Timeline - The History of French Catch
The history of French catch (pro wrestling). Up to 1962.
Historically France is one of the most important pro wrestling territories that there’s ever been, but it’s often overlooked because its various peaks were decades ago and have largely been forgotten. France was the birthplace of Greco-Roman pro wrestling and one of the major territories for that style (which was super popular in Europe at one point), and for many years France was also one of the top European territories for catch-as-catch-can/American style pro wrestling and was influential in that style’s popularization in Continental Europe and parts of Africa. So with that said I thought I’d put together a timeline of the history of catch in France. The focus of the timeline is more so on business-level happenings, but I’m also covering certain important matches. I’m sprinkling in a few random interesting facts as well.A few notes before we start the timeline itself:
- In France “catch” is the most common name for pro wrestling as we know it today, but it’s not the only name that there’s been for it. Lutte libre (freestyle wrestling), lutte de combat (combat wrestling) and pancrace (pankration) were other names used at different times. Sure, there were some stylistic differences and some minor rule differences, but more or less all of these names referred to the same type of wrestling. In fact, even as late as the 1960s you can find the terms being used interchangeably in the French press. The term “catch” itself became more common in France in the 1930s and by the late 1940s it was firmly established as THE name for pro wrestling in France, which it is to this day.- So as not to have to explain it at different points in the timeline itself, here's how the catch (pro wrestling) business worked in France from September 1933 onward for the next few decades. To a certain extent France was a seasonal territory in that the majority of the shows were from fall through spring, there would be a lot less shows in the summer months, and then a new season would begin in September. This was especially true for Paris where the shows took place at indoor venues while in the French provinces the summer schedule could be a bit more active. Until the 1980s the French capital Paris was always the cornerstone of the territory. Not only were there several promoters running weekly shows there for many years, but Paris was also where the major French booking offices were based and those booking offices were run by the Paris promoters. The booking office concept is something that came over from the United States in 1933. The office would have a number of wrestlers affiliated with it and the office would work with local promoters in other French towns and even other countries to get bookings for their wrestlers. In exchange for a fee the office would send its wrestlers to work the local promoter’s show. The office would decide who wrestles who and who goes over, the only job the local promoter had was to promote the show. Generally speaking this is how French pro wrestling worked on a business level. Keep in mind, France was not split into different territories with boundaries like the U.S. was, for example. It was all one territory and a bunch of booking offices were sharing it, so to speak, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the offices always got along. They co-existed - at times they’d work together, at times they were on neutral terms and at times they were outright enemies.
- Most of the focus of the timeline will be on Paris as this was where the majority of the important stuff happened. Over the years a number of different Paris venues hosted catch on a regular basis. The biggest and most famous one was Palais des Sports (a.k.a. Velodrome d’Hiver), which was for about 18,000 people. That arena was damaged by a fire and demolished in 1959. The following year a new Palais des Sports (a.k.a. Dome de Paris) was built, but it was much smaller with a capacity of about 4,600. Other popular arenas for catch in Paris were Palais de la Mutualite (3,500 seats), Salle Wagram (2,600 seats), Cirque d’Hiver (about 1,600 seats), Elysee Montmartre (about 1,400 seats), Stadium (1,200 seats), Central Sporting Club (1,000 seats) and some others that weren’t as important or as regular as these arenas. Apart from Palais des Sports until 1959 and occasional summer shows at big bullrings in the provinces, the French territory wasn’t about big crowds. It was focused on there being a ton of shows at small to mid-size venues.
- Let’s also talk briefly about promotional names, because that is something that can lead to confusion when it comes to France. Up until the early 1980s promotional names weren’t really a popular thing in France in the way that we expect promotions to have names. Most promotions simply didn’t have names or, if they did have one, the name usually wasn’t emphasized. When you look at old French catch posters or programs from before 1980 typically there wouldn’t be a name of a promotion on it. Instead what you would normally see is something along the lines of “This is a catch show under the regulations of” and then the name of a particular governing body would be listed. On an organizational level catch in France was originally set up as a sport with one sports federation serving as the sport’s governing body. Over time the number of federations/governing bodies grew exponentially and things became very diluted, but the important thing to remember is that these federations were not the same thing as the promotions themself. FFLP or FFCP, for example, were not the names of a particular catch promotion. Those were the names of the federations that served as governing bodies for shows by various promoters. That said, eventually some governing bodies became so closely associated with a particular promotion/booking office and were often put together by that office to a point where the governing bodies and promotions kind of start to blend together, even though technically they were separate entities. So while not technically correct, in my opinion it’s perfectly acceptable to refer to those promotions by the names of their governing body, with some exceptions. But as a whole though don’t get too hung up on the promotional names. They didn’t really matter all that much.
- One of the challenging/annoying things when trying to research the behind the scenes aspect of French catch is the term “organizer” (organisateur in French). The term promoter was also used at times, but typically the term used in the French press to describe a person promoting catch events was organizer. However, they would also use the term organizer to describe the matchmaker (the term back then for booker, i.e. the person booking the matches and the outcomes), the person running the booking office (i.e. the one doing the negotiating and sending talent to local promoters), and on occasion the term could be used to describe even a manager (i.e. a person managing the career/bookings of a particular wrestler or few). This ambiguity around the term “organizer” makes it difficult at times to figure out exactly who had what role.
- In general the later decades are difficult to research due to a lack of resources to research them with so while I do know a fair bit about the history of catch, I also do have quite a few knowledge gaps too. The copyright laws in France are such that 70 years need to have passed since the original date of publication in order for the issues of a newspaper to be made publicly available online and therefore it will be quite a while before those later decades become easier to research.
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| First row (left to right): Charles Debray, Jeff Dickson, Eugene Mandron, Raoul Paoli, Alex Goldstein, Robert Lageat, Maurice Durand Second row: Henri Deglane, Charles Rigoulot, Yvar Martinson, Felix Miquet, L’Ange Blanc, Roger Delaporte, Gilbert Leduc |
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Lutte de combat takes over (1913-1914) - By 1913 Greco-Roman pro wrestling had dropped off greatly in popularity in France so when Charles Debray, the director of Nouveau Cirque in Paris, decided to promote pro wrestling at his circus he didn’t go for Greco-Roman. Instead he promoted a tournament in a style which he billed as lutte de combat (combat wrestling). This was just a fancy new name for catch-as-catch-can. The biggest differences between Greco-Roman and lutte de combat were that in the latter holds below the waist were allowed, all matches were best two out of three falls, a 3-second pin was required to win (in Greco-Roman pro wrestling back then both shoulders needed to touch the mat at the same time for a wrestler to be considered defeated but there wasn’t a 3-second requirement), and submission victories were allowed in lutte de combat (to give up a wrestler had to either verbally submit or tap the mat with his hand twice). Debray promoted his first lutte de combat tournament in May 1913. He dubbed it a World Championship in lutte de combat. The popular Belgian star Constant le Marin won the tournament. Then later in the year Debray promoted another tournament, billed as the Championship of Champions, which featured a bunch of popular stars - Stanislaus Zbyszko, Wladek Zbyszko, Jess Pedersen, Simon Antonitch, Maurice Deriaz, Joe Rogers, Taro Miyake, Jimmy Esson, Karl Saft, Marinus van Riel, Raoul de Rouen, etc. Even the former World Heavyweight boxing champion/occasional pro wrestler Jack Johnson came in for some matches. It was a major tournament. Wladek Zbyszko won it when his older brother Stanislaus refused to wrestle him in the final and forfeited the match to Wladek. In 1914 Debray’s circus featured another lutte de combat tournament, where Maurice Deriaz and Yussiff Mahmout were the top stars, but a financial dispute between Debray and Deriaz (the tournament manager behind the scenes) prevented the tournament from having a conclusion and it ended in scandal. And then with WWI on the horizon, pro wrestling in France got put on hold.
Post-WWI tournaments (1919-1922) - After the war there wasn’t much pro wrestling going on in France, due to a reason which we’re about to discuss below, but still in that period there were three notable tournaments in Paris that included lutte de combat, all three won by Constant le Marin. The first was billed as a Lutte de Combat World Championship and the other two as a World Championship in Mixed Wrestling (mixed as in they’d wrestle falls in both Greco-Roman and lutte de combat).
The tax that almost killed pro wrestling in France (early 1920s onward) - I haven’t been able to verify exactly when it went into effect (definitely before 1922, possibly in 1920), but at some point after World War I the French government imposed a new significantly higher tax on professional wrestling events - depending on the event, from 33% to 40% of the gross revenue from tickets sold. Pro wrestling was now being taxed the same as bullfighting and cockfighting while professional boxing, for example, was taxed at 17% to 23% at most. This new tax made it extremely difficult for promoters to do pro wrestling shows in France going forward. Add in the fact that wrestling had generally declined in popularity and what you get is a period in French history, 1919-1932, where there was very little pro wrestling happening in France.
A French pro wrestling governing body is created (November 13, 1922) - Before this point pro wrestling in France, be it Greco-Roman or freestyle, had never really been regulated as a sport. Prior to WWI there was a governing body for a few years, which was partially created due to there being too many fixed matches, but its scope was limited. Pro wrestling as a whole had been presenting itself as a sport, but in reality as a business it was always closer to music hall and theater entertainment so it was never regulated like a sport would be. Enter Federation Francaise Professionnelle de Lutte (FFPL) - a new governing body for professional wrestling in France. The goal of the newly created FFPL, which registered with the French authorities as a sports federation, was to revive pro wrestling in France and to treat it as a legitimate sport rather than as a music hall/theatre/circus attraction like it had been in the past. FFPL was modeled after FFB (the French boxing federation) so it borrowed a lot of ideas from there. FFPL introduced several weight divisions (weight divisions hadn’t been much of a thing in the past), started issuing annual licenses that wrestlers and promoters had to take out in order to wrestle or promote in France (no licenses were required in the past), banned the old-style tournaments with daily matches for weeks on end, and last but not least FFPL recognized Constant le Marin as the World Mixed Wrestling champion. It should also be mentioned that FFPL avoided using the term lutte de combat. Instead they went with lutte libre (freestyle wrestling) and would sometimes use this term interchangeably with catch-as-catch-can, but overall in 1920s France lutte libre was the most common name for the style.
A new World champion is crowned (December 5, 1922) - The first pro wrestling event under FFPL’s jurisdiction was organised at Cirque de Paris in Paris and in the headline match Robert Roth defeated Constant le Marin to become the new World Mixed Wrestling champion. It wasn’t a clear-cut victory though - Roth won the first fall (lutte libre), then in the second fall (Greco-Roman) le Marin supposedly injured his wrist and couldn’t continue so Roth was declared the winner. About a week later the Greco-Roman aspect was dropped and FFPL began recognizing Roth as the World Lutte Libre/Catch champion and said they’d no longer be allowing mixed matches. Roth had won a gold medal in catch-as-catch-can wrestling at the 1920 Olympics and at the time of his victory over le Marin Roth had been a professional wrestler only for about a year, with less than 20 pro matches altogether (all of them in his native Switzerland). FFPL wanted to distance itself from pro wrestling’s past reputation of predetermined matches and presented the Roth/le Marin match as a shoot, and some newspaper reports thought it was a shoot too, but given the cop-out finish, I doubt it.
FFPL crowns a French champion (April 28, 1923) - At the time there were only a handful of French pro wrestlers and two of the best, Salvador Chevalier and Francois Berthod, wrestled in Paris to determine the French Lutte Libre pro wrestling champion as recognized by FFPL. Chevalier won. Back at the 1919 Inter-Allied Games Chevalier had won the catch-as-catch-can heavyweight tournament so just like Roth he was another guy with strong amateur credentials.
FFPL crowns a European champion (January 25, 1924) - After months inactivity, FFPL managed to organize another wrestling event where they crowned a European Catch-as-catch-can champion when the Belgian Laurent Gerstmans defeated the French champion Salvador Chevalier for the recognition. Along with the aforementioned le Marin, Gerstmans was one of the top pro wrestling stars in Belgium (one of the strongest European markets for pro wrestling at the time) and prior to that he had wrestled at the 1912 Olympics so he was another guy who fit FFPL’s vision for more legitimate pro wrestling.
A pro wrestling rematch of the 1920 Olympics final (July 25, 1924) - When Robert Roth won his catch-as-catch-can gold medal at the 1920 Olympics in Antwerp, he won it in controversial fashion. The final match was Roth vs. the American Nat Pendleton. There were no pinfalls in the match and then Roth was awarded the decision by the judges on points, overruling the referee who had given the decision to Pendleton. The American camp protested this decision, claiming the judges were biased and that Pendleton was the easy winner on points, because he had Roth on the defense for most of the match, but the decision stood. Fast forward four years and now Roth and Pendelton were booked for a rematch under FFPL rules in Paris for Roth’s World Championship. An Olympic wrestling final being rematched under pro wrestling rules - the first and only time this has ever happened, and probably will ever happen. And again, just like in the Olympics, the outcome was controversial. Neither man could score a pinfall on the other and the match reached its 60-minute time limit. There were four judges - two ruled the match for Pendleton, one ruled it for Roth, and one said it was a draw so Pendleton was declared the winner and new World champion. However, shortly thereafter one of the judges who had ruled in favor of Pendleton changed their mind, the decision was reversed and the match was declared a draw. Therefore Roth remained the champion, and for a second time a bout of his with Pendleton ended in controversy.
= Sidenote: This was also more or less the end of this incarnation of FFPL. They did push hard, but ultimately they weren’t able to reduce the pro wrestling tax, which was the big hurdle for the business in France at the time. When it was all said and done FFPL had managed to organize only a handful of events and pro wrestling in France remained almost dead. All the championship titles FFPL had introduced would be forgotten and ignored going forward.
A pro wrestlers’ labor union is formed (August 29, 1928) - A number of French wrestlers got together in Paris and formed Syndicat des Lutteurs Professionnels Francais (SLPF). This was the first of its kind labor union of pro wrestlers in France. I say pro wrestlers, but in reality the majority of the members were actually amateur wrestlers who were looking to become pros so almost overnight there were over 70 French wrestlers who were now classifying themselves as pros. The most notable member of the union was Henri Deglane, who despite being in North America at the time, became a member of the union in October 1928. Like with FFPL before it, the main hurdle in front of SLPF was to get the pro wrestling tax reduced. SLPF’s vision for pro wrestling was the same as FFPL’s, for pro wrestling to be treated as a legitimate sport, and SLPF was even more stern in its disapproval of the pro wrestling of the past than FFPL was. For example, at one point in late 1929 there was talk of Constant le Marin wrestling Primo Carnera (a former fairground pro wrestler/strongman who was now one of the fastest rising boxing stars in Europe) in Paris and SLPF blasted the idea publicly and wanted nothing to do with either man. SLPF started running small wrestling shows and eventually in late 1929 they hooked up with boxing promoter Jeff Dickson, who promoted a couple of pro wrestling events at Salle Wagram. The shows were mostly Greco-Roman matches, but there were some lutte libre matches too. I can’t confirm this, but I think there’s a strong possibility the majority of these matches with the SLPF guys were shoots (i.e. no predetermined winners).
= Sidenote: I won’t be focusing on any other wrestler unions and associations further in the timeline, because overall they’re not an essential part of the story (with one exception), but just know that there were several more of them and they were around for a long time in one form or another.
FFPL is revived (December 11, 1929) - FFPL had never officially died, it just wasn’t doing anything, so a meeting with former FFPL members and SLPF members took place with the idea to revive the governing body for pro wrestling in France. Apart from a couple of guys, the leadership of the revived FFPL was all brand new people. Their goals and vision for pro wrestling were very similar to those of the original FFPL.
FFPL becomes FFLP (April 24, 1930) - FFPL was going through some restructuring and changed its name to Federation Francaise de Lutte Professionnelle (FFLP).
Pancrace makes its French debut (September 14, 1932) - Jeff Dickson was an American based in Paris who had risen to be the top boxing promoter in France and had also promoted big boxing events outside of France too (for example in London, Barcelona and Berlin). His main competitive advantage was that he had purchased the 18,000-seat Palais des Sports in Paris and would host his biggest boxing cards there. In the past Dickson had promoted a few pro wrestling events at Salle Wagram (in conjunction with the SLPF guys) and in 1930 he had attempted to revive pro wrestling in the UK by running a show at the Royal Albert Hall in London (the show didn’t take place but pro wrestling did take off again in the UK anyway). Dickson clearly had some interest in the wrestling business and in September 1932 he introduced a new type of professional wrestling to Paris. He dubbed it pancrace-pugilat or just pancrace (pankration) for short. Pancrace received a lot of hype in the French press and was presented as a completely new type of pro wrestling - more dynamic, more violent and with tougher competitors compared to the already established lutte libre. Pancrace was pretty much the French version of the UK’s all-in wrestling, which had taken off a couple of years prior. The rules of pancrace weren’t all that different compared to the lutte libre that was already being practiced in France, the main difference being that the matches were to be wrestled in three 10-minute rounds. The other differences were stylistic as the pancrace matches were meant to be more aggressive and violent like the matches in the UK (and USA by extension) compared to the more amateur-like lutte libre matches. The first pancrace card featured names such as Jack Pye, Ben Sherman, Norman the Butcher, Stan Karolyi and others, and it was a success in terms of crowd interest.
A pancrace association is created (September 21, 1932) - Because pancrace was treated as a completely new thing, separate from lutte libre, it was not regulated by FFLP. Right after the first pancrace show things started rolling and Association Francaise du Pancrace was formed, with the idea being it soon to be transformed into Federation Francaise du Pancrace (a FFLP-like governing body for pancrace specifically). The new association immediately drew up official rules for the pancrace matches.
Jack Pye kills pancrace (September 28, 1932) - Jeff Dickson held his second pancrace show at Salle Wagram and it was an even bigger success than the first one, with about 1,000 fans turned away because there were no tickets left. The first pancrace champion was crowned too as Lucien Malezieux won a match to become French Middleweight champion. There had been some irregularities on the first show too and in other matches on the second card, but it was a Jack Pye vs. Barney Tolstoi match in particular that caused a lot of controversy. The Brit Pye was pretty violent in the match, kept using illegal holds and blows, and finally he ended up even hitting the referee. On the very next day Dickson declared Pye’s actions grotesque and said he would no longer promote a sport where such actions were allowed (they weren’t allowed per se, Pye just completely ignored the match rules that the pancrace association had put forward). Prior to this there had been talk of Dickson possibly running pancrace shows at Palais des Sports and in other countries. This wasn’t the official end of pancrace in France as there were a few additional matches and shows through the first half of 1934, but with Dickson out of the picture pancrace was doomed not to take off, and it didn’t.
Champions of Paris are crowned (March 2, 1933) - A FFLP-sanctioned tournament concluded at the Olympia Theater in Paris where champions of Paris in lutte libre pro wrestling in six different weight classes were crowned. This wasn’t an important event, but it’s good to once again point out that while pro wrestling events weren’t regular, there were still some that were happening so the idea that freestyle/catch pro wrestling in France started with Raoul Paoli’s promotion is not entirely correct. There was a local scene before he came into the picture, but it was much smaller in scale and generally, apart from pancrace, the style of the matches was closer to amateur wrestling than the more Americanized style that Paoli’s booking office pushed.
Eugene Mandron becomes the president of FFLP (June 12, 1933) - In the first half of 1933 FFLP was going through some turmoil internally. Earlier in the year a guy by the name of Lorang was announced as the provisional president, then as the permanent one and now he got ousted and Eugene Mandron became the new FFLP president. Remember the name Lorang because it will come into play a little bit later on. As for Mandron, he was a former wrestler who had been part of FFLP since 1930 in the role of treasurer and in fact his cafe was being used as the FFLP headquarters since then. Mandron would remain the guy in charge of FFLP throughout the 1930s and was therefore an important figure in the business.
Raoul Paoli announces his intention to bring American style pro wrestling to France (August 1, 1933) - This was the development that revived pro wrestling on a major level in France. Raoul Paoli was a popular French athlete, a three-sport national champion and a five-time Olympian. He then went to the U.S. to do some acting and while there he reconnected with Henri Deglane, who he knew from back in the day in Paris. The two became very good friends and Deglane introduced Paoli to American style pro wrestling. Paoli became so interested in it that he decided to become a pro wrestler himself. Deglane trained Paoli and Paoli, who was in his 40s at this point, had a brief career as a pro wrestler in North America in the early 1930s. Paoli then returned to France in 1932. On August 1, 1933, Paoli announced that he’ll be promoting pro wrestling (lutte libre/catch) at Palais des Sports in Paris with Henri Deglane as the headline star. The Frenchman Deglane was a fairground pro wrestler, who then became an amateur and won heavyweight gold in Greco-Roman wrestling at the 1924 Olympics, and after that he returned to pro wrestling, which ultimately led to him becoming World Heavyweight champion in North America (with a controversial victory over Ed “Strangler” Lewis in Montreal in 1931). By August 1933 Deglane had lost the World Championship to Ed Don George, but him coming back to wrestle in France for the first time in six years, now as a former World pro wrestling champion, was a big deal. Paoli and Deglane were partners in this new venture - Paoli promoting the shows and Deglane being the top star. Their new promotion not only made American style/catch pro wrestling very popular in France, but it was also influential in the style becoming popular in other European countries.
= Sidenote: Another two important behind the scenes names that need to be mentioned when talking about the Paoli promotion/booking office in the 1930s are Jeff Dickson and Dan Koloff. Dickson was an important piece of the puzzle because he owned Palais des Sports, which is where Paoli had his big Paris shows. Without access to that venue, at the time the biggest indoor venue in Paris, who knows if Paoli’s promotion would have taken off as much as it did. I don’t know for sure to what extent, but there are a number of clues that point to the veteran wrestler Dan Koloff being involved on the booking side of the Paoli office, particularly when it came to bringing in talent.
Raoul Paoli agrees to work with FFLP (September 11, 1933) - Initially Paoli tried to avoid working with FFLP. He attempted to put together something called “Comite pour la propagande et la pratique de la lutte libre en France” (Committee for the propaganda and practice of freestyle wrestling in France). This committee was supposed to draw up the rules and regulations that the Paoli shows would adhere to. In other words, Paoli wanted to create a new governing body with his own people and play by his own rules instead of FFLP’s rules, but the FFLP president Eugene Mandron did not allow for this to happen and ultimately Paoli agreed to go under FFLP’s jurisdiction. What that meant was that Paoli himself needed to have a FFLP-issued promoter’s licence, all the wrestlers he booked had to have a FFLP-issued wrestler’s license, his shows could be refereed only by FFLP’s licensed referees and in general anything to do with match rules and show regulations wasn’t up to Paoli - it was FFLP’s call. FFLP’s main position on the new promotion was that they were fine with Paoli presenting American style pro wrestling, but they did not want it to feature any of the excessive violence or buffoonery that had been on the rise in American pro wrestling. They wanted French catch to be more like a sport so they were pretty strict about their rules and regulations being followed. That said, in the past FFLP used to be more radical in their views on pro wrestling and had wanted it to be almost like a pro version of amateur wrestling so FFLP even working with Paoli and his vision of pro wrestling was definitely a change in their philosophy and I can only attribute the change to the new FFLP president Mandron.
Managers appear (mid September 1933) - Managers were more prominent in the post-WWII era, but they were around at this point too. When I say managers I don’t mean managers in the sense of characters that were part of the show. I mean actual managers behind the scenes, just like in boxing, who had a number of wrestlers under their control and they’d be responsible for managing the wrestlers’ careers and finding them bookings, for which they’d take a cut from the wrestlers’ pay. To be a manager in France back then you needed a manager’s license by FFLP. One such manager in September 1933 was a guy by the name of Alphonse Ulrich. He was a former boxing manager and matchmaker, who had now taken on the management of 15 France-based pro wrestlers (Alphonse Zwahlen, Albert Ben Chemoul, Paul Marton, Roger Mollet, Alexandre Poizat, etc.). And this is important to point out, because it shows that Paoli wasn’t the only source of talent in France back then. Paoli’s promotion was always built around heavyweights, especially the big Palais des Sports shows, and back then in France there were more non-heavyweights than there were heavyweights so that left a lot of wrestlers looking for work that Paoli’s heavyweight-based promotion wasn’t able to provide. Therefore over the years a lot of the non-heavyweight talent in France would be booked through other booking offices, managers or independently. Ulrich is the only one I’m aware of in 1933, but I’d imagine there were more. Ulrich in particular didn’t last long anyway and was definitely done by 1935, perhaps even earlier.
Raoul Paoli promotes his first show (September 25, 1933) - The official name of Raoul Paoli’s new promotion was Les Organisations Raoul Paoli (which would be akin to Raoul Paoli Promotions in English) and its first show at Palais des Sports was a major success. It was headlined by Henri Deglane defeating the American Len Hall and also featured names such as Dan Koloff, Billy Bartush, Hardy Kruskamp, Charlie Santen, Karl Pojello, Ben Sherman, etc. The show drew about 10,000 fans and those types of crowds became the norm for Paoli’s Palais des Sports shows in the 1930s, but it should be pointed out that the high tax on pro wrestling was still in place so 40% of the gate went to the French state. Paoli would have Palais des Sports shows typically every other Monday for the duration of the catch season. In addition to promoting his own shows he also established a booking office and would send talent all over France and to other countries.
Dan Koloff defeats Henri Deglane (November 20, 1933) - This was an important match as it solidified Koloff as the other top star of the Paoli office in the 1930s. The Bulgarian Koloff had a long career in North America prior to coming to France. He was never a major star in the U.S., but was an established name and in 1933 he was running the Northern California booking office, which is where a number of the wrestlers for the initial season of Paoli shows came from. Koloff and Deglane had become good friends, and Koloff had even been Deglane’s policeman for a while, so there was a mutual trust there, which explains how Koloff became an integral part of the Paoli office. Throughout the 1930s Koloff was the other top star of the Paoli office and was always pushed on the same level as Deglane.
Charles Rigoulot makes his pro wrestling debut (December 4, 1933) - Rigoulot was an Olympic gold medalist in weightlifting from the 1920 Olympics and at one point had a legitimate claim to being the strongest man in the world. Paoli managed to recruit him to his promotion and that was a major coup for him. Since Rigoulot’s fame predated his debut in wrestling, he was immediately very popular as a wrestler too and right away he was positioned as the number three star of the Paoli promotion. For his debut Rigoulot defeated Louis Loew.
The high tax on pro wrestling is finally reduced… perhaps (late 1933) - Since the formation of FFPL back in 1922 the main goal had always been to convince the government to reduce the 33-40% tax on pro wrestling. For over 10 years many meetings had been held and many FFPL/SLPF/FFLP people had given it their best shot, but no one was able to get the tax reduced. And then it seems like it may have finally happened in November-December 1933. I say it seems, because there was a whole bunch of movement in that direction after Eugene Mandron took over as FFLP president in June 1933, but I haven’t been able to find verification confirming the tax was actually reduced. What I can say is that up to November 1933 there was constant talk in the French press about this tax, but after November 1933 I haven’t been able to find any further mentions of it in the 1930s press so it seems to me the tax was reduced at that point, but I could be wrong. The last mention of it that I’ve seen is from mid November and it’s about how FFLP representatives and Raoul Paoli were presented at the Chamber of Deputies (the legislative assembly of the French Parliament back then) and a draft amendment was to be submitted and put to a vote. One of the key factors why it even got to a vote was that they finally managed to get a member of the Chamber of Deputies to support their cause and argue in favor of the reduction and that person was a politician by the name of Paul Malingre. Another thing that might have helped too was that with Mandron at the helm of FFLP, the relationship between FFLP and the French amateur wrestling federation FFL improved a lot (the two federations were at odds with each other in the 1920s) and there was talk FFL might support the effort to reduce the tax (I don’t know if they did or not, but there was talk they might).
= Sidenote: I’ve seen conflicting information about the tax in later years. One article in 1951, for example, listed it as 40% while another article from the same year had it at 25%. I’m not sure which is correct.
FFLP vs. ”outlaw” promoters (March 1934) - The intent of FFLP was to govern any and all pro wrestling in France, but inevitably there’s always someone who goes against the establishment and tries to do their own thing. This was the case in the spring of 1934 when a pair of promoters promoted shows in several French towns without having FFLP licenses and used some unlicensed wrestlers on those shows. One of these promoters actually dates back to at least February 1933 as I have him running a pancrace show then. The important difference between then and now, however, was that now FFLP took action against these “outlaw” shows. They announced that all FFLP-licensed wrestlers who had worked one of these “outlaw” shows or were going to work one, were going to have their license suspended. Among the wrestlers in question: Karl Pojello, Billy Bartush, King Curtis, Sailor Arnold, and a few others.
The FFPL “outlaws” (March 1934) - And this leads us to the earliest mention of Federation Francaise Professionnelle des Lutteurs (FFPL) that I’ve been able to find. FFPL was set up as a rival governing body to FFLP, but unlike FFLP which was just a governing body and didn’t book events itself, FFPL was also a booking office based out of Paris so now there were two French booking offices (Paoli’s and FFPL). Earlier on I had mentioned a name - Lorang. In 1933 this Lorang was briefly the president of FFLP only to be ousted by Mandron. Lorang was now the president of FFPL so it seems his removal as the president of FFLP led to the formation of the “outlaw” FFPL. Even though the FFPL booking office was based in Paris, they didn’t have much of a presence in Paris itself and I’ve been able to find only a few cards with FFPL wrestlers there throughout the 1930s. The vast majority of their shows were outside of Paris, particularly in French towns that didn’t get much, if any, wrestling shows. FFPL was a much smaller operation than Paoli’s operation. They could supply talent for just one show on any given day while Paoli, especially later on, had enough wrestlers at his disposal to send out talent to multiple towns on the same day. Later on FFPL had a larger crew, though still not particularly large (maybe about 20 wrestlers at a time, if that), but in 1934 it was just a handful of wrestlers. The two key FFPL stars were Karl Pojello (who they were always presenting as World Light Heavyweight champion) and Georges Letto (who they were always pushing as European champion). Neither man had a legitimate claim to such titles, but that’s how FFPL pushed them. Both worked for FFPL, on and off, between 1934 and 1939. Another interesting name that would show up as a headline star among the FFPL ranks every once in a while was Ernest Cadine (an Olympic gold medalist in weightlifting from the 1920 Olympics who became a pro wrestler in 1934). Other notable names who worked dates for FFPL include the UK’s Bill Garnon, Greece’s George Macricostas and Italy’s Leone Jacovacci. Overall FFPL’s crew was a collection of wrestlers that had never had a FFLP license and ones with a suspended FFLP license.
French catch highlights become part of French cinema newsreels (September 24, 1934) - Back in those days cinemas would show newsreels that would cover a range of topics from world events to sports. The earliest French catch match to be featured in a newsreel, at least that I’ve been able to find, was Henri Deglane vs. Kola Kwariani (the main event of the first show of Paoli’s second season of shows). As best as I can tell, prior to this only some training footage with Deglane had been shown in the French newsreels, as well as random match highlights from abroad here and there. Highlight clips from French catch matches would continue being part of French newsreels until the 1960s.
A new Paris promoter, Francois Quilgars, and a new booking office (September 27, 1934) - Francois Quilgars, a well-known former athletics club manager, promoted his first catch show in Paris. He was running weekly at Central Sporting Club at first and then at Paris-Ring (two venues that would normally host boxing fights). The shows were sanctioned by FFLP and Quilgars was using non-heavyweight talent (Lucien Malezieux, Albert Arnaud, Raymond Bukovac, Emile Rivollier, Felix Clody, etc.). His run as promoter lasted for 7 shows until mid November 1934 when FFLP revoked his license (there’s no mention in the press as to why). What’s more interesting though is that a booking office was established out of Paris-Ring and it seems to have been led by V. Ernie (the general secretary of the group that owned the building). This new booking office, just like Paoli and the “outlaws” FFPL, was selling shows to local promoters elsewhere in France.
Another new promoter, Albert Duriaux, and another new booking office (October 15, 1934) - Albert Duriaux, a boxing journalist, promoted his first show at Salle Wagram in Paris. He called this new promotion Wagram-Sport and also established a booking office. His shows were sanctioned by FFLP and would run monthly through January 1935. Duriaux was using mostly non-heavyweight French guys, and from his second show onward he got a new headline star that he could anchor his promotion around - Charles Rigoulot (who had just left the Paoli promotion). Another interesting name that popped in for a show was the Greek Bill Demetral who, after having a long run in North America, had returned to Europe for a while.
Henri Deglane defeats “Strangler” Lewis (December 3, 1934) - In October the former World Heavyweight champion Ed “Strangler” Lewis (the man Deglane had won the World Championship from back in 1931) came in to work a few matches for the Paoli promotion. After victories over Kola Kwariani and Charles Rigoulot, Lewis defeated Deglane only to be then defeated by Deglane in the rematch. Both of their matches did great business and drew 15,000 fans each.
Albert Duriaux takes over as promoter at Paris-Ring (December 8, 1934) - After FFLP pulled Francois Quilgars’ license there were no shows at Paris-Ring for a few weeks and then catch returned to the venue with a new promoter - Albert Duriaux. At the time he was still promoting his monthly shows at Salle Wagram too so technically that made Duriaux the first promoter to promote shows at two Paris venues at the same time. It’s difficult to say what that meant in terms of the two booking offices (i.e. whether they remained separate or merged into one). By the end of January 1935 neither Wagram, nor Paris-Ring hosted catch cards anymore, but there were still shows with the Wagram/Paris-Ring crew happening outside of Paris so there must’ve still been a booking office in place.
FFLP negotiates with Germany’s Welt Union (January-March 1935) - The French governing body FFLP was in talks to affiliate with Welt Union fur Berufsringen (World Union for Professional Wrestling), which was an alliance of sorts that was based out of Germany and subordinated to Verband Deutscher Berufsringer (the organization that the nazi regime had forced all existing German pro wrestling organizations to merge into). The initial approach was made by Paul Favre, who was the representative of Welt Union for Switzerland. The idea was for FFLP and Welt Union to create and use the same rules and regulations for pro wrestling (Greco-Roman and catch). In the end, this did not happen.
Henri Deglane becomes French Heavyweight champion (February 4, 1935) - From early 1935 through the first months of 1936 FFLP sanctioned elimination tournaments to crown official French champions. These championships were not promotion-specific and the tournaments to crown the champions were spread across different Paris and non-Paris promoters. The first champions were: Henri Deglane (French Heavyweight), Gabriel Martinville (French Light Heavyweight), Emile Pouveroux (French Middleweight), Alexandre Poizat (French Welterweight) and Albert Ben Chemoul (French Lightweight).
A new Paris promoter - Leo Beynat (April 26, 1935) - Leo Beynat promoted his first show at Elysee Montmartre in Paris. Beynat was a boxing promoter, who had promoted boxing at a few Paris venues in 1930 (including at the 40,000-capacity Stade-Velodrome Buffalo). He then got out of boxing and in January 1935 Beynat and partners took over Elysee Montmartre. They were mainly promoting boxing and Beynat himself tried promoting catch. His shows were sanctioned by FFLP and he was using the American boxer turned wrestler George Godfrey and the Italian Renato Gardini as his headline stars (they had both come over from the U.S. for a European tour). Beynat’s run as catch promoter lasted only three weeks.
Raoul Paoli starts running a second Paris venue (October 2, 1935) - Paoli started promoting shows at Salle Wagram every other week during his season, in the weeks when there was no Palais des Sports show. Paoli had talked about running Wagram all the way back in September 1933 and now he finally pulled the trigger. The Paoli shows at Wagram were definitely secondary to the Palais des Sports shows as the biggest matches were saved for Palais and the very top guys like Deglane and Koloff never worked the Wagram shows in the 1930s (apart from one exhibition bout that Deglane did on the first Wagram show). The Wagram shows were an opportunity to feature some of the non-heavyweights and the midcard heavyweights of the Paoli office more. The first show was headlined by Stan Karolyi vs. Dick Perron. Paoli continued promoting Wagram shows through the end of the 1938-1939 season.
A new Paris promoter - Georges Jacob (November 29, 1935) - Georges Jacob promoted his first show at Magic-City. The name of his promotion was Organisations Nationales de Catch and the shows were sanctioned by FFLP. Jacob was using Charles Rigoulot, who was still on the outs with Paoli, as his top star. Jacob’s run as catch promoter was short. After his initial show he had another two shows at Palais de la Mutualite and that was it.
Henri Deglane becomes European Heavyweight champion (January 27, 1936) - Deglane defeated Kola Kwariani in a tournament final at Palais des Sports to become the European Heavyweight champion. This was the top championship in France in the 1930s,1940s and most of the 1950s. In addition to the heavyweight belt, from late 1935 through early 1938 FFLP also sanctioned elimination tournaments to crown other European champions and the first champions were: Stan Karolyi (European Mid-Heavyweight), Alphonse Zwahlen (European Middleweight) and Roger Mollet (European Welterweight).
”Outlaw” Wladek Zbyszko passes through France (late March 1936) - The popular Wladek Zbyszko, who was active in Europe at the time and had a troupe of wrestlers, passed through France for at least one show (I have a record of one show in Lille but there could have been more elsewhere). FFLP made sure to announce in the French press that the show with Zbyszko wasn’t sanctioned by them. Not only that, but FFLP even suspended the Frenchman Arthur Ghevaert for three months and fined him 1,000 French francs due to him working the Zbyszko “outlaw” show.
Dan Koloff becomes European Heavyweight champion (April 6, 1936) - Koloff defeated Henri Deglane at Palais des Sports to win the top championship of France. The victory also made him the only wrestler to defeat Deglane twice in France (and he would remain the only one until 1948 when Yvon Robert did it as well).
Wrestlers’ relief fund is created (September 19, 1936) - FFLP created a wrestlers’ relief fund to support injured wrestlers. The first initiative for this fund was selling a yearbook with about 50 wrestler photos, with all proceeds going to the fund.
Charles Rigoulot returns to Paoli (October 3, 1936) - After almost two years of working for other French promoters as well as abroad, Rigoulot returned to the Paoli office and was once again positioned as its number three star.
Société/Organisations Redco has its first show (February 17, 1937) - As you’ve read so far, apart from Paoli no other promoter had been able to last more than several shows in Paris. That changed with the introduction of Société Redco (also known as Organisations Redco), which was based out of Elysee Montmartre. Their first show was headlined by Charles Ulsemer vs. Bill Garnon. Redco would go on to be the second most successful French booking office of the 1930s and would promote weekly catch shows at Elysee Montmartre from February 1937 through June 1939. Redco was also a booking office and selling shows to local French promoters as well as supplying talent to foreign promoters. On top of that Redco had a working relationship with promoter Harold Lane in London and would bring in talent from there. The Redco shows were sanctioned by FFLP. Redco was composed of three key players. First there was the director of Redco, Daniel Pacheco, who had a background in managing theatrical tours and who had taken over the management of the Elysee Montmartre music hall in Paris. Secondly, there was a guy by the name of Marcy, who was the promoter (i.e. of the three Redco guys he was the one who held the FFLP promoter’s license). And finally, and perhaps most importantly, there was Paul Marton. Marton was a Hungarian who had lived in France for a number of years by that point. He had some success as an amateur wrestler in the late 1920s and then in the spring of 1933 he turned pro. As a pro he was just a lowercard/midcard wrestler, but behind the scenes he was an important player in French catch for many years (he was still active behind the scenes as late as the early 1970s). Marton was the matchmaker for Redco and was especially known for having a lot of international connections. This was reflected in the type of talent Redco was using - a lot more international talent than the other Paris promoters prior to them, with the exception of Paoli. That said, Redco’s roster wasn’t very consistent and there was a lot of talent turnover so they didn’t really have any longterm top stars. Some of the guys who Redco featured as their headliners during the 1937-1939 period were guys like Stan Karolyi, Mike Brendel, Charles Ulsemer, Joe Nawrocki, Regis Siki, Arthur Ghevaert, King Curtis, etc. Probably the most consistent headliner they ever had was Ben Sherman, around whom they built most of their 1938-1939 season.
Henri Deglane defeats Ed Don George (March 8, 1937) - In February 1937 the former World Heavyweight champion Ed Don George came in to work a few matches for the Paoli office. He first had a draw with Deglane and then lost to Deglane. Both matches did big business and packed Palais des Sports. Deglane defeating George was a big deal to the French audience, because George was the one who had defeated Deglane for the World Heavyweight Title and this was Deglane avenging that loss on his home turf. Ever since returning to France in 1933 Deglane had talked about wanting to avenge the loss, which he claimed had happened only because he had injured his shoulder, so there was a lot of anticipation for these Deglane/George matches.
”Outlaw” promoter Alfred Francis has his first show (March 12, 1937) - Alfred Francis, a boxing manager, promoted his first catch show at Palais de la Mutualite in Paris. Not only was his show not sanctioned by FFLP, but it was also the first show in Paris backed by the “outlaw” FFPL that I’ve been able to find. The first show was headlined by Mike Brendel vs. Gaby Cyr (who they billed as the son of the legendary strongman Louis Cyr). There was a second show later in the month with Karl Pojello on top. There were no further shows by Francis after that.
”Wednesday Night Wars” (March 1937) - For the first time in about 20 years Paris saw two promotions running shows on the same night - Paoli at Salle Wagram and Redco at Elysee Montmartre. On March 17 Paoli had a show headlined by Oscar Nygren vs. Michele Leone (yes, the future baron) while Redco had a show headlined by Stan Karolyi vs. Harry Brooks. There was a second head-to-head battle on March 31 - a Paoli show headlined by Felix Miquet vs. Felix Kersic, and a Redco show headlined by Bob Gregory vs. Butcher Johnson. FFLP did not like the idea of two promotions running shows on the same night so they put a stop to this pretty quickly.
Al Pereira defeats Dan Koloff for the European Heavyweight Championship (March 22, 1937) - Al Pereira was a wrestler from Northern California, who had been around for a few years, but wasn’t much of a star anywhere. What he had going for him though was the support of Dan Koloff, who had been his boss in Northern California previously and who had mentored him a bit. At the beginning of 1937 Pereira was brought in to France and was given a huge push, which led to him getting over big. He first took the European Title from Koloff and then went on to have victories over Deglane and Don George too.
Karl Pojello challenges Henri Deglane (March 31, 1937) - Pojello, backed by FFPL president Lorang, issued a challenge to Henri Deglane. Pojello was willing to wrestle Deglane on a date of Deglane’s choosing and under any conditions Deglane would like. Pojello also added that he was willing to put his $1,000 diamond belt at stake in the match (FFPL was pushing Pojello as a World Light Heavyweight champion and Pojello claimed he had defeated Johnny Meyers in 1934 in Chicago for the belt). Pojello had originally issued a challenge to Deglane and Koloff a year prior, but now this new challenge got a bit more attention (though not a lot), because it was issued through the pages of the most popular French sports newspaper at the time “L’Auto”. In general such challenges between wrestlers from different groups were very common in pro wrestling back then so in that sense Pojello’s challenge was pretty standard overall. However, in the context of 1930s France it stands out as unique, because challenges like that were not common at all in France in the 1930s as most promoters and wrestlers were under the jurisdiction of FFLP so no one was trying to rock the boat by challenging wrestlers from other FFLP-affiliated promotions.
Boxing champion Louis Robur promotes his first wrestling show (June 18, 1937) - Yet another new promoter tried his hand at catch when Louis Robur promoted a show at Cirque Medrano in Paris. Robur was a former boxing French Heavyweight champion, who was then a boxing referee and manager. His run as catch promoter lasted only two shows. The first show was headlined by Michele Leone vs. Roy Fields. The shows were sanctioned by FFLP.
Jim Londos wrestles in Paris (August 10, 1937) - From May through November 1937 Paris hosted the “International Exposition of Art and Technology in Modern Life”, which attracted a ton of visitors to the city. The idea came about to have a big catch show as part of the exposition and host it at Grand Palais (one of the biggest indoor venues in Paris at the time). The headline attraction for the show ended up being Jim Londos defeating Karol Nowina. This was Londos’ first and only match in France. About 8,000 fans were in attendance. The show was promoted by Les Organisations Auriche. The promoter was M. Auriche, who had recently taken over as the boxing promoter at Cirque d’Hiver, and Emile Mornay was his matchmaker. The week prior they had promoted a catch show at Cirque d’Hiver where Nowina won a match for the right to face Londos. Both Auriche shows were sanctioned by FFLP and FFLP actually had a hand in organizing the show with Londos. It’s also important to note that FFLP did acknowledge Londos as World champion and the Nowina match was presented as a World Championship defense - as a matter of fact, the only World Championship match in France in the 1930s.
Dan Koloff defeats Al Pereira for the European Heavyweight Championship (November 15, 1937) - Koloff re-won his title from the man who had defeated him for it. Koloff would never lose the championship again. He would retire in early 1938 due to health issues and the championship would become vacant.
FFLP suspends Redco’s license (November 26, 1937) - FFLP suspended Marcy’s promoter’s license, which meant that if Société Redco continued to promote events they would effectively be an “outlaw” promotion. FFLP also warned all licensed wrestlers that if they were to wrestle on a Redco show they’d get their licenses suspended too. There were also some issues with advertising matches and not delivering the advertised matches, but the main reason for the suspension was that there had been numerous instances where wrestlers on Redco shows would break the match rules as laid out by FFLP. The matches were turning too violent (i.e. punching, kicking, etc.) and FFLP didn’t like this. They wanted French catch to be more like a sport and the matches had to adhere to the rules.
Redco turns “outlaw” (November 30, 1937) - The lack of a FFLP license did not stop Redco from running their shows and they promoted their first “outlaw” event at Elysee Montmartre. Mike Brendel, who had also fallen out of favor with FFLP, was used as the main headline star during Redco’s “outlaw” run.
Joe Savoldi makes his debut in France (December 13, 1937) - The popular Joe Savoldi came in for a few months and had a big run which saw him beat Koloff and Rigoulot, and the run ended with him losing to Deglane and Rigoulot.
FFLP reinstates Redco’s license (December 15, 1937) - After three shows as “outlaws”, Société Redco returned to the FFLP fold and FFLP reinstated their license.
Dick Shikat makes his French debut and challenges Paoli’s top stars (February 25, 1938) - The former World Heavyweight champion Dick Shikat, who had come over to Europe for a tour, wrestled his first match in Paris. Even before coming to France Shikat made it known through the press that he wanted to wrestle Deglane, Koloff and Savoldi. When he got to France he even offered to put up 50,000 French francs as a guarantee for a match with Deglane or Koloff and said he could beat Savoldi three times in an hour. Shikat said he wasn’t going to bow down to anyone and suggested that Paoli was afraid to let him wrestle his guys. Shikat, it seems, was trying to stir things up and was presenting himself as a “trustbuster” of sorts who was in France to disrupt the establishment. His challenges were ignored by the Paoli office and didn’t get much attention in the press either. Shikat ended up wrestling on three Redco shows. For his debut he beat Joe Nawrocki.
A new promoter and the return of the FFPL “outlaws” to Paris (April 6, 1938) - The previous month a new group had taken over the promotion of boxing at Magic-City and then they decided to do a catch show too. The promoter for that group was Juan Suaya (a boxing manager), who at one point had been an associate of Alfred Francis (the guy who promoted shows with the FFPL guys in Paris the year prior). The Suaya show was backed by FFPL and headlined by Karl Pojello vs. Bert van der Auwera. This was his first and only catch show.
The Angel emerges (May 11, 1938) - There could have been earlier ones, but this is the date of the earliest Maurice Tillet match that I’ve been able to find. From the very start of his career he was known as The Angel. In 1937-1939, on and off, Tillet was touring France along with Karl Pojello and the rest of the FFPL “outlaw” crew. At this point he wasn’t a headline attraction yet and was typically working in the midcard. Since FFPL didn’t have much of a presence in Paris, all of Tillet’s French matches were in various towns in the French provinces.
Mud wrestling arrives in France (July 2, 1938) - Mud wrestling (i.e. a match where they would cover the ring with mud and the wrestlers would wrestle on top of the mud) was a concept that came over to France from the United States and the ones to introduce it to France were the FFPL “outlaws”. They, and only they, used this type of match as an attraction on a number of shows in 1938 and 1939. The very first one, that I’ve been able to find, was Karl Pojello vs. Jean Prochazka and it was part of a show at the 15,000-capacity Arenes du Prado bullring in Marseille.
Yvon Robert makes his French debut with a victory over Henri Deglane (January 9, 1939) - The former (Boston and Montreal) World Heavyweight champion Yvon Robert came in for a four-month run, which started with him defeating Deglane (thus becoming one of only four men to defeat Deglane in France in the 1930s). Later in Robert’s run Deglane got his win back and thus Deglane added another victory over a former World champion to his record in France.
Wrestler and trainer examinations (January 31, 1939) - This is an interesting tidbit worth mentioning. By this point FFLP had started doing examinations - if someone with no prior experience as a pro wrestler wanted to become an FFLP-licensed pro wrestler they needed to pass an exam in front of a commission. The exam was basically the wrestler demonstrating their knowledge of catch and FFLP were fairly strict about who they would allow to pass the exam. For example, on this occasion one guy passed the exam and the other guy was turned down. There were also exams if you wanted to be a FFLP-licensed catch trainer. On this occasion the French pro wrestlers Albert Arnaud and Emile Pouveroux passed their exam and obtained trainer licenses.
Jack Sherry works a Redco show (February 10, 1939) - Jack Sherry, the main World Heavyweight champion claimant in the UK at the time, beat Mountain Dix in the main event of a Redco show at Elysee Montmartre. I do have a record of another couple of Sherry matches in France outside of Paris, but this was his most high-profile appearance in France.
The final Palais des Sports show of the 1930s (April 17, 1939) - In the main event Felix Miquet, the top French heavyweight prospect of the Paoli office, headlined Palais des Sports for the first time and scored a big victory over Yvon Robert. Overall the run of Palais des Sports shows that Paoli had in the 1930s was quite impressive with a lot of 10,000+ crowds. In the 1930s no other promotion in Europe was drawing such crowds on a regular basis over a number of years.
Another challenge by the “outlaws” FFPL (May 1939) - FFPL and its president Lorang were once again issuing challenges to wrestlers under the FFLP umbrella. This time George Macricostas challenged Ben Sherman (the top star of the Redco office at the time) and Karl Pojello re-issued his challenge to Henri Deglane (the top star of the Paoli office). Deglane and Sherman never really responded, but an Estonian wrestler by the name of Kulikoff did respond instead and offered to wrestle both Macricostas and Pojello in a private gym match in the presence of neutral judges. Kulikoff had worked for both Paoli and Redco earlier in the year, and he would end up working for FFPL soon thereafter (and had worked for them back in 1937 too).
Professional sports, including catch, are banned in France - the last catch show (October 5, 1940) - In August 1940 the new Vichy regime in France created a new commission to rule over sports in the country - Commissariat General a l'Education Physique et aux Sports. In early October the commission made a decision to put an end to all professional sports in France, including catch, and focus entirely on amateur sports instead. No more sport for profit, they said. Professional boxing and cycling were given a three-year grace period where certain limited events could still take place, but all other professional sports events had to stop effective immediately. When the decision was made there was already a scheduled catch show at Salle Wagram (a benefit show for the prisoners of war) for October 5 and it was allowed to go on. The show was headlined by Albert Arnaud vs. Andre Trante. Officially, this was to be the last catch show in France. It was also the end of this incarnation of the FFLP governing body.
Catch during the time of the ban (October 1940-September 1944) - Professional wrestling in France may have been officially banned for almost four years, however, there were still some catch matches and events that took place during that time. First of all, in 1941 there were shows with “outlaw” wrestlers, mostly headlined by Georges Letto, in the east of France. Not a lot, it seems, but definitely some, and there may have been others that I’m not aware of. Secondly, and this was not a catch show in the traditional sense, but music hall exhibitions were not banned so Henri Deglane, for example, had a bunch of catch performances in 1941 in Paris. He would first demonstrate and explain some holds to the audience and then he would wrestle a short exhibition match with Emile Pouveroux. And finally, there were a few sports and benefit events that featured catch matches, most notably a September 17, 1943, card at Grand Palais in Paris. This was the only full catch card (5 matches) in Paris during the ban, and the proceeds from it went to a children’s home that had been damaged by a recent bombing. The main event was Henri Deglane vs. Bert van der Auwera.
Pro wrestling airs on television in France for the first time (November 30, 1943) - In 1943 and 1944 the Germans ran a television network out of Paris, albeit a network with an extremely limited reach. On that date the network aired about 3 minutes of highlights from a pair of pro wrestling exhibitions matches: Albert Arnaud vs. Leone Jacovacci and Stan Karolyi vs Emile Pouveroux. The matches were filmed at the Magic-City studio in Paris. This is the earliest known instance of pro wrestling airing on television in France.
Catch is no longer banned (September 1944) - After the liberation of Paris the Vichy regime was removed from power and with that came the end of their mandate for a ban on all pro sports. Federation Francaise de Lutte (FFL) was re-established as the governing body for amateur wrestling in France with Roger Coulon now serving as the FFL president. The pro wrestling governing body FFLP did not return. Instead catch went under the jurisdiction of FFL. A professional group/section was created within FFL and it was headed by former FFLP president Eugene Mandron initially, then by another former FFLP official in Paul Moyat, followed by Jean Poirier from 1950 onward. This professional section was now in charge of catch in France, and they themselves answered to FFL president Coulon. Under this new set up where amateur wrestling and pro wrestling (catch) were governed by the same federation, 3% of the proceeds of every catch show going forward were to go to FFL as financial support for amateur wrestling in France (this was modeled after the boxing federation FFB where there was the same arrangement). A lot of the pre-war FFLP rules and regulations returned and particularly the barrier to entry for new wrestlers became higher - new French wrestlers still needed to pass an exam to qualify for a pro license, but now they also needed to have four years of prior experience as an amateur wrestler otherwise they wouldn’t even be allowed to go to the pro exam (in the late 1940s the required amateur experience was reduced to three years). The pre-war FFLP French and European champions were still recognized as champions, if they were still active in France, so guys like Karolyi, Zwahlen and Mollet kept their titles. The rest of the championships were declared vacant and in 1945 new French champions started being crowned.
The return of catch to Paris and a new promoter (October 21, 1944) - Gaston Caliez, a new boxing and catch promoter, promoted his first catch show at Palais de Glace in Paris. It was headlined by Charles Rigoulot vs. Charles Pierlot and it was the first catch show in Paris since the ban was lifted. With Raoul Paoli currently not in the picture, Caliez was perhaps the top promoter in Paris/France for the first year after the war. During his first season of shows Caliez typically ran two shows per month. Among his featured headliners were guys like Charles Rigoulot, Raymond Bukovac, Alphonse Zwahlen, Louis Loew, Stan Karolyi, and a few others.
The return of Redco (November 10, 1944) - Société Redco, the number two French booking office of the 1930s, resumed its shows at Elysee Montmartre. Daniel Pacheco was still the man in charge, and I think Paul Marton was still the matchmaker. Redco’s first show back was headlined by the European Middleweight champion Alphonse Zwahlen vs. the European Welterweight champion Roger Mollet.
Catch returns to Salle Wagram with a new promoter (November 29, 1944) - Jean de Nebehay, a new boxing and catch promoter, took over Salle Wagram and now Paris had three venues that were hosting regular catch shows (though not weekly yet). Nebehay would remain the promoter there for a long time. His first show in 1944 was headlined by the European Mid-Heavyweight champion Stan Karolyi vs. Eric Fetz and also featured the Paris debut of the American sergeant Bob Cummings, who would go on to be one of the more popular stars of that first post-WWII catch season.
= Sidenote: After WWII catch caught on again pretty quickly in Paris. Just like before the war, there were now three regular catch venues (by three promoters instead of by two like in 1939), but there were no regular Palais des Sports shows since Paoli wasn't promoting at the time. Looking at the cards from the three regular Paris venues it doesn’t seem like there was much, if any, talent exclusivity at this point and the promoters were sharing the talent. Shows did start taking place outside of Paris too so I’m sure there must’ve been a booking office or offices that were booking out the talent. I just don’t know who was running it/them at this point.
Catch shows at Palais des Sports, but with no involvement by Raoul Paoli (December 1944 - March 1945) - Back in 1941 and 1942 there had been a pair of sports events at Palais des Sports, organized by “Paris-soir” newspaper, that featured a few catch matches, but there hadn’t been a full catch show at Palais des Sports since Paoli’s last show in April 1939. That changed on December 25, 1944, when there was a benefit catch show for the prisoners of war and deportees. It’s not clear who promoted it, but FFL and its president Roger Coulon were involved in the organization of it. The headline match was Charles Rigoulot vs. Manuel Fullaondo. Then on February 2, 1945, there was another show at the venue, which was promoted by Gaston Caliez. It was headlined by Louis Loew vs. Lou Diamond. And finally, there was a March 3 show headlined by Charles Rigoulot vs. Felix Miquet. I’m not sure who the promoter was. It’s also worth noting that by the end of WWII Jeff Dickson had died and now Palais des Sports had a new owner.
The return of promoter Raoul Paoli (October 12, 1945) - Raoul Paoli returned to promoting and had his first Palais des Sports show since April 1939. It was headlined by Henri Deglane vs. Chick Knight (who was a last minute substitution for former World Heavyweight champion Danno O’Mahoney). Yvar Martinson wrestled Pat Kinney in the semi-main. Martinson was originally from Latvia, but lived in France for many years and became a French citizen so eventually he came to be viewed as a French star. He was wrestling in France in the late 1930s as an upper-midcard star, but now Paoli was about to strap the rocket to him and push him as one of the top stars of the promotion for the next several years. With the previous champion Dan Koloff having passed away in 1940 the European Heavyweight Title was up for grabs and FFL recognized Martinson as the reigning champion, the claim being he had won the title in 1943 (he hadn’t). While generally FFL had pretty straightforward title lineages for their French titles, when it came to the European and later the World titles they would often randomly start recognizing someone as the champion, as opposed to having them win the title in a tournament like FFLP did with all of its European champions back in the 1930s, and then they would continue the lineage from there. Still though, because FFL controlled the majority of pro wrestling in France for the next few years there was never a situation, with one exception, where there was more than one title claimant per title. There was always just one champion for all of France, even though sometimes that champion may have not won the title in a match.
Three of the four Paris promoters co-promote a show (December 22, 1945) - In a sign that at this point things were pretty amicable between the various Paris promoters, Paoli, Caliez and Nebehay co-promoted a benefit show at Caliez’s regular venue (Palais de Glace), headlined by Charles Rigoulot vs. Arthur Ghevaert. In general, while some signs of talent exclusivity were starting to appear, a lot of the talent was still being shared between the promoters.
Alex Goldstein promotes his first catch show (January 11, 1946) - Alex Goldstein was a young up-and-coming promoter who was involved in the promotion of boxing, motocross, car races, etc. and later in roller-catch (roller derby) and catch equestre (horseback wrestling) amongst other things. This was his start in the catch business where he would become one of the most important behind the scenes figures for many years to come. He was based out of Cirque d’Hiver in Paris. His first show was headlined by Louis Loew vs. Roland Bonneville.
= Sidenote: Around this same time Maximilien de Rumine (a former FFLP official and licensed referee) also started promoting shows in Paris, at Gymnase Huyghens, so now Paris had six different promoters running regular shows. This was more catch than the French capital had ever had, although it should be said that the Rumine shows didn’t last long.
Charles Rigoulot becomes the European Heavyweight champion (February 16, 1946) - Charles Rigoulot defeated the champion Yvar Martinson at Palais des Sports for the European Heavyweight Title, a title he had been chasing since the mid 1930s. He would drop it back to Martinson later in the year only for Martinson to lose it to Deglane and then to re-win it again. In the second half of the 1940s Martinson, Deglane and Rigoulot were the top three stars of the Paoli office and with them at the helm business for Paoli was once again pretty strong.
Alex Goldstein goes off on his own (July 26, 1946) - Goldstein announced to the press that he’s leaving the “international organization office” and that from now on he was going to be organizing his shows by himself. I don’t know any other details about this office beyond that, but to me this confirms what I was alluding to earlier that the Paris promoters were sharing talent and there was a booking office that was supplying talent to all the promoters. With his newly-gained independence, for his next season of shows Goldstein heavily relied on Louis Loew as his top heel, Henri Cogan as his up-and-coming babyface star, and visiting foreign stars such as Jack Dale, Mario Matassa, Vic Hessle and Charlie Fisher.
Olympic gold medalist Axel Cadier makes his French debut (October 22, 1946) - The Swede Axel Cadier had just become a professional wrestler and was brought to Paris by manager Robert Lageat to work as a headliner for promoter Gaston Caliez at Palais de la Mutualite. Caliez had just moved over to this venue and formed a partnership with promoter Etienne Siry, who was promoting boxing at the venue and who would eventually get more involved in catch too. Cadier was the most decorated amateur to ever turn full-time professional - he was 1932 Olympic bronze medalist in Greco-Roman wrestling and 1936 Olympic gold medalist, 3-time European Greco-Roman champion, 1-time European freestyle champion, 6-time Swedish Greco-Roman champion and 5-time Swedish freestyle champion. For his French debut Cadier defeated another two-time Olympian in the Frenchman Jean Jourlin. Cadier wrestled in France for a number of years and while popular he was never among the very top stars, but rather on the level just below them.
= Sidenote: Speaking of changes in Paris, Redco had been slowing things down over at Elysee Montmartre and in fact there were no catch shows at the venue at all during the 1946-1947 season, because someone else took over the management of the venue. Also, Paul Marton was now the Salle Wagram matchmaker, for promoter Jean de Nebehay.
Steve Casey vs. Henri Deglane for the World Heavyweight Title (November 13, 1946) - “Crusher” Steve Casey came to Paris and was recognized by FFL as the World Heavyweight champion, even though he had already lost his (Boston) World Title in the United States. Casey successfully defended the title against Henri Deglane at Palais des Sports (the two wrestled for 60 minutes without a winner and then the jury awarded the match to Casey on points). This was the first World Championship match on a Raoul Paoli show.
The French state officially authorizes FFL as a governing body for catch and recognizes catch as a sport (November 25, 1946) - The French state, or to be more precise the Ministry of National Education, finalized the federal structure for all the sports with an official decree where it listed all the different sports federations it recognized as official ones. With this decree the Ministry officially authorized FFL as the governing body for both amateur wrestling and catch. By virtue of this decree catch was now officially recognized as a sport by the French state.
Bert Assirati makes his French debut (March 31, 1947) - Top UK star Bert Assirati came to Paris for the first time and lost a European Heavyweight Title match to the champion Yvar Martinson at Palais des Sports. On and off, Assirati would wrestle for Paoli as a top star until 1951. In November 1948 he defeated Martinson (via countout) for the European Title and lost it back to him half a year later.
An International Pro Wrestling Federation is formed? (April 1947) - This is a curious thing that I haven’t been able to quite figure out. In April 1947 there was an announcement in the French press that while in Prague the president of FFL Roger Coulon had met with the heads of other national amateur wrestling federations (England, Belgium, Sweden, Czechoslovakia and Italy) and they had agreed to form Federation Europeenne de Catch with the idea being to put catch (pro wrestling) under the control of one governing body, similar to how the International Federation of Amateur Wrestling (the future FILA/UWW) was ruling over amateur wrestling at the time. I couldn’t find any other mentions of this new federation in the press, but I found mentions of Federation Internationale de Catch later that same year. There are further mentions of Federation Internationale de Catch in the 1950s too. I even came across the odd mention of Federation Internationale de Lutte Professionnelle (probably a mistake by the newspaper and it was meant to be Catch, not Lutte Professionnelle). Also, in 1952 there are mentions of Commission Professionnelle Internationale (Germany, Belgium and Spain supposedly being affiliated with it) and Commission Europeenne Professionnelle (Switzerland, Spain, Belgium, Germany and England are mentioned as the affiliates). I think all of these mentions from the French press that I just brought up are all referring to the same thing. Plus, in Spain in the 1950s there was always talk about Federacion Internacional de Lucha, which I believe is meant to be the same thing as the federation/commission mentioned in the French press. In the context of French and Spanish pro wrestling this International Federation was referred to as the governing body that had to approve all European and World championship matches (unlike the French/Spanish championship matches which were sanctioned by the French/Spanish federations themself). I’ve never seen this International Federation mentioned in any other context. The important question is though, was this International Federation a real entity that existed or was it just a fictitious governing body that they came up with to justify them having European and World titles? I have my opinion, but I can’t say for sure.
European Middleweight Title unification at Roland Garros Stadium (June 29, 1947) - Stade Roland Garros in Paris is one of the most famous tennis stadiums in the world and to the best of my knowledge there has only been one catch event there. The promoter was Alex Goldstein and the headline match, Albert Arnaud vs. Jack Dale, had an interesting twist to it. The Frenchman Arnaud was the recognized European Middleweight champion by FFL in France and when the Englishman Dale came to France it was said that he was the recognized European Middleweight champion in the UK. And this is where Federation Internationale de Catch first came into play - in the French press it was announced that the International Federation had authorized a title unification. Arnaud won.
The beginning of amateur catch (September 28, 1947) - There were some similar events earlier in the year, but it was a September 28 card at the 10,500-seat Arenes du Bouscat bullring in Bordeaux that put some national attention on the topic of amateur catch. On that day a local promotion called CIC (Cercle International de Catch), that had officially been formed the month prior, put on an amateur catch show. On the card there were some guys who were to become staples of the CIC amateur catch shows for the next few years - Rene Mathieu, Manuel Cubera, Juan Pascual, James Bellivers, etc. FFL was quick to announce that not only did they have nothing to do with this amateur catch event, but that according to FFL regulations amateur catch was prohibited in France and any FFL-licensed amateur or pro wrestlers that participated in such an event would suffer the consequences. CIC responded that they were registered strictly as an amateur catch organization, the first and only one in the country, and therefore were fully within their rights to organize such events. So what was amateur catch? Basically the same thing as catch (pro wrestling)… but billed as amateur. Amateur events with amateur athletes were exempt from paying the taxes that the pro events had to pay so by having the events be “amateur catch” the promoters made more money and the barrier to entry for new wrestlers was much lower, because you didn’t need a license to be allowed to wrestle as was the case with the pro shows then. The emergence of amateur catch would lead to major changes in the pro world as well, but we’ll get to that later.
= Sidenote: Amateur catch did exist in France in the 1930s too, although on a much smaller scale than what it was to become now. Back then it was a proper amateur sport, from what I can tell, and therefore different from this new version of amateur catch. The most notable name to come out of the 1930s amateur catch scene was the future main event star Andre Drapp, who started wrestling in amateur catch matches in 1936 when he was only 16 years old.
World champion Yvon Robert returns to France (March-April 1948) - Yvon Robert, at the time the reigning (Montreal) World Heavyweight champion, returned to France and had a few matches at Palais des Sports. FFL recognized him as the champion. He first had a 60-minute draw with Yvar Martinson and then two successful World Championship defenses against Bert Assirati and Henri Deglane.
Rene Ben Chemoul debuts (May 14, 1948) - After successfully passing his pro exam earlier in the week, Rene Ben Chemoul made his catch debut with a victory over Desbonnet on a Cirque d’Hiver card. Rene was the son of Albert Ben Chemoul (a retired pro wrestler who was now one of the most prominent catch referees and one of the top catch trainers). Over time Rene grew to be one of the most recognizable and popular French stars, despite being only a welterweight/middleweight. He was considered to be one of the premier “voltigeurs” (acrobats) of his time and had a very dynamic style. Later he was also an important figure behind the scenes too.
Swimming pool matches make their debut in France (September 10, 1948) - Swimming pool catch matches, or “catch on the water” (catch sur l'eau) as they were officially known in France, were a unique French attraction that first started on this date in Bordeaux. These were matches where the ring would be placed in the middle of a large body of water (usually a public swimming pool). They would be worked more or less as a regular match, and the biggest spot would inevitably be someone (be it a wrestler or the referee) getting dumped into the water. Initially swimming pool matches were strictly an amateur catch attraction, but in later decades they made their way to the pro shows and the biggest promotions as well. A number of swimming pool matches aired on national television in the 1970s and 1980s.
= Sidenote: Back in the mid to late 1930s there were similar matches in California and Spain, which predate the French swimming pool matches, but France is the place best known for them and the place where these matches became a staple of the local wrestling scene.
FFL gets involved in amateur catch (October 2, 1948) - After a year of FFL denouncing amateur catch and FFL president Roger Coulon publicly calling out the amateur catch shows for being pro events masquerading as amateur events in order to avoid taxes, all of a sudden FFL decided to bring amateur catch into its fold and allow all of its clubs throughout France to promote such events. This was a significant change that would have major consequences down the road. Just like there was a pro catch section within FFL, now there was also an amateur catch section. On October 2 at Central Sporting Club in Paris the first FFL-sanctioned amateur catch show took place, and the shows became weekly after that. Even though he was already promoting boxing at the venue and had previously announced his intention to promote catch there too, Alex Goldstein publicly distanced himself from these amateur catch shows and told the press he had nothing to do with them. The guy in charge of these shows, and to a large extent the one overseeing all FFL-sanctioned amateur catch shows throughout the country going forward, was actually Maurice Durand, whose official title was FFL Director of Amateur Catch. As far as I know this was Durand’s entry into the catch business. Further down the line he would become a major player behind the scenes in the pro scene too and a bitter rival to Goldstein. I will stress this again - don’t let the word amateur fool you. These amateur catch shows were pro shows simply being billed as amateur. The only significant differences between the amateur and pro shows were that the amateur catch matches were often wrestled in 6 or 8-minute rounds and in amateur catch certain holds were prohibited, and submissions were not allowed. Other than that, the amateur catch matches were exactly like the pro catch matches with good guys, bad guys, cheating behind the referee’s back, dropkicks, etc. The talent pool, however, was completely different. Pros weren’t allowed to do amateur catch matches and vice versa so there was a whole new crop of young wrestlers being featured in the amateur catch shows across the country. Some never turned pro, but a lot of them did. Among the guys who got their start in amateur catch were future pro stars such as Roger Delaporte (under the pseudonym Max Renaud), Robert Gastel, Liano Pellacani, Gaby Calderon, Michel Chaisne, Luc Straub, King Kong Taverne, Joachim la Barba, Andre Chauveau, Roger Laroche, Guy Laroche, Eddy Koparanian, Billy Catanzaro, Albert Falaux, Jules Delmee, Jean Rabut, and many others.
Etienne Siry runs a show at Elysee Montmartre (October 21, 1948) - There hadn’t been any catch at Elysee Montmartre for a year and then Etienne Siry took over the venue with the intent of promoting boxing and catch there. This didn’t last long and to the best of my knowledge he, in fact, had only one catch show there (the main attraction on it being the Paris debut of “The Strangler” Grailet, who was the nephew of Constant le Marin and who had been making a name for himself in Belgium and especially in Spain).
Without catch, the amateur federation FFL would be bankrupt (December 1948) - A report came out in the French press breaking down the financials of FFL and based on that report the revenue generated by the 3% tax that all pro catch shows paid to FFL accounted for about 70% of the total revenue of FFL. The conclusion by the report was that without the pro catch revenue the amateur wrestling federation FFL would go bankrupt. Now add in the revenue FFL was about to get from amateur catch as well and it becomes very obvious how financially important catch was to FFL and amateur wrestling in France at the time. The state did subsidize FFL and FFL did have a few other sources of revenue, but overall catch was far and away the biggest source of income for FFL (the state subsidy was the second biggest revenue source but the subsidy was about three and half times less than what pro catch was bringing in).
FFL crowns European amateur catch champions (May 26 & 27, 1949) - Once it got involved in amateur catch, FFL started doing tournaments in all the weight classes to crown the first amateur catch champions of Paris and then the first champions of France. This all led to a pair of shows at Cirque d’Hiver where tournaments were held to crown the first ever European amateur catch champions. Those first champions ended up being: Mike Marino (mid-heavyweight), Jules Delmee (middleweight), Roger Laroche (welterweight) and George Kidd (lightweight, beating Mick McManus in the tournament final). Yes, British pros like Marino, Kidd and McManus were presented as amateurs in France (since they did not have a pro FFL license they technically were amateurs in France), but this just goes to show you yet again that amateur catch was nothing more than pro wrestling being billed as amateur for tax purposes.
= Sidenote: Amateur catch titles worked a little bit differently compared to the pro ones. There were the annual tournaments where the titles would be up for grabs each year, but in the meantime the reigning champion could defend his title in singles matches too.
Elysee Montmartre opens its doors to amateur catch (September 30, 1949) - Since Etienne Siry’s sole pro catch show at the venue a year prior there hadn’t been any catch shows at Elysee Montmartre. Meanwhile Henri Chausson took over the lease of the venue and now he started promoting weekly amateur catch shows. However, the shows were not under the jurisdiction of FFL. Instead they were sanctioned by the national multi-sport amateur federation FSF (Federation Sportive de France).
Professionals, amateurs and independents (October 22, 1949) - FFL introduced a brand new classification for wrestlers and added an independent category to go along with professionals and amateurs. Independent wrestlers were new professionals who weren’t getting a lot of pro bookings yet so they were allowed to participate in both amateur and pro catch events. For example, the Laroche brothers (Roger and Guy Laroche) were two of the first independents.
Felix Miquet becomes European Heavyweight champion (November 7, 1949) - Felix Miquet had been the top heavyweight prospect of the Paoli office since the 1930s and particularly at the end of the 1930s, after an extended North American tour, he was primed to become one of the top stars in France, but World War II happened. After WWII he wasn’t around much either and was wrestling mostly in North America until October 1949. Once he returned to France Paoli got behind him big time and him winning the European Heavyweight Title, the top title in France at the time, from Yvar Martinson was what cemented Miquet as the top star in France. The original “big three” (Martinson, Deglane and Rigoulot) were still around, but going forward and for the next few years Miquet was the top star of the Paoli office, with Martinson as a very close second.
Catch highlights start airing on French television (November 22, 1949) - There were some earlier experimentation broadcasts, but 1949 is when the first French television network launched officially and until 1964 it was the only network in France. It was called RTF (TF1 today). I can’t confirm if it was definitely the first time, but the earliest example I can find of catch airing on RTF is from November 22, 1949, when several minutes of highlights from a Henri Deglane vs. Frank Valois match aired as part of the TV News the day after the match had taken place at Palais des Sports. Catch highlights airing on the news became a regular thing going forward. It could be anywhere from a minute to 6 or 7 minutes of highlights. Over the next five years close to 200 French catch matches were featured on television in highlight form. In these very early stages of television in France the viewing audience was super small, because there weren’t that many television sets in France yet (less than 4,000 registered TV sets in early 1950 to about 50,000 by the end of 1953), but still this was when catch became a staple of French television and began creating a loyal TV audience for itself. As best as I can tell, the two promoters who embraced television early on the most were Raoul Paoli and Alex Goldstein - matches of theirs were being featured on the TV News on a more regular basis compared to those of other promoters.
World champion Frank Sexton debuts in France (January 9, 1950) - The (Boston) World Heavyweight champion Frank Sexton came to France for a four-month run with the Paoli office and was a pretty big deal. FFL recognized him as the World champion and he had a few title defenses while in France. For his debut Sexton defended the title against Yvar Martinson and then went on to defeat other headliners of the Paoli office as well (Felix Miquet, Henri Deglane, Charles Rigoulot and Frank Valois), by all accounts drawing some strong houses along the way.
Amateur catch arrives at Stadium (March 19, 1950) - Yet another Paris venue started doing weekly amateur catch shows, sanctioned by FFL, and this was Stadium. I can’t confirm who the promoter was. Now Paris had four regular pro catch venues (Palais des Sports, Salle Wagram, Cirque d’Hiver and Palais de la Mutualite), though only two were running weekly, while three venues (Central, Elysee Montmartre and Stadium) were doing weekly amateur catch shows, and Elysee would soon start having two shows per week. Plus, Gymnase Japy also had a run of amateur catch shows during the season as did some other venues in the years that followed. In short, now and for the next couple of years there were more amateur catch events taking place in Paris than pro catch events.
= Sidenote: On top of FFL and FSF, which were the two biggest federations for amateur catch and which were sanctioning events in Paris and outside of Paris, there were other federations leaving their mark on amateur catch as well. There was the aforementioned CIC (Cercle International de Catch) out of Bordeaux, which was now affiliated with a new federation called FACA (Federation Autonome de Catch Amateur). FNLP (Federation Nationale de Lutte Professionnelle), which despite its name was actually more so involved in amateur catch, was sanctioning shows in various suburbs of Paris. FSGT (Federation Sportive et Gymnique du Travail), a national multi-sport federation, also did some amateur catch events. And there were probably other groups as well. Amateur catch was catching on big time in France. Not that pro catch wasn’t - the pro business was doing good - but more promoters were inclined to put on amateur catch events rather than pro events due to the lesser tax burden and therefore lower profit margin. Also, unlike with the pros where FFL was ruling over everyone, in the amateur catch world things were more fragmented and the various federations operated completely independent of each other, and almost all of them had their own champions too.
Lino Ventura’s in-ring career ends (March 31, 1950) - Lino Ventura was born in Italy, but raised mostly in France where he eventually became a rising pro wrestling star. On that date he was wrestling Henri Cogan at Cirque d’Hiver and broke his leg - an injury that ended his promising in-ring career. Alex Goldstein then made him a co-promoter for the local shows in Angers and also a manager. Among Lino’s clients were up-and-coming stars of the Goldstein office such as Rene Ben Chemoul, Claude Montourcy, Guy Robin and others. After a few years Lino left the Goldstein office and in the mid 1950s he became the Salle Wagram matchmaker. Around the same time Lino got a break as an actor and over time he became a big movie star in France and overall one of the most recognizable actors of that era in France. Despite leaving the catch business Lino always maintained a good relationship with his former colleagues, often getting them jobs as extras or stuntmen on his movies. As luck would have it, Henri Cogan (Lino’s final opponent) also suffered a career ending injury later in 1950 and he too ended up having a successful career in cinema, both as an actor and stuntman. Cogan was also a top catch trainer and he too worked as a manager behind the scenes (two of his most notable proteges being Bolo Hakawa and young Edouard Carpentier).
Gilbert Leduc wins the World Welterweight Title (March 31, 1950) - Gilbert Leduc was an Albert Arnaud protege who made his catch debut in 1945 and quickly became a favorite of the French audiences. For the first few years Leduc was working for the Salle Wagram office and then at the start of 1949 he joined the Cirque d’Hiver office (Alex Goldstein). He was already on his way to becoming a headline star before, but it was for Goldstein where he truly cemented his status as a top guy. He first won the vacant European Welterweight Title and then he defeated the recognized champion Harry Fields for the World Welterweight Title, becoming the first Frenchman to win a World Championship (catch style) in France and the first one to be European and World champion at the same time. This happened on the same show as Lino Ventura’s final match. Leduc would go on to have a long career in France, and elsewhere, and became one of the top babyface stars in the history of France. He was beloved by the fans and very highly regarded by his peers as one of the very best French workers to ever wrestle. He was also an important figure behind the scenes, but more on that later.
Roger Coulon bans Robert Lageat for life and Lageat files a lawsuit (September 1950) - This was one of the most important events in French catch history because of the long term ramifications that came from it. Robert Lageat was a pro wrestler in the 1930s who got badly shot during WWII and that ended his aspirations as a wrestler. After the war he became a FFL-licensed manager and eventually managed popular stars such as Charles Rigoulot, Al Cabrol, Axel Cadier, and others. He was also promoting/matchmaking some events outside of Paris. In February 1949 Lageat became part of the 10-man professional section within FFL that was in charge of catch in France. While working there he didn’t like what he saw and began pushing against the way FFL was handling a particular matter, which led to FFL president Roger Coulon first suspending his managerial license and then outright banning Lageat for life. Lageat immediately sued Coulon for abuse of power. He was asking for 5 million French francs in damages and to be reinstated. Lageat won the lawsuit in late November 1950 - that is he was given some financial compensation (300,000 francs), but the judge ruled he could not force Coulon to reinstate Lageat because that was an internal FFL matter and was outside of his jurisdiction. Coulon appealed the decision, a year and a half later he lost the appeal, and Lageat’s financial compensation was bumped up to 500,000. So what was Lageat’s big problem with FFL? Amateur catch. He felt that amateur catch was undermining pro catch. Amateur catch was exempt from taxes and pro catch was not so Lageat felt this was not fair and amateur catch was just a case of FFL/Coulon being greedy and trying to avoid taxes while taking money from the pros at the same time. Lageat kept pushing against the fact that amateur catch was being treated differently than pro catch and finally, when he didn’t pay the 3% FFL tax that all pro catch shows were subject to, that is when Coulon took action against him.
The “dissident” FFCP is formed and the world of catch is divided into two (December 12, 1950) - Fresh off his victory in court Robert Lageat along with Etienne Siry and Gaston Caliez decided to break away from FFL and establish a new federation/governing body for pro catch in France. Siry and Caliez had also been recently suspended by FFL president Roger Coulon for refusing to pay the 3% FFL tax on pro shows. And so Lageat, Siry and Caliez created Federation Francaise de Catch, which several weeks later on January 25 was renamed to FFCP (Federation Francaise de Catch Professionnel). Jean-Yves Beigbeder (the son-in-law of the current French Minister of Finance Maurice Petsche) was appointed the president of the new federation. Now France had two federations that served as governing bodies for pro catch, but keep in mind FFL was the only one authorized by the state officially. This was a major development and not only the start of the first big promotional war in French catch, but also an omen of what was to come in the years that followed (i.e. many new federations being formed). For the first few years FFCP was always referred to in the French press as a “dissident” federation and initially it was viewed as something lesser compared to FFL, but over time the FFCP camp grew in size and prominence. At the very start it was just Lageat/Siry/Caliez versus FFL’s network promoters across France. Initially the FFCP camp had only one well-known Paris venue under their control (Palais de la Mutualite), and they also did occasional shows at smaller Paris venues such as Theatre de Belleville and Clisson-Palace. Talent-wise they had about 50 wrestlers affiliated with them, which was not a lot, but more importantly they didn’t have much star power. Initially the biggest names that FFCP had were the former Paoli top guys Henri Deglane and Charles Rigoulot, Al Cabrol (one of, if not the top French heel at the time), and that was pretty much it. Things were very hostile between the two sides with the Lageat lawsuit now in appeal, Deglane and Rigoulot denouncing FFL and their former boss Paoli, Lageat and Caliez openly suggesting to the press that FFL was corrupt and money was being misappropriated, shows being held head-to-head in the French provinces, and there were even a few public challenges for private shoot matches (e.g. Deglane challenged Miquet). But Deglane was about to go into retirement, Rigoulot was near the end of his career too and Cabrol was in his early 40s so the FFCP group was in desperate need of new stars, which they found mostly from the amateur catch ranks. By mid to late 1951 FFCP now included up-and-coming stars such as Liano Pellacani, Jacques van Dooren, Robert Gastel, Lino Di Santo and King Kong Taverne among others, and that new group of guys along with the already established Rigoulot and Cabrol were the headline stars for the FFCP-sanctioned shows in Paris and elsewhere. There was also another new key star, who we’ll talk about shortly. With FFCP being a brand new federation they also started crowning their own champions and some title runs carried over from FFL (e.g. when Rigoulot jumped ship to FFCP he was the reigning FFL French Heavyweight champion and FFL stopped recognizing him as such, but FFCP now recognized him as champion instead).
FFL steps away from amateur catch and a new amateur catch federation is created (December 29, 1950) - Amidst all the amateur catch allegations by Lageat and the FFCP camp, FFL decided to distance itself from amateur catch and a new federation FFCA (Federation Francaise de Catch Amateur) was formed to govern the amateur catch shows that were previously governed by FFL. Technically, FFCA was a separate entity from FFL, but in reality the two were closely connected. Maurice Durand became the technical director of FFCA and continued to have a lot of influence over amateur catch in France.
Felix Miquet takes Frank Sexton’s World Heavyweight Title (January 30, 1951) - Frank Sexton had returned to France earlier in the month, and he would return again briefly in 1952 and 1954 too, but this time his run went a little bit differently. Sexton had already lost his World Title in the States, however, in France FFL continued recognizing him as the champion. At the time Paoli was regularly sending his stars to shows in Switzerland and on a January 30 show in Zurich Felix Miquet defeated Sexton to capture the World Championship. This made Miquet a double FFL champion (European and World Heavyweight champion at the same time), only the third Frenchman to win a World Heavyweight Title (in catch) and the first one to do so since The French Angel (Maurice Tillet) in San Francisco in 1944.
Yvar Martinson wins the World Heavyweight Title (February 19, 1951) - A mere three weeks after winning the World Title, Miquet lost it to Yvar Martinson (the other top star of the Paoli office) at a Palais des Sports show in Paris. On April 2 Martinson dropped it back to Sexton.
Boxing star Robert Charron joins FFCP and makes his French catch debut (October 12, 1951) - In the years immediately following WWII Robert Charron was one of the most well-known French pro boxers, but he kept getting into trouble outside the ring and ultimately was suspended for life by the French boxing federation. Raoul Paoli was very interested in using him as a wrestler, but FFL shut that idea down and refused to even consider Charron for a license (for several reasons). Charron was then recruited to the FFCP side by Etienne Siry, who had promoted boxing fights of Charron’s in the past. Charron had his first ever match in Switzerland and then, after FFCP issued him a license, he made his French catch debut with a victory over Jean Casi at Palais de la Mutualite. The match was featured heavily on the TV News and got a lot of attention in the press too. The infamous boxer Charron, who was known for being aggressive in the ring and a “bad boy” out of the ring, joining the FFCP ranks was a major coup for them as it gave them a very recognizable star they could now build around while continuing to create new stars in the meantime. Charron becoming a pro wrestler, however, was also a bit of a turning point in the history of catch and a sign of things to come. Up until now under FFL’s jurisdiction no Frenchman would even be allowed to go to the exam for a pro wrestling license unless they had at least three years as an amateur wrestler under their belt. The FFCP camp being in need of stars and Charron being a big star, they made an exception and allowed someone with no prior amateur wrestling experience to become a pro wrestler. It didn’t happen right away, but as the years went on the barrier to entry for new wrestlers became lower and lower to a point where anyone could become one and prior amateur experience was no longer required at all. In a way Charron was the start of that trend.
Primo Carnera makes his Paris catch debut (October 15, 1951) - When he was young Primo Carnera used to be a professional fairground wrestler and strongman in France, and then he went on be a big boxing star, first in Europe and then in North America. Once his boxing career ended he switched back to pro wrestling and was a big star in North America so when Primo, now a former World Heavyweight boxing champion and one of the top wrestling names from America, returned to France it was a big deal. Primo would wrestle in France, on and off, as a special attraction until the early 1960s. In 1951-1954 in particular he had several high-profile matches against the likes of Miquet, Martinson and Sexton at Palais des Sports. For his Paris debut he defeated the Canadian Frank Valois, who was a hated villain. Over the years Valois had multiple runs in France and has a strong case for being one of the top heels in the history of France.
Women’s catch starts taking off (1952) - This was the year when a women’s pro wrestling (catch feminin) scene started developing in the French provinces (in the capital Paris women’s wrestling on catch shows was banned). For the 30 or so years before that women’s wrestling (Greco-Roman and catch) in France was featured mainly at cabarets and nightclubs. It was a nightlife attraction and something that existed in the periphery of entertainment, and it wasn't considered part of the pro wrestling business. This started to change in 1952. The catalyst behind the change was Lucien Choury - an Olympic gold medalist in cycling, who somehow became interested in promoting women’s catch. Choury put on women’s catch shows in various French towns, and for a few months he also teamed up with Cirque National to present women’s catch on the circus’ program as the circus toured France. The following year Emile Guilloton (ex-pro wrestler who was now a trainer and a promoter) established a touring women’s troupe of his own. Choury and Guilloton, who on occasion worked together, were the two main driving forces behind women’s pro wrestling in France in the 1950s and early 1960s. In its initial stages French women’s catch was its own standalone thing and typically not part of the male shows (that would change toward the end of the decade and especially in the 1960s). Some of the pioneering stars of women’s catch in France in the 1950s were Lea Calonne, Nady Jacky (Emile Guilloton’s wife), Sylvia Morelli (wife of pro wrestler Karl von Kramer), Maria Apolsky, and a few others.
FFL pushes for pro catch matches to be in 5-minute rounds (September 5, 1952) - FFL announced that going forward all pro catch matches under its jurisdiction were going to be wrestled in 5-minute rounds (so similar to amateur catch) and that this decision had come at the request of the aforementioned International/European professional commission. There was pushback to this change and the decision was reversed later in the month.
Salle Wagram and some of its top stars go over to the FFCP side (August-September 1952) - Up until this point FFCP had only one Paris venue under its control (Palais de la Mutualite) with some occasional shows at another two smaller venues while FFL had three pro catch venues (Palais des Sports, Cirque d’Hiver, Salle Wagram) and two amateur catch venues (Central and Stadium). And there was also Elysee Montmartre, which was amateur catch and affiliated with FSF. In August the Salle Wagram office (i.e. promoter Jean de Nebehay and matchmaker Paul Marton) switched sides and joined the FFCP ranks, which gave FFCP an increased presence in the French capital. Wagram had been sharing some of the talent with Goldstein and Paoli, but also had headline stars of its own such as Stan Karolyi, Michel Chaisne, Mario Matassa, Raymond Bukovac, Butcher Johnson, Pat Curry and some others. In the jump some of the talent remained behind with FFL while others followed Wagram over to FFCP, most notably the World Mid-Heavyweight champion Stan Karolyi (a very well-established star by that point) and Michel Chaisne (the top up-and-coming star of the Wagram office). In the press Karolyi pointed to FFL’s decision to have the matches in rounds as the reason for his jump (his jump happened before FFL reversed its decision about the round).
Raoul Paoli and Alex Goldstein join forces (September 1952) - They did have a prior working relationship going back several years, but it was at this point when Paoli and Goldstein officially became business partners and merged their booking offices. There was still a degree of separation in that Paoli continued to handle the big Palais des Sports shows while Goldstein continued to run the Cirque d’Hiver shows, and they would consult each other on talent and decisions. The talent was also still relatively split too, i.e. Paoli continued using heavyweights as the headline stars for the big Palais des Sports shows (with non-heavyweights underneath) while Goldstein relied mostly on non-heavyweight stars.
European Heavyweight champion Felix Miquet jumps ship to FFCP (October 7, 1952) - Felix Miquet, the reigning FFL European Heavyweight champion and the top star of the Raoul Paoli office, got into a financial dispute with Paoli and as a result Miquet decided to jump ship to the opposition. This was a big loss for Paoli and an even bigger gain for FFCP which needed more big stars, but as luck would have it Paoli had already announced that Felix’s younger brother Francois Miquet was returning to France after an extended run in North America so Paoli immediately positioned Francois as his new top star, replacing one Miquet brother with another. With Felix making the jump, FFL president Roger Coulon issued a statement to the press to discredit him as no longer being the real champion to which Felix responded by issuing a challenge to all FFL wrestlers. Robert Lageat drew a cheque for 1 million French francs to back Felix’s challenge and wanted Coulon to match his stake. Nothing further happened.
Robert Gastel defeats Robert Charron (November 30, 1952) - A match between Robert Charron and the up-and-coming star Robert Gastel took place at Palais de la Mutualite, and Gastel won it in just 1:30 minutes when Charron injured his shoulder and couldn’t continue. This victory over Charron cemented Gastel as a headline star, because no one had defeated Charron in catch yet (apart from the occasional DQ victory when he would get disqualified for his rough tactics). I’m only mentioning this match because there might be an interesting backstory to it. According to French wrestler Jean Corne’s book, which I found to be generally pretty truthful, in this match Gastel broke Charron’s shoulder on purpose to teach him a lesson, because the ex-boxer Charron had been talking smack about catch. I don’t know if that was really the case or not but it’s an interesting claim. It doesn’t seem like there were big issues between Charron and Gastel afterward as just three months later they wrestled again in Charron’s first match back after the injury and Charron went over.
European judo champion Guy Verrier makes his catch debut (January 17, 1953) - Guy Verrier had just become European judo champion the previous year and Raoul Paoli recruited him to become a pro wrestler. Paoli gave him a big push and slotted him on the level right below the top stars. First Charron, then a couple of other boxers (Jean Wanes & Louis Thiery) and now Verrier. Athletes with no prior wrestling experience were now being allowed to become pro wrestlers and this continued to ruffle some feathers among those who held more traditional views on the business. In the case of Verrier there was a meeting of the professional section of FFL where, reportedly, there was a heated two-hour argument about him being allowed to have a pro license, with a lot of pushback by one of the pro wrestler unions in particular. Verrier’s run as a pro wrestler didn’t last long anyway - he was done within a few months and went back to judo.
Henri Chausson starts promoting pro catch and recruits Yvar Martinson to be his top star (January 25, 1953) - Since 1949 Henri Chausson, the director of the venue, had promoted amateur catch at Elysee Montmartre. First one show a week, then two. But now amateur catch was on shaky grounds (we'll get to that story shortly) so Chausson decided to get into the pro catch business as well. He already had an amateur catch booking office and now the office began handling pro catch too. His first big move was to recruit Yvar Martinson as his top star (Martinson had left the Paoli office a couple of months earlier). He also brought in Jean Jourlin and Robert Herland (two former Olympians who had since become well-known pros), and some others. For the next two years or so Chausson promoted hybrid shows, so to speak, that had both amateur and pro catch matches until finally transitioning to pro catch only. Eventually the Elysee Montmartre shows went under FFL’s jurisdiction.
Charles Rigoulot retires (March 15, 1953) - The 49-year-old Charles Rigoulot, one of the top catch stars in the history of France, wrestled his retirement match - a victory over Lino Di Santo at Palais de la Mutualite.
Salle Wagram returns to FFL (June 25, 1953) - After about a year in the FFCP camp, the Salle Wagram office returned to the FFL fold.
Health insurance for FFCP wrestlers (July 7, 1953) - In what may be a first in pro wrestling history, FFCP worked out a deal with Mutuelle des Sports for FFCP wrestlers to have health insurance. Up to this point insurance agencies in France had always refused to cover pro wrestlers.
Robert Charron jumps ship to Paoli and Siry sues him for breach of contract (September 22, 1953) - Raoul Paoli announced that Robert Charron was going to be wrestling for him soon, effectively stealing Charron away from FFCP. Paoli had big plans for Charron, but he only got to feature Charron twice at Palais des Sports, because in the meantime Etienne Siry of the FFCP group sued Charron for breach of contract. The vast majority of the wrestlers who wrestled in France back then, and in the years that followed too, did not have written long-term contracts with specific promoters, but a few of the bigger names did. Such was the case of Charron. Back in April 1951 Charron had signed a contract with Organisations Sportives et Artistiques Internationales (the name of Etienne Siry’s company) and the contact was to expire at the end of 1954. The court ruled that by going to work for Paoli, and others, Charron had indeed breached his contract with Siry and therefore Charron lost the lawsuit, as well as the consequent appeal. Paoli could no longer book Charron. Furthermore, Siry filed a lawsuit against the promoters who had booked Charron in the meantime (Paoli, Goldstein and 10 provincial promoters) asking for 25 million French francs in damages. I’m not sure how far that lawsuit went.
= Sidenote: Another interesting tidbit about Charron’s contract that I’d like to mention is that it had a downside guarantee of 100,000 French francs per month. Charron was paid per show (on a percentage basis based on the gate), but he was guaranteed a minimum of 100,000 per month no matter how good or bad the gates were. And he wasn’t the only one with a downside guarantee either. Charron’s contract gave Siry the right to book him both in France and abroad, and it had a clause where Siry could terminate the contract if he felt Charron wasn’t in good shape or wasn’t living a moderate and sober life (Charron’s wild lifestyle had been a problem in the past when Charron was a boxer).
Raoul Paoli tries to introduce tag team wrestling (October 19, 1953) - Promoters Raoul Paoli and Alex Goldstein, inspired by what was happening in North America, wanted to introduce tag team matches to France. Paoli announced a tag team main event for his October 19 Palais des Sports show - Robert Duranton & Gene Dubuque vs. George Pencheff & Leo Demetral - but ended up cancelling the show a few days before the date. He then announced another tag team main event for his November 16 show - Robert Duranton & Yvar Martinson vs. Roy Heffernan & Charlie Green - and while the show did take place the tag team match did not. In both cases FFL/FFLP, under the jurisdiction of whom the Paoli shows were, did not allow tag team matches to take place.
FFL is successfully sued by the state for tax evasion via amateur catch (before November 1953) - This was a story with major implications for catch. It had been an ongoing thing dating back to the start of 1951 and now it reached its culmination. Not too long after FFL president Roger Coulon banned Robert Lageat for life and FFCP was created, the French tax authorities (Indirect Contributions) started looking into amateur catch, having been nudged in that direction by Lageat. In their investigation Indirect Contributions found out that the wrestlers performing on amateur catch shows were being paid under the table and therefore it was obvious amateur catch was no amateur sport. Amateur catch was simply pro catch disguised as an amateur sport so as not to have to pay the taxes pro events were subject to. Therefore eventually Indirect Contributions sued FFL for tax evasion. They estimated that in 1951 alone over 80 million French francs in taxes had been evaded by presenting shows as amateur catch. Several FFCP wrestlers such as Al Cabrol, King Kong Taverne and others filed an additional civil lawsuit against FFL, asking for money to be paid to them as damages. I’m not sure what happened with the civil suit, but the Indirect Contributions vs. FFL lawsuit went on for quite a while and well into 1953 (I’m not sure of the exact date, but I think it reached its conclusion somewhere in the July-October period). The final result of the lawsuit was that FFL was fined 4.7 million French francs. The findings from it and the outcome of this lawsuit spelled the end of the amateur catch phenomenon in France, and also led to a couple of very important developments.
FFL cuts all ties with catch and FFLP returns (November 13, 1953) - With the lawsuit over amateur catch and the growing discontent of some of the promoters and pro wrestlers, this had been brewing for a while and it finally happened. The amateur wrestling federation FFL decided to cut all ties with catch. It would no longer govern catch (pro wrestling) in France. In the wake of this decision the old FFLP (Federation Francaise de Lutte Professionnelle) from the 1930s was brought back as the new governing body for catch. Jean Poirier, who had been the president of the professional section within FFL, was elected FFLP president. So, in short, FFLP replaced FFL and now catch no longer had any direct ties to FFL and its president Roger Coulon (who by now was also the president of FILA, i.e. the highest-ranking official in the amateur wrestling world). However, bear in mind that the French state had authorized FFL and FFL alone as an official governing body for pro catch - FFLP was not recognized as such officially. With the loss of the catch revenue, in order to keep FFL going, eventually the French state increased its financial support of the organization and provided them with a bigger subsidy.
Henri Chausson starts a working relationship with Paoli and Goldstein (November 1953) - The Elysee Montmartre promoter Henri Chausson started working with Paoli and Goldstein. In the 1950s of the four most important Paris booking offices his was always the smallest and especially at this point, when he was still doing both amateur and pro catch at the same time, he didn’t have a lot of stars at his disposal. The partnership with Paoli and Goldstein gave him access to more stars and allowed them to use Yvar Martinson and some other Chausson guys.
Raoul Paoli starts doing weekly Palais des Sports shows (November 16, 1953) - His plans for tag team matches as the big new attraction may have fallen through, but Paoli still went ahead with his planned change in how he was going to operate that season. Ever since he started doing shows at the 18,000-seat Palais des Sports back in 1933, Paoli had typically done a show there every other Monday night for the duration of the season, but now he wanted to try running every week. The crew of stars he used to try and pull this off with included Francois Miquet (his top star), the veteran Yvar Martinson, the boxer-turned-wrestler Robert Charron (who, as mentioned, Paoli couldn’t use past the first two shows), the four-time Mr. France bodybuilding champion Robert Duranton (who had started his wrestling career in France with FFCP but had since come over to Paoli and was getting a big push) as well as visiting foreign stars such as Frank Sexton, Primo Carnera, Lucky Simunovich, Hermann Reiss, Eugenio Gonzalez, Ted Christy, Don Beitelman (Don Curtis), Rudi Saturski, and others. The experiment with weekly shows lasted only for that season (i.e. through mid April 1954) and from the next season onward Paoli went back to doing shows every other week.
Catch is not a sport, says the French state (January 11, 1954) - This was a major development. Back in 1946 the French state (the Ministry of National Education more specifically) had recognized catch (pro wrestling) as a sport and authorized FFL to govern it, but now with FFL being implicated in tax evasion and it deciding to cut ties with catch, the current minister Andre Marie issued a decree that catch was no longer recognized as a sport and the decree confirmed officially that the Ministry was pulling its authorization from FFL as a governing body for catch. The decree made no distinction between amateur catch and pro catch, which effectively meant that they were recognized as the same thing and amateur catch could no longer benefit from tax exemptions like it had in the past. Now that catch was no longer legally considered a sport and had no official federation governing it, going forward anyone could create their own catch federation/governing body and it would have just as much authority as the next guy’s federation. To a certain extent the creation of FFCP was the start of this, but now things were wide open. I’m getting ahead of the story, but by 1963 there were around 20 different federations/governing bodies for catch in France. It didn’t happen immediately but over time things became less and less regulated, unlike in the past when it was just FFL ruling over catch and holding a firm grip over the business (which had its own positives and negatives). As the years rolled on the various federations became nothing more than pretend governing bodies with no real authority.
Stadium turns pro (January 29, 1954) - After several years in the amateur catch business, the Stadium venue in Paris stopped having amateur catch shows, affiliated with FFCP, and weekly pro catch shows started taking place at the venue instead. I’m not entirely sure who was the one in charge when the Stadium shows were amateur catch, but when it was a pro arena in the mid 1950s and beyond it was run by Rene Guilleminot (an ex-pro wrestler, who was then a manager and one of the top catch trainers). Technically, Guilleminot was running a booking office too, but a much smaller one in scope, and over the years it heavily relied on talent from the bigger offices.
Henri Deglane returns for one final run (February 28, 1954) - After being retired for a couple of years, Henri Deglane returned to the ring. He did not, however, wrestle for his old partner Raoul Paoli, nor for his last organization (Siry and Lageat’s). Instead he joined Henri Chausson’s company. For his return match Deglane wrestled fellow Olympian Robert Herland. Later in the year Deglane also joined the FFLP board and was pushing really hard against tag team matches, which he thought would really hurt the business in France.
Francois Miquet wins the European Heavyweight Title (March 15, 1954) - After then champion Felix Miquet’s jump to FFCP, there was no FFL European Heavyweight champion and recently the newly-formed FFLP had recognized Lucky Simunovich as the champion. After being pushed by Raoul Paoli as a top star for more than a year, Francois Miquet finally won the big one and defeated the champion Simunovich for the title. Now, with this victory by Francois, both Miquet brothers were the European Heavyweight champion, but of course of rival groups, and for the first time since the title was introduced France had two European Heavyweight Title claimants at the same time.
The first live catch broadcast on French TV (March 22, 1954) - Catch highlights had been airing on national television in France for a few years by that point and then catch aired live for the first time on March 22 (Monday) in prime time at 8:45 pm when RTF broadcast a pair of matches from Raoul Paoli’s Palais des Sports show that night. The first match to air was Primo Carnera vs. Hermann Reiss and that was followed by Francois Miquet vs. The Great Zorro (the future Hans Mortier). The broadcast came together very late and was announced only that same morning, because it wasn’t a planned broadcast. It was a last minute replacement for the popular "36 chandelles" variety TV show, because its creator Jean Nohain got into a dispute with the network and they needed a replacement. The broadcast was a big success in that afterwards the network received a lot of letters by viewers asking for more catch on TV. And the network itself did want more catch on TV too, but it would be a while until catch would begin to air live on television on a regular basis. Why? Because the top catch promoters in France were still very apprehensive about their shows airing live on TV and what that might do to ticket sales. And this apprehension was shared by most of the other popular sports in France too, it wasn’t just the catch guys who weren't sure how TV would affect them. In the case of catch there was a strong concern that having important catch events from Paris airing live on TV for free might hurt not only the gates of the events airing, but especially hurt the gates of the provincial events that were happening all across the country (which were a big part, perhaps even the biggest part, of the top promoters’ business due to their booking offices and how those worked). Also, the head honchos of catch and other sports had read about how television had affected things in the United States, both positively and negatively, and wanted to avoid some of those pitfalls.
Central turns pro as well (September 11, 1954) - Just like Stadium before it, Central Sporting Club in Paris stopped hosting amateur catch and the weekly shows there became pro catch shows. Alex Goldstein was the promoter for these pro shows and Central was his secondary Paris venue going forward. With both Stadium and Central coming over to the pro side, now Paris was regularly getting eight pro catch shows per week, plus occasional shows at various other Paris venues and extra shows in the Paris suburbs. This would remain the case throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. In short, back then there was a lot of catch taking place in and around Paris.
FFLP votes against tag team matches and women’s wrestling (October 9, 1954) - Raoul Paoli and Alex Goldstein once again attempted to introduce tag team matches to France and this time they also wanted to do women’s wrestling. Both ideas were put to a vote during a FFLP board meeting. Every member of the board, except one, voted against allowing women’s wrestling. For tag team wrestling the vote was much closer. It seems Paoli and Goldstein had lobbied hard to change the stance on tag team matches, because the votes there were almost even, but still not enough - 10 against, 8 in favor, and 2 people abstained. This was the last straw for Paoli and Goldstein.
Paoli and Goldstein leave FFLP and create a new federation/governing body (October 28, 1954) - Promoters Raoul Paoli and Alex Goldstein being firmly determined to introduce tag team matches to France and FFL/FFLP stopping them from doing so on three occasions, they finally had enough and decided to break away from FFLP. There had been some other issues between Paoli/Goldstein and FFL/FFLP over the years too, but tag team matches were the tipping point. Paoli and Goldstein had seen how successful tag team wrestling was in North America and believed it could do great business in France too. So when FFLP did not allow tag team matches yet again that left Paoli and Goldstein with no other choice but to create a new governing body that would be their own and they’d control fully. Now that the French state no longer considered catch (pro wrestling) a sport and there was no official governing body for it, setting up a new federation/governing body was easy to do and there were no legal hurdles whatsoever. Anyone could set up one, and over time many people did. And so Paoli and Goldstein created FIC (Federation Independante de Catch). FIC was the governing body for all Paoli and Goldstein shows, in Paris and elsewhere, until either late 1955 or early 1956 when FIC was replaced by FILC (Federation Internationale de Lutte de Combat). Then in the fall of 1956 through the spring of 1957 it seems it was FIC again (not sure why) and then later in 1957 they settled on FILC permanently. There must be more to the story here, but I don’t have the details yet.
Tag team matches finally arrive in France (November 1, 1954) - After several unsuccessful attempts Raoul Paoli finally managed to promote a tag team match for the first time. Not only that, he also managed to get the popular Felix Miquet back from FFCP. In coming back, Felix abandoned his claim to the European Heavyweight Title and let his brother Francois be the only claimant. The first tag team match to ever take place in France ended up being the Miquet brothers (Francois & Felix Miquet) vs. Eddie Brush & Jack Wentworth. The match was a box office success, it was very well received by the crowd and going forward tag team matches became a staple of the Paoli shows at Palais des Sports, and eventually of Alex Goldstein’s Cirque d’Hiver and Central shows as well. It’s interesting to note that Paoli’s tag team matches were using the rulebook of the National Wrestling Association of America. It took a few years, but by the end of the 1950s all of the other Paris promoters started doing tag team matches too, after initially being strongly opposed to the idea.
The other Paris offices unite against Paoli and Goldstein (December 19, 1954) - On that date FFCP’s Al Cabrol wrestled FFLP’s Henri Deglane at Elysee Montmartre and that match was a clear sign that things had changed in the world of French catch. Paoli introducing tag team matches created a big stir in France as a lot of people in the business (both promoters and wrestlers) were against the idea of tag team matches. Raoul Paoli and his partner Alex Goldstein became public enemies number 1 and 2, so to speak, and the rest of the Paris booking offices united against them. Offices that had been at odds until recently were now all of a sudden working together and sharing talent all because of their dislike for tag team matches. The 4-year FFL (FFLP) vs. FFCP promotional war was over and peace was made between the two federations and their affiliated booking offices. Going forward it was the Paoli/Goldstein booking office (with FIC/FILC as the governing body) vs. the Palais de la Mutualite, Salle Wagram and Elysee Montmartre booking offices (FFLP and FFCP being the governing bodies, working hand in hand). The smaller Stadium office was also affiliated with the latter group and getting talent from them. A few weeks earlier FFLP and FFCP had held a joint general assembly of promoters, wrestlers, managers and referees where tag team matches were put to a vote - 112 votes against, only 8 in favor. A decision was also made that anyone who worked in any capacity on a show with a tag team match on it would get their license suspended by both federations. With this new shift in alliances came some shifts in the talent pool too. To begin with Paoli and Goldstein lost popular stars such as Robert Duranton, Gilbert Leduc and Rene Ben Chemoul who all decided to work for the other group instead. In addition to those guys the combined FFLP and FFCP camp also had Henri Deglane, Robert Charron, Laurent Dauthuille (another popular boxer turned wrestler), Al Cabrol, Robert Gastel, Stan Karolyi, Liano Pellacani, Lino Di Santo, and a few others as its headline stars. The headliners for the Paoli/Goldstein side were the Miquet brothers, Yvar Martinson, Frank Valois, The Great Zorro, plus some other visiting foreigners, and they were building up new French stars underneath - Andre Bollet, Roger Delaporte and especially Eddy Wiecz (later known as Edouard Carpentier), who was given a big push and got to main event Palais des Sports for the first time in the spring of 1955.
Henri Deglane’s in-ring career comes to an end (February 13, 1955) - I don’t know for sure if this was his last match, but it’s the last one that I have a record of at the moment. On this date the 52-year-old Henri Deglane wrestled Hermann Reiss at Elysee Montmartre. The Olympic gold medalist and former World and European pro wrestling champion Deglane was without question the most successful French pro wrestler (catch style) on a worldwide basis up to that point and he was the key star who made catch popular in France to begin with. A major name without whom catch may have never taken off in France to the high level that it did or at the very least it would have taken off much later.
Yvon Robert returns to France (October 17, 1955) - Yvon Robert returned to France for one final brief run. He was recognized as the World Heavyweight champion by the Paoli/Goldstein federation, even though he had lost his (Montreal) World Title earlier in the year. For his first match back he successfully defended the title against the European champion Francois Miquet at Palais des Sports. The most notable thing about Robert’s final French run was that he ended up losing the World Title to Frank Valois, who later dropped it to Felix Miquet.
Midget wrestlers wrestle in France for the first time (January 1956) - For the first time ever midget wrestlers wrestled in France when Raoul Paoli and Alex Goldstein brought in four midget wrestlers from North America, most notably Sky Low Low and Lord Littlebrook. North American midget wrestlers would have a few more tours in France in the 1950s and 1960s. At the start of the 1960s the first French midget wrestlers made their debut too - those being the Ledez brothers (known professionally as Bruno Ledez and Stan Kovalic).
Catch broadcasts become a regular fixture on French television (1956) - As previously mentioned, the first live catch broadcast on French TV was in 1954. Information is limited, but it looks like there were only a handful of other broadcasts in 1954 and 1955 (mostly, if not exclusively, by the Paoli/Goldstein office), and 1956 is when catch TV broadcasts became more regular. Now, a few important things to mention about how things worked in France when it came to television:
- Up to 1964 there was only one television network in France (RTF) and it was state-owned. There was an annual tax that everyone who owned a TV had to pay and that’s how the network was funded. For more than a decade there were no commercials on the network so it was fully reliant on the state and the taxpayers for financial support.
- The network had wanted to air live catch shows regularly as early as 1954, if not earlier, but the Paris catch promoters were largely opposed to that. As time went on their outlook changed and they all wanted to be on TV. So then the network worked out a deal with all four major booking offices to share the TV time. Keep in mind, at this time the Paoli/Goldstein office was still in a promotional rivalry with the alliance of the other three offices. The idea was for all four offices to get equal TV time, but in the long run the TV time distribution ended up being not as equal as originally promised.
- What office’s show aired on TV, on what day, at what time, for what duration and even the commentator for the show were all decided by the sports department of the network. Because the department was dealing with different booking offices who were running shows on different days and because of the general nature of how the programming departments of the network worked, catch didn’t have a fixed time slot or a fixed day when it would air. It would air on whatever day and in whatever time slot the network had decided for that week.
- Catch never aired on TV every single week, year-round. 36 weeks of the year or so was the peak, but most years it was much less than that. During the early years of catch on TV the shows were almost always live and almost always in prime time. In the 1960s things shifted to having more taped shows while still having some live broadcasts, and by the end of catch’s run on TV in the 1980s it was all taped in advance.
- Typically the catch broadcasts featured either only one full match or one full match and the closing few minutes of another match. There was no fixed broadcast duration - it could be anywhere from 25 minutes to an hour.
- Even when catch was airing on TV 30+ times per year, no wrestler was featured on TV more than a handful of times per year. The idea was to expose as many wrestlers as possible to the television audience and not overexpose anyone, and plus as discussed the TV time was split between the four booking offices so it wasn’t possible to feature a certain wrestler all the time anyway. And they didn’t feature main event stars only - midcards and lowercarders could occasionally also get a match on TV.
- The network paid a certain fee to the booking office to air their show, but the fee was small. For example, I know that in early 1961 it was 200,000 French francs for a singles match, and 225,000 to 250,000 francs for a tag team match.
- The commentators for the shows were another important piece of the catch TV puzzle. It was usually a sole commentator who would do the catch broadcast. The commentator was chosen by the network and they would rotate them. None of these commentators were catch commentators per se. Think of some of the most well-known television presenters and sports commentators in your country and now picture them being tasked with doing wrestling commentary. This is exactly how things worked in France and this was important because all of these guys were voices that the public already knew and liked.
- Right off the bat live catch shows were a big hit and catch became one of the most watched shows on French TV. TV ratings are hard to come by, but this next piece of information should give you some idea of catch’s popularity on TV. From 1957 through 1961 one of the “TV Guide” type of French magazines did an annual reader poll asking people what they watched. In those polls, depending on the year, between 58% to 80% of the respondents marked themselves down as catch viewers and catch ranked as high as the 6th most-watched show on French TV based on these polls (which toward the end were getting about 30,000 responses so it was a pretty solid sample). Catch was typically ranked higher in the polls than the TV News.
- As popular as catch was on a percentage basis, we also have to keep in mind the total TV numbers. Compared to some of the other affluent countries, France’s TV adoption rate was slow. For example, in 1956 when catch broadcasts became more regular, there were only about 500,000 registered television sets in France. By 1961 the number had grown to about 2,000,000 registered sets, but the TV adoption rate overall was still much slower compared to the USA and the UK, for example. The mid to late 1960s is when France finally caught up to them. That said, keep in mind that in those early years television viewing was a very communal experience - not only would the whole family gather to watch TV, but their neighbors or other relatives might come over too (if they didn’t have a TV of their own). TV sets were also in bars and pubs so some people got to watch TV this way. Plus, surely there must have been some people with unregistered TV sets too (trying to avoid the tax). The point to all of this is that the potential TV audience was larger than what the number of registered TV sets might suggest at first glance.
= Sidenote: From 1955 through the early 1970s, matches were being filmed in France and then sold for broadcast in other countries such as Monaco, Luxembourg and Switzerland. Oftentimes more French catch was airing on TV in those countries than in France itself.
Goldstein starts running a third venue in Paris (fall 1957) - Alex Goldstein started promoting shows at a third venue in Paris (Lancry Arena), making him the first and only catch promoter with three regular venues in Paris. It could have happened a bit earlier, but the earliest mentions of Lancry Arena shows that I’ve seen are from fall 1957. At this time and for the next several years, during the catch season Paris was getting over 30 catch shows per month (just the city itself, the suburbs had even more shows).
Commentator Claude Darget breaks kayfabe on the air and is removed from catch commentary (December 7, 1957) - French TV presenters Claude Darget and Georges de Caunes were the two voices most associated with catch early on. Darget’s commentary style was always sarcastic and sometimes harsh toward the wrestlers, which the majority of the catch promoters did not appreciate at all, and then one particular line of his during an Al Hayes vs. Jean Casi match was the final straw that broke the camel’s back. At one point in the match Darget said the following: "All that doesn't matter, don't worry, in catch nothing matters. I have ten minutes on the air, in ten minutes the match will be over.", basically saying catch is fake and the match was booked to end at a certain time. The predetermined nature of catch wasn’t exactly a secret, but kayfabe was still very much in place and publicly no one from the business would admit that catch was worked. The promoters were furious at Darget’s line and demanded that he be removed from catch commentary going forward. In fact, the promoters went as far as to threaten the network that if the network assigned Darget as the commentator to a catch broadcast, they would not do the broadcast. Begrudgingly, Pierre Sabbagh (the head of sports at the network) obliged and removed Darget from catch commentary going forward. Not long after that Raymond Marcillac replaced Sabbagh as the head of sports. Over the next year Marcillac kept pushing to bring Darget back to catch commentary, and the audience wanted it too because they liked him, but the promoters wouldn’t budge. In the meantime, Marcillac brought in sports radio presenter Roger Couderc to do catch commentary. With his colorful and enthusiastic style of commentary, Couderc would over time become the person remembered as the iconic voice of French catch.
Lou Thesz wrestles in France (January 1958) - Fresh off losing the NWA World Heavyweight Title to Dick Hutton, the former champion Lou Thesz embarked on a European tour. In France he worked for the Paoli/Goldstein office and was recognized as the World Heavyweight champion (by FILC), defending the title against some of the top French stars.
Andre Drapp becomes European Heavyweight champion (March 3, 1958) - Andre Drapp was a French pro wrestler, who got his start in the business in 1938, but was never really pushed as a top name in France. In the late 1940s he did, however, find success as a bodybuilder instead when he won Mr. France in 1947 and placed third in Mr. Universe and Mr. Europe in 1948. Then he wrestled in North America for several years, with moderate success, and returned to France in late 1956. By that point Yvar Martinson was no longer working for Paoli/Goldstein, Francois Miquet had relocated to North America (where he became known as Corsica Joe), and Felix Miquet was still around but was now in his late 40, so there was a slot open for a new top babyface star to emerge. The original plan was for Eddy Wiecz (Edouard Carpentier) to be that new top star, but he got a big break in Canada and relocated there. This coincided with the return of Drapp a few months later and Drapp was immediately positioned as the new headline star of the Paoli/Goldstein office, his rise to fame culminating in him winning the vacant FILC European Heavyweight Championship (the title had become vacant when Francois Miquet left for North America). Drapp would remain a main event star in France for the next 10+ years.
The first female catch commentator (May 2, 1958) - The network decided to do something a bit different and assigned TV personality Dominique Sandrel to do commentary for the catch broadcast that night. Catch commentary back then was usually a one-person job, but in this case they also had wrestler Michel Chaisne as a second commentator to help support Dominique. Her performance, however, was not good and, unless I’m forgetting someone, the network never had another female catch commentator again.
Alliance Europeenne de Lutte de Combat is created (1958) - I don’t have the full details, but at some point in 1958 Alliance Europeenne de Lutte de Combat was created. The founding meeting was held in Paris, and later on there were additional alliance meetings in London, Antwerp and Hamburg. This was an alliance that brought together some of the leading European pro wrestling promoters. The following promoters were members of the Alliance: France (Raoul Paoli, Alex Goldstein, Etienne Siry, Henri Chausson), United Kingdom (Joint Promotions), Germany (Gustl Kaiser and Willi Müller), Spain (Luis Gil Esparza and later probably others too), Belgium (Pete Brackeniers, Constant le Marin, Joseph Robyns), and Italy (Giorgio Demine). I believe by 1960 promoters from Austria and Morocco had joined in as well. In the UK this alliance was usually referred to as the European Wrestling Alliance (but that wasn’t the official name). Given the presence of the term “lutte de combat” in its name (which was a term associated with Paoli and Goldstein) and the fact that the headquarters of the alliance shared the same address as FFCP, it’s safe to assume this European Alliance was spearheaded by the Goldstein/Paoli and Siry/Lageat offices. And that’s quite the turn of events, because these two offices had been feuding for about seven years by that point and now they were not only working together, but also helping bring together a whole network of European promoters. So what was the European Alliance all about? Again, I don’t have the full details as of yet, but this alliance doesn’t seem to have been as cohesive and as controlling as the National Wrestling Alliance was in America, for example. The idea behind it seems to have been for all of these promoters to work together and protect each other’s interests along with some talent sharing and using the Alliance as an international championship sanctioning body. On paper it reads like a major deal, but I don’t think it did much in the long run. It was around for a while though - you can still find some mentions of it as late as the 1970s.
The allegiances in the world of catch shift and the Salle Wagram office finds itself on the outside looking in (1958) - Right around the same time as the formation of the European Alliance, and most likely the two events were related, the promotional alliances in the world of French catch went through another big change. Up until then the Palais de la Mutualite (Etienne Siry & Robert Lageat), Elysee Montmartre (Henri Chausson) and Salle Wagram offices were working together. Now, however, things changed and the first two aligned with Paoli and Goldstein. All of a sudden the Salle Wagram office became the opposition to the establishment, so to speak. By this point Maurice Durand had taken charge of the Salle Wagram office and he had three wrestlers as business partners - Gilbert Leduc, Robert Gastel and Claude Montourcy. Durand was the ultimate boss and Leduc was second-in-command. Jean de Nebehay was technically still the promoter of the Salle Wagram shows themself. According to Durand this newly-formed French alliance, and by proxy the European Alliance, were out to get him and were actively trying to run him out of business, going as far as threatening and putting pressure on local promoters to no longer work with the Salle Wagram booking office. Durand also claimed that Goldstein specifically tried to get the Ministry of Finance to go after him and in general there was a lot of animosity between Durand and Goldstein (Goldstein was most likely the one who pulled the strings for Durand to be kicked to the curb). This shift in alliances left Durand’s roster very depleted as the majority of the talent was now with the Alliance so Durand was trying to rebuild his roster and regain momentum. Gilbert Leduc was his top babyface star and Robert Gastel was his top heel. Other guys being featured in prominent spots were Claude Montourcy, Gaby Calderon, the veteran Stan Karolyi and the Spaniards Jim Oliver and Felix Lamban. On the governing body side of things, Durand had a close association with FFLP and therefore going forward FFLP was the governing body only for shows with talent from the Salle Wagram booking office. FILC and FFCP were the governing bodies for the other side.
L’Homme Masque debuts (December 8, 1958) - Europe in general and France more specifically had a long history of masked wrestlers dating back to the 1800s, but by this point masked wrestlers had become largely irrelevant in Europe. There were only a handful of masked wrestlers in Europe as a whole, and France hadn’t had a prominent masked wrestler in about six decades. And then Alex Goldstein introduced L’Homme Masque (The Masked Man). He was billed as an American and was physically larger than almost anyone else in France at the time so he was pushed as a monster heel of sorts. For his debut L’Homme Masque defeated Robert Duranton in the main event of a Palais des Sports show and was off to a hot start. The masked man’s identity was supposed to be a secret, but on the very next day it got exposed in the French press. L’Homme Masque was the Dutch wrestler The Great Zorro (best known later on in America as Hans Mortier), who had wrestled previously as a headliner for the Paoli/Goldstein office.
The debut of L’Ange Blanc (January 8 and 9, 1959) - Every great villain needs a great hero. Enter The White Angel. There’s a lot that can be said about the introduction of L’Ange Blanc and how very well done it was, but I’ll keep it brief. The story developed as follows. Roger Couderc, catch commentator and television personality, went on the TV News and announced that he had received a letter by an anonymous person who had watched the last catch broadcast and was appalled by the violent actions of the bad guys (Dr. Adolf Kaiser and Paul Villars being the bad guys in question). This anonymous person wanted to wrestle all the big names in France. Couderc said he told the person to contact the catch promoters directly. So then on January 8 the TV News featured a segment which started with Couderc introducing promoters Goldstein, Siry, Lageat and Chausson. Goldstein announced that the anonymous person, who he had named L’Ange Blanc, would get a chance to wrestle on his Cirque d’Hiver show tomorrow, live on TV. Couderc then introduced L’Ange Blanc (dressed in all white, with a white mask and a white cape) who gave a brief interview and promised to punish all the bad guys put in front of him. L’Ange Blanc was a major success, before he even stepped foot into a ring, as a reported audience of 4 million viewers tuned in to watch that segment (in a country that had about one million television sets at the time). People were extremely interested in seeing what this masked comic book-like hero was all about. On the following night L’Ange made his in-ring debut by defeating Paul Villars. Within the span of a few days L’Ange became a sensation and his star continued to grow from there, L’Ange Blanc ultimately becoming the biggest mainstream wrestling star in the history of France. Newspaper, radio and television appearances in the weeks that followed helped L’Ange’s character become fully fleshed out, including his motivations and backstory. The official story was that he was from South America, but the reality actually got exposed in the French press just a few weeks after his debut when in late January the press revealed that Francisco Pino Farina, a midcard Spanish wrestler, was the one under the L’Ange Blanc mask. The reveal did not take away from his popularity at all. With L’Ange Blanc at the helm French catch was about to enter the peak of its popularity.
Johnny Rougeau comes to France (January 1959) - The popular Montreal star Johnny Rougeau came in to work in France for a few months (for the Goldstein camp) and was pushed as a big deal. In fact, the storyline in France was that Rougeau was the reigning World Heavyweight champion after beating Lou Thesz for the title. The Thesz part wasn’t true, but either way Rougeau was the recognized World Heavyweight champion in France (by both FILC and FFCP). By all accounts he got over really well too, but that coincided with the rise of L’Ange Blanc so Blanc got most of the attention.
The TV debut of Le Bourreau de Bethune and the lawsuit that preceded it (February 5, 1959) - As mentioned, things weren’t looking particularly good for Maurice Durand’s office and he needed to do something to build some steam. And much like Goldstein and his partners before that, the gamechanger for Durand ended up being a masked wrestler as well - Le Bourreau de Bethune (The Executioner of Bethune). Le Bourreau was pretty much a knock-off of Goldstein’s L’Homme Masque, and it was obvious from the start. So much so that Goldstein immediately took Durand to court and tried to block the use of the character going forward. That didn’t work and it only built more buzz for Bourreau’s television debut. For his big TV debut Le Bourreau took on Durand’s top babyface star (and right-hand man behind the scenes) Gilbert Leduc in a match that made Le Bourreau a sensation overnight. Le Bourreau won in two straight falls by brutalizing Leduc with press slam gutbusters that Leduc sold in an incredibly convincing manner. No one had dominated the popular Leduc on TV like that before. Afterward the network was flooded with phone calls by viewers asking for an update on Leduc’s condition. And just like that Le Bourreau was now probably the hottest heel in all of France and Durand had a new top heel star to work with. The man under the Le Bourreau mask was the French veteran Jacques Ducrez and, just like with L’Homme Masque and L’Ange Blanc before him, his identity got exposed in the press (on the day of his TV debut, actually), but just like those guys that did not take away from the character’s mystique whatsoever.
= Sidenote: The introduction of masked wrestlers in France made masked wrestlers relevant in Europe again and a whole new wave of masked wrestlers appeared in Europe over the next few years, including a number of L’Ange Blanc, L’Homme Masque and Le Bourreau de Bethune knock-offs in other countries.
The network threatens to take catch off TV unless Claude Darget is allowed back and Darget returns (February 27, 1959) - After more than a year of requests by the network and refusals by the promoters, the promoters finally agreed to let Claude Darget back on catch commentary. What ultimately forced them to agree to it was Christian Chavanon (the RTF director general) getting involved and threatening to take catch off TV altogether if the promoters didn’t take Darget back. The Darget situation is actually a great example of the tension that was building between the network and the promoters. Catch was one of the most popular shows on TV at the time so the catch promoters were becoming more headstrong and were making demands of the network, which the network did not take well to, and over time things escalated quite a bit.
Shoot challenges issued and a notable shooter arrives on the scene to handle them (February-April 1959) - As often used to happen in promotional wars back in the day, in early February Maurice Durand had all of this top heels (Le Bourreau de Bethune, Robert Gastel, Stan Karolyi and Gaby Calderon) go to the press and issue challenges to L’Ange Blanc for a match, knowing full well L’Ange was never going to accept and this would make him look bad (especially given that his gimmick was that of an avenger out to put all the bad guys in their place). L'Ange ignored the challenges for two and a half months and then he came out with a challenge of his own. He said he had a very busy schedule and couldn't just meet anyone who challenged him so he had the following offer for all four of Durand’s challengers. They had to wrestle L'Ange's supposed training partner and friend Mysterman (a new masked wrestler who had just come to Paris a couple of weeks earlier). Mysterman was to wrestle all four men in one session, one right after the other in whichever order they wanted. If one of them managed to defeat Mysterman that wrestler would get a match with L'Ange. However, L'Ange did not want these four challengers to make any money off of his name so he wanted the bouts with Mysterman to be held in a private setting under the supervision of officials and in the presence of journalists. As far as I'm aware L'Ange's challenge didn't lead to anything. As for Mysterman, under the mask he was none other than noted Belgian shooter Karel Istaz (better known as Karl Gotch later on).
Masked wrestlers are banned from TV (early March 1959) - By this point Alex Goldstein and his partners had L’Ange Blanc, L’Homme Masque and Monsieur X while Maurice Durand was featuring Le Bourreau de Bethune, Le Justicier Blanc (a L’Ange Blanc knock-off) and Superman so in just three months the number of masked wrestlers went from zero to six (and that number would quadruple within a year). Masked wrestlers were becoming all the rage in France and not only were they growing in numbers, the key ones (Ange, Masque, Bourreau and Justicier) were being pushed harder than anyone else was in France at the time. The aforementioned Christian Chavanon, however, thought masked wrestlers were becoming too much of a focus and instituted a mandate that masked wrestlers were no longer allowed to appear on television, which at first may sound like something negative for the catch business, but in the long run was probably better for the financial side of the business as now the only way to see these very popular characters was to purchase a ticket to a live event.
After pressure from Germany, hated villain Dr. Adolf Kaiser wrestles his final French TV match for a while (March 6, 1959) - One of the most hated catch villains in France at the time was the evil monocle-wearing German Doctor Adolf Kaiser (real name: Hans Waldherr from Austria), whose signature was strangling his opponents. As you can imagine that character drew a lot of crowd heat in France and pulled on some WWII-related heartstrings and stereotypes. Up to this point Kaiser had been featured on French TV a number of times and then his appearances randomly stopped. Reportedly, this was due to pressure coming from Germany and certain high-ranking people there being upset by the portrayal of this supposed German, especially given his first name. One report specifically credited Eugen Gerstenmaier (the president of the German federal parliament at the time) as the person who ultimately got Kaiser pulled off French TV (reminder: RTF, the French television network, was state-owned so it was more inclined to give in to outside pressures like that than a private network would be). After a couple of years Kaiser would eventually make his return to French TV in April 1961.
The final catch show at the 18,000-seat Palais des Sports (May 4, 1959) - The show was headlined by the big showdown the Paoli/Goldstein office had been building to for the past half a year, the undefeated masked hero L’Ange Blanc taking on the undefeated masked villain L’Homme Masque. Later in the year Palais des Sports was damaged by a fire and then demolished, thus depriving French catch of its biggest arena.
L’Ange Blanc travels with Tour de France as an added attraction (June 25-July 18, 1959) - One of the biggest, if not the biggest, sporting events in France back then was the annual Tour de France bicycle race. In a clear sign how popular L’Ange Blanc was at the time, Tour de France and Alex Goldstein worked out a deal for L’Ange to wrestle matches at each of the tour’s 22 stages. He would wrestle each night after that day’s race as part of the entertainment program for the night.
Business is booming (1959 and beyond) - This is a good point to take a moment and focus on what was happening in general in France at the time. The introduction of L’Ange Blanc and the other masked wrestlers made catch more popular than ever before. Since 1933 catch had more or less always been pretty popular in France, but now things were at a whole new level. There’s no way to verify the claim and he was probably exaggerating, but in a February 1960 interview Alex Goldstein claimed that his business had quadrupled since December 1958. On the Durand side of things, he started the year on shaky grounds, but by the end of the year his office was in a strong position too. In terms of talent, the most popular stars for Goldstein and his partners were L’Ange Blanc, L’Homme Masque, Roger Delaporte, Andre Bollet, Andre Drapp, Robert Duranton, Rene Ben Chemoul, etc. Meanwhile Durand’s top guys were Gilbert Leduc, Le Bourreau de Bethune, Robert Gastel, Le Justicier Blanc and as the year progressed he also added Charles Humez (a popular boxing star now becoming a wrestler), Jose Tarres (who Durand recruited away from his opposition) and the debuting James Brown, Quasimodo and Josef Kovacs. Outside of the big four, there were some other smaller independent offices that were doing their own thing too - for example Felix Miquet had a touring promotion, Jean Fryziuk had a small group of wrestlers, Emile Guilloton had a company of about 15 female wrestlers or so, etc.
The first catch show at the new Palais des Sports (February 8, 1960) - After Palais des Sports (a.k.a. Velodrome d’Hiver) was demolished, a new Palais des Sports (a.k.a. Dome de Paris) was built. Going forward it became the biggest venue for catch in Paris, but its capacity was much smaller than the capacity of the original Palais des Sports. The new one was for about 4,600 people. The first catch show there was promoted by the Goldstein/Paoli office and was headlined by L’Ange Blanc vs. Andre Bollet.
Raoul Paoli passes away (March 23, 1960) - At the age of 72. Paoli was without a doubt the top promoter in the history of French catch. The one who first made catch popular back in 1933 and someone who had a lot of success as a catch promoter. One of the most successful European wrestling promoters of all time, really. Almost until the very end Paoli was listed as an active promoter, but I don’t know how involved he was in reality. It definitely seems like for the past couple of years Goldstein had been the one calling all the shots.
A new book exposes the business (fall 1960) - Gilles Calou, a judoka who had a very brief and unremarkable career as a pro wrestler, wrote a book called “Confessions d'un catcheur” (The Confessions of a Pro Wrestler). The book set out to expose the inner workings of French catch and the fixed nature of the business. There had been plenty of newspaper articles over the years talking about how catch was predetermined so this was no secret, but this book did it in a more detailed manner. It got a good amount of media attention and Calou was even interviewed on national prime time TV about it. That said, the book didn’t really have much of an effect on anything. Business was still booming.
Masked wrestlers are allowed back on TV (November 1960) - As mentioned before, right when masked wrestlers became super popular in France they got banned from appearing on French television and now, after a year and a half off TV, they were allowed back. L’Ange Blanc’s TV return in particular was very eagerly awaited as the viewers had been asking for it constantly. For his TV return L’Ange took on Andre Bollet (one of the top two French heels at the time). The actual number is not available, but for what it’s worth I saw an article predicting a television audience of 5 million.
Maurice Durand is sued by writer Jean Bruce over a wrestling character (January 1961) - Maurice Durand introduced a new main event character on his shows - OSS 117 (portrayed by Spanish wrestler Benny Galant). OSS 117 was the codename of a fictional secret agent that French writer Jean Bruce had created (kind of like a French James Bond 007, except that OSS 117 was created before James Bond was). By that point Bruce had published many OSS 117 spy novels and there was even an OSS 117 movie. When Bruce saw an OSS 117 wrestler being introduced he filed a complaint immediately as he did not want his creation being used without his permission. I’ve seen a claim that at one point Bruce even came to a Salle Wagram show and punched Durand in the face, but I haven’t been able to verify that claim. OSS 117, the wrestling character, was around for a little over a year, and then Galant went to Mexico where he became a big star.
L’Ange Blanc unmasks (March 13, 1961) - On that date L’Ange Blanc took on his arch nemesis L’Homme Masque in the main event of a Palais des Sports show. About 10 days prior L’Ange announced that regardless of the result, after the match he was going to be removing his mask and showing his face to the world for the first time. His reasoning was that there were just too many fake L’Ange Blancs and he was tired of dealing with the drama that came with that (he had been involved in a lawsuit or two over guys using his likeness). Or at least that was the reason he mentioned publicly - privately, who knows. And it is true that there was an epidemic of fake L’Ange Blancs in France. The gimmick was so incredibly popular that in order to keep up with the demand promoters had guys pretend to be L’Ange Blanc, as many as four L’Ange Blancs working on the same night in France. L’Ange had been the cornerstone of the Goldstein/Siry/Lageat/Chausson alliance since his debut in January 1959, with all three offices pushing him heavily and all three reaping the benefits. His decision to unmask caused a major rift in the alliance. Goldstein backed L’Ange’s decision while the others were strongly against it because they felt the mask was the key to his appeal and without it his popularity just wouldn’t be the same. Things got to a point where Siry, Lageat and Chausson tried to get an injunction to stop L’Ange from unmasking. The judge ruled that he had no jurisdiction over the matter and that Francisco Pino Farina, the man behind the mask, could do as he pleased. It was also revealed Pino had a two-year contract, which was about to expire. And so after the match with L’Homme Masque, L’Ange Blanc unmasked. Was his popularity hurt by the unmasking? Sure, of course, but even unmasked he still remained the most popular babyface star in France and was a main eventer there for many years after that.
The Goldstein/Siry/Lageat/Chausson alliance falls apart (March 1961) - There been financial disputes brewing underneath already and ultimately the L’Ange Blanc unmasking was the final straw that led to the disbanding of this alliance, which had been dominating the French catch scene for the past couple of years. Within a few weeks, however, Alex Goldstein managed to work out a deal with Henri Chausson and they went back to working together while the Siry/Lageat office went in another direction.
Siry and Lageat join forces with Durand (March 1961) - Right after the split with Goldstein, the Palais de la Mutualite office (Etienne Siry and Robert Lageat) made a new alliance with the Salle Wagram office (Maurice Durand) and started sharing talent. The promotional lines were clearly drawn in the sand and going forward it was the Goldstein/Chausson alliance vs. the Siry/Lageat/Durand alliance, or if you want to put it in federational terms FILC vs. FFCP and FFLP.
Roger Delaporte and Andre Bollet leave Goldstein and join the other side (March 1961) - For the past few years, along with L’Homme Masque, Roger Delaporte and Andre Bollet had been the top heels of the Goldstein office. Maurice Durand had been trying to poach them for a while, at one point reportedly guaranteeing Delaporte 5 million French francs per year if he left Goldstein, and amidst all the L’Ange Blanc drama Durand finally succeeded in stealing them away from Goldstein. This was a major addition to the Durand/Siry/Lageat ranks.
After pressure from a Minister, catch is taken off TV (late April 1961) - Maurice Herzog (the French Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports at the time) put pressure on the network not to air catch any longer, because he considered it a "degrading spectacle" and wanted the network to focus on other "more noble" sports such as athletics, boxing, skiing, volleyball and basketball. Despite catch being one of its most watched shows, Raymond Janot (the assistant Director General of RTF) gave in and made the call to stop the catch broadcasts.
Catch returns to television (June 29, 1961) - The decision to take catch off TV was met with a lot of negative feedback from the public and ultimately the network brought catch back pretty quick. However, when catch broadcasts returned it was with a very reduced schedule. While catch being on television was great for the overall popularity of the business in France, the nights when there were broadcasts on TV greatly hurt the live gates of the shows happening all across the country that night, which did not sit well with the booking offices that were booking these shows. That’s why Goldstein, Durand and others were in favor of there being a lot less catch broadcasts. The new agreement going forward was for catch to be on television once a month, the slots still being divided between the four major Paris-based offices.
L’Ange Blanc switches sides too (September 1961) - The Goldstein/Chausson alliance suffered another big loss when L’Ange Blanc, the most popular star in France, left their camp and joined the Siry/Lageat/Durand one. Around the same time Goldstein also lost his long-time top foreign tag team (Al Hayes and Ray Hunter). By this point the FFCP/FFLP alliance had L’Ange Blanc, Gilbert Leduc, Roger Delaporte, Andre Bollet, Robert Gastel, Jack de Lasartesse, Le Bourreau de Bethune, James Brown, Michel Allary, Lino Di Santo, Gaby Calderon, Horst Hoffmann, Hermann Iffland, Al Hayes, Ray Hunter, Quasimodo, etc. In other words, they had a pretty deep pool of popular stars to work with.
Gil Voiney wins the World Heavyweight Title (December 11, 1961) - Having lost a number of his top stars Alex Goldstein needed to fill the void they left behind and fill it fast. Gil Voiney, a French heavyweight with very strong amateur credentials in wrestling and weightlifting, had worked for Goldstein for a few years and looked to be a future prospect, but wasn’t really being pushed at a high level yet. L’Ange Blanc leaving changed that and all of a sudden within a couple of months Voiney found himself shot right to the top of Goldstein’s shows. In order to make Voiney an established star Goldstein brought in Lucky Simunovich and had FILC recognize him as the World Heavyweight champion, only for Simunovich to then lose the title to Voiney a few weeks later. Other talent moves that Goldstein made around this time were bringing back The Great Zorro and Felix Miquet, debuting new foreign headliners such as Tibor Szakacs, Josef Zaranoff and Ski Hi Lee, taking Josef Kovacs away from the FFCP/FFLP side, and recruiting the multi-time French weightlifting champion Jean Debuf to become wrestler. In addition to all of those guys he also had other popular stars such as Andre Drapp, Robert Duranton and Rene Ben Chemoul. All in all, Goldstein recovered well from the talent losses that he suffered earlier in the year.
Eddy Wiecz returns (January 15, 1962) - Alex Goldstein’s next big move was bringing back Eddy Wiecz (Edouard Carpentier) to France. Wiecz hadn’t wrestled in France since 1956 and by now he was a former multi-time World Heavyweight champion in America so his coming back to France was a big deal. For his return Wiecz defeated Robert Duranton in the main event of a Palais des Sports show. He stayed in France for a couple of months.
A match from a new promotion airs on TV and the other promoters blow a gasket (May 3, 1962) - On that date Roger Delaporte vs. Jean Fryziuk, with Roger Couderc on commentary, aired on TV and this kicked up a big storm in the French catch world. Shortly before said match a new federation/governing body had been formed in France - FFLCA (Federation Francaise de Lutte et de Catch Autonome). It was associated with a collection of talent who were unhappy with how things were being done in the big two catch alliances so they left them and joined this new company. The main guy behind FFLCA was Jean Fryziuk (more or less a midcard wrestler who was also a catch trainer). The roster of the new company was on the smaller side, but featured several popular stars including Roger Delaporte, Andre Bollet, Lino Di Santo, Gaby Calderon, Bernard Vignal, and Warnia de Zarzecki. Their public stance was that they were against masked gimmicks and they were going to be presenting a more serious version of catch. A FFLCA match airing on TV infuriated the established Paris booking offices, who had been sharing the television air time for years now, and they began pestering the network with complaints and threats.
Catch is taken off television (June 1962) - Raymond Marcillac (the head of sports at the network) finally had enough of all the complaints and threats by the promoters. Ever since the start of French television catch had always been handled by the sports department of the network, but now Marcilac no longer wanted anything to do with catch and was asking for catch to be put under the jurisdiction of the entertainment department. Catch got stuck in a limbo. No one from the network's side wanted to deal with the promoters and their demands. The network’s directive was quite clear - catch would not be airing on television until the promoters stopped all the bickering among themselves and toward the network. To make matters even worse the voice of catch Roger Couderc also announced that he’d had enough of the promoters attacking him (because he did commentary for a FFLCA match) and he would no longer do catch commentary going forward.
And this is where I’ll end the timeline for the moment being...
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