El-P

Probably not. It probably means that the movie is more on the side of the myth rather than the truth, like most biopics are anyway, and probably very much cleaned up, with a heavy dose of Hollywood sappy pathos. The Von Erich story is dirty as hell.

He did not say anything about attendance and all though. He said it was a very small world with very little money and fame. Which it is. I made the comparison with small US indies, although that may be off the mark, but that's neither here nor there. There's very few people actually making a living as pro-wrestlers in France. Extremely few, and the ones who do have to work in the UK or Germany or elsewhere in Europe to make ends meet. That being said, and to put things in perspective, French referee Artemis, who was signed with WWE under NXT UK until they fired most everybody, told after the fact that she never earned less money than during her WWE contract. Ponder that for a second. Not that she's saying she was making a good living beforehand, but the fact that there is, or was, enough work around Europe to make more money than working for NXT UK. But it says a lot more about WWE's ridiculous salary policy than anything really.

I agree, it's pretty good. Which, for the biggest show of the year at the Dome, doesn't cut it. I don't feel there's any hype about Naito vs SANADA at all. SANADA doesn't come off as a legit big time main-eventer at all, he never gets those kind of reactions (on the contrary, every show I watched since G1, to me he was always one of the least charismatic guy in the ring). Naito's rise in the G1 only really happened in the last two days, thanks to awesome performances by Ospreay & Okada. The emotional reactions these two days were ridiculous, but I'm not sold on Naito getting the same support 6 months later after a cold-as-hell SANADA title reign. It will take a whole lot to make this a worthwhile Dome main event, and that's basically all on Naito and his charisma.

It's the special unemployment benefit regime for every worker in "entertainment", be it actors, musicians, technicians, circus artists, whatever. It allows them to receive money when they don't have any work, and it's the only thing that has allowed France to have a very vivid cultural life with workers actually being able to live from their jobs instead of having to do something else on the side to survive. You have to work a certain amount of hours over 12 months to be able to get the status. It's regularly been attacked by conservative governments for the last 30 years and it's not nearly as good now at it was 25 years ago. Very regularly during ceremonies like the Cesars (equivalent of the Academy Awards), someone is either gonna talk to defend the intermittent regime, or a bunch of intermittent are gonna jump on stage to bash the Ministry of Culture and their destructive politics. Mercier is saying they (the TV's) were paying under the table. I grew up watching his son Antoine doing funny bullshit on Canal +. I remember he was doing that show on the BBC, with an extremely French accent. It's just slang. Quedalle = zilch, jackshit. No, they're just dumping their product. That's what he accuses them of doing. Hence why Flesh Gordon's product is the one who ended up getting around towns and on TV (for whatever very small time they did). Makes sense. It's the law about freedom of creating non lucrative associations. Meaning your association can make benefits, but it is not created with the goal of making benefit, and no member can gain from it. What I get from this, which I had read before, is that Guy Mercier tried to clean up the business and make it more legitimate to protect the workers and get the intermittent regime for them, which absolutely makes sense. The "huge amount of cost" is the same usual bullshit from business owners who spend their time whining about paying too much taxes and how it's hurting their business boo boo cry me a river. I mean, when Mercier talks about pimping, that's no different from the ridiculous "independent contractors" that WWE forces on his wrestlers. Yes, some of them win ridiculous amount of money, but in the grand scheme of thing, this is nothing but a scam. Mercier says Richard is talking shit about him all the time and tries to sabotage what he does. What I get from this too in that apparently stuff went to trials (my best guess is defamation of character and such) and Richard always lost. The feel I get from this interview, which I had read before, and other stuff, is that Flesh Gordon is a huge old-school carny con-job, while Mercier positioned himself as legit and fought for a legit status for pro-wrestlers. Of course Mercier could be full of shit himself (pro-wrestling, ya know), although that's not what Varini says, and he probably knows what he's talking as he's been around for a while (he was the French announcer for TNA for like 10 years, he also announced for WWE I believe). I listened to an interview on France Inter from a few years back, and Mercier came off to me as rather level headed and legit, FWIW. The one thing Varini is underscoring though, is that French pro-wrestling is just tiny, tiny business with barely any money anyway. This "big fight" would be akin to two small US indies with no hype fighting each others for their "territory".

I did not think about it that way but you're absolutely right. This comes after Danielson said he realized that doing the G1 at this point of his career would not be reasonable anymore. Dragon sadge. Then Coach TK is like, don't cry little Dragon, I'll make you your own little G1 at home ! And you can be a part of All In next year too ! (please buy seats people)

With all the goodwill I have for AEW, I do fear this tournament will be more WCW than NJPW, I must say. The fact he only announced one guy thus far is already kind of a red flag to me. I still have PTSD from "no-bracket announced WCW tournaments". As long as it's not as ridiculously bad as the Bound for Glory series than TNA ran in the early 10's, it's ok. And yeah. Okada vs Danielson is honestly the only thing looking like a major match at WK this year. Kidani and Gedo are gonna have a stressful end of year for sure. Hey, if anything happens, just send Omega.

Oh, of course. What I meant was that as an outside observer basically only reading news about WWE, I find the real life and business aspect much more intriguing that whatever the product is. It's really been a crazy year and a half or so. Yep, most probably. He'll be the richest guy in the cemetary. Congrats. With the new management and owners, the idea of WWE dying with Vince is very far fetched though. Although I thought very interesting what Meltzer said about the latest earning call and how it was completely different from what it used to be, in that it's obvious none of these people care about pro-wrestling at all. It's just the bottom line that matters. As I said before, sports agents ? Talk about an amazing level of parasites. WWE is still probably idiot proof and safe for a while, but with the media landscape changing at a fast pace, who knows what happens in 5 years from now.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that. Care to elaborate or explain ?

Takagi getting Tama Tonga at the Dome is so meh. We just had that match. Yes, it was excellent, guess what, Takagi vs anyone good will be. But it's really not very interesting for the biggest show of the year. Word is ZSJ is getting Tanahashi. Again, it's been a great pairing in the past and even ay this point it will probably be really good, but one would have hoped something bigger or different for ZSJ. I don't get any hype going for this WK apart from Danielson/Okada II.

Yes. Because you're basically giving a false information to people. The fact Wiki allows people to give false informations is an issue. It happens in very serious articles about very serious stuff. Whether Flesh Gordon was a household name or not really won't matter one bit in the end, because no one cares. It's still wrong, but it won't affect anyone. But it's still wrong.

I don't see a better way to end this but by finally posting the one and only, "Flesh Gordon et les pompiers", the peak of Flesh Gordon on French (although it's a Belgium show) TV. Amazingly cringe too. (notice the description of the video and how it introduces Flesh Gordon. Yes. The exact same three of four elements that you'll find everywhere, in every PQR article and every interviews of him ever)

.... Yeah. I know what La Dépêche du Midi is. I'm French, you know. I also know how Wiki works. Which is why Wiki is not considered a valuable source in many cases and should by used with much care.

What I mean is that an article from a PQR in the 10's promoting a show in the local town mentioning "Hey, this guy was a star in the 80's" is not a valuable source because it doesn't mean anything, not because La Depeche is a trashy tabloid. Every article about Flesh Gordon is from some PQR journal, because he sells his show in small towns. And of course they are gonna refer to him as "A star from the 80's", with the usual bit about "Oh, he was european champ and then world champ in whatever years" that he tells in every interview ever. You think any of these people know who the hell he is ? You've very naive... You've got a pigiste being told by the boss "hey, you're doing a paper on that wrestling show that happens next Sunday", and the guy is gonna go talk 5 minutes to Flesh Gordon who's gonna give him the bit and there you go. Again, this is not a hill I'm gonna die on. And although I may come off as if I have something against the guy. I don't. I don't care. He's got his place in French pro-wrestling history. But it's not one of fame.

One obvious blind spot to me is that the discourse is only focused on inner working of pro-wrestling, while ignoring the outside factors that may have played a consequential part. The old France of Pompidou was not the France of Giscard d'Estaing in the 70's. Mai 68 changed society a whole lot. Ditto 1981 which had huge effect on the structure of medias in the country. There's many reasons why the mythology of French pro-wrestling belongs to the 50's and 60's mostly, with the 70's already showing a decline.

So true. Too true almost.

Because I think that ended up costing them matches lately... I think. That's as good a reason I could dig up. Because otherwise, yeah, it's just totally ass-backward considering what the whole gimmick of the group is. Of course as a pure dynamic it works wonders and the day Garcia pops Daddy Magic in the face and does the dance the pop is gonna be huge, so there. I do think Daddy Magic blames Garcia for costing them (and himself) matches lately because of it though...

And since I'm a generous fellow nonetheless, the VOD of a famous French pro-wrestling Twitch streamer watching the opening and the Flesh Gordon match (against Carlos Plata) from the first 1991 New Catch show in TF1, which I watched and probably even taped at the time. This is such a treasure. OMG LOOK AT THE TITLE ! HE CALLED FLESH GORDON THE FRENCH HULK HOGAN ! THIS IS PROOF RIGHT THERE ! Yeah, no, it's ironic. Enjoy nonetheless people. Or don't. But you won't find this anywhere else.

(EDIT : yeah, whatever, this is going nowhere and it's just tedious at this point) Talk about exposing yourself with that one Big Daddy was a huge star. No one knows who Flesh Gordon is.

Even past his prime when I saw him live, he was obviously still pretty good, and yes, his finisher looked cool and would have looked cool anywhere at the time he did it, including in the early 90's. He said it himself in interviews, he thought the old-school wrestling was dusty and kinda boring. Talk about wanting to replace the old ways, there it is. The bolded part though. That's what I've been trying to get at for a while now. There was no pro-wrestling culture anymore in France in the 80's and so on. It was not part of popular culture anymore. There are probably inner reasons that are due to the business itself, but most probably other reasons too that have nothing to do with pro-wrestling and that have to do with changes in French society (not to mention the influence of the US entertainment industry with the new Hollywood blockbusters like Star Wars and such, new cartoons including Japanese anime that we got super early, so many things changed at that time, France got the very first hip-hop show on TV in the world too for instance, there were so many new exciting things happening). Even when Canal + brought WWF, there was no pro-wrestling culture in France. Christophe Agius, who is a few years younger than me but started watching earlier, mentioned it in lenghty interviews he did on his Youtube channel a few years ago. Even though he was a fan, he was basically alone. Pro-wrestling was not a thing. I experienced the same thing, I had no friend in middle-school nor high-school who watched WWF. There were enough people that they could do a few houseshows, yes, because Hulk Hogan was a global star and there's no escaping that. But it was never a part of mainstream pop culture at all. Pro-wrestling became popular again not when ICWA ran a few shows with indy wrestlers from abroad in the early 00's, but when WWE caught on in the late 00's because they were on NT1 and had a unique duo of announcers. For a few years, pro-wrestling, through WWE (and because of Agius & Chereau, who carried that stuff like they were Russel & Brown and literally built an entire generation of fans), became part of the pop culture. In 2013 not one but TWO pro-wrestling movies were produced in France. There was a lucha themed bar in Paris. John Cena became a meme in Youtube videos that had nothing at all to do with pro-wrestling. That's when pro-wrestling, as part of pop culture in France, became relevant again, for the first time since some time in the seventies, maybe the late sixties. Pro-wrestling was not part of France pop/entertainment culture at all from the end of the "golden days" until the days of the "Catch Attack" generation on NT1 in the late 00's. That is a fact.

That too. But the gimmick itself I find overrated anyway. There was a novelty aspect in the 80's, but the submit or surrender stip I always though made for a lame anticlimatic finish (Schiavone said the same thing in the past). Its reputation of great gimmick match really comes from the 92 match to me, which was the apex of the style. After that point, it was pretty much all downhill in WCW. Without the use of blood in WWE, I have no idea how they even get that big time violence feel. BCC vs Elite was awesome, but that's really the only one I enjoyed in AEW, the two other ones where indeed way to long and had the annoying WWE trope of having to do a cage jump too.

Holy shit, you did not dig up some article from the PQR about some shows in Montauban and Boé (what, where ?) as a "proof" that he was some kind of a big deal, right ? You realize how utterly ridiculous that is to anyone with *any* clue about France ? The irony is that in this interview that you linked, he actually is more brutal toward old-school French pro-wrestling that whatever fictional "aim to supplant the old school style" ICWA had. Trying to find bits and pieces that confirms a preconceived idea or narrative is the WORST way of doing any research. I repeat and it's the last time, feel free to not listen : Flesh Gordon was not, never, at any point, a household name. He's not known, he's not a star, he's not a TV personality, he's not part of pop culture at all. Do with that what you want, it's really not a hill worth dying on.

Mental health issues suck. Hopefully she does what's best for her. That Rampage crowd was pretty hot. Roddy Strong is all about saying words with intensity. Talk about a creative shake-up for the guy who had the "great worker, no character" stigma for most of his career. I'm totally behind the 2.0 & Outcast sitcom drama. FTR vs Vikingo & Komander was terrific and much better than I expected considering the clash of styles. Wheeler (Cash, not Yuta, damn, and AEW got three ADAM too ?) seemed more at ease doing lucha spots than Dax. He also has been hitting the gym hard lately it seems, look at the guns on this guy (see what I did ?). FTR vs House of Black is also something I can get behind yesterday.

War Games is actually a super difficult match to really shine in, which is why many War Games match pretty much suck (and the gimmick has always been overrated anyway, just sayin'). That would be the last place I would debut Cargill, who's still basically a greenhorn who had other people bumping for her to make her look good in short matches. Plus, she would be "one of many" as opposed to have all the focus on her, which is what you want. Rumble would have been perfect with a different timing, because it's easy to have her shine in that context and clean up the ring. I'm curious how this is gonna turn out, because she really strikes me as someone who has zero interest in pro-wrestling apart from it being a vehicule to be famous and make more money. Which, in the current context, won't be looked as favorably by workhorses in the company who have build their legacy from the ground up through hard work in a much different and less favorable environment. But in the TKO context, will be perfect for her if she does get over and ends up meaning something, which did not happen in AEW (yeah, she got over at first, then very clearly overstayed her welcome as an attraction doing the same thing over and over again, and she was never a mover at all either). Of course, having the WWE (and TKO) machine behind you changes everything, because their marketing strength is without commune measure.

It just gives a totally false idea that this guy was anything like the big stars of the golden days and it's just very misleading. He belongs in the 80's and post-80's part of the article. He was what he was. He doesn't even belong in the same discussion as those guys.

I haven't read the book, although I might at some point (I credit this thread), but I've heard the guy on a radio show to promote it, alongside Marc Mercier of all people. No idea if this was posted earlier in the thread and if anyone speaks French well enough to understand, but there's this cool little documentary from 1982. The names from the "golden era" that are dropped here during the intruction are le Bourreau, Chéri-Bibi, l'Ange Blanc, Delaporte & Bollet. What amazes me is how mostly devoid of bullshit the interviews are and how respectful of pro-wrestling the whole thing is, presenting it as a craft in pretty much a post-kayfabe way. Then again, obviously I have no idea if that's true, but Roger Couderc talks about he basically created L'Ange Blanc's character (including the costume), after a request from Goldstein (who he says was managing Le Cirque d'Hiver at the time). I have no idea if Couderc was familiar with El Santo, but that was basically it. The funny part is how he explained he chose Caracas as its origin city because it was much farther and more exotic than any place in Spain. Also, Delaporte clearly says that venues have emptied because of lack of new stars, which is why he had to resort to foreign wrestlers (you can see bits of a Yaso Fuji match). The last part evokes topless wrestling but there's no picture shown that would be NSFW. Interesting how the woman pretty much talks about the etiquette as a heel dealing with hostile crowds : "We have to right to insult them back, but not hit them. It's a game." On a personal level, it's always funny when I think of what l'Elysée Montmartre was, as I went there many times for concerts when I lived in Paris in the 00's and 10's. It also pretty much burned down a few years back, although it has since been reopened.