Pro Wrestling in Macedonia in 1996

Flesh Gordon's FEC/EWF tours the Republic of Macedonia.

There were various times when pro wrestling was very popular in the Balkan region in southeastern Europe (particularly in Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and the European part of Turkey) and the region had some of the biggest pro wrestling crowds in the history of Europe. However, by the mid 1990s pro wrestling in the Balkans was pretty much dead, and had been dead for quite some time in almost all of the Balkan countries. That is precisely what makes this 1996 tour that we're about to discuss all so very random and fascinating.

Before we talk about the tour itself, let's first start with providing some background. The Frenchman Gérard Hervé got his start as a pro wrestler in the first half of the 1970s and within a few years became one of the top young stars for the top French promoter at the time Roger Delaporte. In 1982, or early 1983 at the latest, Hervé and Delaporte went their separate ways. Hervé then got together with some partners and formed his own booking office/wrestling promotion. Around the same time he adopted a new flashier persona too - Flesh Gordon - which is the name he's best known by. His promotion aired on free-to-air French national television (the Antenne 2 channel, now known as France 2) as summer programming from 1983 to 1985 and some additional matches aired on the France 3 channel in 1987. Gordon's promotion more or less knocked off Delaporte's promotion as the top promotion in France and Flesh Gordon himself became the top French pro wrestling star at the time, which he would continue to be for many years after. In 1988 the promotion was rechristened Fédération Européenne de Catch (European Wrestling Federation) and had a brief stint on the biggest French television channel TF1, where it aired as late night programming (i.e. after midnight) under the name "New Catch". There was another brief late night TF1 run in 1991 and right before that the promotion started airing on the sports network Eurosport (TF1 and Eurosport were owned by the same company), which it was on for about a year. Eurosport was available in over 20 European countries back then, albeit likely with a small viewer reach in some of them due to lower satellite/cable adoption as of 1991-1992. While all of these TV runs didn't last long, you have to keep in mind that at the time no other promotion in Continental Europe had as much television exposure as FEC did. Not that it was a big television exposure, it definitely wasn't, but it was still more than anyone else was getting at the time in Continental Europe (apart from WWF, of course, which had also aired on Eurosport as well as on other channels in various European countries). To a certain extent it was that television exposure that allowed Gordon to do shows in some other countries besides his native France (Switzerland at first and later Portugal and Congo too, for example). And this brings us to the 1996 Macedonian tour.

As already discussed, live pro wrestling was non-existent in the Balkans in the mid 1990s (outside of some very occasional and very small shows in Greece, as far as I'm aware). It was certainly non-existent in the Republic of Macedonia (known as the Republic of North Macedonia today) specifically and had been for decades. Furthermore, American wrestling like WWF and WCW hadn't yet taken off in popularity to a significant degree in the region so it's not like wrestling in general was popular. And then seemingly out of nowhere Flesh Gordon's FEC did a 4-show tour of Macedonia in 1996. I have no idea how the tour even came to be and who approached who with the idea. A tour in one of the smallest countries in the region with no history of big time pro wrestling and no existing wrestling fan base. You look at a tour like that on paper and it looks so incredibly random and like it's bound to be a big failure, and yet by all accounts the tour did well as a first of its kind attraction in that market.

Part of the poster for the 1996 Macedonian tour
("For the first time in Macedonia", "World TV stars of catch live", "Gladiators of the modern time")

From 30 October to 3 November 1996 FEC did shows in the cities of Skopje, Bitola, Strumica, and Kumanovo. And by all available accounts the tour looks to have drawn well for what it was and that is how some of the wrestlers who worked the tour remember it as well. For example, the show in Skopje supposedly did over 2,000 fans. For an independent promotion with no American TV stars on the roster doing a tour in a country with no significant pro wrestling fan base or knowledge of pro wrestling, that is a pretty good attendance.

Regrettably, this tour is a difficult one to research as newspapers and other similar contemporary sources are not easy to access. That said, in speaking to several of the wrestlers I can confirm that the following wrestlers were part of the tour:

- Flesh Gordon (the top babyface and World champion of the promotion)
- Prince Zefy (originally from Zaire/Congo but based in France, the number two babyface of the promotion)
- Scott Rider (a Frenchman doing a Scottish gimmick, the top heel of the promotion at the time)
- Monsieur Jacky (a veteran French heel, one of the mainstays of the promotion since its start in the 1980s)
- Bernard Vandamme (an up-and-coming Belgian babyface star who two years later joined the cast of the popular game TV show "Fort Boyard")
- Robert Fasser (an Austrian heavyweight, one of whose gimmicks was an Ultimate Warrior knock-off)
- Ted Vicious (a French heel)
- Pierre Fontaine (a Frenchman, who trained with Édouard Carpentier in Canada and later in the early 2000s created the ICWA promotion in France)
- Mandingo (an African American wrestler from Ohio)
- Le Commando Para

There may have been some others too, but these are the names I've been able to confirm. As you may have noticed above, the German Ulf Herman was on the poster, however, he did not work the tour. The Golden Falcons, a popular tag team gimmick dating back to the 1960s that would get reused over and over, were also featured on the poster. I don't know if they were on the tour though.

Some of the participants in the 1996 Macedonian tour:
Flesh Gordon, Prince Zefy, Scott Rider, Monsieur Jacky
Bernard Vandamme, Robert Fasser, Ted Vicious, Pierre Fontaine
Photo credit: European Catch/Wrestling Museum and Petrus Wrestling Museum

Luckily for us the Skopje show was filmed and some of the footage is still around so we can get some sense of what the tour was like. It's certainly possible that the show in question aired on Macedonian TV - I was told by one of the wrestlers that it did, but I can't independently confirm this. The match below was likely the main event of the show. It’s very much a family friendly house show style match (i.e. the style Flesh Gordon's promotion has historically leaned toward) and it was clearly designed to ensure that the audience seeing wrestling live for the first time left satisfied. The crowd, which has a lot of kids in it, definitely seems to be enjoying themselves in the footage. You will also notice there was live commentary in the building, in Macedonian. If you can understand Macedonian, which luckily I can for the most part, the commentary is actually kind of fun to listen to.

Flesh Gordon & Prince Zefy vs. Scott Rider & Monsieur Jacky, w/ Le Commando Para (full match):

Video credit: the France-based Ecuadorian wrestler Hugo Perez

Bernard Vandamme vs. Mandingo (clips from the match):

Video credit: the documentary Road to Victory - The Bernard Vandamme Story

In talking to several of the wrestlers who worked the tour, I've been told that the plan was for the promotion to also do tours of Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria around the same time, but those plans didn't come to fruition. Apparently, there were negotiations for a show in Bulgaria in 1999 as well, but that didn't happen either.

So there you have it. This wraps up our story of FEC's Macedonian tour in 1996. To me this tour is for sure one of the most random events in European pro wrestling in the 1990s. If I didn't know about its existence and you asked me to name European countries where I thought there had been pro wrestling tours in the 1990s, Macedonia definitely wouldn't have been one that I would've guessed. And that's what makes this tour so interesting to me.

P.S. In case you're wondering, as of right now (November 2026) Flesh Gordon is still promoting shows in France, making him one of Europe's longest-running wrestling promoters in history. And, funnily enough, Prince Zefy is still wrestling on the shows, having now wrestled for over 40 years. Gordon's promotion is no longer called FEC though. Over the years it has went through a few different names, most famously WS (Wrestling Stars), and these days the Flesh Gordon shows are under the banner of Les Maîtres du Ring (The Masters of the Ring).