in Quebec and Catch-Á-Quatre in France.  Even wrestling itself has different names (lutte/catch - I gather in France's case this along with the change from GR to CACC was an attempt to sidestep a tax on Lutte in the 1930s by rebranding as a different sport).

[David Mantell]

Another thing about technical knockouts (not 10 count KOs) - it might be the mark of a sportsmanly blue-eye that they refuse such a win (even a title) leaving the match a No Contest, but it's also the mark of a dastardly heel that they not only accept such a win but CROW over it:

 

[David Mantell]

By the way, if anyone hasn't seen it there's already a very good thread about British wrestling on here which covers a lot of the specific points from the last two pages of this thread:

There's also a similar thread about French wrestling:

 

[David Mantell]

On 11/19/2023 at 12:20 AM, PeteF3 said:

Quote

Only one US wrestling territory lives on in 2023 (or indeed past March 2001) , compared with three surviving European old school wrestling cultures.

Two. Puerto Rico is limping along but still around.

On 11/19/2023 at 12:27 AM, David Mantell said:

True, although PR is not annexed so arguably deserves separate status like Mexico.

Done some reading up on Puerto Rican wrestling (WWC et al) - am increasingly convinced that it belongs in a separate genre - along with Mexican Lucha Libre, Brazilian Telecatch, Dominican wrestling, pre-revolutionary Cuban wrestling (did it continue under Castro?) from US/Canadian "American Wrestling"- maybe call it "Latin American Wrestling" ?

[SirEdger]

9 hours ago, David Mantell said:

One thing I can't help noticiing about wrestling in Quebec and France is they seem to have a different french name for just about EVERYTHING eg tag matches are Lutte D'Equippe in Quebec and Catch-Á-Quatre in France.  Even wrestling itself has different names (lutte/catch - I gather in France's case this along with the change from GR to CACC was an attempt to sidestep a tax on Lutte in the 1930s by rebranding as a different sport).

We use "combat par équipe" here in Quebec. In France, the use of "catch" is directly from the "catch-as-catch-can" style, which would be the official style for professional wrestling.

[David Mantell]

Thought - could Satoru Sayama have gone over in America as a babyface as Sammy Lee rather than as Tiger Mask? 

 
c.f. a certain Mr S. Stain's* comments about Japanese and Mexican wrestlers not getting over in America because Americans like himself only want to see other Americans.
* ©  Jim Cornette

[David Mantell]

On 11/24/2023 at 5:39 PM, SirEdger said:

We use "combat par équipe" here in Quebec. In France, the use of "catch" is directly from the "catch-as-catch-can" style, which would be the official style for professional wrestling.

Just posted this October 2019 bout to the French Catch thread, at the start the MC says Match d'Equippe.

Mind you recently on Rumble's YouTube the commentator said "Trios" instead of the traditional UK term Triple Tag Match:

 

[David Mantell]

On 11/24/2023 at 12:50 AM, David Mantell said:

and yes, it was considered a slightly more emphatic way to win than two falls/subs.  Quite a lot of KOs were out of the ring but they were considered definite because the knocked out opponent was pretty much destroyed by that point.

Aged 14 in 1988 I was FLABBERGASTED to learn that in America you could keep a title after falling victim to that.

Just seen an example of this - to a British audience in 1988 it would seem ABSURD that Hacksaw Duggan did not become the brand new Intercontinental champion on the strength of a win like this:

 

[NintendoLogic]

Like many of the sillier rules in American wrestling, the "no title change on countout or DQ" rule was originally intended to protect the champion from double-crosses. It dates back to when Henri Deglane stole the world championship from Strangler Lewis by feigning being bitten, which led to Lewis being disqualified by a referee who was in on the plot. Over the years, it came to be justified in kayfabe by having a wrestler who got counted out or DQed forfeit his share of the purse. That way, a champion who continually took the coward's way out would never make any money even if he retained his belt.

[Al]

No wonder the Honky Tonk Man ended up doing all those shoot interviews.

[PeteF3]

In Memphis, titles actually did change on countouts--this is why Lawler thought he should have won the NWA World title in his famous TV studio angle and match with Flair. I have to admit, titles not changing on countouts has never really made sense to me. With a DQ I get the idea that a title should only change "objectively" and not the result of a referee's decision, but a countout (especially in the kayfabe days) doesn't really fit that description.

Don't get me started on the WWWF not doing title changes on blood/injury stoppages.

[David Mantell]

On 11/20/2023 at 1:23 PM, David Mantell said:

Pat Roach says in Simon Garfield's book that he was shown a document that he was not supposed to see, listing all the countries that Joint Promotions was getting payments for as a result of overseas sales.

We know that (O)RTF was up to something similar because a lot of the 50s and early 60s kinescope prints on Matt D's YouTube channel have captions in Arabic at the start and/or finish, indicating they were intended for overseas sale (most likely to parts of North Africa such as Algeria which France annexed at one point as well as Libya and Tunisia, and also to Syria and Lebanon which were French Mandates after the First World War.)

Interestingly enough it's emerged on the French Catch thread that in the 1970s Lebanon was indeed a wrestling territory and there is even surviving TV footage.

This ties into what I suggested about kinescopes of ITV World Of Sport and (O)RTF Le Catch matches getting sold to countries in Africa and Asia and in some cases inspiring local wrestling scenes. In Lebanon's case, I'd suggest French Catch was the likelier suspect than British Wrestling.

I skim viewed some of that second clip and I think I heard a mention of René Ben Chemouel in there too.