Biography - The French Pro Wrestling Promoter Raoul Paoli

The life and career of the promoter who made catch (pro wrestling) popular in France.

Multi-sport French national champion. Five-time Olympian (in different sports). Decorated WWI veteran. Movie actor. Pro wrestler. The promoter who popularized catch-as-catch-can/American style pro wrestling in France in the 1930s, turned France into one of the major European territories for pro wrestling and helped spread the style elsewhere too. Member of the French Resistance during WWII. The first promoter to bring pro wrestling to French national television. A promoter whose run spanned over 25 years and included many 10,000+ crowds. Without question one of the greatest pro wrestling promoters in the history of Europe and possibly the greatest French promoter of all time. All of the above describes just one man and that man is Raoul Paoli.

Raoul Paoli through the years

Jacques Marie Lucien Raoul Simonpaoli was born on 24 November 1887 in Courtalain in Northern France. His father was a gendarme (paramilitary policeman), originally from the island of Corsica, and his mother was a housewife from Senantes. By the time Jacques was a teenager he started going by the name Raoul Paoli and that was the name everyone knew him by. From an early age Paoli showed an affinity for sports. He first took up gymnastics, then running and then he got involved in discus throw and shot put, both of which he excelled in. He also got involved in amateur Greco-Roman wrestling too and became the heavyweight champion of Paris in 1908. That same year he broke the French record for discus throw. When it was all said and done Paoli ended up having an excellent sports career in France and was one of the most well-rounded French athletes of his era. His accomplishments during his days as an active sportsman include:
- Champion of Paris in amateur Greco-Roman wrestling;
- French national champion in discus throw;
- Set a French record for discus throw;
- French national champion in shot put;
- Set a French record for shot put, then improved that record and altogether was the record holder for 8 years;
- French national champion in amateur boxing;
- Part of the French national rugby team.

Furthermore, Paoli took part in the Olympics a total of five times, in four different sports. His first appearance was at the young age of 12 when he participated as coxswain for the Castillon Rowing Club team that won bronze in rowing (coxed pair). Then he himself competed in four of the next five Olympics. However, he never placed high enough to win a medal. The highest placement he ever achieved was 9th in shot put at the 1924 Olympics in Paris. Paoli’s history at the Olympics:
- 1900, Paris (coxswain for the team that won bronze in coxed pair);
- 1912, Stockholm (competed in Greco-Roman wrestling and shot put + was the official flag bearer for France);
- 1920, Antwerp (competed in shot put);
- 1924, Paris (competed in shot put);
- 1928, Amsterdam (competed in shot put and discus throw).

He was scheduled to be part of the 1908 Olympics too, but ended up not starting. And over the years he was also supposed to compete at the Olympics in sports like javelin throw, pentathlon and decathlon, but for whatever reason did not start.

As recognition for his sporting achievements, in November 1937 Paoli was awarded with the Legion of Honor for Physical Education. This is France’s highest possible distinction for physical education and sports.

Another notable thing that Paoli did was fighting in World War I as part of the French infantry, and during that time he also started learning how to be a pilot. He was wounded on a couple of occasions during the war and also had a serious aviation accident, which left him in the hospital for some time. Later Paoli was awarded by the French state with a Military Medal and a War Cross, both of which are awarded for acts of bravery.

Paoli’s injuries from WWI did not stop him completely, but they did slow him down a bit and his sports career, while still active, was no longer as big of a priority after that. Previously he had worked as a salesman and in 1921 he tried his hand at a new profession - movie actor. The pursuit of acting eventually led him to the United States in 1926, where he would remain for the next several years. He did have small roles in a number of movies, both in France and in the States, but overall his acting career wasn’t all that significant. While in America Paoli eventually reconnected with an old acquaintance of his - Henri Deglane.

The Frenchman Henri Deglane was an Olympic gold medalist in Greco-Roman wrestling from the 1924 Paris Olympics. Shortly after his Olympic victory he transitioned to pro wrestling. In 1927 Deglane got a big break when one of the top U.S. promoters, New York’s Jack Curley, brought him to the States. Eventually Deglane jumped ship to Curley’s chief rival, Boston promoter Paul Bowser, and it was while working for the Bowser group that Deglane truly became a major star. This led to him taking the World Heavyweight Championship from Ed “Strangler” Lewis in the infamous Montreal screwjob in May 1931. Then in February 1933 Deglane lost the championship to another one of Bowser’s top stars - Ed Don George.

It was Deglane who introduced Paoli to the American style of professional wrestling and Paoli became a big fan of it. So much so that he wanted to be part of the business. Paoli trained under Deglane for a while, and also did some additional training with Dan Koloff and possibly others, and he ended up wrestling professionally for a couple of years (1931-1932) under the name Raoul Simon. He wrestled mostly in Montreal and Boston (two of the strongholds of the Bowser group) and did get in the ring with popular stars such as Ed Don George, Gus Sonnenberg, Marin Plestina, etc., but he was pretty much a midcard wrestler and ultimately his career as a pro wrestler wasn’t much, nor could it have been given that he was in his mid 40s at the time.

In late 1932 Paoli decided to put an end to his career as a wrestler and returned back to France with a goal in mind. The goal was to bring the American style of wrestling to France as Paoli believed the time was right for big time pro wrestling to make a comeback in the country, with a new twist. Pro wrestling (Greco-Roman style) used to be very popular in France and France was one of the major territories for wrestling in the early 1900s, but that was no longer the case and hadn’t been the case for quite some time. Outside of some smaller wrestling shows and wrestling at fairs and carnivals, pro wrestling was almost non-existent in France at the time. On top of that, after WWI the French government had placed a very high tax on pro wrestling events (up to 40% of the ticket sale revenue went to the state) so it was difficult to even try to get something going. Paoli, however, was firm in his belief that he could pull it off. And pull it off he did.

At the start of August 1933 Paoli officially announced his intention to bring American style professional wrestling to France. That said, his version of it wasn’t going to be as over-the-top as the American style was starting to become at the time. Paoli’s version of pro wrestling, or catch as it would become known in France and in other European countries, was more sports-like and without some of the wilder American antics. Paoli was the official promoter and matchmaker/booker for the new promotion, though by the looks of it he did have some other guys helping him with the booking at times.

In front of the public Paoli was the sole owner, but behind the scenes he had a business partner who was going to be the top star of the new promotion - Henri Deglane. Deglane, who was the first Frenchman to win a World Heavyweight Championship in the catch style, had already lost the World Title, but that did not matter. Because of his success in America he was now a much bigger name than he had ever been in France and the French public was very eager to see him wrestle in person. He was key to the success of the new promotion. Without Deglane as the top star Paoli’s new promotion likely would have not taken off or at the very least not to the extent that it did.

Another important piece of the puzzle was Jeff Dickson. Dickson was an American who had moved to France and become the top boxing promoter in the country. Dickson owned the biggest indoor arena in France, the 18,000-seat Palais des Sports (a.k.a. Velodrome d’Hiver) in Paris, and Paoli worked out a deal with Dickson to hold his wrestling shows there. Paoli getting to use that arena was a game changer. No other promoter in Europe at the time was running such a large venue on a regular basis. Without Palais des Sports as his main arena, it’s difficult to imagine how Paoli’s run as promoter would have turned out.

The final important name to mention here is Dan Koloff. The Bulgarian Dan Koloff had spent the past 16 years wrestling in America. He was a well-known wrestler, but never a major star there. As of 1933 Koloff was running a booking office based in Oakland and booking wrestlers all over Northern California and elsewhere. Paoli brought the booking office concept over to France. Paoli would promote his own shows in Paris all the while supplying talent, affiliated with his booking office, to local promoters in other French towns as well as promoters outside of France, and those local promoters would pay him a certain fee for it. It’s not clear to what extent but Koloff was definitely involved on the booking side of the Paoli promotion.

Finally the big debut came. 25 September 1933. Paoli’s first show at Palais des Sports in Paris. And the show was a great success - about 10,000 fans turning up to watch it. In the headline match Deglane defeated the American Len Hall. French catch was born. France had been one of the major territories for pro wrestling at various points in the past, but that hadn’t been the case for about 20 years. Paoli’s new promotion changed that and Paris became the talk of the European wrestling world. It didn’t take long for France to once again become a major territory for pro wrestling and it would remain a major one for several decades. And this can all be traced back to Paoli’s first event on 25 September 1933.

The way the Paoli promotion worked going forward, and really for most of its existence, was as follows. Big shows at Palais des Sports from fall through spring, typically every other Monday night. On the other days Paoli would book his guys through his booking office on other shows in France and abroad. And that’s another important aspect to mention. Not only did Paoli popularize catch (pro wrestling) in France, but to an extent he also helped spread it in other European countries and even some North African ones by sending his wrestlers to wrestle there. For example, in October 1933 the first catch show in the history of Barcelona was a Paoli show. Later the first catch shows in Lisbon were also entirely with Paoli guys. Same in Tunis. And there are more examples. In general once catch became popular in France this encouraged other countries to give it a shot as well and try to establish their own local scenes. In that sense Paoli deserves some credit for opening the door for the catch style of pro wrestling to become popular in Europe as a whole.

Paoli’s first season of Palais des Sports shows was super successful. It consisted of 11 shows in total and, while we don’t have all the numbers, based on the newspaper reports of the time we know that at least 8 of the 11 shows drew crowds of 10,000 or more fans. At this stage when it came to talent Paoli was mostly using wrestlers brought in through Koloff’s NorCal booking office as well as some local French wrestlers. The key headline star was Deglane. There were another two wrestlers who emerged as major stars on the French scene during that first season and they would remain the backbone of the promotion through the majority of the 1930s along with Deglane. First there was the aforementioned Dan Koloff. In addition to racking up a bunch of other victories, in November 1933 Koloff also picked up a big win over Deglane, which solidified him as the other top star of the promotion. Obviously, Deglane was always the biggest star in France, but in terms of booking Deglane and Koloff were always positioned as equals and were the two stars Paoli relied on the most as headliners in the 1930s.

And then there was the number three star of the promotion - Charles Rigoulot. The Frenchman Rigoulot was one of the most well-known weightlifters in France and a gold medalist from the 1924 Olympics. He was also one of the first ever official record holders in weightlifting, as recognized by the International Weightlifting Federation in 1925, and one can make a case that Rigoulot was the first officially recognized strongest man in the world (with a clean and jerk of 160,5 kg). Paoli recruiting Rigoulot to become a wrestler was a big deal at the time, and Rigoulot was a major star right off the bat. He was given a big push with quick dominant victories over his opponents until he ran into Koloff on 22 January 1934 and suffered his first loss. Rigoulot (the unbeaten powerhouse) vs. Koloff (the guy who had defeated Deglane) drew a packed house of about 18,000 fans (16,656 paid) - the biggest crowd of Paoli’s first season, the biggest European crowd of 1934 and reportedly the biggest pro wrestling crowd and gate in the history of France up to that point. Later that same year Rigoulot left the Paoli promotion for a couple of years, but when he returned later on he was once again one of its most featured stars.

Being a legitimate sportsman himself, Paoli always liked to recruit well-known athletes from all sorts of sports. This was true in the 1930s and especially true in the post-WWII years. Rigoulot was just the start. This is not a full list, but here are some of the other notable names who wrestled for Paoli through the years: Ernest Cadine (Olympic gold medalist in weightlifting), Henri Lefebvre (Olympic bronze medalist in wrestling), Tekirdagli Huseyin (nine-time Turkish oil wrestling champion), Axel Cadier (Olympic gold medalist and four-time European amateur champion in wrestling), Rene Florent (multi-time French weightlifting champion), Robert Duranton (four-time Mr. France bodybuilding champion), Guy Verrier (European judo champion), Robert Charron (French boxing champion), Robert Villemain (European boxing champion), etc. Plus, a number of French amateur wrestling champions and French Olympic wrestlers.

Paoli’s second season of shows started in September 1934 and it was just as successful as the first one. With Koloff away wrestling in Australia, the Georgian Kola Kwariani was brought in and pushed as a headline star (drawing 12,000 fans for his debut against Deglane), but the biggest story of the season was the arrival of one of the biggest wrestling stars from America. Ed “Strangler” Lewis came to France in October 1934 and went on to wrestle four big matches in Paris. He first defeated Kwariani, then Rigoulot (13,000 in attendance for that one), and then it was time for Lewis to wrestle Deglane - a rematch of the match where Deglane had won the World Championship three years prior. About 15,000 fans, if not more, attended the match and what they saw was Lewis defeating their hero Deglane. The finish was Deglane falling out of the ring, hurting himself and then Lewis taking advantage of the situation and pinning Deglane, which of course left the door open for a rematch. In the rematch two weeks later, which drew another 15,000 house, Deglane got his revenge and beat the famous Strangler clean in the middle of the ring to the delight of the Paris audience. Later in the season the American boxer-turned-wrestler George Godfrey (a former World Colored Heavyweight boxing champion) worked a couple of Paoli shows as well. Another thing that happened during this season was that matches from the Paoli shows began appearing in the newsreels being shown in French cinemas at the time, giving his wrestlers extra exposure. This would continue through the 1950s. Some of the matches even made their way to newsreels in other countries too.

Paoli’s third season of shows saw the crowning of a European Heavyweight champion when in January 1936 Deglane defeated Kwariani in a tournament final to become the first champion. At least 10,000 fans were in attendance. In April 1936 Deglane dropped the title to Koloff in a match that drew 15,000 or so fans. The European Heavyweight Championship was and would remain the top championship of the Paoli promotion for the next 20+ years. It was also during this season that Paoli started running additional shows in Paris at the 2,600-seat Salle Wagram, giving him a second venue in the French capital.

The 1936-1937 season had two big stories. First there was Ed Don George, the guy who had taken the World Championship away from Deglane, finally coming to France to face Deglane. Their encounter was a huge deal. It had been talked about in France since before Paoli’s first show back in 1933 and the people had waited for this match for years. Don George and Deglane ended up wrestling two times - first a time limit draw and then Deglane finally beat George, four years after losing the World Championship to him. Both matches drew big - the first one did about 17,000 while the second one did between 15,000 and 18,000 (conflicting numbers reported in the press). The other important story of the season was the rise of Al Pereira as a major star. The Paoli promotion had previously taken guys such as Koloff and Kwariani, who were already well-known elsewhere, and turned them into big stars in France, but Pereira was perhaps the best example yet of Paoli taking a nobody and turning him into a big star. Pereira was a wrestler from Half Moon Bay, California, who had been around for a few years, but wasn’t particularly popular. He was a Koloff protege, however, so Koloff brought him to France with the intent of turning him into a star there. And it worked. A series of wins over midcarders led to Pereira getting over, then he won the European Championship from Koloff, and went on to have additional victories over Kwariani, Deglane and even Don George. The Deglane match in particular, which drew a crowd of about 16,000, ended in big controversy. It was for the European Championship and the crowd’s expectation was that Deglane would finally get the title back so when Pereira beat Deglane a big riot broke out and police had to intervene. To appease the fans eventually Deglane won a non-title rematch a few months later. Non-title because two weeks after that Pereira dropped the title back to Koloff in front of about 12,000 fans.

The 1937-1938 season had a few big stories. First and foremost, the popular Joe Savoldi came in from America for an extended tour which saw him wrestle all three of the top Paoli stars. He defeated Koloff (with about 12,000 in attendance), beat and then lost to Rigoulot (the rematch being in front of what the local press described as a capacity crowd), and as for Deglane, Savoldi first had a draw with him (packing Palais des Sports with 18,000 fans) and then Deglane defeated Savoldi in front of another capacity crowd. The other big story of the season was Strangler Lewis returning for a brief run and losing matches to Deglane and Koloff. And finally, this season saw the retirement of Koloff, who had to step away from the ring due to health issues. He was still the European Heavyweight champion at the time. 1938 also saw the French debut of former World Heavyweight champion Dick Shikat, who wrestled for another Paris-based promotion. Shikat tried to stir up some controversy by going to the press and claiming Paoli was afraid to let his top guys wrestle him, because he knew Shikat could beat them for real. Shikat’s challenges got little traction in the press and were ignored by Paoli and his stars.

Paoli’s final season of the 1930s was largely built around the arrival of the former World Heavyweight champion Yvon Robert, who stayed in France for a four-month run, drawing some big crowds along the way, especially for his matches with Deglane and Rigoulot. Another headline star during this season was the German Milo Steinborn (Dick Steinborn’s father).

More or less this was how Paoli’s 1933-1939 run went. There was more to it, but these were the main highlights. Everything was mostly built around Deglane and Koloff (and Rigoulot to a lesser extent), with some other guys getting spotlighted at times and a number of guest stars getting a lot of focus as they came to the territory. Paoli did have some competitors in the French market in the 1930s, but overall his promotion was far and away the biggest one in France. Based on the available reported attendances, we can summarize that in the 1930s Paoli had over 35 shows which drew crowds of 10,000 or more fans, and that number is for sure lower than the real number because we’re lacking a lot of attendance data. Not everything was a success of course and he did have some shows that underperformed, but when it was all said and done no other European promoter in the 1930s drew as many 10,000+ crowds and for as long as Paoli did. In fact, given the state of the wrestling business in North America in the later years of the decade, it’s also possible Paoli may have been the top promoter in the world for a time in terms of being able to draw big crowds. That is, with the possible exception of the Jose Lectoure and Ismael Pace promotion in Argentina, whose shows were said to be drawing very well at the time, but we don’t have enough attendance information to confirm.

With World War II on the horizon naturally pro wrestling in France was put on hold. Furthermore, in 1940 there was a change in the political regime in France and the new regime banned all professional sports. During the war Paoli made his living as a farmer and a winemaker, while also being part of the French Resistance. At one point he ended up being arrested and imprisoned by the Gestapo.

The ban on pro sports was removed after the war and pro wrestling returned to France in October 1944. Paoli himself did not return right away, but he did resume promoting in October 1945. It was the same deal as before - big shows at Palais des Sports for the duration of the season and using his booking office to book his talent elsewhere the rest of the time. For the first couple of years the Palais des Sports shows were monthly, and then Paoli went back to the pre-war model of shows every other Monday night. As for talent, by 1945 Koloff had passed away so he was no longer in the picture, but Deglane and Rigoulot still were so Paoli once again relied on them as top stars, despite both of them now being in their 40s. In addition to Deglane and Rigoulot, a big focus was put on Yvar Martinson and eventually he became the top star of the promotion. 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. With those three guys at the helm Paoli’s promotion picked up right where it left off in 1939. Over the next few years Martinson, Deglane and Rigoulot traded the European Heavyweight Championship back and forth, and the UK’s Bert Assirati was brought in as another regular headliner and he had the title for a while too. Attendance information is much more limited on this period, but by all accounts business was strong and there were a number of big crowds, particularly for the matches between the aforementioned top stars of the promotion. In 1949 a new French main event star emerged in Felix Miquet. Miquet was considered the best French prospect of the Paoli promotion going back to the 1930s, but he wrestled abroad quite a bit so he wasn’t around much. When he finally settled back in France, he was quickly pushed to the top and won the European Heavyweight Championship from Martinson.

Another two notable names worth mentioning when discussing the 1945-1949 period of the Paoli promotion are Steve Casey and Yvon Robert. In 1946 the Irishman Casey wrestled Deglane in a big World Heavyweight Championship match in Paris. In fact, the first ever World Heavyweight Championship match in the history of the Paoli promotion. Casey had been the World champion of the Paul Bowser promotion in Boston, a promotion Paoli always had close ties to, but he had already lost the title. In France, however, that did not matter and they billed him as the champion. Casey and Deglane wrestled for 60 minutes without a winner and then the match was awarded to Casey on points. Casey therefore retained “the title”. In 1948 the Canadian Yvon Robert, the reigning World Heavyweight champion of the Montreal promotion (another promotion Paoli always had strong ties to), returned to France and successfully defended his title against Assirati and Deglane, and also drew with Martinson in a non-title match.

The next big name from America to come to France was Frank Sexton at the start of 1950. At the time Sexton was Paul Bowser’s World Heavyweight champion. In France Sexton received a lot of publicity and was a really big deal. For his debut he defended the title against Martinson in a match that drew somewhere in the neighborhood of 12,000 to 15,000 fans. He followed it up by drawing 10,000 against Deglane two weeks later, and then 16,000 for a match with Miquet two weeks after that. Sexton then went on to wrestle Rigoulot, followed by Frank Valois (a Canadian newcomer who had really gotten over in France as a big time heel) and then he had rematches with Miquet and Martinson. Sexton would return to work for Paoli in 1951, 1952 and 1954 as well, and even though in 1950 he lost his World Championship in the States, in France he continued being recognized as the champion and was always treated as a very important star.

Now let’s take a step back for a moment and talk about the French scene in general, because a major development was about to happen. The pre-WWII and post-WWII French scenes were different in two main ways. First of all, while there were several attempts at creating other booking offices in the French territory in the 1930s besides Paoli’s, most of them failed pretty quickly. Only two lasted, but one was a smaller operation while the other one was around only for a couple of years and then WWII started. So while Paoli wasn’t the only game in town in the 1930s, he kind of was for a lot of it. Post-1944 things were different. Paoli’s was still the biggest promotion/booking office, but now there were also others who were successful in their own right. At the start of the 1950s in addition to Paoli’s there were another three booking offices based out of Paris, who would promote their own shows in Paris (albeit in much smaller venues than Paoli’s 18,000-seater) and book talent nationwide.

The other important difference in the post-WWII French scene was that after the war the French state put pro wrestling under the jurisdiction of the French amateur wrestling federation (Fédération Française de Lutte - FFL). All Paris-based booking offices and their promotional partners in the French provinces were under FFL’s control. We won’t go into it here, because while very interesting it’s also a long story, but ultimately at the end of 1950 a group of promoters and wrestlers decided to break away from FFL’s control and create a new governing body specifically for pro wrestling - FFCP (Fédération Française de Catch Professionnel). What that meant was that French (catch) pro wrestling was about to have its first all-out promotional war. Public allegations of corruption, lawsuits, shows being held head-to-head, wrestlers switching sides, and even a few public challenges for private shoot matches. The war was very much on and things between the two sides were pretty hostile. Most of the animosity by the FFCP side was toward the FFL governing body itself, but as the biggest promoter under FFL’s umbrella Paoli was under fire as well. The FFCP ranks were very thin at first. They did have Deglane and Rigoulot, who had both had a falling out with Paoli, but both of them were near the end of their career. Therefore the FFCP group put their efforts toward creating brand new stars and trying to steal established stars away from the other side, and over the next few years the FFCP group grew to be a formidable foe.

As the FFCP/FFL situation was unfolding Paoli was operating as usual. The spotlight was on Miquet and Martinson as top stars. As mentioned earlier, Sexton returned for another tour and that is when he dropped his World Title claim to Miquet who then dropped it to Martinson only for Martinson to drop it back to Sexton. This was all so that Miquet and Martinson could get the recognition of being former World champions (strengthening their reputations in the wake of FFCP’s creation). In October 1951 Paoli brought in another big name from America - the former World Heavyweight boxing champion turned pro wrestling star Primo Carnera. At the time it was the most money Paoli had ever paid a wrestler to wrestle in France and Carnera was a big attraction for Paoli. Carnera wrestled for Paoli at Palais des Sports several times over the next few years and had big matches against the likes of Valois, Miquet, Martinson and Sexton.

The promotional war in France was heating up in 1952 and 1953. Of the four Paris-based booking offices only one was affiliated with FFCP, but then in the summer of 1952 another one switched sides and took some of its headline stars with it over to the FFCP side. It’s not clear whether these events were directly related, but right after this Paoli announced that he was joining forces with Alex Goldstein. Alex Goldstein was the head of one of the other Paris booking offices, the Cirque d’Hiver arena being his base of operations. Paoli and Goldstein had had a loose working relationship dating back a few years, and now they were merging their companies. Fast forward a few weeks and the new Paoli/Goldstein alliance took a big hit when, after a financial dispute with Paoli, Paoli’s top star and reigning European Heavyweight champion Felix Miquet jumped ship to the FFCP side. 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. Francois would remain Paoli’s top star for the next few years. Then in early 1953 Paoli suffered another blow when his long-time headline star Yvar Martinson joined promoter Henri Chausson, who had just established a new pro wrestling booking office in Paris. Also, in late 1953 Paoli attempted to hurt the FFCP side by stealing away one of their biggest stars - Robert Charron. In the mid to late 1940s Charron had been one of the most popular boxing stars in France, but his wild lifestyle outside of the ring got him suspended for life by the French boxing federation so then the FFCP camp recruited him to wrestling. When Charron jumped ship to Paoli the FFCP side sued, successfully, for breach of contract since Charron had a written long term contract with them and therefore Paoli couldn’t use him going forward. In short, this was a dynamic time in French pro wrestling and even more drama was brewing underneath.

For reasons we won’t get into here, in November 1953 the amateur federation FFL cut all ties with pro wrestling and in its place French’s pro wrestling’s pre-WWII governing body was re-established - FFLP (Fédération Française de Lutte Professionnelle). Paoli and Goldstein’s shows were now under FFLP’s jurisdiction. Right before this happened Paoli had tried to introduce a new concept to France, but the conservative FFL did not allow it. The concept in question was tag team wrestling. In the past few years tag team matches had become a big hit in North America and seeing the success overseas Paoli wanted to use tag matches as an attraction on his Palais des Sports shows. After the switch from FFL to FFLP Paoli tried promoting tag team wrestling again, but he got shut down again and wasn’t allowed to put on such matches.

Around this same time Paoli also tried something he hadn’t really tried before. Ever since 1933 he had typically run the 18,000-seat Palais des Sports every other week during the season, and from October 1953 onward he wanted to do it weekly. He already had his top stars Francois Miquet and Yvar Martinson (who he had just brought back into the fold), plus he was also pushing a new star in the bodybuilder-turned-wrestler Robert Duranton, and he had also lined up visiting foreign stars such as Frank Sexton, Primo Carnera, Lucky Simunovich, Ted Christy, Gene Dubuque, Don Beitelman, and more. However, as explained above, two of his key planned attractions fell through. Those being tag team wrestling and Robert Charron. There isn’t enough attendance data to say for sure whether the experiment with weekly shows was successful or not, but given that the run of weekly shows lasted only four months and Paoli never tried it again, it’s safe to assume things didn’t work out as well as he might’ve hoped. In 1953 and 1954 Paoli also had hopes of bringing Antonino Rocca, Gene Stanlee and Gorgeous George to France, but those plans didn’t work out either. In the case of George he was asking for more money than Paoli was willing to pay. As for Rocca, Paoli had been trying to bring him in since 1951 and at one point in 1953 Rocca’s upcoming debut was officially announced, but it never happened. It’s not clear why.

We’re skipping something important here (television), but we’ll get back to it soon. In October 1954 Paoli and Goldstein once again made a push to introduce tag team wrestling to France and also pushed for women’s wrestling (women’s pro wrestling was only just taking off in the French provinces on the indie level while in Paris it was banned). The FFLP board took a vote and the result of the vote was that neither was allowed. This was the final straw for Paoli and Goldstein. It was at this point that they decided, much like what had happened with FFCP a few years prior, that they would break away from FFLP and form a new governing body which would oversee their shows. That governing body ultimately became FILC (Fédération Internationale de Lutte de Combat). There were now three major governing bodies for professional wrestling in France. And you might think that this would mean that the promotional war that had been going on would now be a three-way war, but instead things took a different turn. The FFLP and FFCP governing bodies put their differences aside, as did the promoters associated with them, and formed an alliance against the Paoli/Goldstein office. For the next few years it was the Paoli/Goldstein office, the biggest one in France, in a battle against the alliance of the other three French offices. And this shift in the world of French pro wrestling happened simply because Paoli and Goldstein wanted to do tag team wrestling while everyone else was opposed to it.

Inevitably this shift of alliances led to some talent shifts as well and the Paoli/Goldstein office lost some of its stars. They did, however, gain an important star when Felix Miquet left the FFCP camp and returned back to Paoli. And it was Felix and his brother Francois who ended up wrestling in France’s first ever tag team match, which took place on 1 November 1954 at Palais des Sports. Their opponents were Eddie Brush and Jack Wentworth, and naturally the Miquet brothers won. The match was very well received and tag team wrestling gave the Paoli shows a new boost. Not that things were bad before, they weren’t, but tag team wrestling injected some new energy and excitement into the shows and overall was a big success in the long run. Paoli wasn’t the very first promoter to introduce tag team wrestling to Europe, but he was one of the early ones, and him having the foresight to do it, when most everyone else in France was opposed to the idea, adds to his legacy as a promoter. It took a while for them to come around, but by the end of the decade all the other major French promoters started doing tag team matches too.

Speaking of having foresight, another thing Paoli was ahead of compared to most of the other French promoters was television. Television officially started in France in 1949. Up until 1964 there was only one television network in the country and it was a public state-owned network. Very early on the TV News began featuring highlights from various sports and pro wrestling was one of them. It’s not possible to confirm for sure, but based on the available information the first match to have been featured on French national television seems to have been Henri Deglane vs. Frank Valois from the 21 November 1949 Paoli show at Palais des Sports. About 7 minutes of highlights from the match aired on television the day after it happened. In the next few years wrestling highlights became a staple of the TV News and highlights of close to 200 matches were featured on French TV by the end of 1954. Based on the available information, the two promoters to get their matches featured on TV most often were Paoli and Goldstein.

And this brings us to 22 March 1954. On that date pro wrestling aired live on French national television for the first time when the top two matches from a Paoli card at Palais des Sports were broadcast live in prime time. The first match to air was Primo Carnera vs. Hermann Reiss, followed by Francois Miquet (who had just become the European Heavyweight champion the week prior) vs. The Great Zorro (the future Hans Mortier).

The first live wrestling broadcast was a big success in that afterwards the network received a lot of letters by viewers asking for more wrestling on TV. And the network did want more wrestling on TV too, but the wrestling promoters had been and still were very apprehensive about their shows airing live on TV and were worried about what that might do to ticket sales, especially outside of Paris. They had read about how television had affected things in the United States, both positively and negatively, and wanted to avoid some of those pitfalls. And for that reason it took a couple of years until live wrestling broadcasts became a regular fixture on French television. Eventually what happened was that the network worked out a deal with all four major French booking offices. The idea was that the network would give equal air time to all four, although in the long run things didn’t work out quite that way. And keep in mind, even though they were to share the air time (meaning one week it would be a show by one office, the next week by another office, and so forth) at this time the Paoli/Goldstein office was still at odds with the other three offices, who were working together. In the long run Goldstein was the one who was more directly involved with television than Paoli was, but Paoli was the first one to do live wrestling TV in France so he should get the credit for that.

Wrestling airing on national television on a regular basis gave it a new wave of popularity and helped it reach a wider audience. As for Paoli and Goldstein’s office, those initial few years of wrestling on TV (1954-1958) were in a way a period of rebuilding for them and they put a lot of effort behind creating new stars. Yvar Martinson had left by February 1955, by the start of 1956 Francois Miquet relocated to North America (where he would become known as Corsica Joe), and while Felix Miquet was still around he was now in his late 40s. So new top stars were badly needed. The first guy Paoli and Goldstein strapped the rocket to was Eddy Wiecz, who they clearly had pegged as their next top babyface star, but as luck would have it Wiecz got a big break in Canada, where he became known as Eduoard Caprentier, and from April 1956 onward he was no longer around. Later that same year Paoli and Goldstein did find their next top babyface star in Andre Drapp. 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. He was put straight into the Palais des Sports main events and eventually won the vacant European Heavyweight Title (it had become vacant when Francois Miquet left for North America). Drapp was a headline star in France for 10+ years after that. The other two big stars that Paoli and Goldstein created during this time were a pair of heels - Roger Delaporte and Andre Bollet - who were very valuable both as singles stars and especially as a tag team. Over time Delaporte and Bollet became the most famous tag team in the history of France.

There are a few other interesting facts worth mentioning that happened in the second half of the 1950s. In late 1955 Yvon Robert returned for one final run and he was once again recognized as the World Heavyweight champion, despite not being one at that time in North America. He ended up dropping his title claim to the top heel in France at the time Frank Valois, who in turn dropped it to Felix Miquet. In January 1956 Paoli introduced another new attraction to the French audiences - midget wrestlers - when he brought in Sky Low Low, Lord Littlebrook and a couple of other midget wrestlers from North America. The midgets were yet another example of Paoli and Goldstein trying something new and different that no one else in France would at the time. In early 1958 Lou Thesz came in for a brief run as well. Thesz had just lost the NWA World Heavyweight Title to Dick Hutton and was doing an international tour. In France Thesz was still recognized as the World Heavyweight champion (by FILC) and defended the title a few times. The following year the popular Montreal star Johnny Rougeau had a French run too and was the recognized World Heavyweight champion by FILC (the claim being he had defeated Thesz for the title, which of course wasn’t true).

There was also an interesting shift that happened in 1958 on a promotional level. After several years of Paoli/Goldstein vs. the alliance of the other three French offices, all of a sudden things changed. Paoli and Goldstein aligned themselves with two of the offices while the fourth one was kicked to the curb and became the opposition. In a move that was partially spearheaded by Paoli and Goldstein, 1958 also saw the formation of Alliance Européenne de Lutte de Combat, or the European Wrestling Alliance as it was known in the UK. This was an alliance of some of the major European promoters. It included Paoli, Goldstein, their two partners in France, Joint Promotions in the UK and promoters from Belgium, Germany, Spain and Italy. The alliance was somewhat similar to the National Wrestling Alliance in North America, but nowhere near as cohesive and I don’t believe it did much in the long run.

As the decade was nearing its end Paoli was no longer as involved and Goldstein was the one mostly calling the shots. It’s difficult to say exactly when Paoli stepped away. Technically, he was still listed as the promoter of the Palais des Sports shows as late as 1959, but I don’t think he was very involved at that point. 1959 happens to be the year when French pro wrestling entered its absolute peak in terms of popularity with the emergence of L’Ange Blanc (Francisco Pino) - a masked babyface hero who took France by storm and became the biggest mainstream star in the history of French pro wrestling. And while technically Paoli was the man listed as the promoter for several Palais des Sports shows with L’Ange Blanc that drew big, I don’t know if Paoli should get the credit for the crowds as I don’t know exactly how involved he was at that stage. I don’t think it was much, if at all.

Raoul Paoli passed away on 23 March 1960 in Paris at the age of 72. His legacy in France is that of a formidable athlete and also the man who created French catch (pro wrestling). When Paoli started as a promoter there was hardly a pro wrestling scene to speak of in France. His promotion created a new industry in France, an industry that was very successful during his time in it and for another decade or so after he was gone. It’s an industry that’s never really gone away in France - it just got much smaller. It’s difficult to imagine what the history of French catch would even look like without Paoli. There is no denying that Raoul Paoli was one of the most transformative figures in the history of French and European pro wrestling, and one of the greatest European wrestling promoters of all time.

Note: The Raoul Paoli bio above was originally published in the 17 November 2025, issue of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter when Paoli was inducted into the WON Hall of Fame.

Acknowledgements: Thank you to Christian Gaildraud for his help on some of the biographical details about Paoli.