Egyptian Wrestling

[David Mantell]

Decided to give Egypt its own thread after coming across a couple more clips of Mamdouh Farag in action.

To fill you in, Egypt had the odd foreign tour back in the Monarchy days but was "dark" from the Revolution under Nasser up until Camp David when the country opened up again to the west and tours resumed.  At around that time. Farag was a popular babyface in Germany and decided in the early 80s to set up a scene of his own back home in Egypt.  Farag had won a European championship and took it back home from where, as national hero, he took on foreign heel challengers from both Europe and America.

Farag continued with this into the Nineties when he retired and became a TV presenter. Among other projects, he provided bootleg Arabic commentary on WWE broadcasts Cairo being a major media hub in the Arab world, his commentary.  To say this urinated off the folks in Stamford CT is putting it mildly - in fact when WWE finally toured Egypt in October 2012 with three nights at Cairo's Stadium Complex, Farag was banned from the building. He died two years later aged just 64.

[David Mantell]

Okay, this is one of the two new ones I've found - Farag against someone billed as Hercules but looks more like Chris Benoit

 

 

[David Mantell]

The other new clip is a handicap tag against German heel Indio Guajaro and Colonel Brody from Britain.  Brody was a regular on 80s ITV and also Reslo from Wales and New Catch from France as a mean moody macho military man heel (albeit often quite technically adept). but this was tame compared to the very dark racist N-bomb dropping character he was for Germany's VDB (Ed Wiskoski also toured Germany at this time and may have plagiarised Colonel De Beers off him.). Which makes the obviously BAME Guajaro an odd choice of tag partner.

 

[David Mantell]

This is probably the best known piece of Egyptian footage, Farag as home country hero defends his Euro title against Klaus Wallas - back home in Austria a respected judoka and usual good guy but here the arrogant villain. Listen out and you will lean plenty of useful Arabic wrestling vocabulary like BODEHSLAM and SIDERING.  Keep your eyes peeled for Tony StClair as Farag's second.

 

 

[David Mantell]

Mashup of various bouts to the tune of Eye of the Tiger.  Mostly footage of a match where the challenging Bad Foreigner is a young Dave Taylor.

[David Mantell]

The one other bit of Egyptian footage I've found is another mashup of various bouts. One opponent is Greg Valentine (John Wisniski Jr from America, not Steve Crabtree from England)  and another is in a bizarrely small outdoor venue- possibly a lawn tennis court.

 

[David Mantell]

Not exactly a match but an angle, partly conducted in English., on Egyptian TV

 

 

 

[David Mantell]

Okay just to finish off, a couple of media articles about Farag and the scene.

https://cairoscene.com/Buzz/The-Death-of-a-Wrestling-Legend

https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/6/56/108556/Sports/Omni-Sports/Famous-Egyptian-wrestler-Mamdouh-Farag-dies.aspx