David Mantell

This was him, apparently:

This seems to be a trope Flesh Gordon goes for in his matches. He wins the fight but is robbed of official victory by dubious refereeing handing him a DQ. You can see the same ending In the early 2010s tag bout I posted several pages back. This and the Nagasaki/Myers Disco Ladder Match were the only two overt gimmick matches on European TV until Orig Williams on Reslo started to push the envelope with cage and chain matches from 1990 onwards.

Getting back to French wrestling, the gorilla gimmick in that clip and the caged gorilla gimmick in a Greek movie clip I posted to the British Wrestling thread are both comparable to actual French gimmick Mambo Le Primitiv:

I agree OJ, Carl Jason aka Carl McGrath, trainer of Robbie Brookside, deserves better than this. KC's babbling away did grate (and I doubt S4C execs - or Orig Williams - were happy with him babbling away in ENGLISH.) Ten years on from the bout with Kwango, Coneelly was older and tubbier wearing a top half like Mick McManus, Mike Marino and George Kidd all did in their later days. He repeats the mistaking a microphone for a gun gag of a decade earlier. Just as an experiment I watched the bout with the sound off. Something of an improvement, Coneelly does some good cartwheel escapes for a man his size (except the one that ends in a pratfall in the corner) and lots of further nelson roll up pin attempts. I've seen McGrath (Jason) work heel before eg holiday camp footage of him and "Sadistic"Sandy Scott Vs TBWs Robbie Brookside and Doc Dean in 1984 and he looks on the verge of cracking up and breaking out the dirty wrestling. He still comes out with some good moves, going into a bridge during a test of strength then flipping upwards into a standing full Japanese strangle hold. Coneely does a nice sidestep roll up for the one fall required. By the way, the view of the ring with a wooden wall behind just a few rows of audience (presumably a theatre stage on one side with fans seated on it) reminds me a lot of a similar stage-facing camera angle used for most of Thompson-StClair '67 sixteen years earlier, an era before colour and an era before keeping master tapes instead of wiping them.

I'm not a fan of his comedy either and it got worse on Reslo in the early 80s but I do like how he suddenly got serious and scored two good folding press pinfalls over Kwango. Referee Tony Mancelli is the same one as from Thompson Vs StClair less than 6 years earlier.

A handful of Italian Catch clips. Italian Catch died out in 1965 although two brothers from Piedmont later made attempts to revive it until WWE came along. There's not enough out there to give it its own thread so I'm posting this he like has been done with Spanish. Greek, Egyptian, Lebanese, Iraqi etc wrestling on this and the British thread. If oodles of Italian footage ever turns up - or oodles of footage of any other of the above turns up - it can have its own thread. Primo Carnera homecoming visit to Rome: https://www.facebook.com/IlDragoDelWrestling/videos/697258901885771/ Primo Vs Felix Miquet, Rome 1957 https://www.facebook.com/IlDragoDelWrestling/videos/531801975674517 1959 footage - one of these guys is an American.: Some very old GR footage, in what is borderline recognisable as a ring: https://www.facebook.com/IlDragoDelWrestling/videos/681611836638435/ Some scenes from Italian films. This is from 1975: https://www.facebook.com/IlDragoDelWrestling/videos/1560342717751864/ This is from 1966 just after the scene shut down, possibly more authentic of what the scene was like. Oddly, the film depicts TV coverage which Italy had none ever. https://www.facebook.com/IlDragoDelWrestling/videos/2187361951428021 1958 film https://www.facebook.com/IlDragoDelWrestling/videos/551546770038143/ Female wrestling, old B/W film: https://www.facebook.com/IlDragoDelWrestling/videos/1579732649490983/ https://www.facebook.com/IlDragoDelWrestling/videos/1579732649490983/

Some rare footage of the young Mike Marino., Royal Albert Hall 1953. Unfortunately he's getting his backside handed to him by Italian champion Mario Matassa. Even more unfortunately it's Pathe newsreel so it's all "comedy" highlights and snooty sarcastic commentary. https://www.facebook.com/IlDragoDelWrestling/videos/630597371416845

Yes that's PRECISELY what a kinescope recording is (or a Telerecording as the BBC called them.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinescope The reason most surviving old B/W TV shows look like old films is because they were kinescoped from either a live broadcast or a videotape that had to be wiped and re-used afterwards. (The process cuts the image down from 50 interlaced frames down to 25 non-interlaced frames. Film on TV is sped up from 24 to 25 fps so each frame of film contains every other frame of live TV or video. Because of the lower frame rate plus film judder and other film artefacts like scratches, dirty, tramlines etc, it makes the program me look like an old film from decades earlier. There is a process called VidFIRE which can reverse this and restore the video look. The BBC has used it mainly for 1960s Doctor Who episodes and early 1970s colour Doctor Who episodes with Jon Pertwee in conjunction with chroma dot restoration of the colour. These two processes could be used on a lot of wrestling footage 1940s-1970s including French Catch from RTF Channel 2 1967-1974 and the 1972 Vic Faulkner Vs Mick McMichael bout if the master tape didn't survive.) It's possible it could have been a live transmission - @JNLister doesn't confirm on his site and there were still some live bouts as late as the early 70s.

Old black and white German footage found on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/IlDragoDelWrestling/videos/367447659227841/

Cheers to @JNLister for passing the StClair/Thompson match link on to Tony.

Several months before Stax and Daly beat Pat Roach and Alan Kirby on the top of the bill of the Crabtrees' Battle of the British video (see earlier in thread) here they have a similar squash against Tarzan Johnny Wilson and Danny Boy Collins for All Star in Bath on the minus tenth anniversary of 9/11. Collins by this point has 3 titles (World Middleweight, Euro Welterweight, British Heavy Middleweight) so fortunately he isn't treated as a sacrificial lamb. He does concede the first fall to Daly but fights back valiantly stinging the Scrubber with dropkicks and tagging in Wilson to score the equaliser. Rather than have Stax get the winner with a guillotine elbowsmash on Collins and have him stretchered out of the ring. Wilson controversially drops the decider by pin to Daly due to Stax interfering, leaving Wilson and Collins clamouring for a rematch where they promise to fight fire with fire.

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Clean wrestling German style. Part of a January 1998 video release, about the best quality VdB production ever, reported lying marketed as a nostalgia "Wrestling How We Liked It" show. I thought it got reviewed on the British thread but can't find it. I remember remarking on it highly resembling Joint Promotions TV footage 1985-1986 (I meant that as a compliment, OJ) They work the holds longer than in actual British wrestling and only Wright really uses kip ups and rollouts. Zrno somersaults backwards French style out of a loose hammerlock to convert it to a figure four top wristlock on the mat. Wright counters W ith a headscissors.Zrno flips out and after a round break they both go into folding press attempts. This leads into a test of strength which leads to bridges, trying to break them and more folding presses. A female fan keeps shouting for Mile. At, one point male Northern English voice tells her to "shut up, woman." Wright is okay with it and leads the cheers for Zrno at one point. Apart from a brief exchange of forearms in the final seconds it stays scientific until the end. A nil nil draw. Afterwards there is some sort of parade with all the wrestlers in the ring and the MC making a speech in German. They all leave the ring with medals round their necks. Both these two wrestled for the CWA circa 1990, it's a pity they didn't have a match together then.

Three Otto The Austrian National versus Evil Guest Americans matches, two of which feature guys that went on to bigger things. Otto has some strange outfits in the first two bouts that Big Daddy night have worn as a heel in 1975-1976. The first is a magenta/cyan/black striped outfit that brings back memories of the planet Thoros Beta from 1986 Doctor Who story The Trial Of A Time Lord pts 5-8: Mindwarp. Otto's outfit in the Black Bartmatch can only be compared to an explosion in a factory making blackcurrant cheesecake. Yokozuna's life would end on tour with an old school European Promotion (All Star in 2000) so it made sense that he would have visited another one earlier in his travels. At this point he was best known in America for helping hold down Missy Hyatt in Continental with tag partner uncle Sika while manager and former jobber Alan Martin kissed her forcibly, turning her babyface after husband Eddie Gilbert (another future CWA alumnus) refused to intevene. I wish he could have come to Britain earlier. He would have a great opponent for Big Daddy or tag partner for Kendo Nagasaki. Orig Williams pops up as heel manager of Black Bart match and looks very solemn and emotional as the trumpeter played the Stars and Stripes. This was quite a blood soaked encounter with Bart covered in claret. Steel Man the future Tugboat /Typhoon/Shockmaster has a WWF World tag belt and glittery stormtrooper helmet in his future. He was much better as a heel and would have been a good challenger for Warrior.

Jones using a mix of skill and psychological tactics,slapping Blackjack around and generally acting like a smug git trying to get Mulligan wound up enough to foul as Walton says - or rather foul clumsily in front of the referee. It pays off as Mulligan get a public warning in round 3, by which time he is a fall down. Jones was popular and Mulligan had heat enough that they could get away with this without any wrongway sympathy from anyone except maybe Walton. Jones makes it two straight in round 4 but he could have been even , he nearly gets a knockout from a piledriver but Mulligan gets up at 9, Jones piledrivers again but this time covers for a three. If you rewind to the first piledriver, you will see Jones leans in for the pin but realises he is too late and has to stand back while ref Dave Reece starts a 10 count. A bit swifter with the cover and it would be all one move and Jones could have shaved maybe 20 seconds off his match time.

Nice scientific bout for a pair of older heavyweights, plenty of good small details, like at the beginning where Czeslaw tries to reverse snapmare his way out of a hammerlock but senses Bartelli is up to something when the Count releases him and rolls quickly away while the going is good. If you've been watching this style long enough, you pick up on minor details like that (or like Clay Thompson using a scissorhold of his own to pry off Tony StClair's headscissors.) I was expecting a TKO or No Contest finish from @ohtani's jacket's comment s but even though that's what Walton calls it, it's actually a 10 count knockout. Under American rules, Bartelli would have been able to drape himself across Czeslaw for the pin. (Would that have made the finish better, OJ?) Bartelli accepts the victory and no one blames him for it although if that had been a heel, it could have been milked more heavily, the baddy taking advantage of a fluky or ill-gotten injury, like Rocco putting Danny Collins in a power lock after his leg was tangled in the ropes or Finlay arm-barring Saint's arm for a deciding submission after the arm was injured when Finlay threw Saint out the ring between rounds and he landed badly at ringside and even though it got Finlay a Second And Final Public Warning the referee still had not choice but to award him the deciding submission and 2-1 win. Technical point, the caption slides for the names on this video were doing using the same technology as the "WRESTLING" slide in big letters at the end of Thompson-StClair 1967 to lead from World of Sport into a commercial break and caught on the end of the WfGB overseas sales kinescopes. Bear in mind on the original monochrome 1967 broadcast it would have looked the same as on this purely electronic colour copy of the 1974 bout. Apart from the jump from b/W to colour and from 16mm kinescope print to preserved VT master, this is the same visual effect. That's why I'm not so keen on 16mm B/W film. The format was ubiquitous for around 70 years and it makes everything from a Charlie Chaplin film in 1909 to a TV show originally broadcast in colour in 1974 look the same, one big long swathe of "the old days of black and white." This unnecessarily ages relatively modern stuff from the 60s/70s to make it look like it came from the 1930s.

Which list? Do you mean @Matt D's videos that are unlisted on YouTube but accessible via Alessio's playlists? Not sure either if the 1988 (and 1991) TF1 episodes of New Catch didn't show up on the INA's site or if you chose to exclude them from the parameters of the subject. Does the INA's remit include TF1 after the 1987 privatisation? (Or come to that satellite channels receivable in France like Eurosport?)

I can't see Marc Mercier Vs Albert Sanniez 1978 from the FFCP channel. Nor this mysterious, visibly late 80s bout: I know @sergeiSem has it labelled as EWF but it's clearly not an episode of New Catch.

https://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2021/05/french-catch-tuesday-master-list.html?m=1 That list isn't sorted in date order and I can't find the bouts Bob posted (himself Vs Magnier, Di Santo Vs Chaisne, two lighter clean wrestlers).

Well we don't have the match but if we did and it was on TF1, it would presumably be in b/w albeit with an interlaced video picture such as an off air video recording might have, not a film-type picture like a kinescope might have. The only colour on TF1 (and it had only started a month earlier) at this point was repeats of unsyndicated FR3 shows in the afternoon.

Do you mean this list? https://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2014/05/la-complete-et-exacte-french-catch.html Cos that's a very threadbare list, only half a dozen post-1969 entries. As I've said before, what is needed is either a French @JNLister or some old time French fans who noted TV details down at the time and pooled their records to put together an entire 1952-1987 chronicle of French TV wrestling.

Indeed. Either not every live broadcast was kinescoped (or every tape delay match was kinescoped before the tape was wiped for reuse.) OR ELSE some bouts all 3 or 4 bicycled overseas sales prints were destroyed by the last TV station/destroyed by ORTF on return/taken home on return and now stashed in the garden shed of some elderly film collector in the rural Mediterranean South. How do we sort the blog list and what other lists do we have?

I know about that list but not how to sort it into date or any other searchable order. Is that Michel Di Santo Vs Michel Chaisne match where Fred Magnier comes out in street clothes and gets his behind kicked or from the same taping where Magnier faces Bob Plantin where Fred and Delaporte get in a fight and Delaporte has to reluctantly declare Magnier winner by TKO or the snippet of two young lighter weights starting on a clean match on the list?

According to the calendar on my tablet, 18th August 1975 was a Monday! The nearest Saturday 18 August either way was 1973 (when TF1 was still 1er Chaine De l'ORTF and Zarak was still Le Batman) or 1979. Corne and Falempin teamed on TV quite a bit through the 70s but I don't think they became les Celts with the light green trunks ("Allez Les Verts!") until 1977 when they faced Jacky Richard and Jean Menard although I could be totally wrong about that . My guess is 1979, by which time TF1 was in full colour. It does go to show that not every last remaining terrestrial wrestling broadcast 1975-1987 was taped by the INA and that what Matt D has on his channel was by no means the complete collection and that there was more French TV wrestling in those later years than can be assumed from just looking at his channel. I see that 1975 date has been handwritten on. Perhaps the handwriter screwed up.

Yup I was right - here is Le Grand Vladimir in Germany in the VdB in 1983: That ring with the yellow ropes and vertical cords reminds me of the ring in one of the two 1970s Roland Bock clips we have.